Motley Cru would be so jealous...(or Smoking, but not in the Boys' room)

Howdy Y'all!

After many moons of trying to convince my darlin Bride that I needed a new offset smoker, she asked my why I didn't just build one. The truth is, I hadn't even thought about it until then. As you know by now, I've built much of the furniture in our house, yet never even considered building my own smokehouse.  I began searching the internet for ideas and plans when I came across SmokingMeatForums and it didn't take long for me to decide exactly what I wanted. I found a thread from one of the members there and  borrowed from his design (by borrowed I mean shamelessly copied. See the link for his build).

I began the build by laying out my first run of cinder blocks. Having never done any sort of masonry work, it was a little bit disconcerting at first, but after the first run I began to get more and more comfortable. 

After the third run, I used 4x4x8 blocks to cap off the fire box portion. I used 1/8th" angle iron to support the caps across the expanse, then mortar to seal the open spaces. 

I ordered a custom steel door from Wilke's Badass Pits in Conroe, TX for the fire box, and went pretty basic on it. The door measured 16"x16" to perfectly fit the opening, with a 1" trim that completely seals the firebox if needed.  

Two 8x8x8 block turned on their side to allow the smoke and heat to move from the fire box to the cook space. 

Once the mortar dried, I started framing the cook space with cedar 2x4's.

After a long day, the framing was complete...

The door is built with 1/8th" clearance all the way around, then trimmed to seal completely. No smoke leaks there! (You can see I have my little helper (the Piglet) out there with me...). 

This is a shot of the interior of the cook space. It measures 30"x 35"x 60" (24" of cinder block bottom, 36" cedar top). The black piece you see in the upper left corner is a 6" stovepipe purchased at Tractor Supply.

Interior view of the opening between the fire box and cook space. There is a 9" concrete block overhang between the opening and the cedar to reduce the chance of ash and to deflect some of the direct heat from the dried cedar. If you didn't know, dried cedar and flame will smoke...as it burns your smokehouse to the ground....

I put a 6" cast iron damper in the stovepipe to control my airflow on this end.

Here is the rest of the chimney..

After the build was complete, I burned oak in the firebox to help eliminate any remaining cedar scent inside the cook space. I let it set for a day after that, then smoked two spatchcocked chickens as a test run. Once I figured out the correct airflow, it maintained 200-225 degree temps with little fuss. 

Dinner in the making. The cooking grates were also custom manufactured at Wilkes Badass Pits for about $35 each. Much cheaper than building them myself, not to mention better constructed!

Finished smokehouse....Despite the fact it appears the Good Lord is giving it His blessing, I was working on our Thanksgiving bird when this pic was taken.

Since the build, I've smoked two turkeys, two hams, two racks of ribs, two briskets, and a whole mess of bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos. Hindsight, with all this "two by two" stuff, maybe I should have dubbed this "Noah's Ark" instead of the "SmokeHahs"...




Until next time,

How to accidentally buy a house.

Well, once again, it has been a LONG time since I last posted here...as in one year, four months, and a handful of days. (Sorry, just really didn't feel like doing the math).  A lot has happened in that 16 month span, and I shall valiantly attempt to take you on a whirlwind tour of that era. As the title not-so-subtly suggests, we have moved the Coop since the last post. We left our little half acre in Montgomery, TX, and moved to a nice 4 acre place in the country about 24 miles away. As the title also suggests, we weren't dissatisfied with the old Coop, nor were we necessarily looking to move, thus leading us down the twisted path of  drama, the tale of our accidental sale/purchase of houses.

