So, I’ve mentioned that woodworking is one of the things on my long list of hobbies, and I thought I might show a little bit of what I’ve done.  I’m in the middle of another little woodworking project right now, which as usual I’ve made more complicated than it needs to be, so I can’t tell if it’ll be done soon (what I’d really like), or many months from now (the more usual turn of events).  But in the meantime, I can show you the weird range of my past projects.

My first woodworking project is from many years ago and only barely deserves the name, as it was much more about function than about form.  It was back when I was in grad school, and I made it over a Christmas break with a hand-saw, and…hopefully a drill?  I don’t quite remember now, but I do know I used my manual screwdriver for a lot of things for a long time, and so that easily could have been involved in this too.

As is usual for me, the project came out of a need for (convoluted) problem solving.  My husband had been learning how to use an airbrush, mostly to paint miniatures.  You can see some of his awesome work here, or you can look below at the pretty pictures.

We were living in an apartment, and, since airbrushing needs access to power and a sink, he was using the mostly-unused second bathroom as his painting station.  The countertop was almost non-existent, making the toilet seat the most stable available surface.

So, I made him a painting table designed to fit over the unused bathtub.

Yep, the whole thing’s made out of 1×2’s (sawed to length by hand) and the ‘surface’ of the table is barely deserving of the name.  But, there is a plexiglass window for protecting reference books. Also, you know, he could now sit on a stool to paint rather than crouching on the floor – a win!

The hilarious thing is that he helped me make it (I wasn’t even barely competent with a drill at that point) and he knew it was a present for him, but he Could Not Figure Out what it was going to be.  You can’t really blame him, all things considered.  But it was great fun to spend hours sitting on the floor in the kitchen assembling his Christmas gift and still have it be a surprise.

And for a long time, that was the extent of my woodworking accomplishments.

Years later (after we got a house), I decided to finally have a go at a proper project – a bookcase, because I’d been living with the sci-fi portion of my book collection packed up against a closet door for years.  I, of course, immediately designed something overly complicated, that required I learn lots of new things (youtube is so helpful, thank goodness).

But my husband took a look at that plan and said, ‘Nope.  Before you go straight to figuring out how to use a router, you must first build a workbench!  That is the proper order of things.’  This, it turned out, was also good, because the workbench he’d made before that was/is just so tall, it was going to be way too tall for short me to be able to use that router that was key to my new, way-too-complicated project.

So, workbench first, small enough to fit under that first, giant workbench. Then (about a year later because I am the queen of complicated projects that take forever), a bookcase.

Which I am reasonably pleased with.  Not least because it’s the right depth for books.  That was the thing I was really going for.  Huzzah!

Anyway, I did a nice, careful job on that bookshelf.  It took a long time, and though it is not perfect, it’s a good manifestation of what I intended it to be, carefully designed from start to finish.

After that one, big, polished project, though, I really reverted to type.  Or I should say, the other type.  I have two main crafting modes:

1. Way over-designed and takes for-freaking-ever.
2. Patchwork (from the ground up).

You see, one summer I went and tore up half of our deck (it was too big), and as a result suddenly found I had a lot of, reasonably nice, scrap lumber.

So I designed plant stands!

The design is based off of a park-bench design I’ve seen before and really like.  And I quite like my plant-stands.  But I feel a bit chagrined that I’ve figured out the patch-work mode of woodworking so quickly, where precise cuts almost don’t matter at all.  What in my brain is so very drawn to this style of crafting?

Anyway, more recently I made a very wonky bookshelf for the end of the hallway, also out of that scrap lumber.  It’s basically the opposite of my first, fancy bookshelf project, and it’s arguable that it’s even actually successful (as long as the shelves are full the books don’t fall through…)

But I still quite like it, actually.  And look! It has a piece of my first project in it.

Since we don’t live in that old apartment anymore, my husband has a much nicer painting station now, and that old ‘table’ got slowly taken apart for scrap.  But now that dark, dark purple paint still gives it away, since that’s always been one of my husband’s favorite colors and for many years that table played host to a lot of purple paint.

And there we are.  Hopefully I’ll get to show you my new project before too long.  But, realistically, it’s going to be a while.

Happy crafting!