Epoxy Tumbler for Mrs.Libera

Etsy - everymandan.etsy.com

In this video i made an epoxy cup using a 30oz. stainless steel tumbler, glitter, spray paint, Mod Podge, vinyl, clear cpoxy, and my Cricut. i put links to all the materials i used below. 

This project will take 2 days because after each application of epoxy you need to let it sit for a good 12 hours before you can work on it again. 

I started with a blue Zak 30oz. tumbler i got from target. i wanted a white one but i wasn't able to find one anywhere without having to order it. I got the lightest color they had and took it home and just used some spray paint i had laying around to paint it white. 

Once i had the cup fully covered i applied the mod podge and glitter. ( don't be afraid to us the glitter, just dump it on) when you have the cup covered with glitter to the way you want you will need to spray a clear top coat on the cup. i had seen where a lot of people used triple thick clear coat but from what i can tell just any clear coat will work. This will prevent the glitter from floating around or coming off in the epoxy when we are spreading it on the cup. Before you start the epoxy step put on electrical tape anywhere you do not want epoxy to cover. I only put tape around the top edge. 

The epoxy is mixed at a 1:1 ratio, you will pour equal amounts of each into a cup and mix it together. I measured out on a scale 1 fl.oz.of each part.  At first the mixture will be cloudy and swirly keep mixing it making sure to scoop all around the edges and bottom to get every bit mixed. When the mixture turns clear it is ready to go. you can try and work out some bubbles at this time or take your chances on the cup. using a heat gun on the cup to get bubbles out works well but i do not have a heat gun so i took my time with it. 

spread the epoxy on liberally, you will not add too much. make sure and use everything you mixed up, any extra will drip off ( this is ok ) keep turning it for an hour and a half continuously. After about 1.5 hours you can take your tape off the cup ( you do not want to wait until it is dry , it could mess up your clean edge. ) keep turning for a few more hours , this Doesn't have to be non stop but keep an eye on it and use your judgement. I keep turning non stop for at least 3 hours ( just kind of zone out watching a show while doing it ) In the video i showed how i got tired of turning it and made myself my own cup turner . The popular thing to do is to make them out of rotisserie motors but i didn't have one laying around and Katie gave me the idea to use our kitchen aid. ( This requires running the kitchen aid for long amounts of time) i found a piece of wood and whittled  it down to fit in the mixer and the end of my pvc pipe. worked perfectly, just a little loud. 

after the first layer i sand the whole things down until there is no glossy left. i stick on my decals and repeat the epoxy step( i only used about 3/4 the amount of epoxy ) and after it dried you are finished!

Turned Epoxy Cup

The school year is fast approaching and with 3 of us going back to school in the fall it has been busy around our house. I have been experimenting and researching a few projects for the blog and YouTube but have not gotten around to filming or editing much. But I have a lot in the works. 

Here are a few things i am currently working on and when they should be ready. 

....

The Winner of the contest Cup!

 Finished with the project and has been filmed ( it went....not as planned ). I will explain what i was trying to do and what happened. It is in editing and should be out soon. 

Turned Epoxy Cups 

I got together with Jenn ( my sister ) and Adam ( her husband ) and we tried making some different kinds of cups with clear casting resin ( epoxy ). It was a learning process but it all went pretty smoothly. I made some cup turning platforms and we finished all three of our cups. I will make a post going into some of the details of those three cups and a video of me making one for Katie ( Some pictures of me and Adams cups below [I have not taken a picture of Jenns finished cup yet]).

Gunpowder Signs

This is a fun one an d worked much better than i thought it would. I have already tested it out and gotten it down i just need to film me doing one!

Kids Corner

Me and Lillian are thinking of our next craft for us to do after we got such an overwhelming response to our last video.  Lillian- " I'm YouTube famous " . We are currently narrowing down our options of what crafts. 

Maple and Walnut Box - special dovetail corners. 

I am going to make another box similar to my last one but a different size and i am going to try and do some special corners using dovetails on it. 

