Shop time...finally...

Hi Everyone!  Happy Friday!  I hope you had a good week.  I know I had a productive one.  I wanted to share with you a little of what's been going on in my shop.  The weather finally turned around making it bearable to work out in the shop this last weekend and this week.  And since I'm behind because of the heat wave we had, I've spent most nights after work out in the shop until 9 or 10 pm, trying to get caught up.  I have two craft fairs coming up and I'm not as ready as I would have liked to have been by this point.  The first is the Essex Labor Day Market on Monday, September 5th and the second one is the Red Oak Craft Fair on Saturday, September 17th.  I haven't been to the second one before and normally I like to have at least a couple of weekends in between shows, but this year I only have one weekend in between which doesn't leave much time to replace inventory.  So that's why I'm building and building and haven't stopped to paint anything, yet.

So this is what the shop looked liked this morning before I left for work.  I have three completely built benches and two that are almost done.  And then that box (top right hand corner) is a storage coffee table/storage bench that is built except for the top.  I will post about each of these soon.

This bench I started Tuesday afternoon and finished everything except the seat/top of the storage, last night.

This one I started on Sunday afternoon.  I had cut almost all the wood when the sun came out and heated up the shop (it has a metal roof and gets pretty warm).  So I packed up all the pieces and moved the building party into my living room so I could keep building.  The dogs weren't too happy, but I sure was more comfortable!  Then I moved it back out on Tuesday and finished it up in the shop.  I still have to make the seat/storage top.  And I can't decide if I'm going to make it or buy a sheet of plywood for all three of the storage benches that still need a top.  I'm going to need to inventory my lumber and see if I have enough to make them or if I need to spend a little money to get some plywood. 

Hopefully this weekend is just as productive as last weekend now that our summer visitors have gone home and my mom is finally feeling better.  One of the benches in the first photo is for a client that called me last Saturday and ordered it.  I of course didn't tell her I was in the middle of making things for two craft fairs, so I slipped it into the workday on Sunday and Monday evening and I'll be painting it this weekend.  So more to come.  Well, take care and have a great weekend!