Yesterday we had a fun filled day out on the Pacific Ocean. Uncle Dylan's dad, Papa Gormly and Bebe invited the whole Reardon, MacDermott and Donaldson Crew out on their beautiful new boat named "Finominal." They were wonderful hosts and everyone from little to old enjoyed the day.
Picking a fresh lemon at the cousins house. No lemon trees in Oregon :)
This year we drove to Southern California for the kids spring break. They have had slot of rain this winter so hills are very green. Our first morning, we went on a hike in the hills behind Lulu and Papa's house.
Nice day at the mountain up at the summit on the official last day of winter today - March 19. Looking forward to a great spring. It's been the 4th biggest snow year on record.
Today we built shelves in Noah's room. Barn wood stained the same color as our trim, with pipes holding up the shelves. Noah was a great helper.
Today Abbie started dancing very early. She had to be up and out the door at 7 to get her wig and ghillie shoes on. Her dance school performed at 4 elementary schools and 3 retirement homes. They ended at a pub where our family and friends came to see her dance. It was a very full day but we enjoyed it. Lulu was a trooper and came to every school and retirement home with us. She was Abbie's biggest fan. We loved having her with us. It was a real treat! Abbie danced her heart out and we are so proud of our little Irish dancer.
Here are a couple videos of Abbie dancing. She is the dancer on the far right with the curly brown wig.
Tonight we went to IHOP for dinner. I'm pretty sure instead of breakfast for dinner it was dessert for dinner. LuLu treated the kids to yummy pancakes.
This morning on the way to school Hunter took several pictures of a rainbow.
In the back seat Preston was retelling the story of Noah and the flood, and how after the earth was flooded what the rainbow was a sign of.
He got the story correct, however, added one small part. Preston told us that after the flood God made a rainbow in the sky that told us of His promise to never flood the earth again. Preston said though, that God made a "pinky promise" to never flood the earth again. I'm not sure God makes "pinky promises", but never the less it was a cute addition to the story.
I wanted to give my home office a slight industrial feel so I decided to build myself a desk using metal piping as the framing material. I browsed around on the internet and found some ideas and then sketched out my design. It would have two shelves on one side and a single shelf on the other. Here is my initial design sketch.
First, I went onto Zoro.com to order black metal 1" piping. Because I had different structures on each side (2 shelves vs 1) I guessed at my pipe lengths to make the entire puzzle go together. I wasn't quite sure how the fittings and threads would match up to the pipe lengths, but figured I would give it a go.
Once the pipe and fittings arrived, I cleaned them with a de-greaser so that my hands would not get as dirty but also mainly so that when it came time to paint that the paint would adhere to the metal better. Here are all my ordered parts based on my plan above.
Next I started putting the parts all together. My part count requirements were dead on, however my fear about the fitting design on one side possibly not matching the other were realized, and one portion of my desk ended up being about 2 inches too long.
So I went back onto zoro.com and bought a couple of 4" pieces instead of the current 6" pieces to hopefully correct and make everything match. This time I got it right!
Next I needed to build the top. My goal was to build the top and the shelves from reclaimed barn wood. I found a place south of Bend in La Pine and went down and picked out some awesome old 2x8's for the top and 1x12's for the 3 shelves. Here are the 4 2x8's after some sanding. One of the pieces was actually the edge of a tree so decided to use that for the front edge of the desk. Note the great old cut marks from a large circular saw when they were originally cut. Next I put clear polyurethane on them to harden the surface and bring out the grain/color better. I ended up putting 3 coats on the top.
Meanwhile I took the pipe frame and painted it a hammered brown by Rust-oleum.
Lastly I took the old reclaimed 1/x12's, and did some minimal sanding just to get the burs off the wood. Since they are shelves only and not a work surface, wasn't as worried about getting them smooth. I cut them to length to rest on the pipe framing and gave them a couple coats of clear polyurethane. They turned out really nice with a very rustic look.
Here is the finished Product in my office!
This week the kids got to dress up with fun themes each day because it was Dr. Suess week. I captured a couple as they left for school. One day was all green day and another was crazy sock day. Today, the last day was pajama day, however, two of the four kiddos came down with a fever so I didn't get a picture. All in all a FUN week!