As my Darlin Bride will tell you, I rather enjoy browsing the electronic marketplace of the internet. Mostly just dreaming of what wondrous toys one could possess should one be so lucky as to win the lottery, if one played said lottery. I also had a habit of looking ahead to the future to see which amazing expanse of Texas we would purchase to raise the kids on, should the lottery-in-lieu-of -retirement plan work out. Needless to say, the Texas Lottery Commission had nothing to worry about from me as we never won more than $5 on a ticket. I did, however, stumble across this amazing property on 11 acres in our county that had a perfect barn with horse stalls, two smaller out buildings, and a house with enough bedrooms for all of us. The price was right and the place was perfect...or so we thought. My Bride scheduled a showing with the realtor and we toured the property, falling instantly  in love with the rolling hills, the stock tank full of flowering water lillies, and the ice-cold creek that slowly snaked through the back acre. The Realtor, Ms Joan Martin, led us to the house and up the stairs to a very large, nicely appointed deck and opened the door to our future county paradise. It was then that I saw our dream burst like a hairspray can in a bonfire. At first I thought I had knocked over an ashtray on the deck, but quickly realized that it was actually the atmosphere inside the house. The sellers apparently mistook the house for a BBQ pit and consistently used Benson and Hedges flavored firewood  because the odor of cigarette smoke charged out of the open door like an angry Hereford bull and smacked us around for a bit. Once I recovered from my coughing fit and cleared the tears from my eyes, we toured the house and decided that it was not for us, as we prefer our houses smoked with mesquite, or at least pecan. As we were preparing to leave, Ms Joan asked us if we were interested in selling our house. We hemmed and hawed, she said the magic word....FREE. Ms Joan told us that she and her husband, Mr. Richard, would be happy to come by the Coop and let us know the possible sale price of the place, at which point we could decide to sell it, or  stay there till the layers had grandchicks.

To shorten this tale of two cities by a paragraph or two, we did decide to sell the Coop and buy a new one simultaneously. This, for the uninitiated, is about as much fun than a two mile run through a briar patch wearing sandpaper shorts and concrete shoes.Without Ms Joan and Mr Richard, we would to this day still be sitting the corner of  our recently built barn sucking our thumbs while rocking back and forth singing "Tiptoe through the Tulips" like Tiny Tim. They were great. We managed to close on both houses the same day, and moved into the new and improved Coop.


Typical of my Darlin Bride and I, we began making what we considered improvements right off the bat. One nice feature of the new place is it had a saltwater cement pond (That's a pool to you non-Clampett types). The only problem with the pool was there was no safety fence around it, and seeing as we have the Monkey and the Piglet running around, and they weren't born with gills, we had a pool safety fence with a locking gate installed.

Before Fence...

After fence....

Once we secured the cement pond, it was time to tackle the interior of the house. Now I'm not one to disparage another's taste, but that kindness only applies to things they own. Now that it's ours, we made a couple of  mild, nearly unnoticeable changes to the color scheme. For instance, the lime green and bright blue master bath is now a nice neutral brown like the rest of the house, and the kids neon green bath is a soothing light blue with wood accents.

Kids bath after...

Kids bath before....

Just this past week we hired a local company known as 360 Painting to do the exterior of the house. Wesley Werner and his crew did a fantastic job of painting and trimming the exterior, never missing a spot, and were consummate professionals in every aspect.

Before 360 Painting company stepped in.....

After Wesley's crew finished...

My Beautiful Bride and I are very happy with the new Coop, and are overwhelming grateful to God for his grace and blessings. This is literally the place we've dreamed of having, and we feel so undeserving, but thankful. And just to end on a bandwidth gorging stack of photographs, I'll share a couple of my favorite moments from this adventure....

Happy Daddy

Happy lil Cowboy

Most importantly...Happy Momma!

Until next time,

Even Rome wasn't built in a day.

Howdy Ya’ll!

