Family Project #71

A month or so ago I came across a picture of an awesome outdoor bench that unfolds into a full size picnic table.  I've never built anything like that before, and thought it might be fun to try.  Without meaning to, this turned into another family project.

The same Saturday we scored the half price cement mix at Home Depot, we also found a cart full of discounted lumber.  Most of it was 1 inch boards warped beyond use.  We did, however, find a handful of 2x4's that were in pretty good shape.

From start to finish, here are some pictures of how the project came together:

All the parts measured and cut out

R. pre-drilling holes so we could begin putting it together

Right side assembly 

Both side assemblies ready to go

G. was very proud he could carry all those boards at once.

Putting the bench boards in place.  This picture actually shows the point of contact when G. hit R. in the head with his board.  This is why our kids wear hats.  A few tears, but no bruise.

Driving in screws with his power screwdriver.

R. chose to turn his screws in by hand
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Sweeping off the sawdust, getting ready to stain

Staining

Done staining, just need to put the boards back on the bench seat.

                               

Finished product

For anyone who has some extra lumber and patience laying around, this would be a great project to do with your kids.  I am no expert when it comes to woodworking.  If I can do this, so can you.

The Clubhouse

Pallets are very useful things.  Aside from their intended use of holding heavy things up off the ground so they can be moved easily by a forklift, wooden pallets can be used for a lot of things.  I have used them to plug holes in fences to keep animals in, built pens for baby calves, covered holes in the ground to keep people from falling in, used them as sign holders for yard sales, once or twice I even used a pallet as a step ladder (I do not recommend this).

As a person who tends to only throw things away after they have become totally useless or been completely destroyed, two years ago I found myself with a rather large stack of pallets.  Since we had recently moved, we were very aware of how much stuff (and junk) we had.  A lot of the pallets were getting pretty weathered from sitting outside, and I needed to get rid of them.

Not wanting to just haul them to the dump or light them on fire to get rid of them, I started looking online for ideas of things a person could make out of pallets.  It is unbelievable how many different things a simple pallet can be transformed into.  Planters, bookshelves, tables, lawn chairs, and playhouses were just a few of the things I found.  Having small children that needed some fun things to do in our back yard, the playhouses caught my eye.  A lot of them, however, seemed like they were merely pallets nailed together end to end.  I wanted something much better than that.  I wanted a playhouse that could be played in year round, in every kind of weather.  I decided that instead of nailing pallets together to build  something, I would take the pallets apart and use the lumber from them to build the best playhouse I have ever seen.  The more I thought about it, the more elaborate and detailed my plans became.  Soon, the picture of this playhouse, in my mind, had a loft, lighting and electricity, and windows.    If I was going to go through the hassle of building a structure, why not build something that could still be used after my kids didn't need it anymore?

I took an inventory of all the scrap lumber I had and determined there was enough to begin construction.  Putting it together took far longer than if I had gone out and bought the materials to build the project, simply because I had to disassemble pallets and dig through stacks and piles of wood to find the right boards for the right parts of the building.

We worked on the project now dubbed 'the clubhouse' in the evenings and on weekends whenever we had a chance.  In the first few months we had the floor done, the walls up, and the roof on.  Putting the exterior covering on the wall frames was the most tedious part of the whole project.  I came across enough tongue and groove 1x6's to do the front and east sides of the building.  That was the easy part.  The west side, which was the side I started on first, was the most difficult.  There were a lot of 1x4's from pallets I had taken apart that I wanted to get used up.  Using a router and router table, I notched out the top and bottom of each board to make them overlap by about 1/2 inch.  That wall seemed to take forever.  The back wall is covered with an assortment of 1x6's  1x12's and 1x4's. It was the last wall to be finished, so it got pieced together with what was left over from the other parts of the building.  

The theme of this project has been: 'Patience'.  When construction on the clubhouse began I did not have all the materials I needed.  I had enough to start building, then I was on a constant lookout for surplus and discarded materials so construction could continue.  Just when it seemed like I was about to have to go out and buy something I needed to keep going, the required materials would find their way to us.  Some of the lumber came from unusual places (collapsed shed in the cow corral, side of the road, neighbor's burn pile, and a dumpster, just to name a few). My wife got coffee cans full of nails for me at yard sales, The junction boxes and other components needed to add power to the clubhouse came from similar sources.  We even scored some cabinets from a neighbor who was moving.  All the lumber for this project was recycled. The only things that were purchased new were: a couple 1 lb. boxes of screws, 2 tubes of caulking, 3 cans of spray foam insulation, and a 5 gallon bucket of wood stain.  

