Our House Projects and Woodworking In October 2001, Melissa and I bought our first house.  The house we decided on is located in Maryland, and is a reasonable commute to my work.  We wanted something with some privacy and quiet, and that is exactly what we got :-) (incidentally, we also got a ton of raking as part of the bargain!) Melissa and I have done a lot of relatively minor work around the house. The links to the left show just a few of the things we have done. The photos at the bottom of the page show the house in the various seasons.

Woodworking

In September 2004 I got a great deal on half a Delta Contractor's saw. Click here to see what I did with it.

The second (after the structured wiring below) major project I took on after moving in was to build a mantel around our fireplace.  If you would like to see the Mantel I built for my fireplace out of wood and MDF, click here. This project was interesting to me because it was the first time I used a router or a compound miter saw.

In early 2004 I built an oak entertainment center for our TV room, click here.

If you would like to see the (rather large!) compost bin I built for Melissa out of cedar, click here.

In late March 2003, I built a small window bird house with a clear plexiglass back, and attached it to our bedroom window. For information and photos, click here.

Home Improvement

One of the first projects I did after moving into the new house was to rewire all the cable and telephone wires, and add network capabilities to all rooms.  If you are interested in structured wiring, and how I wired my entire house with high-speed network cabling, click here.

One of the more rewarding projects Melissa and I accomplished was the design and construction of a dry stone wall around the bottom of our driveway.  If you are interested in the natural dry stone wall Melissa and I built to line our driveway, click here.

Shower Handles (and sweating copper pipes)

In March 2003 I replaced the handles for the master bathroom shower. This involved sweating copper pipes with a torch and solder - a first for me. Click here.

Home Renovation 2006

Started in 2005, this is my blog on the home renovation. Note that this will jump you out of my main site. To view the blog entries, click here. This is a major renovation including all new wood floors, new windows in previously blank walls, new siding, new openings in interior walls, new stairs, and finally, new kitchen cabinets (custom built by me) and appliances.

Other Interesting Items

Storm August 2003

In August 2003 we had a freak wind storm that did considerable damage to the trees around our house, and some minor damage to our house itself.  To see photos, click here.

Photos of Our House

Here is a photo in the winter of 2001/2002.  This is the only snow we got, and lasted for only a day. This is in contrast to the winter of 2002/2003 when it snowed quite a bit and was cold cold cold!  To the left, you can see the old wooden garden retaining wall that we later removed and replaced with stone.

Here is a photo of the house in early spring 2002.  I later traded in the Mazda Tribute due to the design defect where the thing stalls if you coast downhill around a corner at around 35mph.  The Ford Escape has the same problem.  At the time I traded it in, neither Ford nor Mazda were doing anything to fix the problem, even through there were literally hundreds of complaints of accidents and other difficulties caused by the stalling on the NTSB web site.  I only had to lose steering and breaks once to realize just how dangerous this defect is. Oh, and should I even mention the gas mileage problem?  Over time, the gas mileage on the Tribute gets worse due to another defect.  Anyway, I now own a 2002 Honda CRV; it gets much better gas mileage and doesn't stall :-)  If you want to check on consumer complaints for a car you are about to buy, take a look at the NHTSA Web Site

Here is a photo of the driveway in early spring 2002

Here is a photo of the driveway again in early November 2002.  The lawn and driveway was perfectly clear just a day or two beforehand.  I like the fall colors, though.  You can just see the neighbor's house behind the trees in the upper right.

Here is a photo of our house during the winter storm of February 2003 (this was taken before the snow finished - we received another couple inches of wet icy snow that night).  We ended up with around 20 inches of snow in that storm, with ice on the bottom and ice on the top.  I later calculated just how much snow Melissa and I shoveled: our driveway is just over 350' long, and we shoveled a path 7' wide.  Given the average weight of the wet snow we had, I calculated we shoveled 50,000 lbs (25 tons) of snow, manually, in two days.  Yikes!

Here's a photo from early spring 2003.

For more photos, please check out the wallpaper section of this site.  The majority of the "outdoors" photographs were taken on my property.

NOTE: My latest projects can be found in my blog (see link at top of page)