Easter in Japan

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

My J-O-B occasionally has me fly all over God’s Green Earth with zero to little notice to provide support when something is wrong with an airplane or aircraft system. It never happens on a wednesday at 9:00am. Nope, I usually get the call as I am headed out the door for a 3-4 day holiday weekend with the family. I spent Thanksgiving a couple of years ago in Abu Dhabi, there have been Labor and Memorial Days spent in England/Northern Ireland, and I cannot remember the last MLK weekend that I got to hang out at the house.

This past Friday was one of those days: I got off work and was home just long enough to put on my shop apron, turn on the shop lights, and cut a piece of 47X13.75″ 1/2 plywood for my basement bench before my phone started blowing up. After about 9 calls to and fro, I had tickets booked for the first direct flight out to Tokyo the next morning and a semi-unhappy wife. Stamps-With-Foot has been very gracious about my last minute travel over the past 9 years. She understands that my employer’s ability to have me do these types of trips are part of the reason that we live where we do, have our cute house, and can save for college funds & retirement. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t still get a little miffed – this trip is going to cost me something shinny, I can feel it.

Anyway, I love Japan in general and am here for couple of days. I will have a chance to pick up some ruffled-feather-soothing Japanese gifts for my my wife and mother (The Nana had planned a sunrise Easter Mass/Service as a family outing and was not please that I “bailed”), and there are a couple of things I want to pick up for the kids while I am here, so life shouldn’t be too hard for me when I fly home 🙂

I can feel Spring coming… and then my bike broke.

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I have a neighbor with a rose blossom tree that is the first bloomer of spring. We can see it from our breakfast nook and the kitchen window. The second I see the small red buds starting to show, I know that spring is on its way. Petals are now covering a small patch of ground on my side of the fence and the ornamental cheery trees in the neighborhood blooming. Now is the time to peel myself from my winter sloth and get to the gym, run, and ride my bike. I took my wet-weather commuter-bike down from the rafters in the shop, blew off the sawdust and immediately saw that my head tube was cracked. Son of a…. No idea how it happened. No crashes or huge drops that I know of. It is an aluminum frame, so if cracked it is unrideable. When steel fails it is gradual and you have some warning. When aluminum goes, there is no warning. One just finds him or her self in a bloody and broken pile on the street.

The bike is my Winter/wet-weather commuter, but due to my only laziness, it has only see the road twice since last fall. I have some other bikes, but finding the crack was a a blow to the momentum I was building to finally get off my ass. I took it into a local shop where I know and like the owner and explained the issue. Specialized has a lifetime warranty and he called his rep and I will have a new frame in a few days. I will then spend some time in the basement tearing the old bike down and rebuilding on the new frame. I am sure that I will obsess over some minor detail that will cost me days and some amount of cash.

Roller Derby, St. Paddy, Dresser Building and an Anniversary Weekend

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

This weekend was busy with friends, a dinner out, St. Paddy’s Day activities, an outing to the Roller Derby (?!), and the 9th anniversary of the day that my sweet wife and I met was on Sunday. Even with all that, we still got bunches done around the house: Our under-bed dresser finished, bathroom table drawer installed (a little work on that left), wine crate storage boxes made, basement lighting installed, and the basement work bench is moving along.

The drawers for the under-bed dresser and the one for the bathroom all came from a wooden donor-dresser that my father-in-law drug home from a garage sale last summer. He paid $4 for it and it was in pretty bad shape, but it was solid wood and had potential. It was mistakenly left in the weather (plastic cover leaked) for a month before I salvaged the drawers, cut out off the top and used the sides for kitchen cabinet door panels. I re-squared the drawers, added dividers in the fall, and over the Christmas break sealed the insides (The Ruminator helped). After lots of filling and sanding and more sanding, I stained the fronts to match our bedroom furniture, then built ¾” plywood beams to hang the drawers from bed frame and used some scrap oak flooring as drawer guides/runners. The final product really looks good and is super functional. While some husbands bug their wives by filling the house with brought-home junk – I give my wife more and more and more storage and organization space.

On Sunday, I put the final coat of finish on the basement workbench top, let it dry, and then installed the three runs of aluminum t-track. Stamps-With-Foot bucked up and helped me wrestle its 200 pound beech and maple mass onto the steel base. I secured it with screws and covered the top with carpet squares while I finish the upper shelf/cabinet. I installed a outlet power strip under the main body of the topper and removed the old drawer dividers. I will soon add a plywood back with a mirror, a light under, a dedicated air supply line, install the desk drawers under the bench and mount 4 reclaimed letterpress drawers directly under the top as well. Happy with the progress so far.

12th Night in Portland – 2013

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago we drove down to Portland so that I could to do some off-site work for my J-O-B and took an extra day (on or dime) to both visit friends and attend an evening of the SCA’s 12th Night celebration – Being married to a trained costume designer means that one goes to these sorts of evenings.  Our friends have closets (yes, I meant to be plural – as in 4 closets) filled with period costumes and accessories.  My wife dressed me in a couple of different outfits until she was certain that I looked the part and then I went and waited downstairs for a couple of hours while the ladies prepped and primped like a good little puppy.

