Good Monday Morning Patriot Woodworkers and Guests! Now that we are all waking up to a "normal" week, without football hype, interviews of players, betting, and the constant barrage of geographical reviews of San Fransisco, we can get back to what really matters in life, woodworking! That being said, my son and I were on opposite sides of the Superbowl, I had to root for the Broncos, my boy on the other side, he's already an independent thinker at the ripe old age of 11. I was happy for Manning, and on the other side I was also rooting for a Panther win because of Bruce DeHaven, the Panthers special teams coach, he was diagnosed with an un-curable form of prostate cancer, and he coached through the last season like a champ, and he is loved and well respected by his players. I really also wanted a win for him as this will be his last year.

 

This past weekend I have been tasked by my oldest daughter to make 40 awards for her Veterans and Patriot Tigers club she heads up on her high school campus. My family was at a Homes for Our Troops event on Saturday leaving me in the shop to get the awards started. Our girls club is going to present the awards to all the staff members in our school district who are Veterans at a special dinner that the students organized for the staff.
Each award will be different. None alike. I have done these before and the recipients love them. I'll chop them out of these boards and slabs and shave and chip till they are ready. Then I'll mount some engraved tags and branch of service medallions on the face of each one.
We have some California Live Oak, Apple, Claro Walnut, and Black Cherry. All left from prior projects. What a great way to use leftovers, in wonderful projects like this. Respecting the tree it all came from, and by giving each veteran a unique symbol of thanks.

So this coming week I'll be splitting and hacking at these slabettes (not a real word, but hey, it works!) and cutoffs in order to come up with some unique awards for our veterans. How about you all? What you got coming up this week? Our Admin John Moody gotyall fired up for the weekend, and we are being nosy about your work week now!

 

Gonna fire up the planer and start milling hard maple for the top of that kitchen work table (one of my sister's minister's projects).

I wrapped up the renovation to my daughter's old bedroom this weekend turning it into a guest room with 2 twin beds. It was more of a challenge than I had planned on, but then again the last time I did something like this was a number of years ago and I have had more than a few miles put on this old body since then. But it is all done with the exception of painting the entry and closet doors a those have to be removed down to the shop for clean up and painting and right now there is no space for them until I get a couple of other things done. 

 

So the room was originally painted with 3 walls a bright blue and one wall a bright green which is what our Jr High age daughter wanted back then along with all kinds of stickers put up on her doors and posters hung on the walls. The only good thing with her having had all of her clothes thrown over the floor is that the carpet was in much better condition than I had expected. :-)
Now the room is painted a nice neutral grey/silver with white baseboard and crown and some new curtains. For the crown I actually used casing and instead of doing the miter cuts I used decorative blocks so that I could butt joint them. This made my life much easier especially since I had to go back and forth to the shop to do all the cuts and I was dealing with 12' long pieces so that I didn't have to use any joining leaving them seamless. The photos are from the cell phone so they are not great, but all in all it turned out good. The most important thing is that Momma is happy! :-)

Here is what I started with.

 

Here is the baseboard and crown.

 

Here is with the furniture and curtains in.

Edited February 8, 201610 yr by Allen Worsham

That turned out fantastic, Allen. When do you think she'll move back 

4 minutes ago, lew said:

That turned out fantastic, Allen. When do you think she'll move back 

Our daughter, who is 24 years old now, is still living with us which is fine. We just had her move to the bedroom next door to it which was our old guest room with a full size bed in it. It is a bit bigger room and is north facing so it is actually cooler in the summer months. She is hoping to be able to move out on her own this year, but housing is pretty expensive out here in So. Calif. so it is a financial struggle for her at this time. She had planned on moving out a few months back with a friend of hers from church which would have worked out really well, but her friend had to move in with her brother and his family as they had financial issues and needed her financial support in order to make it. We have 4 bedrooms and it is just my wife and I and our daughter. We have a smaller bedroom which was our son's room before he got married 4-5 years ago which had the 2 twin beds in which we will now covert over to an exercise room as Tami and I both need to get back on the machines and not have them in our master bedroom.