 

It has been a coon’s age since I last posted anything at all. Literally, a raccoon could very well have been born, lived a very fulfilling life, and be sitting somewhere in the raccoon version of Shady Acres Retirement Home asking someone to turn up the thermostat since I last posted…

 

As most of you know, our family has grown by one last July, and the Piglet is getting huge. Not “Daddy I ate the entire month’s worth of food and now I’m morbidly obese” huge, but “I’m wearing 2 year clothing a year early huge”.  This kid is growing faster than a well fertilized crop. (Come to think of it, he does give off a good bit of his own fertilizer…overflow maybe?). Anyway, he has outgrown his little corner of our room and we decided to convert our garage into a master bedroom/bathroom and give the Piglet his own sty. To do that, we needed somewhere to store all the yard tools, power tools, and miscellaneous treasures that a family tends to accumulate in the garage. The plan was (note the past tense) to build a barn in the back yard and then build out the garage ourselves. We learned quite a few valuable lessons during this grand endeavor; for instance, I apparently have delusions of grandeur. In my own mind, I am a magnificent master of construction who can build the barn and room all by myself in two weeks, which is the timeframe I took off of work and gave myself to complete this project. Now make no mistake, I still have the aforementioned delusions. Just not about my contracting abilities. Needless to say, we are still in the same master bedroom and are about to move the Piglet in with the Monkey. The Zoo is staying the same, just moving the animals around.

 

Regardless, the purpose of this post is not to cause you concern of my mental health; that is still as screwy as a sow’s tail. This post is all about the barn, which was to be step 1 of the project, and became the whole project in and of itself. Now my Darlin Bride will tell you, I don’t do anything small. When I decide something needs building, and I am the one to do said building, it’s going to be big. As I was looking at ideas for the barn, I determined that the stuff in my 20’X20’ garage wouldn’t fit in some puny little 12’X12’ shed despite it only taking up about one half of the garage.  I decided the barn was to be 18’X24’ and 16 stories high. My bride (after recovering from her gut wrenching laughter) kindly suggested that I might want to consider making the barn smaller than the house itself. The final outcome was a 16’X20’ masterpiece of barn building that actually looks halfway decent. While I would love to be able to tell you that I singlehandedly whipped this amazing edifice up in two week with my own two hands, that would only be a partial truth. The WHOLE truth is, I could never have built this thing by myself. Not only was it physically impossible, but I found that I don’t know all the tricks of building a structure. In fact, I knew almost nothing at all! If it weren’t for my Dad-in-law and a couple of work friends, the barn would look a lot like this….

 

That being said, here is a picture history of the barn build. The first step was to clear out a 25’X25’ section of brush in the back yard that contained yaupon, small pines, and the nastiest bunch of thorny vines this side of the Mississippi. This took  up about three days of the first week, and the only fun part of that whole affair was getting to run the chipper and punishing those wicked yaupons for growing in my yard.

 

 

 

Now here is where my first lesson in “You don’t have a clue” was. It wasn’t until AFTER I cleared, chipped, and shredded the dense forest that I learned that the grade was WAY too steep to build anything but a waterslide. There was about a 3’ drop from front to back. Just a touch outside my architectural ability, so I opted to move the location to our garden, which was less of a grade and wasn’t producing anything but weeds this year anyway…

 

                            Ahhh...Level at last

 

 

It was also about this time I realized that while the grade was not nearly as severe, it was still present and required yet another trip to Lowe’s Home Improvement for some cinder blocks to raise the foundation. Once I had the blocks in place, I was able to set up the blocks on gravel and attach the rim joists to the 4X4 skids and start building the floor. This was about the time one of my work buddies stopped by to check on my progress (since I wasn’t answering my phone), and immediately called our boss and took the rest of that day and all of the next day to help out. Not that I couldn’t have done it by myself, but, well ok… I couldn’t. Now that this was all in place, I (and by “I”,  I mean “We”) attached the flooring to the foundation and things started looking like a REAL construction job.

 

 

Immediately after the floor was finished, we built the walls. Apparently square actually MEANS square and not an estimate thereof. This wasn’t really important until much later when we started assembling the trivial parts of the barn such as the roof, doorway, siding, you know, the little stuff.  Who knew, besides professional builders, I mean….

 

In the beginning there were walls....

And the walls were good.