I agreed to this foray for three reasons:

  1. Happy wife, happy life…
  2. There was booze promised to me.
  3. There was to be a “huge” vendor area where all sorts of cool stuff like swords, and bows, and armor, and axes and like items would be sold and traded.

Now, the mention/rumor of armor and swords takes be back to being a 9-year old at my very first Renaissance Faire (the REAL Penn and Teller performed that year).  I wanted a “real” sword and a chain mail hood so bad that I would have licked the bottom of a Port-a-John seat for them at the time.  My son is now enamored with the same period of history, I live vicariously through him and thought that he would get a real kick out of the pictures of armor and swords

I was a little disappointed: no swords, one real armor dealer and sales area was lined with stalls that catered to the ladies fabric, buttons, capes, cloaks, furry hats, jewelry, etc…), but I did end up getting a few good pictures to send to The Ruminator and we ended up watching the fencing melee/tournament.  Helmets, steel swords, shields, daggers, very cool.  He would have been all in!

The rest of the event was good and the detail of some of the costumes was amazing.  Some of those folks put months and months of work hand sewing outfits just for that one night.  Our evening ended with a game of Cards Against Humanity – I won – and we stumbled home just after 1:00AM.

A giant sealed dome over our place would solve most of this….

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

There are some days where I want to just drop everything I am holding, turn off the lights, lock the door, and go on an extended vacation involving a sugar-sand beach and copious amounts of fruit laden alcohol.  This Saturday was one of those days.

I decided to work on the kitchen cabinet doors, cut some plywood sheets down, and tackle a bench top while the sun was shining.  I opened the shop, brought out a plastic truck-bed toolbox to cut on (my 4 sawhorses are currently being used elsewhere), pulled 3 full-sized sheets of ¾” and ½” plywood out of the lumber rack and drug it all out into the backyard.  After marking the first sheet, adjusting my saw blade depth, lining up my rip fence, and checking for clearance – I started my first cut and immediately ripped a 6” long kerf-cut into the top of the tool box that the sheet was sitting on.  Dammit! I cut the rest of the plywood up without incident, but grumbled thinking about the mistake (I will fill and patch it with molten P-Tex plastic at some later point).  After stacking all the assorted pieces of ply back into my cluttered shop, I man-handled the 170+ pound beech and maple in-work bench top from the basement and placed it on the now-damaged toolbox – trying very hard not to either herniate a disk in my bask or tear what is left of my shoulder.

My Shop/Garage is pilled deep and high with lumber, hardware, undone winter projects, wood shavings, tools, sawdust,  flotsam & jetsam, etc….  I spent an hour trying to set up my router and in all the clutter and mess I couldn’t find a ¼” collet for one router and the other does not have an integrated fence, so using my big monkey brain, I improvised a fence.  All I really wanted to do with the top was to route channels for t-track and thoroughly sand it down before taking the beast back into the bowels of the basement to apply stain and a tung oil finish.  All was going as planned and my first cut was perfect.  The second cut went just the same, but at the very end of the third cut my improvised fence failed and the router wobbled – gouging the top that I had spent a month building.  Jesus H. Christ I was pissed! – Mostly at myself, but there was some vitriol left over for the machine in my hands.  I said dirty, hateful, vile things while resetting the fence and making an adjusted cut.  I moved on to make my last cut in the very front lip of the bench and while the fence held, I stood up mid-way through the pass and the router wobbled, making the bit chew into a section of wood where I did not want it to go.  I gritted through the rest of the pass and finished the cut, but the second I was clear of the wood, I wanted to throw the still running router on the ground and beat the electric life out of it with the pruning shears that were leaning against the garage wall.  I had to walk away, hand over my mouth, and just breathed deeply with my back to the offending router, my own incompetence, and the damage they had both wrought.  My moment of reflection was short lived because just as I turned, I felt the first drop of rain fall from what was minutes ago a blue sky that had ominously darkened while I was focused on my router-rage (I swear it happened just like that – strait out of a hip urban dramedy…).  SHIT!!  I ran for something to cover the bench top.  The only thing I could find was a pink tent fly and a sheet of cardboard.  I covered everything and retreated into the shop, right eye twitching with disbelief/confusion/anger.  I spent the next hour drinking coffee laced with sawdust and moving piles of crap around in my shop.

When my sweet wife got home she MAY have found me in the shop muttering to myself, pacing, covered in saw dust, contemplating the logistics of building a giant sealed dome over our entire lot.  She talked me off the ledge, helped me put the top back into the basement, patted me a little, told me I was pretty and smart and a good boy, put me in some fresh, sawdust free clothes, and took me out to see a movie.

I got up the next morning and after a yummy breakfast of flaky croissants, bacon, eggs and two cups of coffee, I went downstairs and chiseled out the offending screw-ups, then cut and glued maple patches in.   After calming down some and after a good night’s sleep, I felt better about the whole thing, but me and that router are still not on speaking terms.

