Barn Catting

Last winter, we saw a mysterious cat wandering in and out of the barn.  I even saw it inside the barn a few times, scurrying toward a corner where he (?) could duck into a little hole under the floor.  I don't remember ever seeing him over the summer, but now he's back again.  I have seen him a few times, and then a few days ago Ella found a mouse head/face on her sled in the barn.  It was gross, but at least I know the cat is doing something to pull his weight, which is more than I can say for our indoor dandy cat, Harvey.

With the temperatures dropping faster than the barn's mouse population, I decided the least I could do was give him a little shelter.  I built this little shelter out of foam board, which should trap in his body heat.

Note: the foam board was pink when I bought; I didn't paint it that way as part of some macho headgame to emasculate the cat or anyone else.

I stuffed some hay in there, as well.  And made the entrance enticing by spraying it with catnip.  I put it under some shelving we have, with the little door right up against the hole I've seen the cat disappear into.

As I was finishing it and putting it into place, I kept thinking "the trap is set," then reminding myself that it's not a trap.  The cat is free to come and go as he pleases.   I've just been assuming it's a homeless cat, but maybe he passes through here on his rounds for the mice. For all I know he lives in the ridiculous faux-Italian mansion down the street that was clearly designed by someone who likes cocaine a lot.

Looks like our wiffle bat fell into the cat hole.

With the door up against the wall, I will also have no idea if the cat is actually using it or not.  I'm certainly not going to stick my face down there to peer inside after seeing what he did to that mouse.  I guess i can put my outdoor wireless thermometer sensor in there, which should pick up the cat's body heat.  Or maybe I will just keep my eyes peeled for a cat walking around with bits of hay stuck to him.

Composter's Delight

This summer we started a lovely vegetable garden.  We kind of got a late start on it, but I built a raised bed in early July while I was stuck home nursing our ungrateful cat, Harvey, back to health after an unfortunate incident involving a hair elastic and his small intestine.  Anyway, back to the garden: it went pretty well, though the spot I chose was probably a little too shady.  So now we have tons of green tomatoes on the vine that apparently think we have a big Indian summer coming in late October.

We'll retool next spring, though, with some additional boxes in the sun, and I expect to have a more bountiful harvest next year.  One thing we'll need for our soil is compost, and lots of it.  But where to keep/make it?  One thing I didn't want was a compost heap.  Nobody has ever used "heap" as a compliment.  Look at the definition:

heap /hēp/ noun

1.  an untidy collection of things piled up haphazardly.

"she rushed out, leaving her clothes in a heap on the floor"

So heaps are for slobs, and, apparently, women who go streaking.  While I'm all for the latter, I don't see how "an untidy collection of [compost] piled up haphazardly" in my yard is going to entice lady-streakers.  So I felt compelled to build a "bin," if you will, for our composting needs.

I looked around online to see how other people made them, and came across this plan from This Old House.  I wasn't really crazy about the top/roof or the lack of lateral support for the side walls, though, so I kind of improvised after I put the sides together.

When I was assembling it today, we told Ella and Josie that it was a "timeout box."  Of course, that just made them want to get in it and dance.

Once we finally got them out of there, I installed the bin behind the barn.

Of course, once Erin has the camera out, I just can't resist "getting in the frame."

 "Let me be your tour guide to this bin's features."

Note how the front slats slide out in two sections; also note the bald spot on the top of my head!

I am a very strong man!

Sheepishly putting it back together.

The flip top will allow for easy adding of trash (or whatever you throw in a compost bin-- I honestly have no idea), and the removable front slats will allow for easy turning and removal of the compost in the spring.

So You Wanna Be a Workbench

When we inherited our barn, it had a dirty old workbench in the corner.  The bench had a bunch of drawers that didn't slide anymore, full of a bunch of weird old tools that I had no idea what they did.  Some of them looked like things an old-timey doctor for ladies would use, others maybe for shoeing and/or putting down horses.

A while back, I pulled the drawers out, and found a family of three mice living inside.  The weird part is that all three seemed to be fully-grown-- it was like a couple with their grown son living with them.  They freaked and ran in circles for about two minutes before high-tailing it into a hole in the wall.  I felt bad about displacing them before the winter, but in the long run I think I did the parents a favor.  Hopefully, in the confusion, they ran in the opposite direction from their son, giving him the "tough love" new start he so desperately needs to jump-start his life.  I like to think of him, living in a new barn, or probably just a different part of my barn, he's got a mouse job now, his own little sawdust nest, and he's saying, quietly but swelling with pride, "thanks for the kick in the pants, Nate.  I needed that." You're welcome, guy.

