Christmas Presents!

Lookie what I got for Christmas! :)



I finally got my china hutch finished. Adjustable shelves and all! The base has been sitting in my kitchen for a while now just waiting for a top.

I also got some books, the New Arrivals Cricut cartridge and Super Mario Brothers Wii.

Such a great hubby. Thanks honey!

Dresser

Adam's newest woodworking project is a dresser. If you remember the nightstands that he made for our room, he made a dresser to match. We needed a dresser for the baby's room so this was as good of an opportunity than any!



As with the nightstands he inlayed some walnut on the top.


This holds our stuff a lot better than our old one. Probably because it's custom made for our needs huh? :)

When he put the knobs on, the standard screws were too long for how thick the drawer faces were.


So last night he went through and replaced all of those. It's now officially finished!

Newest Creation

Adam's newest creation is a nightstand. Our room in this house is much smaller than the one in our last house so the nightstands we used before do not fit. New project for Adam!

Tada!


It's oak with inlays of walnut on the top.

Pretty fancy!

TGIF

It's Friday! Aren't short weeks great?

I don't have anything too exciting to share. Just a couple little things.

The quilt rack has been poly'd and looks awesome. These pics are just after one coat.


Since I don't have a whole lot to share, how about a lesson in Walnut. Everyone excited?
Black Walnut is a large deciduous tree attaining heights of 30-40 meters(100-130 feet). It produces a nut which is what you know and eat. It is a hardwood and the wood itself consists of heartwood and sapwood. The heartwood is what is sought after and is very dark. The sapwood is a light color and is usually taken off. Walnut left with both heartwood and sapwood make for a very dramatic effect. Here is a pic that shows a little sapwood.


Black Walnut also produces a chemical that is hazardous to a lot of other plants and some animals especially horses. While great dog beds can be made out of wood shavings, on Wednesday night I just took all of the shavings to the dump. Adam had amassed quite a collection. I wasn't quite sure how it'd effect dogs.


This was my first trip to the Mead dump, or rather the brush pile as it only accepts...uh...brush type things.



With and without poly:


We also checked on the yard on Wed. It isn't dead yet but was starting to yellow.


Tomorrow will be a week after I sprayed it so I'll have to go check on it tonight to see if it's dead yet.

Last night Adam had a softball game. Here's a picture just for fun.

Beautiful Walnut

Sunday was spent in Mead. We drove to Mead on Sat night and just stayed there. Sunday morning we had a bridal shower for one of Adam's cousins fiance. Adam went to work with the Walnut some more while I was there and then we had his grandma's bday party that evening in Omaha so he got to spend most of the day working with the walnut.

Takes a lot of time for what you actually get done but it sure is pretty!

Wood

A couple months ago Adams dad got a call about cutting down some walnut trees. Lucky for us! We were looking for some to cut down! So we went and cut down the trees for this guy for free if we could take the wood. We took a lot of the logs to a sawmill and had them kiln dried. Since walnut is such a hard wood, if it air dried - it would take years for the wood to be ready to work with. The wood came out of the kiln last weekend and Adam stacked it in his dad's quonset. Here is it all stacked up waiting! We also have some more stacked in one of his grandpa's quonset.






The sawmill charges by the hour so he took a couple more logs we had and just had them cut into two inch boards. They're thick and we're not totally sure what we'll do with them but I bet we think of something!















We decided to give planing on of the boards a try to see what it will look like





Here are a couple pics with and without flash - it's hard to get a great pic so you can see the actual color.