Cast Iron Camping Cookware Box

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

In my on-going project to build the finest glamping/campaign furniture kit in the Pacific Northwest, I have added a custom box for holding all of our cast iron and campfire cooking gear.  It all started out with a wooden box I picked up at a garage sale that was full of a cast iron camp set that had been used once.  We have added a square fry pan, pot lifters, trivets, stand-off, roasting sticks, a grill, bacon press, a 12″ lid, and corn-shaped bread pan.  I had thought about including all of it in my camp kitchen, but it would have made the unit so heavy that I would have needed a winch to get it off and on to my truck bed.

The box that it came with was just a roughly tacked together crate, but it had potential.  I spent a couple of hours adding trim, remaking the lid, adding reinforcement, and painting it a deep red.  To Finish it off I added brass pipe handles and brass closures.  It is still not light, but one person can carry and move it.  The “new” box holds all the aforementioned gear, looks snazzy, and doubles as a seat for around the campfire.

Rebuilding Daddy’s Bookcase

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

In 1969 or 1970, my father helped my grandfather build a rental house that my grandparents saw income from for the next 24 years. He came home at the end of the project with a truck bed full of spare/cut lumber and building supplies. Lumber was not wasted in our house. We didn’t go and buy a new 2X4 for a project… We rummaged through the cut-off bin or wood storage shelves for a piece that was the right size or that could be cut, planed, or trimmed to work – Wood was not wasted or thrown away in the Talley house! It is a lesson that I have taken to heart and most of the things I build for my own home are made, at least partially, out of used or recycled materials.

Anyway, Daddy took some of the lumber and built a set of bookshelves that in the next nine years held everything from encyclopedias to technical manuals. Four 12-inch shelves sat on a box base that my father stained and varnished with whatever color he had left over from the rental kitchen cabinet build. It sat in our living room and in the shop. In 1980 we moved back to Houston and somehow my aunt and uncle ended up with the shelves. They put them in their living room, knocked the bottom shelf back, drilled a hole for a cable and sat their 19″ TV on the base. It remained in their home until 2010, when my uncle passed away. My mother asked to have the shelf unit back and brought it to me when she moved to Seattle. It is the only object that I own that my father built with his own hands and I feel so very lucky and proud to have it.

I decided immediately give it an update to make it an everyday part of our home: add a little something here and there to update it and make it that much more useful. Plans are one thing and actually doing the work is quite another – it sat relegated in my overcrowded shop for almost a year before I finally got a chance to work on it. I put the knocked out shelf back, glued all the joints, added reinforcement and screws to hold it all together, and built a base with turned wooden bun feet for it to stand on. The original base box was 12″ X 30″ and I wanted to both maximize the space and add my own signature to the piece. I carefully cut an 8″ X 24″ opening in the front and added rails for a drawer. It was amazing working on the piece. I found my father’s 42 year old pencil marks, a divot from a hammer, saw marks, and I found part of a fingerprint from when it was stained – just on the inside of the bottom. Finding and touching these this tangible proof of my late father brought me more joy than I have words to describe.

I also added a face frame, edge trip, and crown mounding. The piece was sanded down with 120 grit, then all the holes and gaps were filled, sanded with 120 again and then with 220 grip. I then primed with two coats and finished it with 3 coats of white Benjamin Moore ultra-tough cabinet paint.

I think it turned out really nice and I think my dad would be really proud of the work that I did to it. I am taking the original brass corner trim and a piece of original shelving and turning it into a picture frame to hold my favorite picture of my father. I think that he would approve of that as well…

Stupid Pinterest…

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I am an admitted cyber-hoarder. I have gigs and gigs of image files across 5-6 hard drives: Images of furniture, vacations, design details, machines, demotivational posters, LOL cats, etc… that I will someday get around to looking at again or using for some future unnamed and unknown project. The few times I have gone looking for something, it has taken forever to find the wanted file.

I was introduced to Pinterest and I thought that this was the solution to my hoarding problem: a cleared up hard drive, organized files, I would be able to add comments to pictures, etc… Nope. Wrong. Stupid Pinterest solved nothing. Now I save files to my hard drives AND link to Pinterest. I have said many times that I don’t use Facebook because it is the black hole of time management. Now I will “glance” at my Pinterest account and BAM!! it is 2:30 am, I have 2% battery left on my iPad, and I have been repinning pictures for seven hours. This is really cutting into the time I have allocated to plotting my scheme for world domination… Dammit!

I will end up muttering to myself.

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I have come to both love and accept my wife’s little quirks. I don’t understand them all and from time to time I have to just shake my head and mutter after finding something odd in the recycling or noticing that kitchen silverware was used to dig in the flower beds for example. I have also discovered that it is best to work within the confines of these quirks instead of confronting them/her with what most people would call reason. That confrontation would lead to a two hour discussion that would, in turn, lead nowhere. I would have to apologize for even bringing it up and then I would have to buy her something shiny for my transgression. In the end, I would be right back where I started – muttering to myself and slowly shaking my head with my lips pursed in an expression of both frustration and amazement.

