Need to write!

Well, my renter arrived early last night and I’m here to report that first impressions are good.  He seems like a decent fellow who will be reasonable and will make an effort to communicate and get along (very important after hosting my Chinese student =_=).  He even watched some of Supernatural with me as we chatted and got to learn about each other. 

In comparison to Chinese girl, the energy this guy brings into the house is totally different.  I didn’t even realize until now that the girl had altered the feeling of my house so much just with her presence.  But I can see it now, and this guy has calm energy.  For instance, upon turning in for bed, when the Chinese girl was with me, I was on edge and listening for each of her movements in her room.  When he went to bed, I closed my eyes and fell asleep! 

AND Jade liked him haha.  Jade hissed and would snap at the Chinese girl if she came close.  Jade was climbing him like a tree.  It was kinda of embarrassing *snort*.  It seems that that next four months will be quite a change from the two I shared with the foreign student.

Everyday when I get home Jade greets me by the Hobbit door, meowing hellos and looking for attention.  But as soon as I head up the stairs to the kitchen she switches her focus from hellos to begging to be let outside. 

If I don’t answer her straight away her cries become insistent and demanding, sometimes very loud, other times soft and pathetic.  And then as soon as she’s out she taken to sitting on the deck surveying her yard kingdom, sometimes not even leaving the deck but flitting from outside to inside (so she can grab a quick snack from her food dish) for ten minutes or more until she finally has had enough of that and goes down to the grass to explore.  Other times she’ll jump up on my table I built and watch me move about in the kitchen.  Once I notice my audience I can see her mouth moving, which means she’s talking about something even though I can’t hear her, so I go to the door and in she comes for another snack and some rubdowns. 

This cat is spoiled, spoiled, spoiled! lol 

I haven’t done woodworking since jr. high and that was only making a plant stand and a turtlebank, so it’s been a while since I last used wood tools and came out with a useable product at the end.

Cutting the wood as per Ana’s instructions would have worked just fine but dad rushed me and I didn’t see the helpful hint:

From the 2x2s, cut one 2x2 @ 44 3/4” and two 2x2 @ 24 1/2” from three of the 2x2s to conserve lumber.

So I didn’t do as Ana said and I had too much unusable lumber to get the last leg and actually had to go back to the store and get another 2x2.  Curse you daddy *shakes fist* but we ended up with a pile of wood that we would make into a table.

We started at step 1 and stopped at the last step (haha).  There was lots of crouching and kneeling and I my poor knees didn’t like that one bit (I got the bruise to prove it).  

It was so hard to slow dad down enough to let me read the instructions.  He just wanted to hammer stuff and forego reading but I had to remind him of who’s project this was.  He settled down after that.  It was really simple to make and before long we had a thing that resembled a table.

After we had the frame/legs all built we stopped for the day.  But we laid out the table top to see how it’d look.  It was pretty neat for a noob and a man that views home repair as an excuse to hit things and to hell with how it looks.  

In a perfect world I would have liked my table to look exactly like Ana’s and there are things I can live with but wish weren’t there like screws that pop out from the side of the table.  But I’m consoling myself with the fact that as far as first projects go, the finished product is pretty damn good! 

We resumed today and nailed the tabletop to the frame.  Ana suggests using finishing nails (or 2” screws) but we didn’t and it would have been more pleasing to the eye to use flat head screws for the frame, but again, we didn’t.    

Once it was all done, of course I had to test it out and see what it’d look like on my deck!  

They say that in design odd numbers is more visually appealing.  I only have three green chairs, so it looks good right?  I still need to sand and stain the table (so it’s back in the basement until then) but it looks very good on my deck, it’s just the right size :D

At the other end of my deck, next to the house I used one of the three boxes I found in my attic and pulled out some of the stray nails and used it as a bench/storage.

And Jade inspects the box to make sure it’s safe for her human.  She’s such a good owner :3

Next installment»