The Resident Carpenter/Woodworker Has Been Busy!

I’ve been pretty lazy busy lately and haven’t had a chance to post about the latest projects that Ryan has finished. We’re heading cross country to Pebble Beach and San Francisco, so I figured I’d at least draft a post while sitting on the 5-hour plane ride. I am now sitting outside the airport in amazing 62-degree weather (without the humidity that hit us in the face when we left for the airport this morning) waiting for Ryan to show up with our rental car (pretty great system if you ask me - he gets the car and I get to hang out with our bags and we don't have to deal with them on the shuttle bus). I’m hoping to also post some highlights from our trip while we’re there, but we’ll see how well that goes depending on how tired I am each day from all the spa treatments sightseeing. Anyway, back to the projects…

The first project is the flower box. We decided to give this to Ryan’s mom for her birthday since she is quite the gardener and loves flowers so much. It has been finished for a few weeks, but I couldn’t post about it until we had given it to her. We spent the past weekend with the LeNoirs playing beer pong to celebrate Linda’s birthday. I didn’t do a very good documenting the actual flower-box-making process, but I do have pictures of the finished product.

The inside is pressure treated wood and the outside is teak.

Up close

What project wouldn't be complete without a "Handcrafted By" nameplate?!

The next project on the list was a mantel for Mom-Mom’s fireplace in her condo. Ryan built the mantel at our house, but didn’t put it together completely until Maryann painted it. We dropped it off on a Friday night and came back on Sunday after the Phillies game to install it.

Putting the mantel back together after Maryann painted it.

Putting the glue on it to put it up on the tile

The "naked" mantel without all the trim

Ryan putting the trim on. You can tell he was working hard by his sweaty shirt!

The 99% finished product. The brown marks are the wood filler that was used to fill in the nail holes. This will be painted over in white by Maryann.

And, the name plate.

If You Build It, They Will Come

The latest project is finished - the poker table!

Before staining.

The staining station.

The felt. If you look closely, you can see that it has spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds on it.

The finished product!

Home Improvements by the Handyman

This past weekend, Ryan and his new father-in-law spent the day on Saturday working on finishing the part of the basement that will be Ryan's workshop. I'm getting the feeling that now that we're married, Ryan can't wait to get away from me and will be spending all his time in the workshop. Hopefully, some nice projects will come out of his desertion hobby. I have included some pictures below of the workshop to show the progress that was made. There's still some work to do be done, but it's looking good so far.

In addition to the progress in the workshop, Ryan made some really nice shelves for the basement. I have included the pictures of these as well, along with a picture of the huge pile of sawdust on the basement floor from all of his hard work. The first picture is of the frame for the shelves. Second one is of all the sawdust, and the third is the finished product with all of our stuff on the shelves. Good job, Ryan!

The Finished Product

Here it is... the finished bookcase.

And, here it is with some books in it... (the bookcase isn't leaning, I just can't take a level picture) We can finally unpack the office!!

The Bookcase

Here it is, the new bookcase... It still needs to be painted, but I thought I'd share the first picture of the thing that started the whole woodworking craze. I think it looks great!

Another Project

I'm a little late posting this, but better late than never, right? Ryan completed the sofa table about a month ago, so as promised here are a few pictures of it. Not only did he make it, but he also stained it himself! He's getting good at this woodworking stuff! Next up, the bookcase (finally). The bookcase was the project that started the whole woodworking craze!

