Loads of Wildlife and a Bed For House Guests

A family of deer make their way across our garden

This rabbit has been hanging around quite regularly. Here he is hanging out by the horseshoe stake.

One of the pair of hawks that hunts near the pond

Some butterflies mating

Woodpecker testing the willow trees by the pond

One of the resident turtles

A young deer at the back of the pond

One of the many Cardinals that live round our house.

In a previous post I joked that in winter, some trees have leaves and others don't. This one doesn't have leaves in summer either, because it's dead. It does make a nice home for loads of spiders though.

With family coming in the summer, I've been busy building a bed for them to sleep on. I designed it in Sketchup and went to a local sawmill to buy the wood. The sawmill was really impressive, a massive operation and a far better range and choice than is available at home depot/lowes, and much cheaper as well. Just the headboard left to finish and mount. I focused on showing the best looking wood grain on outside surfaces and hiding any of the wood screws from view making use of kreg jig pre-drilled holes. I managed to use up some older, less attractive wood for the slats as they will never be seen.

Queen bed design with storage underneath.

George Nelson inspired table and odd jobs

Since I've started running again (training for a 50K in October -arghhh!) I've had far too much energy and so I've gotten round to finishing jobs and projects that have piled up.

In the past week I've cleared out and organised the storage shed, building in some shelving, a workbench and lumber racks.

 I've also installed a front door handle - for about six months we've had only the deadbolt lock in, meaning we had to lock it every time we went in and out or the door would swing open and the cats would make their break for the wild outdoors. It was very pleasing to reuse the old handle I found in the shed and for the installation to go well without ending up with a big hole in the door!

I also finished the table I mentioned in this post, building legs and finishing it with clear polyurethane. It measures 34" x 34" x 14" and was made from a single 2 x 6, using the table saw to rip the slat thickness. It will work well as a bedside table in our guest room. My other George Nelson bench is in this post.

 If you are interested, check out my mid century modern furniture business Trystcraft . I find, restore, refinish (no chalk paint!) and repair mid century modern furniture and ship it worldwide.

Bluejays and (blue) grass

With the warm weather arriving early this year, spring is well underway with trees greening and plants blooming and animals busy nest building. The wooded area outside our kitchen window has become a favourite place of bluejays to gather nest material - I've counted up to 8 birds at one time picking up twigs and fighting over the best pieces.

The higher temperatures and frequent rain have also helped the grass germinate and thicken well.  

March 1st

March 17th

March 29th

We've also had pairs of geese and pairs of ducks landing on the pond in the mornings.

Gratuitous cute cat photo.

A fox, a big(ger) bass, new table design, grass seed.

We've had a couple of visits from a fox, one at night and one in broad daylight - we think he's after the neighbour's chickens which are free roaming and not shy about crowing. I got a couple of shots of it the second time:

Both shots were taken from our bedroom window.

The fox spotted me here but didn't seem to bothered and hung around for another 5 minutes or so.

 I've also been more successful at targeting the bass in the pond with lures, managing to catch 3 in about 20 minutes today. This was the biggest one I've caught yet.

Big mouth!

 I've also been playing around with a variation on the George Nelson bench I made in November (click here for that blog post)

Smokey strikes his 'aloof model' pose.

The variation has four square slat modules arranged perpendicularly to each one next to it.

The table saw makes things a lot easier - I was able to do in a day what took me almost 5 days just using the mitre saw in November.

I haven't decided on the legs/stand for this one but will post the final product soon.

I also spent today manually-tilling, sowing grass seed, raking and covering with straw the area around the front of the house. That was hard work!

DIY Bench no. 2.

I've been spending a lot of time looking at bench designs as we need one for our 'hallway' by the door. It's the first thing I've really designed and built from scratch so the process has been a really good experience. 

As always, I made alterations and tweaks along the way such as changing the distance between the slats (wider as you move away from the centre) and leaving a gap between the end of the slats and the frame. I also made good use of the table saw again, cutting a step out of the top piece making a ledge for the slats to sit on and for cutting mortices in the bottom pieces. The materials cost about US$15.

The two iterations of the design in Sketchup (this one has more slats and is slightly longer)

The shed and table saw set up.

It's great to be woodworking outside on days like this

The frame pre-oiling. (Very messy shed, I know) 

Test assembly success!

After the stain/seal had dried

Here you can see the mortices are staggered: 2" and 1" deep and the opposite on the other side

 If you are interested, check out my mid century modern furniture business Trystcraft . I find, restore, refinish (no chalk paint!) and repair mid century modern furniture and ship it worldwide.

A (not so) slippery slope

Part of the building inspector's checklist required us to stabilize the slope behind the house. I had a great time moving the + 200lb railroad ties (sleepers in UK) end over end into position at the base of the slope, then strawed (for the purpose of this blog it's a verb) the bank to reduce soil erosion. The two were definitely a visual improvement and the gravel was like a lick of new paint.

Straw, railroad ties and gravel. 

I like the way the gravel highlights the roof overhang after rain.

Now we need to get the grass seeded.

 I got a table saw for my birthday has meant I've been spending lots of time learning how to use. It's great to be able to get accurate cuts, angles and bevels and to be using wood thats wider than a 2x6. Here is a little stand I put together from some scraps: