Mantle is hung

 Taylors mantle turned out fantastic, he sent some pictures after the guy finished installing it

Really Cool Bar

 Part of Taylor's big project includes an outdoor bar on his new deck. There are some 5x5 posts in place to secure the roof, and we could mount the bar around those posts. This one was my idea when we were looking through the house trying to decide how best to use these slabs, and this thing turned out better than I could have ever imagined.

Starting with some sticks

The raw slab as it came off of the sawmill

Cut some radius edges and notched out to fit around the posts

Cleaned up the live edge front

Starting to cut out the supports

Cleaned up and installed

Support system

View from the backyard

This really fits in with the rest of the porch and turned out nicer than I expected. I sat on it, it's super sturdy. This bar is about 7' long & 16" wide. After cutting out the basic shapes, I had to plane and sand everything smooth & flat, all the way through 300 grit paper. Taylor ended up sealing the bar with the same stuff he used to seal the deck so it would all match. This plank turned out really clean and I'm super happy they picked me to build this piece for them, and the rest of the projects.

Couple of other small projects

 I sold a couple of pieces to wrap up the year (latergram, I know) that turned out really nice. First was a Christmas tree stand for my friend Suzie, then a builtin mud room "welcome center" for a new customer who turned out to be incredibly nice.

Cabinet for Sara's welcome center

Christmas tree stand

These both came from the same sheet of plywood. The stand got painted and delivered without any other pictures, she was really happy to get it. 

I also didn't get a finished picture of the welcome center, I had to install some more molding after I got this one, then it got painted and some hooks added to the middle rail. 

Both of these projects resulted in some very happy customers, even if I didn't get finished pictures! They have both asked for more projects in the future. 

This is also a good time to mention that I finally formed an official business. Someplace Nice, LLC  started on Jan 1, revenue will come from furniture sales and short term rental housing (after I build the house in Boone), and expenses will consist of the building supplies for furniture and housing. I'm very excited to get started!

Small Tables

 Couple of small end tables to report on today. First, in Taylor's big project, I had to cut his coffee table slab down to 34" long. So I took the cutoff and made a 20" table out of that by adding an oak base. Then I made a maple table for my dad. 

White oak pieces for the base

Assembled base, added shelf, attached with pocket screws

20" long, about 15" wide and roughly 20" tall

Dad was fairly enamored with the walnut table I made for mom over christmas, and had another place he could use one that size. So I had some extra maple laying around so I pulled together a basic table for him too.

Same base, pocket screws to attach the top

This little guy has a cool live edge top with tiger striping and some interesting coloration in the top. The base is a clearer hard maple. Now I see the flaw in this base - the legs are too close together. It's basically just four sticks and a wrapper. I should have put the legs on the outside of the end grain for the front/back pieces, then ran the long stretchers inside of the legs. That gives more glue surface anyway.

Another Hanging Daybed

 I got a response from an ad on craigslist about the hanging daybeds, he wanted a double bed, and we eventually settled on hickory wood. This turned out beautiful, and I think he was very happy with it. He wanted cupholders and a wine glass slot cut into the arms, I haven't had to do that before so it was a really cool challenge to design.

Started with a double base, attached some 8/4 hickory to the bottom

Beautiful stuff, and I made the supports extra long

Made the arms & back supports

Cutting out the arms was tricky, I boxed in the cupholders and added the wine glass slots

Detail of the cupholder & wine glass

Now with more back

Added a cedar stain

He wanted another board on the arms

This really did turn out beautiful. I used Old Masters wipe-on stain and Exterior Ascend topcoat. Hickory is a really hard, tough wood to work, I don't use it often on furniture like this but it is beautiful. And most importantly, the customer loved it.

Snowy trip to Boone

 I ended up closing the purchase of the land in Boone without having to go up there. Such a HUGE turning point, this is going to be the first house I build from scratch, the first AirBNB for my retirement plan, it's all very exciting!! Lena went with me up there. It was amazingly beautiful, the town was totally dry, no snow or anything. Then we get up to the higher elevation where our land is, and there is more snow than she's ever seen in her life. 

This was as far as the car would go - had to walk the rest of the way to the lot

Underground utilities

"cleared" building site

The stick on the right is roughly the property line, teenager is standing on the setback

pretty steep!

Tire tracks show how the car slid back down the hill haha

This tree is really cool

on the road back to town

That's our snow capped mountain!

Downtown Boone, our lot is on the north side of that white capped mountain top

I'm so grateful she gets to make these trips with me and has the same love of the mountains that I have. This trip was particularly beautiful, even if we didn't get as much work done as I wanted to while we were there.