G. at his workbench

A. demonstrating how to go up the ladder to the loft

'The Boys' having lunch in the loft

Sometimes in life, it seems like things never work out the way we want them to.  This project is not a good example of that.  Everything for this came together so well, it's hard to believe.  It is one of those rare occasions in my life where something I decided to do just worked out (not a regular occurrence).  I guess every now and then, things go just the way we hope they would.  The clubhouse project has been a lot of work, but it was never a struggle to find what we needed to put it together.  The things we needed just seemed to find their way to us.  It still is not finished, but it is far enough along to be a fun place to hang out and play any time of year.  The kids love it, too.  

Wisdom of a Farm Dog

When our area finally got some snow this winter, we tried to make the most of it.  After spending all morning outside, we herded the kids in the house for lunch.  R. wanted to stay out to finish what he was working on.  I told him he could stay another 5 minutes to finish up, and I went in the house.  As I headed inside I saw our dog, who had been been out playing in the snow with us, look at R and then look over at me.  The look he gave me said:
"Hello?! You're forgetting one."

I went inside and looked out the window to keep an eye on R.  In the 15 seconds it took me to get to the window, the dog had gone over and was standing right by him, guarding him.  He'd watch R for a minute, then turn and look all around as if he was making sure nothing would come to attack.  Then he saw me through the window and stared me down, probably wondering if I had lost my marbles, leaving one of my kids outside.  He stayed attached to R's side right up until he walked in the house a few minutes later.

I am not a dog trainer.  I managed to teach him how to sit, stay, come, lay down, and how to ride in the back of my pickup.  That is the best I could do.  He has the instinct to be a good cowdog, but my dog training knowledge (or lack thereof) has failed him in the cow herding department.  He is terrible with cattle.  Taking care of my kids is not something I am capable of teaching him how to do.  We didn't even realize he would (or could) do that until my Aunt pointed it out last summer.

Some things can't be trained into an animal.  Wisdom in all living things comes with age and experience.  Regardless of race, gender, species, or breed, a wise and loyal friend is invaluable.

No Time For Games

I have nothing against video games.  They are a good hobby and a fun way to pass the time.  What I do have a problem with is the video game habit.  I have known grown men and women who harbor such strong addictions to virtual reality that every other aspect of their lives suffer from neglect.   There is so much to see, do, and learn in life, I don't believe children can afford to spend very much time doing something so meaningless.  So at our house, we do not do video games.  There have been a few times where I have considered pulling out the old Nintendo and letting the kids try their hand at Duck Hunt or Super Mario Bros, but just as those thoughts would cross my mind one of them would bring me a book and ask to have it read to them.

To be short and to the point, there are too many other things we want our kids to do to have them spend their time playing video games.  Since we are fortunate enough to live in a house on my family's farm, my children have a few opportunities that other kids do not have.

One thing we like to do in the summer is trap gophers.  To our great fortune, there is a portion of the farm that is infested with them.  Two years ago, what started with me digging out one of my old gopher traps so I could show my boys what a gopher looks like in real life, quickly escalated into an all out war against those nasty little creatures.  After we learned that the irrigation company pays one dollar for every gopher tail you bring to them, we decided that would be a good way for the kids to earn some money.  We took all the traps we could find and started going out to the fields every night when I got home from work. They took turns cashing in the tails, 25 at a time.  By the end of the summer they had earned a combined total of  more than $300 dollars, and were well known by every employee at the irrigation district office.  By the time we stopped trapping last fall, the boys could identify fresh gopher mounds, dig the holes, and put the traps in the ground all by themselves.  

  

With the joys and triumphs of catching gophers, there also comes plenty of frustrations.  There were days when we would go out and find nothing but empty traps and plugged holes.  Sometimes we went to check the traps only to find they had been carried off by coyotes or neighbor dogs, never to be seen again.  According to the statistics I kept last year, our trapping success rate was only about 42%.  In the grand scheme of things, that stinks (but even 42% is higher than average for the type of traps we use).  The height of my frustration came when I was cleaning out a hole, getting ready to set the trap, and one of the little varmints bit my finger.  It wasn't a very big gopher, but it clamped its teeth down so hard they actually bit through my fingernail.  It hurt.  When we finally caught that one, we let the dog eat it.  