Recently I decided to rip out the old bench and build a new one.  I was going to buy a pry bar for the job, but I ended up just using a regular hammer and a rubber mallet.  

 

Also, in the barn I found a thick slab of wood that looks kind of like a fraternity pledge paddle.  It was a perfect wedge for prying off that top piece of plywood.  I'm going to keep it for next fall's rush week, too.

The design and building of the new bench was very straightforward, so I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow account.  It's 8 feet long by 2 feet wide, and I made it 42" high.  That's higher than a lot of people build them, according to the Internet, but I plan to use it more for storage and detail work than for everyday tasks, so hopefully the height will seem right.  At the very least, I'll lie and rationalize to myself to that effect and try to ignore the aching in my shoulders.

 I also installed a couple of hooks on the end, though I'm not sure what I'll hang from them yet.  All told, the new bench cost me about $47 in materials, though I had some random lengths of 2x4 and wood screws lying around that I used.

Here's the finished project.  Note the Screwdrivers sticker already installed.  The adhesive is kind of dried up, though, so it's not really sticking.  Maybe it will hang in there for a while and then fall off, like we did.  How apt!  Though in a way, isn't the bench itself the best metaphor for being in a local band?  For example, I spent more money on it than I made.  Also, the only people to see it will be my current special lady and a few random friends and family over the years.  And it will spend its time in a dank, poorly-lit space next to a power strip.

Coffee Tableau: Part 3, Table Manners

The stain took several days to dry, due to the extremely cold weather (down below zero at night) and the fact that the boards were probably still wet from the water-painting phase.

 As I waited for the stain to dry, I was able to paint the large (6") casters the table sits on.  I looked around online for actual antique ones (or at least ones that looked vintage enough), but they were generally over $100 a piece.  Too much!  So I just bought these regular shiny metal ones from Lowe's for $10 a piece.  I spray painted them black with a faux hammered-finish paint.  (I'm not sure if "faux" is supposed to be in italics, but I'm erring on the side of pretentious.)

Once the stain finally did dry, it was time to assemble the table.  As I mentioned, I generally followed this plan from Ana White, with a few modifications.

I attached the apron with Kreg jig pocket holes, to avoid having any screws visible on the outside.  The plans called for 2x4s running flush along the bottom of the short side of the apron, to be used as the support for the casters.  But the mounting plate of the 6" casters was too big, so I had to upgrade to 2x6s.  I bolted the casters on and tightened everything down.

 
The eight top boards fasten to three 2x4s running the long way down the box.  (You can see a side one and the middle one in the picture above).  The plans call for the tops boards to be screwed on, but I wanted to go for the same look as our old wooden floors, which have old-timey square-headed nails.  So I ordered a bag of 2" ones from here.  I also intended to glue the boards as well as nail them, but the wood glue was frozen solid, since it was about 10 degrees out when I working on the table.  The label actually said it shouldn't be used below 55 degrees.  Stupid fair weather glue.  Since I wasn't going to wait until April to finish the table, I did it without glue.

The nails went in easily and didn't split the boards, which I was kind of worried about. I set the heads just a little below the surface, but high enough that you could still tell they were the kind of fancy square-headed nails you have to order on the Internet.

And that's it!  I'm very pleased with how the table came out.

Coffee Tableau: Part II, or, the Stain

The next step in distressing the wood for the coffee table involved staining it a couple of times.  I followed a technique the couple at Young House Love did, but adapted it a little bit.  We wanted a brown finish, but first I did a "quick" coat of black stain, to bring out the indents, divots, hollows, holes, crevasses, gullies, caves, and whatever-it-was-that-Yoda-lived-in-on-Dagobah.

To keep the black stain from soaking in too much, you first brush water onto the wood.  I got the best results from brushing a good amount of water onto the wood, then immediately slathering on a healthy amount of black stain.  I generally left it on somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds, I think-- the fumes kind of made time fade away.  Also, the stain I used was really, really old, so you may get different results.  The guy at the local hardware store where I bought it told me that this rusty can of stain came over with him from a previous hardware store he owned when he opened the current store 15 years ago.  I think he said something about how this stain had "boot black in it, like the old timers use"; I wasn't 100% listening after the whole hardware-store-timeline thing, but he did give me the can for $2.00 so I politely nodded.