Stamps-With-Foot is very visual and she has to SEE something for it to be real for her. Visualization of a concept like arranging pictures on the wall, where flowers COULD go in the yard, or where to move a chair in the living room is an exercise in frustration. This normally means that after a week+ of debating where a piece of furniture should go, I will move it 4-9 times before she decides that the original decision was the correct one. This comes up for me because we have been talking about to swapping offices at home. Her sewing/estrogen room will go upstairs to the sunny well-lit wood-floored bedroom at the front of our house and I will move my faux-Edwardian office/man-cave into the basement so that it will be co-located to my tiny hobby machine shop, work bench, and our den: A win/win for us both of us as long as I don’t have to move crap up and down and around for two days.

In the spirit of working with her previously addressed/documented traits, I formulated a plan to have it all work in my favor. I measured and drew a scale model of the room upstairs, showing locations of the doors, windows, and air vents. Then, I made scale cutouts of all the furniture that she could possibly have in the room. I left her with the drawing and cutout so that she could torment and second guess herself in peace while I went into the basement and worked on my new machine shop bench. 24 hours later and after looking at every possible combination at least 6 times, she had determined a location for each and every twig for her sewing nest and taped her choices for furniture location down on the drawing. I have elicited a promise that her decision is a final one and that if there is a change in any of the locations it will be made before the very first piece is picked up and humped upstairs.

Now all that is left for me to do is to bribe/con some friends and neighbors into helping move all the crap, putting it in its designated place and then to disappear in to my basement to plot my plan for world domination…. Mwahahahaha….

Basement Bench and Winter Workshop

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I have found that my workshop productivity goes way down in the winter/the six months of Seattle rainy season.  My garage shop is small and quickly fills with material, lumber, tools, and projects.  To add to the handicap of the small size, the lack of heat means that I can’t do any finish-work because of wood humidity, shrinkage/swell, and moisture.  I have made do in the unfinished side of our basement for the past three winters, but I am done my wife is done with the mess and clutter and my bitching about an inadequate work area when the weather turns crappy.  I need a little bit of dedicated space that I can work on the small stuff year round that doesn’t require power tools and a little bit of assembly/finish  space where I can glue and clamp some projects up, a solder station, a spot to reload ammo, work on my bikes, and  a clean/dry/warm space to apply stain or a hand-laid finish coat.  Add to this my current want of a small metal lathe and mill and I will have the makings of a nice little hobby shop from which to launch my plans for world domination …er, I mean a spot where I can make small parts, solder, or tinker.

Anyway, instead of buying a crazy expensive cabinet bench or making do with a thin metal and partial board Home Depot bench, I have decided to build the sturdiest all-around hobby bench that I can with the funds and material I have available (~$130.00), add some really nice features (aluminum t-track, lots of drawers, removable vises, power, lights, etc…) and make it into a finished piece of furniture that I will be proud to sit at and show off to friends for the next 30+ years.  To start the process off, I found a cheap older thick steel framed 6′ workbench at Second Use that I felt would make a bombproof, rock solid base.  I sourced a used IKEA cutting-board counter top that I cut down to the appropriate size and then used the trimmed pieces to add thickness and rigidity (I am still going to add some angle iron).  I thought about and sketched 3-9 different ways to add some shelving and some organization to the top and was still tossing around options in my head when a realized that an old buffet that my mom had just might work.  I took some measurements and looked into reinforcing here and there and realized that not only would it work, but that its style would set the tone and color for the entire bench build.

I decided that the drawers to be added under the bench top needed to be narrow and at least partially match the newly planned top section, so I looked for an older desk or vanity that I could cut apart.  I struck out at Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and Craig’s List, but Second Use came through again and hooked me up with exactly what I needed at a decently fair price, well decent after I haggled a bit…

The current state of the build is that the bench top is 2/3 done, the desk is cut apart, the steel legs are up and in place and I am 1/4 of the way done with reinforcing the buffet/top shelving unit.  I will update the build as it is completed and share some more pictures.

Someone call PETA…

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

Our dog lives a hard life…  No one loves this dog…  Mistreated he is…

We make him sleep in the bed, nap on the heating pad with a blanket, his food is warmed up, there is a bushel basket full of toys, someone is with him all day and he has a drawer full of vests and sweaters.  Treats fill his life and Stamp-With-Foot forces him to snuggle.  I am shocked that the neighbors have not called the Department of Animal Welfare on us.

I do love me a Japanese 4X4

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Some friends of ours are downsizing their lives and are planning to quit their jobs and take an extended around the world trip.  We were helping them move some of their stuff to a smaller place and I asked the Man-Friend in the relationship what he was going to do the what I assumed was a non-running older 4X4 truck in front of the house.  He said I could have it.  Ughhhh….  I tried to let him off the hook telling him to think about it and when he kept on saying I could “Have” it, I offered to pay him what he had in it or what he paid for it.  Nope.  He gave me the truck.  I couldn’t say no.  I just couldn’t.  I love the design and construction of Japanese 4-wheel drives.  They are super tough and if maintained, extra dependable.  There was no way I was going to just let a free one scoot past me.

