Cutting Board Follow Up and Super Secret Projects

“Nothing is work unless you’d rather be doing something else.”

-George Halas

There are few things more simple or beautiful than doing what you enjoy with the people you enjoy; to labor fruitfully in good company is a sweet, soul-gladdening thing. It’s good like a fat drug addict finding a burger smothered in queso and crack. It’s good like a deaf nerd receiving Spock ear transplants. It’s good like an unemployed narcoleptic finding an opening at the mattress factory. It’s good. And when that “good company” is your wife, it’s even better.

Patty and I got a little shop time last night to finish some projects and to start some new ones, all of which I’m excited about. We had a great time and a few laughs, and Kensli got an hour or two of high-quality grandparent time: win, win, win.

Cutting Board Cabinet

So first, as promised, I wanted to show you the finished cutting board cabinet in place at the house, along with a quick review of how it turned out.

Now that it’s in place with Patty’s help, we took a good look at it and asked ourselves if this project met the needs we set out to satisfy. We wanted to add some storage for cooking utensils, baking sheets, and odds and ends. The drawer and door and large top allow for lots of storage, so that column gets a check. We wanted it to be the same height and depth of the oven, and the depth turned out right on the money: it’s flush with the oven door. The height, however, is a few inches shy. When I started designing this in SketchUp back in March, I had planned it to be the same height by putting recessed feet at the bottom. However, now that we have it in place, I think it should stay just a little short; see Patty’s red utensil jar? If it were flush, there would be nothing to keep it or other items from sliding over to the burners, so a little barrier to keep things separated from super-hot coils is a good thing.

You can also see from the SketchUp model that I wanted this to have more shelves, but as I was putting it together, I had two really good pieces of advice. First, my grandpa said, “So you’re gonna bend all the way down there every time you’re looking for spices?” Since I’m fat and lazy, his words struck a chord in me, and I thought, “How about just one really high shelf?” I mean, who wants to burn more calories while you’re cooking? That defeats the whole purpose! So after I suggested it to Patty, she said it would be cool to have the single higher shelf and a larger opening at the bottom, that way we could magnetize the bottom part so Kensli could play with her magnet letters when she got bigger. Brilliant. And after some Pinteresting, we saw people attaching flat dollar-store baking sheets and using them as magnet boards: problem solved.

I kinda had an “Oh, crap” moment when Patty began filling the side shelf: it didn’t have enough space for anything – no cookbooks, no picture frames, nothing.  So here’s a contest for you readers: send me your ideas on how we could utilize this side space, and the best idea gets a grand prize! Like, the chance to come over and cook for us using the shiny new cutting board cabinet! And maybe a few first prizes where the winners can just bring food by and drop it off! No purchase necessary, void where prohibited.

Other Projects

In an effort to beef up my skills and go from handyman to handy superman, I’ve been really practicing my hand tool methods; I recently bought some very old and beat up hand planes at a used tool store in Lubbock and have been whipping them back into shape. I also got my hands on some new chisels, but since they’re very nice and took up some of my limited woodworking funds, I didn’t want to beat the heck out of them with a metal hammer. So with a little leftover maple and some immaturity, I put on my superhero costumes and whipped out this Thor-inspired hammer for my chisels. Pretty nifty if you like hand tools…and superheroes.

Top Secret - Don't Read This! 

Now it’s time for the big reveal of my super secret extra special project. If you’ve read past posts, my first real project was a Japanese-flavor shelf for Patty out of padouk and bird’s eye maple.

Well, our two year anniversary is next month, so I’ve been designing an Asian-inspired jewelry cabinet for my bride. This is my most ambitious and detailed project so far, and I’ve been designing and experimenting for over a month now, but I’m still juiced and nervous! Now I’ve got the materials, the plans, the drawings, and the fire in my belly to get to work. There are some secret details and seventeen herbs and spices that I can’t reveal now because I want to surprise Patty. But rest assured, once she gets it, I’ll share it here. Since this has a set completion date, I sincerely hope I can present you the final project by July 25^th…because our anniversary is the 24^th.

Here are some pics of the model I’ve been building. The two front doors will open out to reveal four small drawers for bracelets, earrings, and the like. The drawer fronts will be padouk, with the rest of the drawers and main cabinet carcass will be maple. The legs and door handles will be ebonized walnut (I look forward to posting on how that turns out!). Below is a shot of the rough-cut padouk and maple for one of the drawers.