After the 60-90 seconds of fume-enhanced reality, I sort of half-heartedly wiped the stain off with a paper towel.  I didn't remove all of the stain, since I wanted to leave it in all of the aforementioned Yoda holes.  I guess I would say I used the amount of pressure you'd use to give a backrub to a child with a sunburn.  Oh, and this is important: don't change out the paper towel.  As it soaks up the black stain, it becomes more forgiving and removes just the right amount.

Once the black stain had pretty much dried, I painted on a regular coat of brown (I chose MinWax Colonial Pine, because our house is a colonial-- great simplistic reasoning, huh?)  To my relief, it wasn't too dark, and it let the nice black distress stain show through:

The stains on the bottom of the board on the left are from when I opened the can of black stain and it sprayed all over the place, including onto that board; it was very distressing, if you catch my drift.

Here's a side-by-side of a stained board next to a pristine piece of white plywood.

Tomorrow: the assembly of the table.

Coffee Tableau: Part I, or, Scraping By

If there's one thing I love, it's propping my feet up on something in front of the wood stove.  We have an ottoman, but the cat has staked that out as his territory--our daughters even call it "Harvey's couch."  Displacing him would be an unpopular move with the ladies, whether it was to free up the ottoman or, more eccentrically, to use the cat himself to keep my legs raised up.  That kind of thing might fly in a Dr. Seuss book, but out here in the real world it's frowned upon, no matter how much that cat might deserve it for non-playfully biting your heels and darting inches in front of your legs on stairways after you've had a few drinks.  You're the worst, Harvey.

Anyway, I set out to build a coffee table. I found a great plan for a rustic-looking one at the incomparable Ana White's blog.  Since we have wood floors dating from the early 1900s, I figured I'd try my hand at giving the coffee table a similarly distressed feel.  I didn't really want to go to the expense of buying reclaimed lumber, though, so I decided to cause the distress myself.


I found another cool blog that discusses ways to distress wood.  I borrowed a lot of the techniques they used, and added a couple of my own, too.  The idea was to take soft, brand new pine and bang, scratch, and sand it to make it appear way more experienced.

In the picture below you can see what I used.

 Orbital sander: I used 100 grit sandpaper to sand the surfaces, edges, and corners of each board.

Bag of screws:  The Young House Love guy used this (along with many of the other techniques here).  Basically, you put a bunch of 2-3" wood screws in a sandwich bag and drop or throw the bag at the wood.  It creates a bunch of random indents in the surface.  It's a really cool effect; kind of the canvas upon which the other effects are painted, if you're prone to really pretentious metaphors.

Hammer:  A few clusters of hammer hits here and there.  The only downside to this move is that if you end up having to put a nail in the area of one of these clusters later, you look like an idiot who couldn't hit that nail.

Long metal rod: I laid this across the surface of the board and hammered it:

Eyebolt screw: I hammered this on the board to create semicircular indents.  You can see one above.  I also stood it on its threaded end and banged the eye end to create fake nail holes.

Threaded hook: I used the coarse threads of a hook for hanging up your bike or whatever (I bought these hooks, and have no idea what I intended them for) to scratch the surface of the board up a bit.

Screwdriver:  This was one of my favorite techniques, which I came up with.  I used a regular screwdriver to create deep, narrow, sharply defined holes in the wood.  As you can see below, I often did a few parallel ones next to each other.  It sort of makes you think, "Oh Lordy, what has been smashing into that wood now?"

I also used the screwdriver to just kind of scrape long flat lines into the wood.  The trick is to do it quickly to make the line more or less straight.  Not only will doing so make the table look better in the end, but this is by far the most intimidating technique if someone is secretly observing you distress wood. You're doing this fast, dramatic thrusting move, and they can't help but know you'd probably be really good at stabbing people, if it came right down to it.  Maybe you wouldn't even be doing it in self-defense; maybe you just wondered what it would feel like to shiv someone while you're looking them right in the eye the whole time.  That kind of thing makes folks think twice before tangling with you.

Ella was very interested in helping, so at first I gave her the hammer to let her bang some dents into the boards.  But her backswing was bringing the claw of the hammer to within inches of her eye.  I kept telling her to swing the hammer to the side, but to no avail.  Finally, we decided she might be better off using the hook to scrape the board up a bit.

 

 In the end, we got a lot of cool markings on the boards.  They're kind of hard to see in the pictures here, but wait till you see how the wood stain really brought them out...  

 

(As those ellipses at the end of the last sentence there strongly implied, I'll do another post tomorrow about the staining process I used.)