House 173

At long last the radiator cover is finished!  I started this project all the way back in November, and as usual - thought I could do it in a weekend.  It all started because so much work had been done on the dining room,


but the one last (and ugly) thing that remained was the radiator:

So, in November, off to work I went...

I had done some rough calculating...

And had rough-sketched the idea... https://www.house173.com/2018/11/made-at-173-fixing-mistakes.html
But still ended up with a bit of a mess.  The end panels were poorly designed and had to be re-fashioned:

I also put in features to try to tie the cover in with features on the hutch, table, plant stand and the built-in.  In this case, a plinth with the fleur-de-lis, and some rope applique:


And the cover really began to take shape:

A couple coats of primer and a few more of paint later:

All the pieces in the dining room are painted with Valspar's Polar Star in exterior enamel:
It's funny because in most light, the Polar …

The last few weeks, around the holidays, I've just been puttering around the workshop.  Before Christmas I was on a roll with the radiator cover, but once the tree went up, I had to leave it.  But, I do think we found a nice way to display the Christmas cards for the season!


So, with the radiator cover on hold, I just puttered around and used some scrap wood to make a few things for the workshop.  Back in September I posted about some scrap wood projects I had done over the years, so this is kind of a continuation of that post.  As silly as it sounds, the first thing I did was make a push shoe for the table saw.  I have I nice one I bought at least 10 years ago, but it's made of hard plastic and has a very shallow heel, (I guess that's a good thing for thinner stock).


It's perfectly fine, and look at all the things it can do!  But the fact is, for at least 10 years I've only ever used it to push wood through the table saw.  So, I thought I'd make one with a th…

Occasionally, I like to play around with some photo-editing apps and see the various artistic effects that can be created.  Back in '16 I did an Impressionist Retrospective on the flowers and yards here at 173, then a couple months ago I did an old-school look at 173.  It's in that vein that I worked on some pictures with an old-school look, this time focused on tools and stuff from the workshop.  I know that doesn't sound particularly exciting, but I found a simple beauty in these pictures...maybe you will too!

I'm the dude looking stressed:

My very basic router table...

Working on the face-frame of the radiator cover:

And the end-panels:






Ha!  A couple of my not-so-frequently used corded drills: