"No good deed goes . . . "

Back when we were in Wisconsin visiting The Wife's family a couple weeks ago, I was conscripted to build a cold frame for my mother-in-law.  Well, "conscripted" might not be the correct term here since, you see, I knew that Jan would accompany any project of this sort with ample quantities of top-shelf domestic macrobrew and, if it's early enough in the day, the occasional bloody mary.  I was quick to volunteer for the task.

Having grown up in the West, in places where nobody is really from, it's always fun to visit central Wisconsin.  If you grow up in rural Wisconsin and move 50 miles, it's a big move.  If you go to, say, Alaska, you might as well be in another country.  My brother-in-law, and good friend, Tyler is one of those locals with deep roots to Marathon County.  You need a used window?  He's got a guy who's got a dozen for you.  You need some lumber on Saturday when the local yard is closed?  He's got as many clear 2x10s as you might need.  Tools?  Forgetaboutit.  If Tyler wasn't such a nice guy, you'd think he was part of some Wisconsin Polish mafia.

With materials and bloody mary in hand, Tyler and I made short work of building the cold frame.

The sides are 2x10s cut to the appropriate length and width and joined like a log cabin so it can be disassembled for easy transportation or storage.

The window is on a hinge for easy access to the inside. 

And an updated picture with the fresh planting:

Of course, now that we're home and things are starting to warm up, The Wife is going garden crazy.  She's already sourced a bunch of old windows and, as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.  She just better have a bloody mary waiting.

Everyone should have one

After enjoying wood heat in our old home so much, one of the first major home improvement projects The Wife and I conspired on for our new house was to install a wood stove.  It took us a bit longer to build up our savings and arrange the installation than we'd have liked, but I'm happy to report that our new stove is in. 

We hired out the installation of the chimney and delivery of the stove, but decided to tackle the hearth ourselves.  Building the hearth was fairly straight forward, but because of our hectic schedules we ended up really pushing the time line and had to work into the wee hours of the night in order to give the mortar and grout enough time to set before delivery of the stove.

Our hearth is a pretty simple design, relying on a plywood base laid directly on top of the laminate flooring.  Two layers of durock cement board on top of the plywood provide the requisite heat and fire resistance. . .

. . . with natural slate tiles finishing off the surface.

Neither The Wife nor I had ever set tiles before, but it all came together easy enough. 

I still need to trim out the edge of the hearth, but the stove is in and cranking out the heat.

You park cars in your garage?

For a lack of something better to do with the garage--after all, we aren't very well going to store cars in it--I've decided to become a woodworker. My skills lag significantly behind my enthusiasm, but that hasn't stopped me from taking over half of the garage. And not the left or right half, such that one vehicle can still park in our garage. Oh no, I've managed to occupy the garage in such a manner to render it totally useless for motor vehicles. Surely this will change when the weather turns bad and The Wife puts her foot down. Until then...

Part of the deal for getting nearly exclusive access to the garage was that my woodworking skills, slight as they are, must serve the becking call of The Wife. As such, my most recent project, with the assistance of my good friend Luke, was this potting bench:

It's made of redwood and cedar, includes a place to store tools and such, and has a hole in the table top with a removable plastic container for collecting soil and other potting debris. Since it's permanent home will be on our back porch, which could put your local gardening center to shame, it can also serve double duty during barbecues and such. Coincidentally, the hole and container for potting debris will work perfectly as a place to cool beer in ice.