Turns out that the truck both runs and has a clear title.  It is a blue 1989 Dodge Ram 50, single cab – that is what the title says anyways.  In reality it is a Mitsubishi MightyMax that Dodge imported, did not touch, and slapped their name on.  the ’89 model was the 1st year of the 2nd generation of the truck and had a 2.6 liter, I4 forklift engine in it.  If serviced, they will run for 400K+ miles.  Our new steed has 183K on it and needs a ring and valve job – smokes on start up and won’t pass smog.  It needs some tires, shocks, tranny service, hub locks, and some electrical work, but it was FREE!

I need another project in my life like I need a meteor hole in my roof, but I think after a little work it will make both a commuter for my mom and a dependable truck to troop over to the grocery store, Home Depot, drive into the mountains, or to haul the occasional thrift store treasure. 

I haven’t thought of a name just yet – we haven’t had enough time together:  No share hardships endured.  We haven’t moved together in the pouring rain. Zero late night beer runs through a dry-county.  No women have been wooed. No mountains climbed…. A name will come in time.

The Never Ending Hutch

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment
Right after we bought our place, I saw an add on Craig’s List for a huge hutch.  It piqued my interest and I went by to take a look at it.  A builder had pulled it out of a church school in Queen Anne, but it had been in the rectory library before that.  It was in really bad shape: paint splattered here and there, broken and missing trim, missing glass, dents, dings, scratches, etc…  Even with all that, I saw potential.  After some surprise haggling, I loaded it on my truck and brought it home.  This was right after I had shoulder surgery for the fourth time, so I would not be man-handling two 8 foot by 4 foot sections of furniture…  I picked up some laborers in the Home Depot parking lot by the house and had them load it into my basement where it sat taking up space for three months before I felt strong enough to tackle the job.  Below is the truncated build process in 67 easy steps:
  1. Looked at hutch for too long and decided to get it done.
  2. Started with bottom section – doors removed.
  3. Stripped off all old paint and varnish from outside with “environmentally friendly” orange stripper.
  4. Scraped and scraped stripper off.
  5. Cussed “environmentally friendly.”
  6. Put more stripper on.
  7. Scrubbed off again.
  8. Wife helped for 40 minutes, hated it and didn’t touch either section again.
  9. Shoved a 1″ splinter under one of my fingernails.
  10. Said the “F” word 5+ times, bled on base & floor and thought about cutting it all up for firewood.
  11. Washed whole thing with paint thinner to stop the stripper residue from working any more.
  12. Let dry and sanded whole case with 120 grit.
  13. Sanded with 220 grit.
  14. Sanded again with 220 grit.
  15. Stained with a crazy pricey, but color-matched mahogany tinted oil-based stain.
  16. Used wife’s special dish gloves.
  17. The old, old fir had issue with the stain and was a little splotchy in some really key spots.
  18. Was grumpy for two days.
  19. Second coat of stain used to blend some areas.
  20. Put on first coat of wipe-on poly acrylic semi-gloss finish.
  21. Wife found stain covered dish gloves and I got in trouble.
  22. Went to store and bought wife new gloves.
  23. 24 hours later, scuffed finish with white 3M pad and applied finish coat 7 more times.
  24. Spent HOURS on the final coat.
  25. Repeated all above steps with the four raised panel doors.
  26. Installed 100+ year old glass pull-knobs on doors.
  27. Whole process took two months.
  28. Moved base into finished side of basement for use as a media cabinet and LCD TV base.
  29. Went downtown to Chinese-owned granite shop on Seattle’s 1st Ave and haggled over granite for top.
  30. I am a poor negotiator in Chinese.
  31. Left and came back with Mandarin speaking co-worker.
  32. Got GREAT deal on custom top.  1/12th of the price that I was quoted at Home Depot – really!
  33. Built A-frame jig for back of truck to haul granite.
  34. Picked up top and hauled home.
  35. Bribed 4 neighbors to help move it into place.
  36. Neighbors won’t answer my call anymore…
  37. Four months from start to finish.
  38. Two weeks later I started the top section.
  39. Decided to make top section into a living room “built-in.”
  40. Built, painted and installed new 8″ base for the top section in our living room to match existing trim.
  41. Removed the doors, hardware, and hinges.
  42. Repeated steps above with the exception of splinter under nail and use of wife’s gloves: I learned my lesson the first time.
  43. Cut hole in back for outlet already on wall.
  44. Had other, unsuspecting neighbors help me move the top section up.
  45. New neighbors called me names after it was all done.
  46. Hole for outlet 1″ off to the left.
  47. Said hateful words.
  48. Grumpy again.
  49. Calmed down and used Dremel tool and coping saw to remove section from one side and glued it to other side.
  50. Trimmed out outlet hole.
  51. Stained and finished outlet trim.
  52. Had wedding and took 30 day break in the rebuild/refinish process.
  53. Started looking for matching trim and crown molding at reclaimed lumber yards.
  54. No Luck.
  55. Had crown custom milled at high cost by a shop in SODO that had 90 year old machines running on their floor (shop closed about a month after I was there last 🙁
  56. Started the process of refinishing the doors.
  57. Installed crown molding.
  58. Shot nail through molding and into palm on final piece of crown.
  59. Bled on top of hutch – no dirty words.
  60. Installed refinished doors.
  61. Built two interior shelves out of 80 year old fir floor boards.  Stained and finished – look original!
  62. Smacked the back of my head when installing shelves and almost knocked myself out.
  63. Sourced and purchased piece of wavy restoration glass to match original broken pane.
  64. Stained and finished the crown.
  65. Put final coat of trim paint on the new base.
  66. Installed the one missing glass pane.
  67. 5 months after base installed the top is done and looks like it has been in our place since 1928.
Never again.

