Destruction and Creation

I finally got around to cutting up the rest of the kitchenette today. The Mrs. informs me that this thing was about 15 years old, having been given to us by neighbors in our old neighborhood whose kids were teenagers already. Here is a little photo play-by-play.

Here's a picture of the kitchenette in the condition we last left it. The top part (roof, phone cradle, and coffee maker) are gone already.

I chose a different blade today. Did not use The Ax, but instead used a 9" demolition blade that had no trademarked name. It was just a 9" blade with 6 TPI. And it cut quite nicely. The first thing I did was to cut off the appendages. Zip zip zip. We're now 7 pieces.

Next, we bisect the body. Chop Chop!


Now, quarter the bisected body.


Finally, I start chopping up the quarters. At this point, HannieC starts banging on the window and crying about how I was supposed to let her watch all this. However, she goofed around all morning and wouldn't do her schoolwork, and I couldn't waste any more time waiting for her. Final tally for today was 17 pieces.


So much for the destruction. Now for the creation. I went to Southern Lumber today and picked up some redwood for the garden boxes of Garden of Death fame. $170 of redwood, as it turns out. Then, after getting home, I blazed up the new Hitachi compound miter saw for the first time. It worked beautifully. I chopped up 3 1x6x8's into 1 ft segments, and also a 2x2. Here is that wood, neatly stacked.


The 1x6's are going to form the vertical slats of the sides of the box. The 2x2's will be corner posts for the wire mesh that keeps the birds and squirrels (and Childrens) out. The upper and lower framing bands of the box are made of 1x4's, which I miter-cut at 45 degree angles all professional-like. I know, I know. Redwood is a pretty soft wood, and miter-cut corners are probably a little weak for screwing into. So I screwed and glued.

Here's a picture of the upper and lower frames with the lovely HannieC standing in the middle of one. She yelled, "WAIT! Let me get into the picture!" when I was about to shoot this one. As noted before, she's quite the camera junky.


We ran out of daylight to finish today. Tomorrow I'll take all those 1x6 slats and nail them into these two frames, with one frame at the top and one at the bottom, to form a box. The box will not have a bottom, which will allow worms to freely travel around the garden. The box will be 2'x4'x1', and I bought enough lumber to make two of them.

Shortly after coming inside from all this work, The Mrs. says to me how all she really wanted was a box made of four 2x12s screwed together. "That would be a lot less labor-intensive," she says.

Less labor-intensive, and no damn fun at all. Heck, I wouldn't even need a compound miter saw for that.