Once the walls were up, Dad-in-law came over and helped me assemble the roof trusses. Now, for those of you who don’t know him, Dad is a life saver and a genius when it comes to things like this. He showed me how to make a template for the trusses, which made 99% of them come out identical (the one that didn’t was entirely the fault of the crooked board, or at least that’s my version of the truth!). When the trusses were finished, Dad-in-law and my work partner came over and helped me hang them and install them correctly.

 

The trusses went up with almost no hitch, and we installed the sheathing. When the sheathing was in place, I built the eave end extension (actually by myself this time) and installed them, and then my Beautiful Bride and I put the tar paper up. As a side note, it will not rain until you are in the middle of a barn build. Literally, EVERY time I started a project on this build, it would start raining. You think God was trying to teach me something?

 

 

Dad-in-Law hard at work....again

With the roof in place, we installed the siding. In this build I used SmartSide from 84 Lumber in Conroe, TX. Good stuff to use on walls, just one tiny little tip; BUY ENOUGH. I found that my math skills are about on par with my construction skills and apparently one DOES use geometry after they graduate high school (Sorry Teacher, I was wrong). With the siding done, we painted the walls and trim, and I built a set of heavy doors (again with Dad-in-law’s help). We installed the requisite Lone Star on the eave end, and had our barn.

Hmmm...what did I forget? OH YEAH...the DOOR.....

 

 Now don’t let the length of this post fool you; this magnificent example of Texas architecture was not built in two days. It wasn’t even built in two weeks. It took us from April 13, 2014 to Oct 04, 2014….SIX MONTHS! At that rate, Rome not only wouldn’t have been built in a day, it would have been built in about 6 millennia. There would still be Romans wandering around the Colosseum (spelling is correct; I Googled it!) in their robes wondering why they ever started it, and their little Roman Brides would be asking them if they really knew what they were doing, and why didn’t they just hire the dang Greeks to do it for them……

Aaaaaand, we're DONE!!!

Thank you to everyone who helped us on this project! I (WE) really do appreciate it!



Until next time,

 

 

 

Thanks for Thanksgiving....

So in honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday, I decided to dedicate today's post to the things I am most thankful for in my life. Many folks are thankful for the obvious things like food, shelter, or a good job, and I am too, but I am more thankful for the things that make me grow as a person and as a man. I am thankful for the things that make me a better father, like a 6 year old autistic boy who teaches me patience every day, and who shows me what unconditional love really is. Not on my part, but on his. The Monkey has the kindest heart, and is the most loving 6 year old boy I have ever met. Not that he isn't a handful (to be honest, he is currently stuffing a plastic chicken in my mouth while yelling about Monster Truck Mater at the top of his lungs), but he communicates his love to us in his family  better in his own way than any eloquent speaker pontificating.

I am thankful for my infant son, the Piglet, who saves all his poopy diapers for his momma.(I mean, that's not why I'm thankful for him, but it sure doesn't hurt things  and it gives his momma something to blog about...) This is the boy who smiles at me every time he looks at me, no matter what. This boy brings a smile to my face every morning as I get ready for work, every evening as we get ready for bed, and every time in between!  He is the most amazing baby and fills our lives with so many blessings.

I am thankful for my 15 year old daughter, who has greatly contributed to the gray hairs on my head (which are mostly concentrated around my beard, since there are none on my noggin). She is really a great kid and is always willing to help out without griping or complaining, even when I can see she really wants to! She is a pleasure to be around and a joy to raise, despite the fact she is currently in Driver's Ed and driving the roads around our neck of the woods. If it doesn't make you nervous, it should.

I am thankful for my Beautiful Bride. She is the one who makes life bearable around this zoo we call home. She is the one who makes everything fit into our small house, makes  that very same house a comfortable living space, and keeps this whole family running. I could not do it without her. My Bride has taken a man who had lost his direction, lost touch with who he really was, and was wondering aimlessly in life trying to figure it all out on his own. She gave this humble man a gift that so few actually can give; true happiness. I can never thank her enough for making me the man I always wanted to be.