The Tooth Fairy is now banned from my office…

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I had a crown replaced seven years ago before we moved to Germany because the original was bugging me a little.  The one I had put on was worse than the original and I have suffered with sensitivity since then and decided that something finally had to be done about it when it moved while I was eating – very uncool.  I had it taken off, was fitted for a new porcelain crown and had a temporary put on last Monday.  The difference was immediate:  The temp crown felt great and the sensitivity was just gone.  I really didn’t get how crappy the old crown made me feel until the new temporary one was put on.  All was going great until the next Friday afternoon.  I was sitting in a customer meeting and coughed a little and out popped my composite crown.  HOLY KELLY CLARKSON!! The exposed nerve or whatever was going on reached down my jaw, all the way up to in front of my ear and squeezed.  I tread really, really hard to make it through the meeting.  I had to answer a question, air hit my exposed tooth and I had to excuse myself, post haste.  Nothing says classy and professional like losing a tooth during a meeting…

I went to a dentist by my office and they couldn’t or wouldn’t put the temp back on because the “didn’t want to alter the tooth bed and affect the fit of the permanent crown…”  Horseshit.  My dentist was closed for a 4-day weekend, but I got through to her on her emergency number and she met me at her office 25 minutes later.  She took care of it in 10 minutes, was REALLY nice about me calling on her day off and gave me some temporary cement is case it happens again before my permanent crown comes in and I can’t get a hold of her.

Stamps-With-Foot’s Garden

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Seattle has suffered through a weeks of freezing fog, stagnant air, flu season, and intermittent rain. The weather has me longing for long September evenings in our back yard….

2012 was a great year for us outside and in the yard. Stamps-With-Foot had her greening thumb put to work and our garden was crazy plentiful, in part because of her planting of mutant green squash and her nightly wine sipping/watering regimen. She moved dirt, turned the compost, picked berries, planted, harvested, pruned, cut bushes, dug in the dirt, and even removed a slug or two. I was very proud of her!

That hard work and spent energy was put to good use and we traded our bounty of veggies with the neighbors, she froze raspberries and blackberries that we both toiled over and my sweet wife made countless spinach and arugula salads from plants that we grew. To top it all off, she turned some of our tomatoes into chutney that was canned to make Christmas gifts. She is turning into quite the little homesteader.

A summer glamping trip to Mt. Adams, WA

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

All the rain, cold, flu and grey skies have me reminiscing about warmer weather and adventures we had this summer:  Stamps-With-Foot and I were working and traveling like mad.  We were almost burnt out, needed a break and deciding the embracing arms of Mother Nature were in order.  A couple that we hang out with was also in a camping state of mind so we planned a little weekend trip to the big woods.  A lakeside campground on the slopes on Mt. Adams was chosen and my brother-in-law and his lady friend were invited as well.

This was not a hike ten miles with all our crap sort of outing.  We packed up the truck with all our Glamping goodies and bits and drove south one Friday afternoon after work.  5 hours later (traffic, road closures, notes tacked to trees, a campsite change, a lying GPS, etc…) we pulled into camp with good wine, cold beer, salmon fillets and steak waiting for us…  This is how all camping trips should start!

We slept in and when we finally did find the initiative to leave our queen sized blow-up bed, we were greeted with a crystal clear lake and a postcard view of the mountain from the door of our tent.

It was a weekend of no cell phones or e-mail, but lots of cast iron cookware, campfires, smores, beer, scotch, laughing, panoramic views and relaxation.  Just what the Dr. ordered after a really hectic week.

Pottery Barn Blanket Chest Refinish/Resale

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I was perusing the furniture isles of the Goodwill in South Seattle a few months back looking for a few pieces that I could put a little work into and turn for a profit.  I have found some amazing stuff there that has been donated:  an $800+ mid-century 8-drawer dresser for $59, solid wood buffets, a camel saddle, hand knotted carpets, two Morris chairs, etc..  It is not always a gold mine – I find something I can turn maybe  one out of three or four trips.  On this walk, I spied a solid wood and black iron hardware blanket chest that had some heavy water damage on the top.  I opened it up, twirled it around to look for a makers mark and any unseen damage.  Nope, it was a sound piece.  I hopped on my iPhone and looked it up on the Interwebs…  I found that it was originally sold at Pottery Barn for almost $400 and I whisked the thing to the front, dropped $39 off at the register and ran out the door.

I gave it a light sanding (320 grit) all over, gave the top some serious attention with 120 then 220 grit sand paper, and layered in some mixed mahogany and dark walnut stain to color match the top before putting on three coats of satin polyurethane finish a couple of days later.  After it was done, we were teetering on the fence about keeping what had been returned to a really nice piece of furniture, but our limited space and us not having a clear need for a blanket chest led to the decision to sell it.

