Love, empathy, tolerance--also puppies, flowers, and laundry

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Playing with Wood: The Bath Tray

Summer, I love you, let me count the ways. I love your warm days and long sunshine-y hours and morning walks and fresh veggies and beautiful flowers and endless amounts of time in which I can do whatever I want without a school bell interrupting my life.

Sadly, our school district has a new "balanced" calendar which stole three! whole! weeks! from my summer.  So I'm making hay while the sun shines.  Yep, lemonade from lemons.  Looking for that oft-touted silver lining aka no procrastination with a deadline in the near future..

Who am I trying to fool?  It's not a deadline...it's more like Godzilla looming menacingly over my summer.  I'm in full-out panic mode knowing that there are a hundred million projects and less time than usual.

I started the summer with three desks in various stages of incompleteness, one girl's vanity-to-be, a coffee tabletop to refinish, thoughts about trimming out a window or two, an ugly entrance to the chicken run, and miscellaneous Pinterest ideas to attack..

I'm almost done with two desks (hurray, hurray!) because I've decided that paint is faster than stripping wood.  I love the way my two-tone desks look.  And I'm really praying that someone on craigslist is willing to pay good money for these suckers because they're taking up some valuable real estate in our garage.  I just need to screw the pulls back on the reassemble the locking mechanism and they'll be ready to list.  Desks gone, cash in my pocket.

So naturally I decided to make myself a wooden tray for the bath instead.  Because, gee, it's been in the triple digits and I just can't wait to take a hot bath instead of a cooling shower!

Truth is...I have a new toy called a Kreg Jr. jig and like any kid I had to play with it NOW.

A pile of leftover oak flooring, some cherry trim that's been hanging around forevah and days too hot to spend in an house without air conditioning.  Add a cool dark garage, sandpaper and sander, plus my wonderful laser miter saw, some tung oil and mix well with my Kreg Jr.

The result:  totally and completely worth the time and effort.



 I love the contrast of the woods and know it'll be awesome for long soaks next winter.


It's not perfect but it's not bad for a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants design.

Next up:  addressing the ugliness of the chicken coop fence and gate.

Be (INSPIRE)d,
 
Where I party: My Romantic Home (of course) and a certain French Country Cottage
plus Miss Mustard Seed

6 comments:

  1. I have been looking for something like that for my tub but since I have an oval large tub no one makes one big enough to fit. It came out beautifully, I love the wood contrasts! And I would love to see how the desks turned out.

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    1. Ours is a large oval too. The trick is to fit a simple cleat on each end so it fits your tub perfectly and slides easily. You could easily use one wide board and stain the edge a contrasting color instead of using scraps like I did.

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  2. 3 weeks taken from your summer is a travesty! But does that mean that you'll have an extra 3 weeks come next Spring? I hope so. I am a fan of that bath tub tray. James made one from an old table for our tub and it seems such a luxury to have a pot of tea and a book nearby whilst bathing. very nice!

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    1. Jeri, they're giving us a Fall Break, three weeks after the holidays and an extra week for Spring Break. I admit I really enjoyed having a Fall Break but would trade those extra two weeks (Christmas/Spring) for more summer!

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  3. I adore this. Trent said he'll make one for me. I love reading your garden stories too! They give me hope that the day might come that I can actually enjoy gardening ;)

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    1. I read your posts and hope that one day I might actually know what I'm doing when I decorate! You'll love having a tray--sheer luxury for us busy moms.

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