Bar Update – Routing Done!

Well, the bar is still coming along, albeit at more of a sloths pace than a gazelle, but what can you do, right? It’s winter, yes, but I’ve still got other things to do. In this picture, you can see most of the rought cut pieces for the bar. Before building, I plan to cut, rout, pre-drill, sand, stain, and varnish most of the wood, so when the time comes to assemble the bar, it’s more like an IKEA project, although much nicer. The little green stickers are the numbers for each piece as per the project plan. If you want to see a few more pictures of where the bar project is at, check out the pictures on flickr. I’ll keep adding more as I go.

Apart from having all the wood cut, I’ve also started tackling the routing. This in itself is proving to be a new challenge, since I’ve never actually used a router. Just to make sure I do an alright job, I snagged a brand new plunge router, as well as a routing table. I’ll say this. After spending 3-4 hours playing with it yesterday, I can safely say there’s no way I would’ve got the project done without those two additions. Now of course, I’m thinking I want a drill press as well. Sheesh. This bar is suddenly getting really expensive! On the plus side, I’ve decided that when I retire, I’ll definitely start doing woodworking much more frequently. Although it can be frustrating at times, I enjoy the precision and the satisfaction of doing something with my own hands. No doubt I’ll tackle a few more projects in the coming years. This bar will be the biggest one in a lone time though I’m sure. There are just so many steps and things I’m learning along the way! Oh well, I guess that’ll make future projects seem that much simpler.

So, a couple weeks back we finally had the official Nanaimo Bar wetting party. This was a combination grand opening of the bar that I built, along with a birthday party for me. Yup, I’m another year older. 31 years old and it turns out I still know how to party! Good for me, right? Hee hee. At any rate, it was great to finally have a party with the fully renovated basement, and what a great excuse to invite people over, and see some people that I haven’t hung out with in a long time. I’d like to say a big thanks to everyone who made it out at various points in the evening, and a special thanks to those who brought some tasty additions to the liquor cabinet! It was totally unexpected but highly appreciated. I started the night off a little grumpy, as my sister will attest. I was very hungry, and had been training earlier in the day, and suddenly felt rushed to get everything set up for the party. Luckily, after a couple hot dogs and some gin, I settled down quite handily. From that point on, I pretty much moved to behind the bar, which you can see in the picture to the right. If you’d like to see more shots of the party, they’re all over on Flickr (as per usual). If you go through the pictures, you’ll probably recognize some faces from long ago, and you might even notice some eerie differences between this party and parties past. Yup, it’s true, we’re all getting a little older, and it seems the invasion of the little people is upon us all! The first half of the celebration night was happily punctuated by several of our friends’ babies, including my own niece Helena. At one point, I looked around and asked myself what happened to the raging keggers, throwing forks at rare earth magnets on the fridge, while dressed in crazy outfits. Now, it’s all about toddlers pulling themselves across the floor, and laughing at the older ones who are now already getting lippy with us 😉 Crazy stuff. As a result, we had to keep Jonah off by himself till the latter portion of the party, which was the appropriate time to release the ‘party animal’. You know when that is of course. It’s when Matt and Rob started throwing random beer and liquor in the blender, expecting to come out with a delicious drink! Such was not the case. However, it did prompt the transformation to the type of party I’m more used to.

Good Morning to you all!

As of the moment of this writing, I am not quite yet an uncle. However, the event is iminent. I’ve decided to try to keep a little log of the day as it unfolds for me (and the new family).

Things started off yesterday when I got a call from my sister: “Are you ready to be an uncle sooner rather than later?”. She was on her way to a diner for a bite to eat, since contractors had invaded their house to do some kitchen renovations. Ironically, a few days earlier, Andrea had said ‘I hope I don’t go into labour while they are there…’. Well, she didn’t, but was awfully close. It turns out that she was full term and pretty much dilated, meaning the big event could happen at any moment. The doctor pegged that within 48 hours, Andrea and Patrick would be new parents, and as a result, I would be the crazy uncle!

Okay, although I’m getting increasingly tired and grumpy, I’ve finished phase III of the basement project. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve basically been up till 11 or 12 each night working on all these projects. It’s the curse of being a perfectionist. The good news is that we’ve got everything finished off that we wanted to have done before the carpet goes down, which is on Monday. Of course we’re leaving on a bus to NY tonight, so timing was of the essence.

Earlier, I had lamented to Kev that I thought putting down the laminate should only take about 40 minutes. Well, while that may be true, it didn’t account for the prep of vapor barrier, cutting the pieces to the perfect size, trimming the lip on the edges where it was needed, installing the plastic track and mitring in for the trim and clean-up! Long story short, I basically worked on this from 7pm till 11:30pm! D’oh! So much for an easy project. At any rate, the finished product looks great in my opinion. I even thought we should’ve maybe done the whole rec room with this. I’ll probably end up renovating my studio with it next.