I dropped it off at one of the local consignment shops on a Saturday morning and it was sold within two hours.  I pocketed $89 after paying for the chest, supplies and the store’s cut.  Not too shabby for a 3-mile drive, some stain/poly, and an hour of my labor.

Wooden Nightstand Build

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

My sweet sweet wife has issues with the color green – most shades. While living in Hamburg, we had a tiny bedroom that Stamps-With-Foot wanted to paint “sage green.” She bought the paint at Max Barr (a Teutonic version of Home Depot) brought it home and painted a little swatch on the wall. It was kinda dark, so she painted the whole wall. Still kinda dark. She then painted the whole room. I came home and my bedroom was Olive Drab, Army Green… It took me two coats of primer and three coats of paint to banish the darkness.

Flash forward a few years to Seattle. We have replaced all of our MDF particle board IKEA crap furniture with real wood pieces with the exception of our night stands. I hate them. Hate. I traded my mother a couple bookshelves for a former dressing table/vanity that was deeply scratched in places and had a couple of drawers that wouldn’t budge. It was in two pieces already and I shortened the legs, stripped off some of the old finish and prepped them for paint. Stamps-With-Foot wanted the pieces to match our 1930’s bedroom set, which has a sage green accent color. The plan is to have the bodies painted green, use a soft sunflower yellow for the accent and to completely strip the top and drawer fronts and coat them with a polyurethane so that the natural color and grain would pop. I had primed them, sanded, primed again, and grabbed some color swathes for her to choose from. She chose a fine green and I had it custom mixed at my local Benjamin Moore store (friends don’t let friends buy paint at Home Depot). I had two smooth coats sprayed on before my sweet wife decided they were the wrong color green. I tried in vain to talk her out of making me swap the color. I tried really hard – I even mentioned the Hamburg incident. No dice, the color WOULD be changed.

I showed up at the paint store with a picture frame for them to color-match, ignored their snickers, bought all new paint, went home, sanded, and resprayed both pieces with two coats of the “new” green. I painted the accent color and rubbed the color into the cracks before washing it off the high spots. The tops were polyurathaned, drawers were fixed, dividers installed, fronts refinished, 100+ year old glass knobs bought/installed, and then I carried them up to our Master Suite and my sweet bride gushed over them. Her delight made my heart happy.

In my heart of hearts I know she is still second guessing the 2nd color choice, but I have sworn to myself that if she changes her mind again she will be banned from deciding house/furniture/accent colors for the term of one year and that I will turn the basement into a mountain chalet-themed man cave- which might happen anyway, I am just really looking for an excuse to belay my guilt.

Weekend Update – 1/7/13

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

My son was here for a week+ for the holidays and we did cool stuff as he is the Igor to my Dr. Frankinstein. He left on Friday morning and to keep myself occupied so I wouldn’t mope around all weekend thinking about how much I missed him, I busied myself with a few on-going projects:

Underbed dresser – 95% done
Letterpress drawers made into occasional tables – 50%
The never ending kitchen remodel – 85%
Sofa table rebuild – 20%
Bathroom drawer for wife – 50%
Candle box – 100%
Glass cabinet handle installation – 45%
Hall mirror – 22%
Helping a friend move – 50%
Etc…

While fitting the final pieces of the under bed dresser (built from an 1980s $4.00 garage sale upright five drawer) for our room and I transposed  two numbers and cut something a touch too long. Grumble… Grumble…  I went out to the shop, measured for screw clearance and put it on the table saw to rip down just a touch. I missed one screw, but my $56 carbide tipped cabinet blade didn’t. Sparks and bits of carbide flew. I said dirty words and came into the house to drown my sorrows in a Mexican coke, Jack with honey and an old Clint Eastwood western while propped up in bed with my grumpy face on.

2012 Gift to Heifer

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

As a follow up to a previous post about our plan to give Heifer International a menagerie of animals as our charity goal for the year: we just got a confirmation e-mail that our $250 donation for one goat, one pig, and a share of rabbits was received. I have stashed change and $1 bills back since July to have for Heifer so that they can continue their mission of giving, training, and hope. It will provide animals and knowledge that will change lives for the good.

My mother gave a gift of bees in my name for my birthday and I have talked a couple of folks at work into donating a little something this year. Other than the families that this will help, the highlight of this process was my son’s involvement. We talked to him about Heifer, the work that they do, and into donating what he would have spent on our gifts to the cause. I am so very proud of him and we will send him a copy of the mailer we will get in the next few months explaining just where the money went and what our gift has done.

I wish we could have done a LOT more and we will do so next year. Please take a moment, do a little research into the charity, and give what you can.


