There's No Place Like Home

Ed sent me a picture of his granddaughter with the well-traveled hutch that finally found a home.

And they lived happily ever after.  The End

Adventures of a Child's Hutch

It took many hands and many moves to finish this child's hutch.  Here are all the memories that come to mind when I see this hutch.

• Being so happy to find a woodworking class in Wisconsin (at Western Wisconsin Technical College) when wood shops in the schools were becoming an endangered species.
• Finding the instructions for the hutch in an out-of-print library book and then being able to find a used copy online and buying it - one of my first online book purchases.
• Resizing the directions with hubby whose mantra is "Math is power".
• Building this for a child, but making it the right size to hold CDs if there were no children.
• Having Kevin, my wood shop teacher, help me every step of the way - especially when it was time to put the door caps on the tops and bottoms of the doors.
• Not finishing it because the class ended and we had to move to Boston.
• Storing CDs in it in the hall of our Boston apartment without bottoms in the drawers, a back, or the doors attached - the hutch, not the apartment!
• Searching for and never finding a woodworking class in Boston.
• Searching for and never finding the perfect hardware.
• Trying to offer the pieces to Brendaen (woodworker extraordinaire and father to many girls) when he and his family stopped by to visit us the night before we moved to California.
• Brendaen offering to help me finish it 'right then and there' and finding out later that he and his family had just come from an appointment where he had been called to be the new bishop of our ward.
• Moving the thing, in pieces still, to California.
• Meeting Ed at church and finding out that he was a woodworker and that he had a shop in his garage.
• Finally finding the perfect hardware at Restoration Hardware.
• Putting all the pieces together with Ed's help.  Okay, Ed put the pieces together and I watched.
• Leaving the hutch with Ed to finish and to keep for his granddaughters when we moved to Tennessee.
• Getting an email (and pictures) from Ed that the hutch was finally done.
• Laughing hysterically right now when I reread all these memories and then reread the title of the book that the project came from!

 The instructions are on page 172 of this book.

 Hubby's math and drafting skills in action.

 

 "Exploded" view - love it!

We could buy our stock from the teacher - a definite plus!

A Custom Clif Crate

Our dad likes to build stuff.  While I was in Houston, he was building a crate to send some stuff to my brother - stuff that he's had forever and has lugged across the country multiple times.  Our folks' move from Oregon to Ohio took four Penske truck trips that, of course, dad insisted on driving himself over a period of a few months.  But, I digress.  Anyway, here's how to build a custom crate.

Make sure you have your favorite tool nearby - a roofing square.

Start cutting 2x4s.  Remember to always measure twice and cut once.

Get some screws from...the Costco candy isle?  Dad had to sacrifice and eat a whole lot of candy to collect enough containers to hold his vast collection of fasteners.  I bet that random blue lid up there is going to drive him crazy.

Ignore your cardiologist's orders to "take it easy" before your upcoming heart surgery.

Finish the base of the crate.

Start loading the crate with really big heavy things - with the help of your tiny wife who's your same age.  Then make sure to anchor things down so they don't slide around during the trip.

Finish loading the two-sided crate, just as you visualized it before you ever began the project.  (This is why I'm good at Tetris.)

Dress up and play army man one last time before you send off your old army gear.

Call a strapping young guy with a forklift and a big truck to load and haul away the crate for you.  There you have it folks, nine easy steps to making a Custom Clif Crate.