Progress

Jason: I finally had a Saturday to spend with my family at home yesterday and it was great. I've been ill the last couple days but woke up feeling considerably better. There was bacon in the fridge that needed to be cooked, so I got that started. I asked the kids to choose between pancakes, Swedish pancakes, and french toast. Pancakes! was the majority choice so Kaitlin came to help me make the batter.

Everyone enjoyed their pancakes with butter, syrup, and Cool Whip. Fresh oranges, bacon, and apple juice rounded out our delicious meal. Then the chores began. Dusting, vacuuming, sweeping, taking out the trash...all the kids were helpful.

Then the fun began. Remember the project I started back in December? I got stalled because I didn't have the right router bit. Then I fouled up the first glue-up. Yesterday I got back into the building of the two bookcases with the intent to have them put together before the day was through.

I started by correcting a couple mistakes I had made. Then the first bookcase went together fairly well with Ruth's help in the assembly. As you can see, our dining room doubled as a workshop. Maybe you've read Sterling North's "Rascal." The boy in the story will do anything do accomplish his goals.

On the second bookcase I found that the grooves for the shelves were not quite square with the front and the parts wouldn't fit together with any ease. So I had to correct those slightly. Everything takes longer when you are using hand tools for almost everything. The shelves and sides were all cut and squared with hand tools.

With both bookcases, after the sides and shelves were all together, the front and back edges did not quite line up. Ruth helped me to plane down the high spots to make it all line up. She did pretty well for a first-time plane user!

We nailed the backs on and filled all the holes. I showed the girls how to seal the knots with white glue and let them handle that task. They were sure excited to be involved. They can't wait to paint!

The shelf heights were determined using the Fibonacci sequence.

Of course after we were done the sweeping and vacuuming had to be redone.

After the kids were put to bed Ruth gave me a haircut and I got to sweep again!

Ruth: We were all so happy to be able to spend the day together and that we accomplished so much! It so much fun to see how excited the kids get when we let them help with these sort of projects! Thank-you for a wonderful day Jason!!! You're awesome!!!

P.S. We may be on the verge of going private. Someone added themself as a follower to our blog who we do not know. Their intent appeared to be to direct traffic to their blog to generate income. It is not hard to block a follower though so we won't take that step yet. However, if you have to log in to read one blog, i.e. Tim/Vanessa/etc., then you're already logged in to read everyone else who is private. So it may not be long...