Platform Beds Part 2

I'm not worried about attempting some of these projects. But I have to admit that I really don't know what I'm doing. I'm any of you who know anything about wood working are cringing when you see these, but it's actually been a fun project. These platforms aren't fancy furniture, but they're pretty sturdy and should work just fine. I thought this would take me about 3 days. More like 3 weeks and I'm still not done. But I'm getting close.




Mom was here for a couple of days. Yesterday afternoon she did some sanding for me. Then helped me get the primer on the bases.

Today I decided to do a bit more work with wood filler, then more sanding, then more primer. But the headboards are currently drying. They'll need some more sanding then I'll start with the final paint. Hope don't get too much more paint on my concrete floor. It's nice to be able to do this in the living room instead of trying to haul the pieces up and down the stairs to the basement.

Window Blinds for my back guest room.

One of the problems with all the windows in my guest rooms, is my non-Alaskan guests have a hard time sleeping in the summer. It's those 20+ hours of daylight. So I've been on a search for a good solution. There isn't much wall space, so regular curtains wouldn't work. I didn't want the them to block part of the view when they were open.

I got these at Home Depot. They're light blocking and cover the entire wall. Paul installed them for me when I was at work last week, so I just got to see them today.

I did have to order some longer brackets, but they do extend out past the door handle on the deck door.

I think there is still too much light that leaks in around the bottom in particular. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that, but I'll work on it. However I think my out of State guests should be able to sleep now :-).

Northstar Island Expansion Project

Our NOC project is well underway. The crews have been working on adding new sheet pile and gravel since March. Plus they've been doing some repair work to the bench.

It's been very cold, wet & foggy the past few weeks. But we got a nice break on Monday. The fog cleared off, it was great to see the sun. So we sent Greg up in the helicopter to get some pics.















As you can see we're having a slow break up. The ice is melting in place, at least so far. There is a lot of melt water on top. And a few open leads. But we haven't had enough wind to break it up into ice pans that start floating around & slamming into each other. But it won't be long until that starts to happen.















Here you can clearly see the remains of our winter ice road to shore. But it's melting quicky.

And below is a photo out the other direction. Melting ice all the way to the horizon.

Murphy Bed for 2nd Guest Room

I was in Anchorage for few hours on Memorial Day. I stopped in at Scan Home to take a look at their Murphy Beds and decided I really liked this one. The price was pretty good with the sale that day, so I bought one and had it shipped.

Then it sat around the house for a week while I tried to figure out how to put it together. The instructions weren't very helpful and this sucker is HEAVY. On Tue Lynn was in town, so she helped me figure it ou and get it bolted together, laying on the floor.

So Wed night Marge & Carol came over for dinner. After dinner they help me get the Murphy bed standing up, and Marge screwed it into the studs behind the wall. It's pretty solid. The lift mechcanism is going to need a bit of adjusting once I get the mattress for it. But, it's 90% ready to go.

I'm really glad I decided to put a Murphy Bed in this room. When it's unfolded, it really fills up the room. So when it's not in use it can be tucked up, out of the way.

Platform Beds Started

As most of you know, patience is NOT my middle name. So spending a day with power tools usually entails much cussing, an injury or 2 and a broken power tool. I'm happy to say, that I only broke one drill bit and the power tools are all intact. Maybe I am learning a little patience. This project did go much better after I decided to actually use the drill bit instead of trying to screw the wood together skipping that step.


This is actually all Carols fault. A couple of months ago, she said she wanted to build a platform bed for her new house. She made is sound so easy, so I looked around on line and found a few web sites showing how to build different kinds of platforms for beds. This one looked easy so I decided to give it a try.
http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2008/01/21/how-to-build-a-platform-bed/
I don't like the metal frames with wheels that I have in the back guest room.

So after much considering, I stopped at Home Depot last week and ordered the 2x10's and 2x4's. They'll cut them to specific sizes. I tried Lowes first but they said they could only cut pieces in half, not to specific sizes.

Today I got to spend a couple of hours working on this project. Boy is it nice to have concrete floors and no furniture. I just put everything on a piece of cardboard in the living room and got started. It actually went pretty well.

Since the back guest room has 2 twin beds, I need 2 platforms. I got both the 2x10 bases screwed together, and one of the 2x4 tops. I also got the 2 headboard pieces sanded and the corners rounded off. Everything is stacked around the living room, waiting until I get home at the end of June. I'm hoping to get it all put together and painted and finished in about 3 days.

Yard work....yuck.

I'm home but it's too wet to do any yard work at my house. So I spent most of the day in town, working around my 6 plex. The yard is in pretty good shape, and there wasn't a lot of garbage to pick up. But I had lots of weeding to do. A couple of years back I had the sod cut back from the sides of the building, and 6 inches of washed gravel added. So when water runs off the roof it doesn't splash mud up on the siding. I know, I tried gutters for 4 years and gave up. Every winter they get pulled off with the sliding snow & ice from my metal roof. Really got tired of having them put back up.

Anyway, the grass won't grow in the yard where I want it too. But it will infiltrate the gravel after a while. At least its fairly easy to clean out. Just use the little hand hoe and dig into the gravel next to the cut sod line. The grass and the roots pull out really easy and then smooth the gravel back. Looks nice now that I have it done. But 3 hours crawling around on my hands & knees wasn't much fun. Wonder how stiff I'm going to be in the AM? Here is a before and after next to the shed.