....

I would like to have all of these done in the next couple weeks and hopefully posted. As the school year approaches it is going to be harder to do these but we will see how it works out. 

Kids Corner

Me and Lillian got to film our first Kids Corner video and she was so excited and happy to see herself on YouTube. She was a real trooper through the whole process, even more so than me most of the time. When i would start to get frustrated or made us take the same clip over and over again she was always calm and saying things like " maybe we should just take a little break and try again" . We are so lucky to have such an amazingly innocent, loving, kind, caring daughter. 

We both thought this video came out perfect. Looking at all the clips it was hard to see the end but we kept editing and it all came together really well. She was very focused when working as you can see in her face, she always tries to do her very best ( and she doesn't want to get hurt by the prickles ). The music, the voice over by Lillian and the overall finished product just couldn't have turned out better.  I can't express how great Kiddo was and we are looking for our next craft.

I hope you enjoy this video as much as we do. Subscribe to my YouTube give the video a 👍  and come back to the Blog for more projects I do and for more Kids Corner videos.

GIVE AWAY WINNER!!!

We have a winner! 

Congratulations! 

I will be getting in contact with you soon and we will come up with what you want on the cup. 

remember it will be etching and i will most likely be videoing it to put on YouTube and the blog

also soon ill be making a post where Lillian does her first Kids Corner video!

Walnut keepsake box.

Hi everyone! It has been a while since my last woodworking project at home and I was very happy with how it all turned out.

For Christmas Katie's dad went to a blacksmith's shop and helped to forge two blades to make into knives. I do not know if any of you watch the show "Forged in Fire" on the History channel, but its one of my favorites, and hearing about how he hammered and shaped the metal was pretty neat. The Smith made handles and a leather sheath for the knife and they were then given to me and my sister-in-laws husband for Christmas. It came a small card with instructions on how to care for the knife. One of instructions stood out to me from the rest " do not store the knife in the sheath " this struck me as odd . I'm not supposed to keep it in the sheath? So what do I do with it?! I tried to follow the instructions as best I could. With 2 kids and nowhere to put it that I might not accidentally cut myself, I had to come up with a solution to safely store it while not putting it in the sheath. 

I looked around online at different knife storage ideas and decided that I wanted to make a box for it. Boxes are small projects in size but you can get really detailed with your design and have fun trying different techniques. I've had a piece of Walnut in the garage for a while and this would be the perfect project to use it on.  I also wanted a contrasting wood for a few accent pieces so I grabbed a scrap piece of beautiful Ambrosia Maple I had laying around . Maple goes really well with Walnut and the ambrosia in this piece was so pretty I decided to use it for my lid also.

• On a side note. The "ambrosia" in the wood is made from the ambrosia beetle.  It digs into the tree and a fungus on its legs discolors the wood. When the wood is cut it reveals the ambrosia pattern. Each "stripe will have a small hole where the beetle traveled through the tree. 

I did not have my camera with me when i was making this box but i took a few pictures on my phone. A lot of the things I did between these pictures are mentioned in the captions. If you want to know about anything I did that might not be shown just message me or comment below.

- In this photo you can see that i have cut all my pieces to size already. i have mitered all the ends and cut a groove for my bottom piece and for my lid to slide into. I recently made myself a table saw sled and was eager to use it. The majority of my cuts were on the table saw and the sled made a HUGE difference. The pieces are ready for the glue up. ( see if you can spot where i made a mistake )

- After i fixed my mistake i got all the sides together, everything clamped, and let it sit overnight. 

- In the morning i took off all the clamps and tape and i had a box! but no way to get inside yet...

- If you read the part about the beetle, this is one of its holes. See how it is in the middle of the "stripe", an easy way to fill these holes is with a little super glue and sand it smooth. 

- I decided i wanted to put a little more detail into this box, the sides were looking a little boring to me. I made a jig to slide on the table saw to cut the slots in each corner. I then took a piece of the Maple and made the splines to fit in those slots. Once i had them all fitting snug i glued them in, cut them, and sanded them smooth. 

- Using the table saw i cut the box in two pieces ( the lid and the bottom ). I then got to use my chisel to notch out where the hinges will be. 

- i used 2 coats of Danish Oil on the whole box, this really brings out the beautiful color of the walnut and protects the wood. 

- I used a piece of i found that had been used for packaging and cut out the outline of the knife and sheath i had gotten at Christmas. Now i can store my knife out of the sheath

How to Make Granite Counter Tops

 If  you have not entered into our Give Away drawing please visit that post and comment to enter! the link is on the left side of my blog titled GIVE AWAY! who wouldn't want free stuff? and its so easy to enter. so go check that out and comment. THANKS!

Hey everyone, have you ever wondered how granite counter tops are made? Well i can show you! If you didn't already know, I am a Granite Fabricator at Carpet One Floor and Home. I work on stone and other counter top materials every day! I do love my job , I get to be creative and hands on, this can be a challenge but can also very satisfying.

There are 3 common materials i work on, Quartz (man made) , Granite , and Marble. There is also natural Quartzite but it is much less common. They all Fabricate about the same, I use basically the same tools on all 3 with the exception of the polishing pads. Everything i use for cutting and polishing has bits of diamonds in them, the more aggressive pads have larger amounts in order to remove more material. In this video i will be working on a piece of Granite for a customer and showing you all the tools i use to go from a scrap piece to a finished product. Due to the length of each step i broke the video down to small snippets of what goes into each one. I recorded this on my phone and it might be a little blurry. I wasn't planning on making a video when i went to work that day but this was the perfect job to record for the blog.

 I have tried to learn everything i can about counter tops and the different ways people make them. I have seen shops that use CNC machines to do all the work, this is good for mass production but a person is still needed to finish the polish and do any small detail or repair work. I take a lot of pride in my work and am always looking to be the best.  I could talk about Granite and Counter Tops all day and I try to educate customers on the difference of poor and high end fabrication. Take these next to Clips as an example.

 The one on top was done by another Granite Shop in town, it is a bevel edge on Santa Cecelia Granite . The one on the bottom is a bevel edge on Santa Cecelia Granite that I worked on. They are both the same profile on the same stone but the quality of work is very different, which one would you want to be paying for?

You can really see the difference in how the edge looks. The left one is wavy and dull while the one on the right is flat and shiny. This is the most obvious way to tell what kind of fabricator you are getting. It isn't always that they don't know how to make it look better but that it isn't cost effective for them to put the time to make it the right way. That is a huge reason i like working where i do, they put the quality of their product above quantity. 

If you have any questions about counter tops let me know, I can most likely answer whatever you need and if i cant i will find an answer and get it for you. If you need any work done message me and i will get in touch, I can do repair work or small jobs if you are Interested.

Miter saw station

This project took some time, I was able to record most of it and had to really edit it down so it wasn't soooo looong. the miter station is great for quick cuts on the miter saw. the benches are at a good height to work on and the fences are nice and flat, they have been nice to have when using hand tools lately.

A lot of this video is in fast forward but i also go over a few things i plan to do to my shed in the future.

I will be uploading my granite fabrication video and a post about a box i made soon. Also Lillian and I are working on her first Kids Corner Video.  so keep checking in and as always please leave comments and let me know what you think!

Thanks guys and enjoy!

Wooden Disk

This project wasn't much of a project at all but something I had not been able to fer around to until now.

Katie is a Pre-k teacher and each year she has an outdoors lesson for about a week. For the past couple years she was been wanting to have a section of tree where she can show the kids what it looks like and let the  touch and feel. After years of Katie pointing out every pile of wood we see on the side of the road and saying " Oh, I would love to have one of those for my class " I finally got to do it. It's not that I was ignoring her or being lazy, i just don't have a chainsaw and most of these logs she would point out probably weighed more than our car. When we moved to our new house i found a saw mill that has a building where they sell some hobby wood to people like me, and they had one of these big wooden "disks" is what I call them. I asked about it and they said I could have it when I told them about why I wanted it. The wood was wet and had been sitting for a while so i wasn't able to work on it right away. I set it somewhere dry and out of the way and honestly forgot about it. In the process of moving my tools to the new shop I stumbled about it again, it had completely dried out and was ready to work on.  The easiest way I could think to clean it up was to throw it on my bench sander and just work it until you could see all the rings easily.  It didn't take long and when I was done you could see every ring perfectly. Katie will be able to show the kids and maybe they can count them and tell us how old the tree was.

Comment below if there is anything you would like to see. 

Check the give away post to see how to enter!

https://www.everymandan.com/2019/06/give-away.html?spref=tw

GIVE AWAY!

We are having a GIVEAWAY!!!


I want to use the etching technique I showed in my "etching metal with electricity" video to make a personalized gift. I've searched around and found a few things I think people would like. ( These might be things only I would like)  so I'm going to ask for your help again.  Which of the following items would you be more likely to purchase for yourself or someone else?


If I get enough comments or "votes" I will pick one voter at random and give the 1st one to him or her. So please share this post with your friends on Facebook or Twitter. There is an easy link button at the bottom left corner of this post to do that. If I get at least 20 comments then I will choose a name from a hat and give one away to the lucky winner! Comment below on this blog page to be eligible for the give away. Thanks guys!

How to enter

• Choosing one of the 4 items below and telling me in the comments will get you 1 entry into the drawing. 
• Sharing this post on Facebook will get you 1 entry into the drawing.
• Following the blog will get you 1 entry 
• Subscribing to my YouTube channel and clicking the 🔔 will get you 1 entry 

 Rules

1. You may not vote more than once.  
2. Sharing the post more than once will not gain you an additional entry. 

The Winner


The winner will be contacted by me and will decide if they would like a name or initials added to the item.


So have your friends enter and share even if they arent interested in winning ( what kind of people are they?) They can decide to give the winning pick to you!

And metal cup with lid

A credit card bottle opener

A small pocket knife 

A bartender's bottle opener

Upcoming projects and a Give Away!

The next couple weeks are going to be busy and I'll be posting less frequently but there are plenty of awesome things to look forward to!

I will be uploading a few videos that briefly show what I do for a living, I am a Granite Fabricator at Carpet one Floor and Home of Huntsville and I was making a small cutting board for a customer of ours and tried to document some of what goes into making granite countertops!

Also I'll show you one short video of a project I have been waiting to do for Katie's classroom. If you dont know Katie is my wife and she is a Pre-k Teacher. I make lots of little ( and some not so little ) things for her classroom and school. This one didnt take much time to do but it will be perfect for Katie's unit of trees.

Something I am really excited about is a series of videos and crafts that I will be asking my daughter Lillian show you all. These are going to be crafts or hands on things you parents can do with your kids. Me and Lillian love to make things together. She is very excited to be able to watch herself on YouTube and show her friends. My goal is to have at least one of these videos a month. Maybe more during these summer months. I havnt come up with a catchy name for these so if you have an idea leave it in the comments.

I'm going to be making a few posts about Disney. How we prepared for it, some of the mistakes we made, and lots of other things. It's going to be hard to pack it all I to a few posts, especially since I tend to ramble on, but I will do my best and I'll have Katie trim the it down.....or, do it all for me. Thanks Katie!

I plan to take a brief video or take a few pictures of my shed to shop transformation. I would like to get working on that again as well as a few projects to do on and around the shed.

 

GIVE AWAY!!!!!!!

Lastly, in order to try to pick up traffic on the blog we will be having a GIVE AWAY! Keep checking back to see when it is posted. I will explain everything on here within the next week or so. So I hope you are excited for that, all you will have to do is, comment and share the post on social media. Doing that will be enter you into the raffle!

