Hi Bree,

Ah yes, power tools. I have and have had many. Built furniture, gates, lots of things. First thing is safety: you always have to wear goggles. It may sound odd but in many cases it's better not to wear gloves because you lose so much feeling in gloves.

What tool(s) to buy and use first? I'm thinking a hand drill, probably battery powered. And drill bits and center punches (maybe 2-3 different sizes). It's fun and handy to use, and also pretty darned safe. Just be sure you know what is on the other side of the thing you're drilling into. If you're making a hole in a wall, for example, you might run into a pipe or electrical wiring. Or if you're drilling into a board, put a board on the other side that you don't care about so you don't ruin something underneath. Another handy tip: if you want to limit the depth of the hole, or keep track of how far the drill's gone into the wood, measure from the tip of the bit to the distance you want (like 1/2" for example) and wrap a small piece of masking tape around the bit with the edge of the tape marking that distance. Easy peezy.

What else? So many things! What will more likely happen is that as you work on your project(s) you'll find that you need another tool, so it might be better to wait for the project than buy many tools now. They are expensive.  

Remember: we learn from mistakes, so try to go slowly so you minimize the mistakes and their damage, but hey, that's how we learn. My dad used to always say, "Too soon stupid, too late smart," which is another way of saying that we learn from experience. That's life, my friend.

Emma

Dear Bree and Emma,

Think it's wonderful to see two women building/decorating together!  Had studied carpentry decades ago and I must confess I miss it.  Was very proud of my tools.  Always bought the best I could afford and took great care of them.

One of my favorite jobs was working in hardware/lumber stores (decades ago) and I learned so much from the pros and do - it- yourselfers!

Your friend,

Monica

I'm going to start banging my head on my desk in numb misery.  Researching good brands is painful, the reviews are HORRIBLY boring reads and I want to spork out my eyes.  How many things can anyone say about a power sander?  I did make a little progress despite the mindnumbing horror, found one that catches dust through the pad, so while I have no iillusions it will catch ALL the dust, minimizing as much as possible sounds good in theory.    Nikki and I are both a wee bit lazy on the manual labor part, and sanding down a whole kitchen by hand sounds...painful.

Right, don't wear gloves, because I won't be able to feel anything.  That is generally my experience with gloves of any kind.  I have a weird aversion to sleeves too, although I do force myself to deal in the winter.  So that is a great relief, thank you Emma!  We do have the power drill and a bunch of bits, but we need some sort of power sander for the kitchen and power saw for building the built in bookcase/shelving unit in the office and the folding craft table thing I found, we're sorta settling on a convertible guest room/craft room for the offsprings old room.  So when we have guest there is a place to put them, and when we don't it will function for his art/modeling and my scrapbooking/origami/whatever new thing I decide to try next.  And we plan to work very slowly.  Grandpa was a big proponent of checking and rechecking until you have what you are going to do in your head for sure, and testing it out (hence the weird dollhouse thought) to practice.   

I'm not entirely useless to Nikki in this, I got a B+ in woodshop and learned a lot growing up with Grandpa. But Nikki is definitely way more skilled and forepersonlike in this mess.  I'm sorta the idea/slave labor assitant! 

STill super excited about my art though.   I can't wait til he has time to paint it!

Hi Bree,

Well...

There is a variety of sanders - they are all specialized. Belt sanders are handy at times, and so are the orbital disk sanders. Most of the time if you're building shelving/cabinetry with new wood you don't really need a sander. For sanding off little places where you've filled in nail head holes with putty, hand sanding is fine.

Same thing for saws. Wow! I've had a radial arm saw (don't recommend it), a Skil saw (very handy), a full table saw (awesome and cool, but pricey), and a sliding mitre saw - also so great, especially for things like cutting molding for ceilings and floors. It might be best to buy a couple of good hand saws, one for finish sawing with fine teeth and one for cross cutting, with larger teeth. Sure they take more effort but then you'd gain a better understanding of what you want/need. After all it wasn't so long ago that no one had power tools!

BTW: if you need to strip paint, don't try to just sand it off. Use a paint stripper (that you can buy at Home Depot or Lowe's) and a scraper to remove most of it. Then you can sand it. But if you're hoping to strip it down to the bare wood for refinishing with something clear then, don't do it! You'll; never get all of the old paint off.  

Good luck,

Emma

We're not building anything new in the kitchen, we're painting over the ugly cabinetry and counters, and the tutorials require sanders.    It's a large sanding area, and Nikki has already informed me he's not doing an area that big for multiple times (you have to sand the entire area each coat of the cement) if we go the faux cement veneer by hand.  But all the brands look the same to me, none of them stand up and scream 'I"M QUALITY I"LL LAST!".  None of them even look that sturdily built, and I guess sometimes I live in my childhood and want to buy thing that will last for 30 years like grandpa did.  We're first sanding to rought up the counter to increase adhesion, then sanding for smoothness of what we put on it before we seal, not to strip anything.  The nifty thing is we found a diy one for painting the cabinets, no pre-sanding needed, just use chalk pant and it adheres fine, covers well, and the site did a two years follow up and it lasts.  SCORE!  And I can't really help sand thanks to carpal tunnel I picked up from years of retail and my insurance is unwilling to pay for surgery since Im mostly functional, just hurty on repetitive action things which I no longer do to make a living since the last 11 years I was working were in an office instead of the scanning/cooking tasks that caused it, so Nikki gets his way here.  And in the worst case zombie apocalypse scenario I can use it to be a zombies brain in. 

