Wooden Docking Station

So I've been going through our house and seeing what areas could look better - the home beautification project :) I noticed an ugly power board with cords everywhere in our bedroom and decided I could build a wooden docking station!

I also built a little stand for Ben's light too!

I roughly sketched out an idea with the knowledge our docking station would need to house my tablet, two phones and possibly some camera battery chargers. You can see above the pieces to make the box with the little triangles to let the cords come out freely!

Nailing together the box was a little tricky but my 90 degree clamps made the job much easier! 

I also used some wood glue to make all the joins sturdier on completion

Ta-daaaa! box complete!

I cut out my panels for the top of the box - the bigger panel at the back to support my iPad and the smaller ones for our phones :) It was only when I started to attach these pieces to the box I had a *face palm* moment realising I could of had the back of the box simply extend up higher thus not needing the biggest panel you see above. That last sentence may be utterly confusing but if you give something similar a go make sure you 100% think through the plans first - maybe even make a paper mock up version first. 

Despite that little boo-boo I'm still super happy with how it turned out and it has definitely made our bedroom much prettier :)

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DIY wooden stool with Lettering

So I've sat with this particular stool for a while, before going kind of crazy with its paint job and calling it a day :) 

I tried to be diligent with taking photos of the process and it's nice to look back now and see the wood that I started with. I will point out this particular stool had legs from a previous cement stool (no longer with us!). I decided I'm only making stools of the sturdy variety so the concrete configurations had to go :p

The chunk of wood I found I was able to be cut in half for two stools!

The outer bark has to go! This part is really fun especially getting to use the chisels - also you can see here just how deep the piece of wood is :)

I ended up filling, the crack on top with sawdust (that I save whilst sawing) mixed with wood glue. I also make sure to spend a lot of time sanding back the wood so it's nice and smooth for the finished piece.

The sawing took me about a week and almost killed my love for wood working :p

The slice of wood was also very weathered so it needed both ends sawed off which added an extra week or so and yes, made me really really hate sawing :p I think it was worth it though, look how pretty the wood is underneath.

The guy on the right - so pretty!

Then it was time to mark the leg position and drill them out. Looking back at the finished piece, I think for the next stool I'll make the legs closer to the edges for aesthetic purposes :)

Note to self: always learning!

For the paint job: the legs are a black stain, the pink I picked up at a flea market and then some random hand lettering type design for the top with a clear sealer all over :)

Ta-daaa!

Ben started using the stool almost immediately as it's the perfect height for his craft bench outside, so I'm pretty chuffed about that

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Wooden Guy

I was cleaning up images on my computer and forgot I hadn't posted this little guy I made, he started out trying to be a horse and I think sort of ended up as a Zebra *weird eyes*

I think my photos give him too much justice, he ended up falling apart and then I gave him a terrible paint job.

I was actually more than happy for his fate to be the rubbish bin but Ben spied him in the nick of time and claimed him! So he lives another day! Wood work is really fun though, Ben's room mate Daz had a rad set up and Ben and I have a fun afternoon one day playing around with wood :) Will have to try my hand at it again in the future!

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