Woodworking

     Saturday was another project day. We added another family to project day last year, so now there are 3-5 adults working, depending on how many small children need attention at any given moment. As a result, many of us plan multiple simultaneous projects for the day.
     I was originally assigned to scraping and painting duty - a few parts of the house exterior needed a new coat before winter came. I'm quite comfortable working on ladders, but my arms are so short that my reach is quite limited. Soon, I defected to the door team. The exterior of the back door was worn, so S&N had decided to sand it down and refinish it. The two months I spent refinishing my bedroom floor gave me lots sanding experience, and I made myself somewhat insufferable complaining about the equipment. I used the little oscillating sander sitting on the bench in the picture, but I had two more appropriate sanders, and better sandpaper, at my house that I could have brought with me. The rest of the team was fine with doing a lot of hand sanding, but I was raised by a man who would spend ten hours building a machine to do a two-hour job* and don't take well to hand tools.
     Two days later I found myself in another somewhat impromptu project. I'd like to build a set of three steps for Ada the dog**. She can't see out of any of the house windows, and with steps she could amuse herself watching the neighborhood, as she used to do at the old house. I couldn't find any steps of appropriate height, and of course I'm too frugal to buy anything new anyway, so I decided to make them. It seemed crazy to spend a lot of money on good wood for dog furniture, but N said he could get me some used plywood. His university lab often receives equipment and materials on pallets that are lined with wood. But we needed to move quickly, because free plywood is snapped up by his coworkers. So I drove to his lab straight after work on Monday. Three of us worked to cut down the wood to a size that would fit in my car. We were in the loading dock, after dark, working by the light of a single fixture and a phone flashlight, cutting the wood down with a circular law while it balanced on barrels. I hadn't changed clothes after work, so I was still wearing my wool skirt and heels. By the time we were done, I and my work clothes were covered in sawdust, but I had the makings of dog furniture loaded in my little hatchback. I felt like I turned the 50's stereotype on it's head - instead of wearing my pearls and heels while vacuuming, I did so while ripping plywood.

*Because then you'd have the machine for the next job, and the saved time would be cumulative.
**It's her Christmas gift, so don't mention a word of this to her...