Easter Sunday

All the family is coming over for Easter Sunday and a potluck lunch - dinner will come together.  But we need a place to sit and enjoy.  The trouble is my teak patio table from Target only seemed to last 2 years and is now ready to be repurposed into something else.  I think if I sneeze it will blow over.  In shopping around for a large patio table at Home Depot or the DIY Center everything is super expensive, and will it hold up?  Why not try and build it myself?  I love the big farm house table design, plus I have a big backyard and patio so a big table would look fine.  Looked at a few ideas on You Tube and penciled out a game plan for materials.  Called up my good buddy Jacobus, said he'd be happy to lend a hand, and it was off to Home Depot to fill my shopping list.  4x4's for the legs, 2x6 for the frame, but what for the top?  Redwood?  Pine?

Nothing looked good at Home Depot.  Did I bite off more than I could chew?  Will I not be able to complete this project in time?  Jacobus came over and we went to town with building the frame 10 feet by 4 feet, seemed huge.  But why not, a lot of people can sit at a big table.  Cut the 2x6 to size, the 4x4 to size, predrilled the 4x4 legs to accept the 1/2" carriage bolts, added some wood glue and started building.  By 3pm I thought it best to call Stock Lumber and asked when they closed.  After all it was Good Friday and they might close early.  And wouldn't that suck if they did, because we did not have our material for the top of the table at that point.  And how many times have I started a project thinking I had all the materials only to find half way through I needed to make another store run for something more.  Seems all the time when working on the car.

Stock Lumber sells wood up to 20 feet long, but you need to buy the whole board if you can not leave at least 8 feet of wood to be put back on the shelf.  You could end up paying for a lot of the waste.  Red Mahogany, Red Oak, Clear Redwood, so much to choose, what should I get? what will look best?
And Jacobus... what will this cost?  The wood here is sold by the foot.  How much feet do we need ?  If the table is 10 feet long and 4 feet wide, we want some wood to over hang the frame and then we can cut the ends to the size we want to end with.  OK... how wide is each board?  And to think I was to busy smoking pot in high school, ditching math class and saying to my buddies; who needs this class anyways. The Redwood was the prettiest, with it's long streaks of red and yellow coloring.  So Clear Redwood it is.

I'd love to say we finished it before dark, but that would be a lie.  Thank God for flood lights and good friends, Jacobus was great staying until we finished.  At 7pm the new table went into the backyard ready for Easter Sunday.

Lemonade Anyone

Sign painting is an art all it's own.  And why not, we have all tried the stencils from Office Depot and they never seem to turn out what we had envisioned.   Kay Kropp  is a scenic painter and artist for the studios.  She seemed delighted to help.  And so the day was set.  We all agreed to go with a loose design, no hard lines, just the look of homemade and fun.  First a chalk out line was drawn to create a plan.  If a change is made, a little spritz of water erases the chalk to start over.  Kay then pulled out her arsenal of artist brushes; a 5 gallon paint bucket filled to the outer edge looking more like some abstract flower blossom and a canvass wrap.  Some square and wide, some small with only the tiniest tip, some round like a finger tip.  They all had a purpose, they all work and so a brush was picked.  First she laid down the creamy yellow lettering, and then followed up with a bright yellow outline.  Washed the chalk away with a wet rag and the lemonade stand came to life.

Rustic Lemonade Stand

Rustic Wedding

It all started when my niece asked me to build a lemonade stand for her wedding.  The big day was planned for May 2014 at the historical Strathern Park in Simi Valley.  The park is cheaper than most wedding venues but you need to bring all your own stuff.  First I started a pinterest page to get the ideas flowing and see just what lemonade stand the bride wants.  Then asked her to comment on my pics.  A trip to Home Depot to load up on lumber, paint and supplies, and so it began.

  I cut the wood at uneven lengths along the front to give the stand a homemade look, also some boards are smooth while others are rough sawn.  This will help with the aging process.  On the back side shelves are installed so the stand can act as a bar or tattoo stand at a party or even a car show.

Burnt Umber is normally a tint used in adding color to a base paint in making a custom color.  I asked for it at my local paint store and the salesmen seem lost.  Nowadays machines tint all the colors, but back in the day a painter would have a color rack of tints and he could make the exact color for the customer on site.  Luckily there was a paint code for burnt umber.  I poured 1/3 into a solo cup and then added 2/3 water, mixed throughly. It then looks more like a watered down stain. Then comes the garden hose with an adjustable nozzle, turned to a fine spray and mist down all the wood.  The water acts like a vehicle for the paint.  If you want more runs, mist on more water. The different wood types accept the paint differently.  Using a wet rag ,follow up with dabbing and sometimes wiping off some of the excess.  This starts the old aging effect, you can even add some burnt umber to a small spritz bottle.  You could stop here but I love some different colored boards, as if the young builder had grabbed his building lumber from anything he could find.

 Blocking… grab a smooth piece of scrap wood and brush on your paint to the face of the wood / block.  Slide the block in one direction over the surface of one or more boards.  The paint on your block will stick to only the high points on the wood surface.  You might want to try it out on a piece of scrap wood first.  I believe less is better, and you can see the results…  One rustic lemonade stand ready for the wedding.