Showing posts with label I sorta fail at woodworking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I sorta fail at woodworking. Show all posts

Thursday, May 23, 2013

It's Here, It's Here, It's Heeeeere!

Woo!  Time for the unveiling!


In this and this post, I teased what I had been working on,
and now it's time to share it with the Wide, Wide World of Web!

....drumroll...

I give you, 
the Little Free Library!


Isn't it awesome?

I read about the Little Free Library movement in the LA Times last summer,
and vowed to make one for myself.

I love, love love sharing books,
and thought building my own box would be a piece of cake.

(Spoiler alert...


... it was NOT a piece of cake.)

My woodworking skills are rudimentary at best,
and mistakes were definitely made.

But after a month of Sundays,
it looked like I was finished.



EXCEPT...


ARGH!!!

Anything bigger than a paperback wouldn't fit!

So I went back to work, adding another story.

I learned a few things from the first go around, such as:


mark a channel, instead of a single line, for cutting,
so that the end results will be more accurate.


And, use one of those L-shaped thingies to keep things lined up
while attaching them together.


Also, pony up the freakin' $30 for a power screwdriver,
 instead of laboriously doing forty-eleven screws manually.

So after another month of Sundays,
 my fine Little Free Library was ready to take out to the sidewalk.










Do you see what I used for the roof?
CDs!
The idea literally came to me in a dream.


I originally was going to do the library in soft, ocean shades,
and shingle the roof with river rocks.

But once I got the painting done,
I realized that while the rocks may have worked with the Shaker-like simplicity
of the boxes offered on the Little Free Library site...


... my color choices were just too Afro-Circus
 for anything but an unconventional roof.


                          Afro! Circus! Afro!

                            Polka-dot, Polka-dot, Polka-dot! Afro!      


So if you're in Simi Valley, California, stop on by!
I'm on the map!

You'll be able to check out books
with a "no-shush" guarantee.