I am thankful to have been given another day to live a wonderful life. Our family is not rich by any stretch of the imagination, not financially anyway, but we are richer than all of the millionaires in the world. Our family lives on love, and unlike money, love breeds only more love. Money can breed contempt, jealousy, and hard feelings, but real love can never be any of those things.

So needless to say (meaning I'm going to say it anyway), I am thankful. I am thankful for my Bride, our children, and for this life I get to live, poopy diapers and all.

What do Poultry and Politicians have in common? Chicken Sh*t.....

Well, it has been a REALLY long time since I have posted, and for that I would apologize but I don’t have the time. Between the new chicks (poultry type, for Pete’s sake. Don’t be so quick to judge) and political hoo-hah, I nearly short circuit every time I try to write.  Current politics alone provide writing material that would tax a professional author, let alone a hack like me!

What a lot of fluff

 So we ordered a new batch of fifteen Gallus gallus domesticus (Them there’s chickens in smart folk talk) from Murray McMurray hatchery back in June and they were delivered to the Post Office two days after they hatched (see above). We had forgotten how cute the little critters were until we opened the box they were shipped in and saw a whole slew of peeping puffballs with legs.  I must say I am impressed with McMurray. They managed to send sixteen life forms through the US Postal Service and get all of them to us alive. Yes, I know I said we ordered fifteen, but McMurray sent us a “Surprise Rare Breed” (meaning  no one knows what kind of chicken this is, what gender it is, or what it’s job will be). My Beautiful Bride and I like to stick with what we know, so we bought more egg layers to rotate into our egg layering flock and two Buff Orpingtons for Mom and Dad to introduce into their flock(more on that later). We (meaning I talked for hours and finally convinced by Sweetheart that I knew what I was talking about) also ordered five Cornish Cross broilers. As a broiler, their only job is to eat, poop, grow, and be eaten. Little did we know how well they do their jobs; they are currently three times the size of the other chicks of the same age and constantly drip what can only be described as the most prodigious amounts of fertilizer known to man.  I mean really, these Cornish Cross birds are so lazy they sleep at the feeder so they can transform the feed into more poop. It’s like someone crossed a vacuum with a leaky sewage pipe. The surprise bird appears to be a Blue Andalusian, but we still don’t know if it is male or female, therefore his/her fate is completely dependent on its ability (or lack thereof) to crow or lay eggs. If it’s a male, he’d better learn to keep his beak shut, not crow, and steal someone else’s egg to sit one if he knows what’s good for him.

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo... I mean look, I laid an egg.... 

 

To explain the whole reason behind the order, our original flock went on strike; they all stopped laying eggs at the same time, dang union birds. I thought maybe threatening them with being eaten would help, but we still only got one to two eggs a day for about three months. I even took a carcass from a wonderful roasted chicken my Bride prepared for my supper and showed them what could be their future, but no dice. I called them lazy, I called them worthless, I even resorted to begging, but it did no good. Egg production slowed to the point I wasn’t able to keep up with the demand at the office, and we only had a half a dozen eggs in the fridge at any given time instead of 4-5 dozen. So I convinced my bride to let me order more, and in six months, when they start laying, we could butcher the older biddies and put them in the stew pot. She agreed, we ordered, the chicks arrived, and the old hens started laying six eggs every day again. Yep, as of yesterday we had seven dozen eggs in the fridge and today I have some very happy co-workers. Sheesh…

As I mentioned earlier, we bought two Buffs for my Darlin’s folks. They have been good to us (the folks, not the Buffs) and raising chickens is something we really enjoy doing as a family. It gives us all something else to talk about besides the governments’ abject failure and the utter joys of child rearing (insert sarcasm here) during our weekly visits. They started their flock a while back with the one Buff Orpington that survived in our original batch of birds (thanks to a carnivorous blood hound who “wouldn’t kill a fly”...) and was later joined by one sister and then another. Unfortunately the sisters fell victim to a serial killer (most likely some raccoon that discovered that chickens really are the other white meat) and Henny Penny (as she has come to be known) was left alone. As soon as the bullies in our coop got the chance, they turned their attention of one of the smaller Reds and pecked nearly all of her butt feathers out. (Naked chicken butt is NOT pretty, by the way, unless the whole chicken is nekkid and headed for the fryer) so we took that Red to the folk’s chicken rescue and she is doing just fine.  Since moving to Mom and Dad’s place, they have become what are likely the most spoiled hens in the history of domesticated fowl. (I have no proof, but I think they are fed by hand from a silver spoon and drink bottled water when we aren’t around to see it). Needless to say, the new chicks will be a welcome addition to their flock once they get big enough to be assimilated into the group, and learn to eat from a spoon…