The Search for the Perfect Dress

This past weekend, Ryan and I headed up to PA to spend some quality time with his family. Today is Ryan's Dad's birthday - Happy Birthday, Rich! We went up to PA to celebrate his birthday, but Ryan and I had our own separate agendas for the weekend. Ryan and his dad did some work around the house working to re-install cable so that if Verizon Fios ever makes it to their neighborhood, they will be ready for it. Ryan's mom and I spent some real quality time together on Saturday searching for the perfect Mother of the Groom dress. We left the house at 9:15am to go and meet Alexis for our first appointment at 10am. As soon as we got onto the highway, we quickly discovered that the cars in front of us were barely moving (if at all). Apparently, Saturday was the day that they were doing construction on a bridge about 4 miles down the highway... The left lane was closed and merging into one lane was just too hard for the people in front of us. It took us about 2 hours to get past the construction.. yes, you read that correctly, 2 HOURS - we literally went 2 miles per hour. Talk about some serious mother-in-law/daughter-in-law bonding time. At one point, I thought Linda was going to get out of the car and walk to see how far she could get before I caught up with her! Once we finally made our way past the traffic, it was too late to meet Alexis, so we headed to our 2nd appointment that was scheduled for noon. From there, we made a lot of progress and stopped at 3 more stores where Linda tried on about 12-15 dresses. We also stopped at the furniture store, had lunch and went to the wicker store to pick up the baskets that we'll be using as our "hospitality" baskets in the restrooms at the reception. Despite trying on quite a few dresses, we didn't find the "one" - there were a couple that were maybe's but we weren't quite sure about. So, the next day we headed out to our 3pm appt, this time with Alexis, where Linda found a beautiful dress. And, even though we got home and the house was a little messy, Ryan and his dad had done a good job running the cable and not cutting any holes in the wallpapered walls! All in all, a great weekend spent with the LeNoirs!

A New Project

As many of you know, Ryan signed up for a woodworking class at the local community college for the spring semester. His first assignment was to build an end table. It took a little longer than expected because his class kept getting canceled due to "bad" weather (a little ice, but mostly rain), but he finished this week. So, as promised, I am posting a picture of it, so you all can see how well it turned out. We still need to stain the table, but who knows when that will happen, so I thought I'd share the current picture. It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but the table top has "grooves" around the edge that Ryan made using a router. He seems to really be enjoying woodworking and he also seems to be learning a lot and doing pretty well with it. I am definitely impressed. The next project is going to be a work bench, and I'll be sure to share that with everyone once it's complete.

Another Project Completed

This time it's a full-length mirror! I was not very good at taking pictures of the progress this time, but I have posted the pictures of the finished product below so everyone can see how well it turned out. I am quite impressed with Ryan's skills and am beginning to wonder if this was his true calling. For those of you reading this blog for wedding updates, I promise there will be more posts soon as we have started planning and are going to our first reception place this weekend!

And the building has begun....

A few weeks ago, I made a comment to Ryan that we needed to get a new, bigger bookshelf because in addition to the books already there, the 2 bookshelves that we have are becoming increasingly full with all the new wedding stuff that I have acquired over the past few months (thanks to the 4 wedding magazine subscriptions, wedding book, brides journal and wedding planning binder from Crystal). Rather than buy a new bookshelf, Ryan started doing some research and decided that he was going to build us a new one! But, of course, before this could happen, he had to buy all the tools for the bookshelf. Oh, and after the tools arrived, he decided that before the bookshelf could be constructed, he would have to build a tool cabinet that could house all the tools. Ryan's interest in building all these things actually kind of surprised me, but it seems to be something that really interests him. So, rather than devote all of the blog posts to wedding talk (b/c that would be selfish), I thought it would be appropriate to document Ryan's projects for everyone to see as well.

Ryan started building the tool cabinet on Saturday, Feb 24th. The weather was a decent sunny day in February, and I think he just couldn't wait to start. I have included pictures below to show Ryan's progress.

Ryan is hard at work, measuring the wood to go into the tool cabinet.

Ryan, using the saw that I was worried would chop off his fingers/hand.

At the end of Day 1, the frame was finished. The only reason he stopped was because he had run out of battery on one of the saws. I was quite impressed!

Day 2 of building the tool cabinet started on March 3rd and was a gorgeous spring-like day. Ryan finished building the tool cabinet, and I think it looks pretty good for a first-time builder! See the pictures below.

The tool cabinet has "walls" now!

The finished product which is in the "cove" outside our basement door. Of course, the tools are still sitting in the house, but we do have the ability to store the tools in the cabinet someday!