Dear Santa -2012

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Dear Santa,

Below is my Christmas list for this year. I have been pretty good – no felonies. Please take a look and feel free to buy directly from the list or use it as a guide for the elves in the workshop – nudge, nudge, wink, wink…

Smart wool socks
For the all crazies at Westboro Baptist Church to smitted repeatedly with a bat.
A pair of red Chuck Taylor low tops – size 9.5.
Gift to Heifer International: Bees, goats, water buffalo…
Books: Theadore Roosevelt: a Strenous Life, American Sniper, Twilight at Monticello, Founding Foodies
Movie ticket/theatre gift cards
Zombie Targets
A new shaving mug
Illy coffee, Jamacan Blue Mountain, or REAL kona coffee
Wood burning kit from Woodcraft or Rockler
Don Julio tequila
Cabellas gift card
Glenlivet 12/15 or Glenfiddich 18 Scotch
For the both congressional houses to play nice and get some shit done.
Sam Adams “perfect” beer glass – set of 4
Any item from my Amazon Wish List

Now that you have been provided the above list for review don’t even consider bringing any weak-ass “Top Fiction” crap from the local B&N, fake Moleskines, cheap beer, ground Starbucks coffee, calculator watches, or any item that even remotely reminds me of Twilight. And don’t be gettin’ uppity when you slide down the chimney this year: We both know that the cookies and milk my wife leaves out are for me. If you touch my cookies there will be an elf beat down. Seriously. I will leave the liquor cabinet open again this year. As per our previous agreement, help yourself to the Bourbon. As long as you stick to the list, Mrs. Kringle will never know about you, Jim, Jack, & Johnny…

Merry Christmas, Santa!

Christmas Redecorating

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Each year after Thanksgiving, we take an afternoon, go to our local tree-seller and pick out a fine Noble Fir for our Christmas tree. I then pull out our integrated reservoir tree stand, a carpenter’s level, and set the whole assemblage on top of our large, round, lipped Christmas tree spill pan – I have very vivid nightmares about water stains on my wood floor…

Like most households that celebrate Santa/Christmas/Yule/Midwinter/etc…: The tree goes up, the ornaments come out, stockings are hung, etc. The only twist in our home is that in all reality, I am relegated to unpacking the 4 boxes of our handmade glass, pewter, and pine German ornaments and my participation in hanging them on the tree is verboten due to Stamps-With-Foot’s Tannenbaum OCD. Here is how it goes:

Tree in stand.
Wife surveys the straightness.
Tree adjusted.
Christmas music marathon begins
Dog trots in and notices tree.
Gets pissed off, turns his back to us and the tree and stares at the wall.
Slinks away after 30 minutes – Brodie HATES Christmas.
Tree adjusted again.
Tree must be turned to see which side is the best.
Decision made.
Lights put on.
Tree turned again.
Light strands removed.
Lights put back on in almost exactly the same place.
Light cords hidden.
Ornaments come out.
Lights on.
I have to turn the tree again.
Re-adjust.
Move some of the lights around.
Possible trimming of branches will happen at this point.
Hand wife ornaments – glass balls first.
Wife will walk back and forth and back and forth searching for perfect branch.
Previous step repeats about 150 times.
I am banned from giving her camping or climbing themed ornaments to place.
I sneak one onto the tree in the midst of her frenzy.
I go away and hang lights outside or hide from her Yuletide decorating wrath.
Find dog brooding over the nasty tree in HIS house and plotting to bite this Kris Kringle guy.
Toward the end of the evening, I am called back and I am allowed to hang 2-4 ornaments in a place I see fit.
Wife then moves them at least twice.
Tree trimming done 2-4 hours later.
I go to bed and twitch in my sleep to the beat of Nat King Cole, Elvis, Perry Como, and Sinatra as holiday music plays into the night…
Dog watches me sleep with hate in his heart because I was the one who carried the tree in.
Wake up sometime later and tree has been moved and completely rearranged.
Camping/Climbing ornament that I surreptitiously placed has been found, removed and place conspicuously on the table.
I look sheepish and she gives me the stink-eye over my transgression.
Presents are arranged by wife in a “certain order.”
Christmas music back on – maybe it never went off…
Brodie is put into his Santa outfit.
He somehow looks sad and furious at the same time.
There will be consequences for the red elf jacket that was forced upon him!
Am not allowed to touch area near tree until pictures are made.
Wife giggly happy.
Presents and ornaments rearranged at least once every three days until Christmas morning.

To save myself some work and time, I told her this year that I “could build” a lockable turning base so that she could move the tree over and over during initial setup and for decorating. You should of seen her face light up. The mere thought of it led to her running over and jumping on me saying “YES, YES, PLEASE, PLEASE!” I do love her.

Film Friday – 1st Double Feature

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Dirftwood. Boards washed up on the beach in a storm. Below is a film in which two guys take a section of lumber found on the Oregon coast and turn it all into functional one-of-a-kind surfboard. Building something both useful and beautiful from reclaimed wood is a thing to aspire to.

Experiment No. 3 – Scrap Surf from Shwood Eyewear on Vimeo.

Jack Daniel’s is the only distillery in the US that still makes its own wooden barrels. Although the process is automated, the production of the coopered tubs that make the aging and mellowing of this fine Tennessee Bourbon possible is mesmerizing to watch.

The Birth of a Barrel from Travis Robertson on Vimeo.