A little DIY table

We kept the old house pillars that had rotted at the base, cut them into couple foot long pieces, and I thought they would make nice end/side tables. Noah had his clock radio sitting on the floor ever since he moved into his big boy room. We put the two together and look what we have.
Noah picked his paint color himself. The project cost about $10.

Fun at the farm

We had a good time visiting the Green's Sugar bush for the big pancake feed. The number of people there was impressive.
We went on a horse wagon ride and Noah got to ride a pony.

Paint - Wow!

Brian got back to the condo this past weekend and was finally able to use his new painting toy.  His early reports were that the sprayer was AWESOME and he is highly disappointed at how much time he put into painting our house without such a tool.  It makes a silky smooth surface in seconds, not hours.  You don't want to read my rambling, you want to see the results! 

Trim done, the rest still coming.  You can see the gentle contrast between the gray and white.  Never mind the weird lamp shadows.

Doors balanced in the middle of the room for spraying

Wall done. Yes!

Gray paint is done here, getting ready for white.

Doors.  Aren't they a  million times better than that orange wood??

Entrance hall done, so sharp!  The tile looks so much better when it's not surrounded by orange wood!

From the kitchen, down the hall.  On a mission to eliminate shiny orange pine paneling!

In progress at the hall to kitchen transition.

Unwrapped and cleaned up, the transition isn't going to look good for quite awhile, boo.

While working, there is not space for people!  What a mess!

Just starting to unwrap, look at that pretty tile next to the light, bright wall.

The order of these is random and scattered, I'm posting pics while Noah is begging to watch videos, hmm.  Better get back to my playdate!

Finally ready for paint

Brian made great progress this past weekend.  Most of the work was in the bathroom, getting walls ready for paint and putting the trim back up.  Just to refresh your memory, here's where we started.

Before

With the wood around the old tub pulled down - found some wallpaper.

Ready to spray the radiator, nasty walls.

Mmm, nice radiator!  Now about those walls...

Mmm, look at that progress!  It's starting to look like a  respectable room!

 

Can't wait to eliminate that yellow/orange wood.

The bedroom is also paint ready.  Looking good!

Here's another before - that's one nasty wall and radiator!

Ahh, much better.

We overcame our issues with Lowes and finally obtained the vanity that we choose for this room too.  Major success after weeks of frustration.  They recalled them, told us to come back in a couple weeks, told us they threw them all away because of the recall.  We were looking one last time before settling on a second choice and discovered that they were once again selling the first choice, but not at our store.  Fortunately, my parents live in a larger metropolitan area with several Lowes and we were able to work with a more capable staff at another store.  The driving miles are starting to add up for this project, but it's still fun!

A Pulled Pulk

After my post about eating vegetarian, you might have seen this title as some sort of soy replica of pulled pork, but this is about sledding.  About towing Noah around out in the snowy wilderness in a more comfortable fashion.  Ever since he outgrew the old Chariot, we've been pulling a sled by a short rope, or taking turns playing outside.  We decided it was high time to pimp-out the sled to comfortable parent mode.

We've assembled some tools and are getting a system figured out.

The engineer says you have to build in redundancy in case one part fails, so we have a pair of carabiners linking this system together.

Here we go!

Somebody's having fun!

Dad can comfortably snowshoe, little one doesn't get left behind.

Unless he jumps out of the sled!

We were able to snowshoe and fat-bike with this system.  We used a bunch of 6-8 inch strips of webbing with grommets punched into them to attach to the sled, the sled-end of the pipe, and the harness end of the pipe.  I sewed a harness out of some outdoor nylon (in a bright color that matches the sled), and a 2 inch strip of webbing and buckle.  We just drilled a couple of holes in the pvc pipe and bolted the grommets to the pipe.  We don't have the best grommet system out there and had a couple of grommets pull out of the webbing from the forces put upon them when in real use - good thing we built in all that redundancy!

It was sure fun to play engineer again, mix power tools and sewing, and make something very useful for playing outside!  

Have you ever used something similar?  I'm curious about different designs, so please share!