We have made a lot of memories trapping gophers, and more will be made as we start trapping again in the spring. Opportunities are everywhere for families to do fun activities and spend quality time together.  They don't have to be expensive.  Some of our most memorable experiences have come while doing activities that had little to no cost attached to them.

A $2.00 Family Memory

The best way my wife and I have found to get rid of the winter time blues/cabin fever is to force ourselves (and everyone else) outside to do something.  In preparation for yesterday's events, Friday night I went out and welded together some old scrap metal and made an umbrella stand to use around the yard this summer.  I used the spare tire rim from the pickup I had back in high school, a piece of galvanized pipe I have been holding on to so long I can't recall where it came from, and the wheels from our old barbecue grill that recently bit the dust.  The other small parts all came from my scrap metal box.

 I got it all cleaned up and painted yesterday morning, and all we needed was some cement to add some weight to it.  Since we were already going to Home Depot for one of the kids projects they do the first Saturday of each month, that is where we went for the concrete mix.  We told the kids last night we were going to pour some concrete, and they couldn't have been more excited.  One of the boys even prayed for our cement pouring project at breakfast.

For large concrete projects (sidewalks, feed bunks, foundations, etc.) I always buy Type 1&2 Portland Cement.  A 90 lb. bag costs about $10. For smaller projects such as this, we use ready mix concrete that only needs water added.  An 80 lb. bag usually costs about $4.  Ready mix concrete already has the portland cement and aggregate properly measured and mixed.  It is more expensive, but for small jobs ready mix makes more sense.  We really lucked out today, though.  We happened upon a discount cart at Home Depot, and got a torn bag of ready mix for half price.

As soon as we got home, I had no choice but to start mixing (the kids were ready to start on it themselves).  We nailed together a small cement form for a stepping stone, so we wouldn't have any cement go to waste if there was extra.  The kids each got a turn to add some water while I mixed with a shovel.  When it was ready I put the boys to spreading and smoothing while I shoveled the cement into the rim.  Little A  got a hold of my concrete edger and for the moment was happy patting it on the wet cement still in the wheelbarrow.  When the rim was filled I took over smoothing it down and my wife added cement to the stepping stone form while the boys attacked it with trowels.  We had a lot more cement left over than expected, so I grabbed a dog food bowl, lined it with the ready mix concrete bag, and put the remainder of the overrun into it.  Then, before we knew it, A had again gotten the edger and was using it on the cement in the dog bowl.  The boys tried to help her, but she would not have any of it.  She worked on it for about 20 minutes, and was very proud of her accomplishment.

The stepping stone G & R made got a lot of smoothing over, and it ended up with a smiley face on it.  Once we were all done and got our tools washed off, G & A moved on to other activities, and R was more than happy to use my socket wrench to bolt the wheels on the umbrella stand.  Hopefully this will make the whole thing easy to move around the yard this summer.

I really didn't expect for a simple project such as this to turn into a family affair, and I certainly didn't know all the kids would be so into it.  They love getting the chance to do things they have only seen other people do, and they especially love getting to do 'grown up' jobs.  But when we get to do something together that everyone is into, it can turn into a long lasting memory.  Especially when everyone is happy the whole time, and the cost for the entire activity is less than $2.00.

Together We Can Do Hard Things

Throughout our lives everyone has times where they feel like they are struggling and have no way out.  Whether it be job loss, financial problems, trouble with school, relationship problems, or countless other situations we may find ourselves in, sometimes life is just hard.  Through our almost ten years of marriage, my wife and I have been through a lot of difficult situations.  A few of them were more difficult than we ever imagined possible.  There are two reasons we survived.  When times were hard, we turned to each other, and we relied on God.
Now as parents, trying to teach our children how to deal with difficulties in life has, itself, proven to be a difficulty.  The phrase 'Together We Can Do Hard Things' became our family motto a few months ago.  We say it together every night before the kids go to bed.  We want our children to accept the challenges they face in life, and learn how to work as part of a team.  But more important than that, we want them to know that when they have to do something hard, regardless of the level of difficulty, they never have to act alone.  Even when we are alone physically, the love and support we feel at home can travel with us, and we can always ask for help from above.  So even when we are alone, we can always be working 'together'.
This blog will share some of our goals and experiences as a family, and how we attempt to accomplish them.