So What Have I Been Doing- the workshop conundrum

  So what have I been doing, that's the conundrum.  It seems nothing, there is no new furniture,  barely a visible project, yet... Over the past couple of weeks I have spent some time working on something in my shop nearly everyday.  I have no photos to share and seemly nothing to show for my effort.  However, all the things where possible because I have a workshop full of tools and a separate place in which to work. 

  Summertime is bicycle riding time for us and this year I bought an e-bike, a Giant LaFree. It was the best money I've spent on a recreational luxury in ages. A new bike involves fiddling, fussing and adjusting, mirrors, racks, water bottles etc. etc.  All of those adjustment require hex keys of various shapes and sizes. 

   Since I live in Canada it means that I have to have full sets of hex keys in both metric and imperial.  I also have a set of specialised driver bits to work on security fasteners as well.  Since I have a shop and have collected those various tools over the years I was able to adapt a handle bar mirror, remount a bike computer and fit and adjust my grandson's bike too.  Were I cynical I would think that manufacturers want you buy something new rather than adjust/modify your existing products. There sure is a broad selection of fasteners out there for which I have the right tools.

  Summertime is also gardening time.  Each year I spend several hours sanding rusty garden tools and treating handles with tung oil.  I have sanders, grinders, wire brush attachments, all of which makes for easy care and maintenance of our  garden tools.  Not interesting, not blog worthy but, a use of time and shop space.  

  What else has been going on...sharpening. I have sharpened kitchen knives, garden tools, shop tools and pocket knives.  I know that blades should be constantly maintained, but...it turns out that a couple of times a year I spend a few hours cleaning up my work space, setting up my sharpening jigs and honing things to a fine edge.  At this time things are sharp.

  The last thing I've done in my shop lately is paint.  I hate painting.  I am not very good at it.  I am not neat enough or comfortably organised enough to be a good painter, nor patient enough. Having a shop space enables me to spread the tools out and contain the mess while doing the job, therefore making the job slightly less onerous.  

  Today's shop time was spent touching up the missed spots on the stairs, and making a new towel rack.  I didn't know we needed a new towel rack until it touched up the drying rack in our bathroom, you know how one job leads to another.

   

cheers, ianw

Painting the Stairs

  We moved into this house eleven years ago.  At that time I bought a five gallon pail of latex paint.  I used the 'apartment block beige' to paint the dry wall in the garage and the paint grade stairs going into our basemen before we moved in.  I painted the garage knowing that once we got moved in we'd never get around to painting the dry walled walls and it would look forever unfinished. (like our previous place). 

 A while ago the stairs into the basement had really started to look rough.  There had been eleven years of wear and tear;  plus lots of dirty boots and spilled coffee/juice/pop/tea/etc stains  accumulate on the satin finish paint.  Glossy paint would have worked better but didn't come in the amount I wanted for what I paid. By the way I bought the paint at the ReCentre for $25.00 according to the price written on the plastic bucket.

Looking Down

  I certainly can't complain about the quality considering it lasted this long

  Painting stairs has a couple of challenges so I suggest you wear knee pads especially when painting the lowest stairs. You can also see that every other stair is un-painted.  This way I painted my way down stairs, painting treads and risers and was able to climb out of the basement leaving the treads to dry over night.  Today I did the missed stairs and hey presto.

looking up

  I am going to give the stairs a couple of days to completely dry then I will go back with a trim brush and clean up any little missed spots.  

  Painting tips:

  The internet is filled with tips for paints but I thought I'd share a couple.  

 I used small foam rollers to do most of this job and so only needed a brush for the tight corners.  The small rollers are really easy to clean.

 I put the paint tray in a plastic bag before I put the paint in it so there was no clean up of a messy paint tray.

 And I made my own paint stirring drill attachment.  The paint sat in the basement for eleven years and so had settled fairly solidly to the bottom.  I broke the solids up with a stick and then whipped them for nearly an hour using my low speed 1/2 inch mixing drill.

  My stirring attachment  started life as copper wire twisted artistically into a giant mixer head.  An hour of run time in thick goo means now it's just twisted.  

    When using old finishes/paints it is a good idea to do a quick test before putting it on your project.  In the past I have had varnish that would not dry and so had to be stripped off. 

This time  I mixed the paint, strained out a few lumps that didn't seem to want to break up and then painted a board from my scrap bin before trying it on the stairs.  I wanted to be sure the paint would dry and...that there was enough pigment etc. to make putting it on worth while.  It appears that latex paint can be recovered when left to separate for years.  

  Once the paint was re-constituted the actually painting part of the job wasn't too tough at all. Which suits me just fine.

cheers, ianw

Middle of August - Where have I been

  Where on earth have I been and what have I been doing. Well, I have been home and not working in my shop.  Since the beginning of August we have been hosting our two oldest grandchildren and frankly that has kept us busy.

  My grand son has been going to science camp at McMaster University and having a whale of a time.  He has written game programmes and made a couple of electronic toys.

  This is an electronic tic-tac-toe game. When he was finished at science it had wires hanging out and exposed batteries some I made a wooden case for it.  Now it is contained and less likely to suffer disconnections.

  My Grand daughter and I spend a while in the shop painting various wooden puzzles that I had made her over the last few months.

  But there has been no serious building going on.  My energy was spent on bike riding, game playing, art making and hanging out with my Grand kids.  

   If you have the chance, hang out with your kids / grand kids, everything else can wait.

These are not recent photos. 

The kids being adorable.

cheers ian