Thanks again everyone!

Make a shirt for Disney!

Last night I got to try my first iron on cricut project. Katie made sure to have Disney shirts for the whole family for each day of our vacation but overlooked her own wardrobe! So naturally I saw this as the perfect time to make one using our Cricut.

I looked around on the internet and watched a few videos on the basics and after I was confident I could do it we went to Walmart and got the supplies. Katie was able to find a shirt she liked for only about $4. We found the Cricut material we wanted also. Walmart does have some vinyl available but is much more limited than Micheals or Joann Fabric's, they have some basic things and they are much cheaper.  

There aren't alot of steps to doing this but there are a few things you need to know. The biggest thing is how to stick your vinyl to the mat. The iron on vinyl is put on the mat upside down. It holds your design together on the backing for an easy transfer. The other major thing to know is you want to mirror your design, because we are turning it upside down if we were to print normally then when we put it on our shirt it would be backwards. Other than those things it was pretty straight forward. Put it where you want it, get it hot, LET IT COOL, peel it off. The nice thing about this compared to the old way of iron on images like I did as a kid is , the backing is clear so you can see where you are going to put it really well. 

This blog is just something fun to do and a way for me to stay creative. I find it interesting how I can mess around with the editing part and on each video, find another way to do something. I try to improve every time and sometimes it gets worse but I cant tell you how much I enjoy doing it. So keep checking in as I hopefully get better at doing these and thanks for stopping by! 

Dan.

Etching metal with Electricity!

Hey everyone I found a really neat project i wanted to try out that involved just a few household items. You can actually etch stainless steel with just some salt water and a 9 volt battery!

Here are the items you will need: 

                                                    Table salt
                                                 Cup of water
                                             A sticker or stencil
                                             9 Volt battery or 2
                                                   Some wire
                                           Q-tips or cotton balls

Find a piece of metal that you would like to etch, this metal cant have any paint or coating on it. Clean the metal with some alcohol or acetone to make sure you do not have any oil or grease on it. 

put your sticker or stencil on the metal where you want it. remember that any exposed metal will be etched and anything the sticker or stencil covers up will remain the same. To make sure you do not etch anything you do not want to use tape to cover any metal around the are you will be etching. Next thing to do will be to attach your wires to the battery. connect one wire from the positive (+) lead and connect it to the piece of metal we will be working on. Take another wire and attach it to the negative (-) lead this wire will be connected to our Q-tip. in a cup mix together the table salt and water until the salt has dissolved. soak your Q-tips in this solution. take one Q-tip out and connect the negative (-) wire to it, making sure its touching the cotton area that has absorbed the saltwater. Press the Q-tip to the exposed metal that we want to etch and hold it for 5-10 seconds at a time. Move the Q-tip around to get a even etching (holding it in one place for too long can cause an uneven look).

For a deeper etch repeat this step until you are happy with it. All that is left is to removed the stencil or sticker and wipe it clean. 

I had to do a voice over on this video so i apologize for the terrible audio. 

This is a really easy project that i can see myself using for all sorts of crafts. I have been looking online at some metal objects to buy and etch onto. I will post some picture and info of those when i get them and you can let me know if you would like for me to make you one. 

Thanks guys!

CRICUT PROJECT POLL

CRICUT PROJECT POLL

Hey everyone I've got a poll going on and I need your help. Please watch the video and vote below in the comments!

Also remember to check out my other posts. I have some other projects that I need help with. Thanks guys!

Voting will end on June 28th. 

Making some personalized cups for Disney!

Today i made a couple little thermos cups for Lillian and Harrison. We are going to Disney soon and Katie picked up a few of these blank cups and wanted to put their names on them. This was a pretty easy project, I did end up buying a Disney font off of Etsy from DrBuddhaDigital for $1.99 I was just having a hard time trying to get the Disney font from anywhere else for free. It worked great and i loved the way this project turned out.

