Daddy’s Pride and Joy (Nanaimo Bar Done!)

Hooray! The bar is seriously starting to shape up into the beautiful oak masterpiece that I envisioned it will be! On the right you can see a shot of the current bar progress. All the main cabinetry work is done, and the lower bar counter-top has been installed. The sink was fitted in for the picture, but not yet fastened down, to make sure I don’t mark it up before finishing the other pieces. The counter came out really nice, and I think this will definitely be a bar worthy of pouring some high-quality spirits on. To those ends, Jody even gave me an early Easter gift, a bottle of Tanqueray No. TEN, a top-shelf gin, since she knows me affinity towards gin. I now have nice top shelf Rum (various aged rums), Vodka (Grey Goose of course), Gin (Tanq. No. TEN) and Tequila (Cuervo Gold), not to mention a nice Single Malt. All these bottles, along with countless others, will no doubt grace the liquor shelf soon once the bar is completed.

Well, I know I keep talking about this wonderful Oak Bar that I’m building, and that I’ll update this as I go. Well, I’m telling the truth, but it’s taking me longer than I’d like to get rolling on the project. Everytime I start to do some prep work, something else seems to come along and interrupt my momentum. I can say this much for my current status. I have the wood. All the wood now. On Saturday morning, I went out to Adams and Kennedy Wood Source in Manotick to pick up the rest of the Oak wood bits. Man, 2×4 Oak sure is pretty (and costly). They had what I needed, and 9 pieces of wood (and $250) later, I was supposedly ready to go. Instead, I went running. Oh well. The plywood is mostly cut up now as well. What remains is ripping and cross-cutting all the oak planks to the proper dimensions. That will be my next step. I’ve also decided the best way to do this is try and stain and varnish the wood before putting it all together. That should minimize the mess in the living room, and make it easier to finish off. I also have all the odds and ends that I’ll need, like hinges, the sink, shelving, lighting, etc. etc. I really wish it was already done, in time for Christmas, but that is definitely not going to be the case. Rest assured, I’ll survive. But I’ve got to get this done, so I can get back to being lazy in the new rec room! More pics will be posted as I go.

Thought I’d pop in another post on the progress being made on the bar front. Things have been going so slowly that I ended up actually taking a day off work to get some work done on this project! Actually, I had a ‘personal day’ that was going to expire if I didn’t use it by the end of the month so I figured it would give me a chance to get a little extra work done on the bar, not to mention get laundry and my taxes done! Pictured to the left here is my attempt at capturing what the oak pieces look like after two coats of stain and three coats of varnish. Shiny, isn’t it? What you see is the product of almost 2 weeks of effort. Every step takes me an evening, because you have to let the stain / varnish dry thoroughly before either sanding it or re-coating it. Plus, most of these pieces had to have both sides done, doubling the time! The good news is that I have about 2 other ‘groups’ of pieces that I have to work on, and most of these are simpler pieces with a lot of 1-sided finish coming up. After those are all done, it’ll be the true building time. Can’t wait for that stage! I have to question the people who submitted testimonials on the website where I got the design saying it took them 3 weeks to build the bar! Okay, maybe they truly meant ‘build’ and not prepare. In my opinion, there’s no way on God’s green earth someone could possibly do all the cutting, routing, sanding, staining, varnishing, dry fitting, and putting together this whole bar! NO WAY!! Maybe if they worked full time on it. Naw. Granted, I had to learn a lot of things along the way (namely how to properly use a table saw and router), but just these last few steps of finishing take so long…

Howdy all! Well, the full title of the post might actually be more like A Hard Night Drinking Leads to … A Hard Day Biking, but I thought that was a bit too long for a blog posting title, and might be a bit misleading 😉 This little story is about a biking tour that I signed up to do more or less on a whim a couple weeks back. In fact, it was the day after my Iron distance triathlon that someone mentioned they were going to do it, so I decided I’d sign up as well. After all, in my mind, a 170km bike ride on a Sunday would be a nice way to spend a day, now that I knew I could handle those distances. After all, this was billed as a “Tour”, not a “Race”, with a sport group and a touring group. That was my plan, to just take it easy and tour. Well, things don’t always go the way you plan, and if you read on, you’ll read what I mean by that in the context of this event. If you’d like, you can check out a map that I put together of the bike ride. Sadly, there are only 6 pictures, as all the batteries I had brought were dead. However, you can go to flickr, and check out other pics that explain the story as well!