Thursday October 24th 2024

One of the things I decided to do when I bought my new base camp was build a lot of the furniture. I have always enjoyed working with wood and it will likely end up costing a little less. Over the last month I have gradually acquired most of the tools I will need. This week I a got started on a Queen Bed frame as the first furniture item.

Last weekend I scouted the area big box stores for the lumber I need. The majority of what I needed was at a Home Depot about fifteen miles away. The Lowes that is practically a neighbor has a very poor wood selection. On Monday I attempted to purchase what I needed at the Home Depot, but they were unable to cut the wood down for me. Traveling fifteen miles in traffic with wood sticking out of my SUV wasn’t going to happen. On Tuesday I returned with my cordless circular saw and made my own cuts in the parking lot so everything was inside the vehicle. By the time I got home the sun was making my outside work area too hot for comfort. It was a good excuse to head north to Disney’s Magic Kingdom for the evening.

On Wednesday I got started cutting the rough cut lumber down to size and forming the open mortises in the legs. I ran into problems with the tools I have available. Ideally I would like a table saw for some of the cuts, but it represents a cost and lack of available space issue that I don’t want to deal with for the limited use it is likely to get. I switched to hand tools to clean up some of my imprecise circular saw cut issues. That sent me on a chisel buying mission. I finally found one at Walmart after striking out at Lowes.

Today I got the leg mortises complete and a first sanding on all the pieces done. Tomorrow I’ll do another sanding and test assemble to pieces. Then I’ll take everything apart for one more sanding followed by a coat of stain. If I get it done early enough in the day for it to dry, I may be able to get a few more steps accomplished. This is taking a lot longer then I thought it would. The fact that the sun heats up my work area around 3PM isn’t helping.

On my Tuesday evening trip to the Magic Kingdom I got a decent theme park meal at Columbia Harbor House. The grilled skewered shrimp are pretty good. I followed up dinner with a few rides and shows waiting for the 8:30 fireworks. After the fireworks, it was back to the rides while I waited for the after fireworks rush to the exits to calm down. It still took about three quarters of an hour to get from the Magic Kingdom exit across the Seven Seas Lagoon to my car in the parking lot when I departed shortly after 9:30.