Katie corrected me on the cup, she said that she got them from Target : 12oz. Pogo Cups :  for $9.99 . 

Still a great deal and they worked perfect for personalizing. 

Be sure to comment below follow my YouTube account  and give me a thumbs up! 

Project Ideas?

I need some help coming up with something to do with these 2 pieces of wood i picked up at Hobby Hardwood the other day.

It is a 43-1/2" x 5-3/4" piece of cherry and a 37" x  9-1/2"

they are both 1/2" thick. i was thinking of making a box of some kind. or maybe a mount for a camera. but i havn't found what i feel is right. let me know what you think!

Hanging a picture

We had a lot going on today; our baby boy was having his 1st birthday and was not able to get any work done outside on my workshop. This does not mean I got the day off though, I had plenty of honey-do's on my list. One of them was something we have been overlooking for some time now.

We looked for a long time for the right picture to hang on this wall and when we found it, I set it there with every intention of hanging it up right away. Well days turned into weeks and "It doesn't look so bad just sitting there, right?" was my go to line when Katie asked to hang it up. With a group of our family and loved ones coming over for Harrison's birthday party, it was time for me to do it!

The tools I used for this project: 

• Tape measure
• Level
• Drill
• Drill bit ( size not labeled , it was part of a kit )
• Drywall anchors and screws
• Pencil
• Sheet of scratch paper and Tape
• Screwdriver ( Philips ) 

The frame has two hooks on each side that you could connect using a wire. This way you would only need to drill one hanger, but I didn't feel comfortable hanging this heavy frame on 1 drywall anchor. If you are lucky enough for a stud to be perfectly centered where you need it, then I'd say go for it. Otherwise, you can follow these steps to make sure your holes are in the correct spots.

I have a large 4 foot level that I used to mark the distance between the hooks, but I understand a 4 foot level isn't a common tool to have (you could also use a tape measure to find the distance). My distance was 39-1/2 ", Once you have this, divide by 2 to get your center. I marked a line on the wall that corresponded with the center of the piece of furniture below. I held the picture up, asked Katie to help find a good height, and she made a small dot on the wall against the bottom side of the frame with a pencil. It's nice having someone help you, but you could also do this on your own with a tape measure. 

Now that I have my center and how high i would like the frame to be, I need to find out how far the hooks are from the bottom of the frame. The hooks are 19-1/2 "  from the bottom of the frame, so I measured on the wall 19-1/2 " up from the dot Katie made. Using my level, I made two dots 19-3/4  " apart from the center of the piece of furniture. 

                                               

Once we know where to place the screws, we have to drill a hole to fit the anchors inside. 

Here is a small tip I found to be useful (especially when drilling into drywall over furniture): use a piece of paper and tape as a cradle to catch any dust when drilling holes. Then take the paper and throw it all in the trash. Little to no clean-up needed!  

I am going to take a second here to explain; I bought the anchor, screws, and drill bit as a picture hanging kit from Bargain Hunt a few years ago. The bit is to be used for the anchors and screws to be used for those same anchors. When I drilled the holes, the provided bit was a little too large. When the screw was inserted into the anchor, it wasn't tight enough for my liking. What do we do now? Simply make a tighter fit by wrapping tape around the part of the anchor that will go inside the wall. It works perfectly!

After using the tape trick and inserting the screw, the only thing left to do is to hang the frame and enjoy our pictures! 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Miter Saw Station

These first few posts will be mostly catch up to what i'm working on and will be lacking any step by step pictures to follow. I plan on doing a better job taking progress photos or videos in the future.

    The first area i will be working on in my shed to workshop transformation is the miter saw station. I've never built one before and i'm not entirely sure how useful it will be but i figured that the worst case scenario is that it becomes just another shelf to put things on and i can never have enough of those. 