The saw is to build the built-in bookshelving and possible lock-in wood wall slats(light weight locking slats that just go on over your existing walls and we can easily fix the living room walls!) to cover the panel issue in the living room that will require a LOT of precision cutting thanks to some really unfortunate architectural choices in there..  And the craft table Nikki wants to build that folds up and is really small when we are using the spare room as a guest room.  Both of which will also require large scale sanding after finish apparently, in addition to the saw for him to cut all the pieces. It's a lot of wood cutting as I understand him tell it. 

Would it help if I pm'd you the links to some of the projects? 

Dear Bree and Emma,

May hire you girls to do my framing for my art.  Am amazed how expensive it is to get my art framed!  

I have never framed art, full confession I'm taking our photo to Hobby Lobby to get them to do it.    We have a really ridiculously expensive but ridiculously lovely black and white photo printed on photo board instead of paper that I need to get framed. 

This is htat art piece I fell hard for fyi.  https://www.etsy.com/listing/69376478/blue-beach-starfish-original-seascape?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=PageTools&utm_campaign=Share

I'm giving you props for going outside your comfort zone. I also share your taste in art. I'm blessed to live near the ocean.

​Thank you!  One of my personal beliefs in life is that you HAVE to go outside your comfort zone, it's the only way to expand it.    I grew up coastal in New Jersey, and clearly my decor convo here gives it away.   Nikki is less comfortable with the ocean, he grew up lakeside and far inland in western NY, but he takes me to an ocean once a year anyway either cruising, camping, or visiting my friends back in Jersey.  I will master this!

He even went to the stingray encounter with me, even though they freaked him out the first time.  That commercial for Carnival I think it was where the guy is saying how they are sorta like giant portabello mushrooms?  That's not inaccurate, they do have that look and structural feel, but it leaves out the sheer smooth softness of them to touch.  And if you follow the rules you can interact safely with them.  Let THEM do the touching.  In the Caribbean they have been fed by humans (their natural food, the people down there did it smart and didn't alter their food source to create any sort of dependency) in certain areas so long they will come to you and rub against you hoping you'll give them a shrimp tidbit.  They're amazing.  One of the females (you can tell by size, females of the common brown stingray species there are six to eight feet across, males are one to two) draped herself across my back like a cloak and just hung out there, it was an incredible moment. 

So since moving back to the beach is financially improbably at this time, I'm going to bring the beach to me me as much as I can in my home.   And the overlarge collection of turtles I have will look right in place!

I agree with you about the comport zone. That was a wonders story that you have. The only experience  I have with stingrays is while I was in various aquariums. 

I have funny story. At least to me, was the first I went sailing with my uncle. I was, think 7 or 8 at the time. Where he took me sailing around the bench, like a couple hundred feet offshore. We where supposed to be having a fun time. The thing was I terrorifed, looking back it was silly and I had no reason to be. The funny thing is that I have done a complete 360 and have become a professional mariner and licensed engineering officer. Needlessly to say, I got over that hang up, and wish that my uncle taught me how to sail when I got older. But he declined or I never asked and wanted to. Strangely it is one my favorite child memories and stories, even though I was terrorifed at the same.

First times can be scary, there doesn't need to be a reason beyond the brain being in a situation it's not prepared for and freaking out about it.  I nearly had a meltdown the first time I ever had to ride a bus (not a school bus, the kind with schedules and exact change) by myself.  I did at least end up where I meant to be, there's that.  But it FELT completely alien and scary to be there alone, especially being born in 72 and growing up with the constant reinforcement as a child every adult I didn't know wanted to cut me into pieces and as a teen that every dude would throw me in an alley and have at it.  Although those dangers were fare more present than quicksand, which tv of the time had us all believing was lurking in wait all over and it was rather surprising to realize it's not. 

I think the only 'first times' that don't scare me are things I'm already somewhat proficient in.  For example, the first time snorkeling.  There was tension about the mask, the feel was really strange, and breathing through the 'giant straw', but I've been swimming since I was around three, and unlike scuba could simple lift my head out of the water and right whatever had gone wrong, so it was mildly frustrating until I got the hang of mask and snorkel seals, but not scary.  Very very salty though, I drank a lotta seawater that first time.  Saw a turtle too, so it all balances out. 

I think it's easy to forget that we rationally think about the world in modern terms, but our brains do not.  Our unconscious and subconscious minds are still doing what they did thousands of years ago, they don't care about computers and safety drills and 911, they are still working out continued survival and utilizing the emotional responses to force our behavior in response to the world around us.  It's what they do.  A good example is the adrenaline rush when my avatar is in a video game and I fall off something (often, I'm always falling).  The visual abrupt downward motion triggers a reflex even though my body is sitting safely in a chair, because my brain perceives the motion and doesn't care the cognitive part is yelling "WE ARE IN A CHAIR".  And the best way to overcome that instinct response is to study it, examine it, and learn to recognize the difference between cognition and reaction (so not as simple as it sounds) so that we can choose vs. react.  Don't fall outta the chair by jumping in the above example, and then having to explain to Nikki why I'm on the floor.  Again.  As much as we can, there are hard limits to certain things such as imminent death that the brain is going to do what it wants to do.  It's all rather fascinating.  And wrinkly.  Brains are very very wrinkly, or something has gone horribly wrong.  And phobias.  Phobias are also scientifcally interesting, research supports the idea that they are hardwired survival instincts gone wrong.  It's why there are certain common phobias that we hear about a lot.  Once upon a time they were useful.  My personal phobia is one of the Big Five of ancient survival, snakes.  The other four being fire, water, heights, and bugs.  Those killed a lot of our ancestors. 

I'm done rambling now, I have to go save Nikki from behind the dryer.  He trapped himself fixing it.  *amused*