I spent most of this weekend constructing a new deck that adjoins the old deck by the pool. This is phase 27 in the 4 year long backyard project. Building the small deck was surprising easy. I wasn’t 100% sure I possessed the skillz necessary to do it on my own, so I recruited dad to help devise the plan, acquire materials, and get me started. I enjoy showing how things are done, so here is how to build a simple deck:

Normally you would start by setting some concrete posts for the deck to rest on. Since there was already concrete underneath several of these posts, I skipped this step and went straight into building the frame. Make sure it's level and square. If your building in a predetermined space which happens to be off-square, then you'll have to deal with that as I did.

Next, use those deck brace things and attach the cross bars, which probably have a real name besides cross bars.

If your deck is awesome like mine and has to go in a space that is not square, you will have to cut at least one board at an angle. I decided to make it the next to the last one, both for aesthetics and to hopefully prevent the narrow end from splintering over time.

Now all that's left to do is screw in the planks across the top and trim them to length with the skill saw. Now the deck is done!

The last step (not pictured) is the call mom and ask her to power-wash the existing deck since it now looks worse than ever with a nice new deck connected to it.

I’ve been wanting an electric outlet in my basement and in the stairway for quite some time so last night I decided to try my hand at being an electrician. I am generally intimidated by projects that involve tampering with devices marked “HIGH VOLTAGE” but after googling “how to install an electric outlet” I felt like I could pull it off on my own.

The first, and also the most intimidating part of the project involves adding a breaker to an electric panel. Since my house is extra cool, it has no less than 5 electric panels, 2 of which are no longer functioning. I chose the one under the kitchen to connect to since it was the closest to where I wanted to put the outlets and it also had 3 open slots.

Once you’ve added a new circuit breaker and all the connections are made, run some wire from the panel along the ceiling towards the target location. If you need to get over some duct work, use a 10′ piece of conduit to pull it through. If you’re in a pinch and don’t have conduit handy, a broomstick, scrap piece of lumber, or in extreme cases, a broken tree branch might all get the job done. Just ask yourself, “how would a redneck do this?”.

Take the conduit you just used to fish the wire across the ducts and cut a short section to run up into the location of the outlet. Attach the outlet box to the wall and run the conduit through one of the pop-out openings on the box. I chose the bottom. If you do this step before fishing your wire across the duct work you’ll be out of luck so don’t get trigger happy and start skipping steps.

If you want extra outlets, you can make it easy on yourself and connect them all one after another. There weren’t any (functioning) outlets in the basement so I decided to add one here. The post I attached it to is pretty rough so the outlet looks stupid and not very straight, nonetheless, it has electric current so I’m happy. Once it’s firmly attached, spray paint a random yellow squiggle mark on the post so everyone knows how awesome you are.

Back in the stairway I have now installed the receptacles and used my cool electrical meter thing to test it. You could also use such things as a fan or radio to see if the outlet works, but if you want to feel like a real electrician I suggest using the meter thing. I got mine at wal-mart for $1.50. Also, putting the receptacles upside-down as required by many building codes eliminates the 1 in a billion chance you could somehow electrocute yourself by getting a flat piece of metal to connect the hot and neutral terminals while something is plugged in.

Done! Now you have one more location in your house that is capable of running up your electric bill.

I often find myself buying various kinds of jams etc to spread on my bread for snacks and whatnot. The other day I went out to check on my raspberry plants and suddenly found myself with a surplus of berries. So I thought maybe I should make jam or something with them. In case anyone wants to try this at home, here is how it works…

1. Plant some raspberries.
2. Wait until you have so many berries you don’t know what to do with them.
3. Call mom to ask how canning works and hope she offers to basically do it for you.

Now that all that is settled, here are the steps of actually making the jam.

First, you need to rinse off the berries. I didn’t use any pesticides or anything like that, so it’s mainly leaves, dirts, and bugs that need to come off. For the record, rinsing these guys is kind of difficult and I’m not sure how effective my method was.

Put the berries in a pot and heat and smash them until you create a boiling pot of raspberry juice.

Add the same amount of sugar as you have raspberries. Continue boiling for about 5 minutes until it forms a gel like substance.

This is what it should look like when it’s done. You can either eat it now or freeze it. But if you want to store the jam in your cabinet for decades, then continue on to the next step.

Pour the jam into mason jars of whatever size you want. Make sure the lips are nice and clean, screw on a new canning lid, and drop the jars into boiling water for several minutes using this weird scissor-lift tool.

While the jars are boiling, lick the spatula thing.

Take the jars out of the boiling water and place them on the counter. Eventually the tops will make a ‘pop’ sound and you know it’s sealed. If they don’t seal then you’re pretty much screwed.

Now you have delicious raspberry jam that will last you throughout the winter months!

I have never been one to get terribly worked up about furniture or woodworking in general, but I’ve generally found making things out of wood to be quite enjoyable and rewarding. While my skillz are probably average at best, I can usually hold my own in a shop. I have been wanting a nice book case for awhile, and finally decided I would just try and make one. So in case you were wondering how to make a fairly simple, kind of antique looking book case…. today is your lucky day!

What’s interesting about this book case is not just that I made it, but what I made it out of. There was once a large black walnut tree growing into the side of the house. It was so close that a notch had to be cut in the guttering to make room for the trunk and about half of the branches hung directly over the roof and would keep me up all night long in the late summer because of the loud thuds of the walnuts dropping and rolling down the roof. So as much as it pained me to cut down such a magnificent tree, I felt the tree’s useful life as a feature in the lawn had run it’s course.

With the help of dad, the trunk was taken to a saw mill somewhere south of town and a few months later a bunch of walnut lumber came back and sat in my barn for about a year while I thought of good ways to use the cool wood. When I decided to make a bookcase I felt like it would be a good opportunity to get my feet wet with autocad. Plus, since this was by far the most complex thing i’ve ever built on my own, it would be good to have a nice set of technical drawings to make sure all the sizes work out correctly.

If you want to try to make the same cabinet, you can download my plans in a pdf format. I had no idea what I was doing so they probably suck as far as plans go, but it got the job done for me, with only a few fairly minor design flaws.

Here is the wood in it’s raw form after Jimmy helped me transport it from the barn to the shop. They were extremely rough as you can tell.

I used a planer to smooth the surface of the boards and get them to the correct thickness. Btw the planer is now one of my favorite machines in the shop, mainly because it shoots tons of sawdust everywhere and makes a huge mess. (note the snow shovel in the background)

Here I am using a simple radial arm saw to cut notches into the side pieces for the shelves to sit in.

Once all the pieces were cut, I assembled the body of the cabinet.

The doors and window panes were made out of a bunch of long skinny parts. I also put glass in the doors, but I had trouble with that part and was in a bad mood so I didn’t take any photos of that process.

Once it was all assembled it was ready to be transported home (again with the help of Jimmyjack) where I would put on the finishing touches!

I wanted the cabinet to match the existing woodwork of the staircase, which is also made from walnut. I figured since it’s 130 years old, the finish was likely an old-school type, called shellac, which also happens to be an organic substance. Shellac dries extremely fast and I had trouble deciding if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I found it difficult to keep the finish from looking splotchy in places but that’s probably because I had no idea what I was doing. The shellac did bring out some really sweet grain patterns in the wood though and it was almost a perfect match to the staircase.

Then I attached some magnetic door catches and some plain, but old looking knobs.

There was a lot more in between these steps obviously, but you get the idea. And now I have a pretty sweet book case made from scratch!