As of yesterday, all of the new chicks have been moved from the brooder box in the warm and dry garage, to their new outdoor runs in the back yard where the “sweet” and “innocent” bloodhound lives. (to be fair, I never saw the hound kill any chickens, but the feathers in her jowls were a clue, and following clues is what I do best…). The egg layers are right next to the older hens so they can see the life of luxury they will lead in a few months, and the broilers are in a free-range pen on the other side. I thought about putting a stew pot in their pen so they could  also see what their future was like, but I wasn’t sure that would exactly encourage them to fatten up over the next four to six weeks of their life. They should be ready for butchering early November, provided the hound doesn’t beat us to it and enjoy herself some more chicken sushi…

 To be (dinner) ....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not to be (dinner)....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, to change pace:

Ah, the government….What other career can you consistently lie about what you are qualified to do, lie about what you did and when you did it (under oath even, Mr Clinton?), not do the job you were hired to do, and still keep that job for 20 years and retire. Not only do you get to retire, but you get your full salary until you die. Ever notice how long many of the politicians live after retirement? I bet if we only paid them when they actually accomplished something,  they would not only get something constructive done, but would also die sooner, leaving the oxygen to those of us who are productive in this society. Not that I’m wanting politicians to die (Pay attention NSA, I know you’re monitoring), I’m just saying that I wish they would stop wasting good air. Al Gore thinks that my full size, long wheelbase, gas guzzling Dodge Ram is the cause of the greenhouse gases and atmospheric changes? NO….it’s all the hot air out of Washington DC causing the polar ice caps to melt and leave countless endangered species homeless. The poor penguins and arctic foxes are dying by the thousands because the politicians spend days yammering about gun control and how to spend my money. Think about the foxes, Mr President. Think about the foxes.

Our government is currently shut down because they can’t get along. I remember as a child when me and my nephew couldn’t agree, Mom would tell us “Take it outside and don’t come back in until you’re done arguing”.  Warm or cold, rain or shine, that was the cure to any disagreement that managed to make its way onto her radar. Maybe We the People should do the same thing. Let’s take the entire Congress, Senate, and the President to the desert, pen them up in a large arena and tell them they can’t come back in until it’s settled. While they duke it out, we can sell tickets to the affair and make a killing off of concessions. I can see the marquee now “In a world class bout: The ‘Rasslin Republicans vs. The Dancin Democrats”.  Even if that didn’t solve the problem, it could be fun to watch and heck, who says we have to let them out if they don’t work it out? Imagine looking at a map one day and seeing a blank spot between California and Utah.

 “Where’s Nevada?”

“Who?”

“Nevada. You know, with all the casinos”?

“Hmm….I thought that was Louisiana.”

“No, Nevada. You know, Las Vegas?”

“Ah…THAT Nevada. Never heard of it. You must be talking about that new place where we send politicians who fail to do their jobs. We sold it to Iran so they could test the nukes they don’t have.”

 

Until next time,

 

 

 

Measure twice, cut once, sand for hours....

Well, it has been a while since I posted anything so I figured now was a good a time as any. We have had a new addition to the Coop, who we call Piglet. No, I’m not talking about Winnie the Pooh’s companion or a young “bacon in training”; I’m talking about my newest son. He is now three weeks old, and is growing like a weed, not to mention eating like a, well, piglet. I won’t go into too much detail about him here because I want to reserve that privilege for my Darlin Bride over at A Country Chick in the Hen House.

