Making Sawdust

Today was a easy going day. Laurie woke me up asking if I might bring some tarps over to the church garage sale to lay some of the clothes on. I got up, threw some jeans and a flannel shirt on and was on my way. I spread the tarps on the grass and helped out a bit at the garage sale, enjoy a couple of breakfast tacos, found some golf shoes for $2.00 and was on my way to do some errands. To the bank, a quick stop into Academy to get some racquetballs and then on to Home Depot for a couple of hours.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been compiling a fairly lengthy list of small stuff I need to get at the hardware store. I use my treo's task list and list all of the stuff we need. Ended up being there the better part of two hours. It felt good to work out the little problems, find solutions for some future projects and just have some man fun.

With no time pressure I could have stayed longer but I was getting hungry by this time and still needed to go buy groceries for the week.

I get home hoping to find a package from Austin Homebrew with three kits in it, but nothing on the front step. Darn! I guess I'll just start installing, repairing the things I could with the stuff I just bought at Home Depot.

The first thing was to see what the cabinet doors look like under the white paint. I had two of the doors in the garage, taken off when I installed the stove several years back. I used some paint remover, and a little elbow grease to clean it up "real nice like" Unfortunately the doors are press wood and not a higher quality wood we could remove the paint and stain. So this means if we want to upgrade the kitchen cabinets we will need to re-paint them or replace the doors, or the whole entire set of cabinets. Something will need to be done before the graduation party in May. The cabinets are looking sorta dingy.

I had purchased some weather-proof electrical fixtures to replace the mess in the corner of the patio. I had an extension cord coming down supplying power to the patio amp and tuner. It was definitely not to code. But before I could install that I thought I'd better build something to house the amp and tuner. They've been on a short plastic table covered with a tupperware box for the longest time. So now to the sawdust part.

I clean off the crud from on top of the table saw. The leftovers from making Donovan and Mira's blocks were there. That brought back a bunch of fun memories. I look around the garage for material to build the cabinet with and find what I need and commence making sawdust. I'm still sawing when Laurie come home from a seminar she's been attending. When I start to try to assemble the cabinet I find that the wood glue I had was almost solid. The top was open and it had hardened. Ok, so now we need to go back to the hardware store. I need some more glue and the hardware for the cabinet.

Laurie was up for going with me. I think she really wanted to go by Ross or Michaels. She didn't complain too much we I was trying to figure out the hinges issue.

It's a good thing I didn't have good glue cause I remembered I needed to drill holes for shelf brackets and prepare the cabinet for hanging on the wall. It would have been awkward trying to do the drilling after the unit was assembled.

When we got home it was time for dinner. I cooked bacon wrapped filet mignon in a mushroom sauce and French cut green beens , and a mixture of corn peas and brown rice. We cleaned off the dining room table and ate in candle light with the piano player serenading us. We took our time eating and talking. Great dinner.

After dinner I drilled the holes and then assembled and clamped the cabinet. It should be set in the morning.

We get to visit with Brian, Laura and play with Mira tomorrow, but time for bed now.