Mounting Bottle Bottoms in Wood

Bamboo Finish on box to heighten Brick Wall

Bottle Bottom Template for Valance

Sometimes simple ideas are harder to execute than you expect. My idea of mounting glass bottle bottoms into the wood we used to build-up our brick wall to counter height took days & days of planning & practice to figure out how to accomplish it. 
First of all a lot of beer bottles appear the same size, but they vary ever so slightly. Also since we are using LED lights to shine through from the inside of the box, the bottles need to fit snug in the hole so light doesn’t bleed around the edge. The cleanest way to get a nice round hole in wood without chewing up the edges is with a hole saw. Only problem, they come in just certain sizes & the larger ones get pricey. Between the contractor & ourselves, we had quite a few, but not enough for all the sizes of bottles. We splurged on a few additional ones. My husband also found an adjustable hole maker, but it wasn’t cutting through thick pieces of wood easily. So after various practice holes and shaving down of glass bottles, he decided to use the adjustable hole saw to cut holes in a template, clamp that template to the box and use his router to cut the smooth round holes. So we ended up going out & spending almost $25 on the right router bit. In the end it was worth it.

Bob cutting Circle Templates

Adjustable Hole Saw

Hole Cutters & practice cuts in Bamboo

The Circle Templates

Special Router Bit

Box with Circles Cut Out (protective tape still applied)

Powering Through the Old Floor

Well besides finishing up some mud on the drywall today, I spent my time with the hammer & chisel breaking away the bit of old floor adjacent to the brick wall. There's another section at the front of the wall that I tried hand sawing away (the grain is the opposite direction) but the oak floor was too hard for me to power through. Now I need a masseuse.

Wish I Could Hang Out in Grandpa’s Shed

My choice for this month’s Blog Carnival theme is to talk about my grandfather.
He was a craftsman. He made his living as a house painter, a skill he passed down. My siblings and I always pitched in when the house needed painting, and I still don’t hesitate to pick up a bucket of paint & brush today. But in addition to his profession, my grandpa was a woodworker. He built all the oak kitchen cabinets in my childhood home and he handcrafted many small household items. Not only did he cut & assemble the pieces, he also did his own decorative painting. I believe my mother still has a cutting board in the shape of a pig. I’m not totally sure, but I believe he used mostly hand tools, don’t remember him using power tools.

Grandma & Grandpa

I’m sure grandpa could have produced lots of items for an etsy shop, but I doubt he would have embraced computers. So much of their home was very old technology, from the ringer washer that grandma used to their telephone (which is probably the oldest style phone I ever used).  But using those old-fashioned hand techniques is what makes the new craft movement exciting to me.

While taking the photos, I noticed inside his intials and 1958 or 1968 

so this may be the same age as me

When you walked out onto my grandparents’ small back porch, you first overlooked his huge vegetable garden. He tended it meticulously & as small children we were banded from playing around in it. Behind the garden was his huge shed, which extended almost of the width of the yard. As small kids we were also forbidden to go into the shed because of the dangerous tools, but as we grew older, only my brothers were permitted inside. The only times I remember seeing the inside was when grandma would send us out to retrieve him & then we got to poke our heads inside. It was filled with all kinds of tools, hardware and furniture needing repair. I always longed to be inside. But when I was around 9, we moved out of state, so there were few opportunities after that. My younger brother did spent one summer there and he built an end table with grandpa. 

 Grandpa, Mom & either my Sis or me

I was about 18 when that house was sold and didn’t have the means or place to store most of the wonderful goodies in the shed or house. Though I pursued so much sewing and crafting throughout my teens, it wasn’t until adulthood that I realized I had missed an opportunity to learn proper woodworking. I’m not one to have many regrets in life (I feel that all our ups & downs create the person that we are) but learning from grandpa is something I definitely wish I had taken advantage of as a child. I’d love to be exploring that shed right now!