 

Thanks to the family medical leave laws, I had three weeks off work at my regular job to tend to the Piglet and his mother. I know that doesn’t sound difficult to most, but you don’t know my Bride. It’s not that she’s tough to get along with; she’s actually quite the opposite. She is an amazing woman, and one of the gentlest people I have ever met. She is the most selfless, kind, and giving woman in the world and I am very lucky to have her in my life. Getting along with her is never the problem. The biggest issue lies in getting her to actually sit down for a minute and relax! She is always moving, always doing something to better our house, to better our meals, or to make someone else comfortable. It makes me tired just writing about it!

I spent the first two weeks of my leave getting to know my new son and trying to help his mother out as much as she would let me, then I spent week three putting together a kennel, er, crib, for the Piglet. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted in a crib before I started, and went to Lowe’s for the materials. Surprisingly enough, the materials cost only $86.00, making it cheaper than a store bought crib made of pressboard and laminate. Where I saved in cost though, I made up for in labor. It took me three and a half days to complete; not because it was that difficult, but because you apparently cannot trust the internet for accuracy! According to several websites, a crib mattress should measure between 27”-29” wide, and 55” long….WRONG! After the crib frame was cut, sanded, and assembled my bride suggested that we purchase a crib mattress to verify those measurements. Now if there is anything I have learned in life, it is this; when my bride makes a suggestion, I should listen. Not because she’d gripe at me, or give me a hard time about not “doing it her way”, but because she’s usually right. There, I said it. My wife is usually right and I’m ok with that. This knowledge keeps me out of more trouble than you could ever guess. After we bought the crib mattress and got it home I learned that the internet’s measurements were off by oh, about 3” in length, and 4” in width. I disassembled the whole doggone thing, re-cut it, and then reassembled it, thus adding one more days’ worth of labor to the whole shebang…

                                                        Assembled and apparently too large....

 

                                                                 Cut down, and fitting snug...

 Once the frame was reassembled, re-sanded, and pretty harshly cursed I began sanding the slats for the sides and the ends. I wanted to make sure there were no sharp edges anywhere for the Piglet (or us) to get hurt on. Besides, hospital bills are expensive and lead to lots of questions you don’t want to answer from people you don’t want to answer to. There were 35 - 1”x3” slats that needed to be sanded and rendered safe. Since I don’t have a belt sander yet, all of the sanding was done with a palm sander starting with 80 grit, and working it down to 220 grit. Luckily I didn’t have to do that part by myself…I had a 15 year old daughter who got herself in a bit of trouble and was beholden to me for a week’s worth of hard labor.

 

 

Once the slats were sanded, I began installing them. Federal safety guidelines require that crib slats be no more than 2 3/8” apart. I have decided in the past few years that our government might not have our best interests in mind, so I opted to make the slats closer together than the minimum requirement. Each slat on the crib is 2” apart, meaning the Piglet cannot poke any vital body part through them and injure himself, nor can the Monkey poke any large object through to help the Piglet escape. With two young boys running around, escape is only ONE of my worries. That and explosions….

 

 When all of the sanding and assembly was complete, I stained the crib with Cabot's Golden Oak Stain, which is almost and exact match to the furniture in our room (which is where the Piglet will live for his first couple of years).  Of course, the crib was too large to fit throught the doorways of our house, so I had to take it apart and move it in 5 seperate pieces, and then re-re-assemble it. I am now a certified pro at putting this thing together. Despite a couple of hiccups, the crib is now in it's permenant home, and has been approved by the Piglet and my Bride.

 

 

 

It has been a fantastic three weeks getting to meet my new son, spending quality time with him and my wonderful Bride, and being able to build him his first bed. I wish every father could experience the thrill of splinters, mis-measurement, and hand cramps from sanding endless 1x3's....  And I wouldn't trade this life for all the money in the world.

 

 

Until next time,