    The goal here is to make a perfectly flat table on either side that is flush with the cutting platform of the miter saw in order to support longer materials and also to be able to add a stop block. This will come in handy if i ever need to make several pieces cut to the same length. forget having to measure and mark the same measurement over and over again. Along with the two flat tables i will also be making a fence on both sides that will be again flush with the fence on the miter saw. I plan on making some sort of dust collection or deflection component to this but i will come up with it when i have the rest built and see what i'm working with. 

   The tables frames are going to be made of  some 2x4s i have laying around. The back legs will be tied into the frame work of the shed. saving me a few pieces of wood. The tops will be made of 3/4" MDF wood. I have not made anything out of MDF before but from what i have learned it is very flat, durable, and affordable. i believe i will make my fence out of MDF as well but that might change. in a thin strip it might not stay as straight as plywood. also i might in the future attach a track to the top of it for adjustable stop blocks and i'm not sure out the edges would hold up to that sort of thing. 

     I got the frame assembled and at first i wanted to have a short side to the right of the saw and a longer side to the left. but the way the studs fell i ended up working out where both sides are about the same. I made some basic frame work for these and spent careful attention to keeping the the same height. any small adjustments and be made with shims when i put the tops on. i secure the legs to the wood sub floor so i wouldn't accidentally bump them and throw off the flatness. Next i cut my MDF to size and brought the pieces into the shed to layout where to cut notched for the studs they would be fitting round. i wanted to make these as tight as possible to keep and dust or things from falling through. The MDF was easy to work with and since i don't own a jig saw i used a hand saw and a coping saw for the turns and this worked just fine. One thing i learned from watching many videos of building with MDF is that the weak point is in the corners and edges so i took my router and put a small round on all my edges except the sided that will be again the saw. I saw that there are lots of opinions out there when it comes to finishing MDF a lot of people like to use oils like Boiled Linseed our Tongue Oil and saturating it. I was going to do this at first but i read one person just used some finishing wax and put a couple coats on. I liked this idea because i would make a smooth surface that i know would repel and glue or moisture that might get on them. I have put one coat on them and i havn't decided if i will put another on or not. i've tested with water and glue and both are easily cleaned off without any trace left behind. 

     I now just have to mount the saw and flush it up with the tables and work out the details of my fence. 

Moving My Workshop to the Shed.

Garden Shed Workshop

I have many projects going on right now and tons that i need to do. The one that i'm currently putting most of my time into at the moment is moving my "workshop" from my garage to my shed. The garage is a nice big space when the car isn't parked in it but every night whether i'm finished with my project or not i have to pack up and make room to pull the car in. This is my biggest gripe about my garage set up, half of my time is spent setting up and breaking down every day. So i began to see if moving it all out to my 12ft x 16ft shed would even fit. An empty shed would make a perfect workshop but i need mine to do double duty. The biggest item i need to remain in the shed is my riding lawn mower along with all my outdoor tools. I took some measurements and made a rough layout on a 3D modeling software i have. My goal is to be able to use most of my tools while the mower is in the shed and doors closed for cold weather but also be able to pull the mower out take advantage of the extra space. I have taken notes from different peoples workshops i have seen and what i like and don't like. After virtually laying it out i have decided to take the plunge.

This is what i came up with. It isn't a detailed plan of each area but i was mostly wanting to see if i could fit my tools in the space i had without being too crowded and leaving room for everything els ei need to store inside. This design will likely change as i go along. The first are i plan on working on is the miter saw station shown in the left. 

1st Blog 1st Post.

Hi I'm a first time blogger that fancys himself a handyman. I am not a writer or English major and you will notice many errors In anything i write. I enjoy doing all sorts of crafts and odd jobs in my spare time, my projects rarely go smoothly and are often stressful. But I imagine that's how most DIY and Handymen or Handywomen projects actually are. I learn loads of tips and things I would do differently while I'm working and would like to maybe keep someone from making those mistakes.  My Intention here is to provide updates and insights into projects I'm working on. From home maintenance to planning a Disney trip and everything in the middle. I'm not sure how well this will turn out but I'll try to keep it informative, interesting and up to date.

 Dan