Since my rapping career has really taken off, I feel obliged to deck my baby momma with jewels and bling, and now Patty can give her busted up hand-me-downs to Kim Kardashian or Princess Kate and keep her premium gems in this heirloom jewelry box! Where my shorties at?! Stay tuned for updates, and send in your ideas for the empty side of the cutting board cabinet!

Cutting Board Cabinet

They say that a man who works with his mind will Sabbath with his hands; if this is true, I’m making my request for a Sabbatical. I’ve had the woodworking DT’s, and I’m grinding my teeth in anticipation of some new projects! So after getting to spend some good shop time this week, I’m pumped to share some developments on some projects and hint at some upcoming ideas.

After finishing the vanity top and doors and drawers in our bathroom, Patty and I have reached a lull in our bathroom remodel while we are waiting for some back-ordered tile from a big box store.  The vanity has turned out well, and Patty’s ideas have proven, once again, to come together wonderfully (with the aid of a handsome handyman whose handiness is bested only by his handsomeness). It also afforded me a wonderful lesson in design and marital communication: I spent two weeks prepping, finishing and painting them,  and Patty said, “Don’t worry too much about them – I want to distress them.” If I’d have had a visceral understanding of “distressing,” this would have been a two-day project, because when I brought out the flawless, seamless doors, Patty took sandpaper, hammer, and stains and instantly undid 14 days of blood, sweat, and tears. I am happy to say that they look amazing and her motif for the bathroom is fleshing out beautifully, but I learned two important things:

1.       dis•tress[dih-stres] adj form “distressed” – indicitave of distress or hardship (i.e. having the crap beat out of it)

2.       Always, always, always ask, “Can you explain that a little more, honey?”

But after mounting them with hidden cup hinges, they match and function beautifully. Now it’s a waiting game for the backsplash before moving on to the tub.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to finish the oven-side cabinet that Patty and I decided to build to increase our kitchen storage that Kensli received as an instant inheritance. For the non-parents reading, babies are awesome, and I highly recommend marriage and parenthood, and in 60 years when Kensli is old enough to date and get married, I’m sure I’ll be pro-grandparenthood as well. But be prepared: they come with a house-full of accessories. So take every single hand-me-down you can get your hands on, because they outgrow each item in about 45 minutes, and then hand them down to the next friend or family member blessed enough to embark on this epic fiasco of love, beauty, and exhaustion!

In the last post, this cabinet had been put on hold, but when the bathroom remodel came to a standstill, I pounced on the chance to wipe the plumbing putty off my hands and head to the shop again. I cut the maple and walnut boards on the table saw into ¾” strips, then glued them together.  At 25” long and 17” wide, I had no easy way of flattening the top to final smoothness, so I had to come up with a manual recipe: one hand plane, two bulging biceps, and three gallons of sweat. When it was done and cut to final dimensions, here’s what it looked like:

A few coats of BLO (boiled linseed oil) later, it really started to pop! The maple that I used had a lot of ripple in it, and you can see a little of the wavy tiger-striped pattern in this picture; so I applied some oil, let it dry, then sanded it all again, only to add another coat of oil. This is called “popping the grain,” and it makes a dramatic difference in coloration on the maple as the oil is pulled down into deeper layers or wavy grain. Here’s the oiled close-up (please ignore the leopard print table top...my sister has her salon cabinets in the way of my woodshop; so as her punishment, she gets a sprinkling of glue and oil!):

I then glued it down to the top of the cabinet, and with a jigsaw and pattern bit on my router, traced the curved shape of the cabinet top. The curve made a really cool effect as it made the profile seem to have differing widths of the two species (seen in the photo below). After rounding over the top edge and finishing with about five coats of a homemade wipe-on finish, this is what we’ve got so far:

I’ve got one more coat of paint to apply to the cabinet and some final touch-ups before I bring it home, and hopefully next week we can add some pics of it in place in the kitchen! I'd love to hear some thoughts, suggestions, and ideas on this project!

Looking forward, I’d like to post some photos and updates of the bathroom vanity, mention a little shop project or two, maybe even some baby pics. At the risk of spoiling a super secret surprise, Patty and I have our second anniversary next month, and I’ve been racking my brain for a couple of months on what I can do, and I’ve settled on a project and drawn out some models on Google Sketchup. Maybe we’ll talk about that next week…maybe.

Stay posted! Find the glory in the mundane, and the beauty of the Creator in the created.

New Projects and New Dad Top 10

     Logically, the shortest distance between two points is a line, but with the birth of our first baby 5 weeks ago, our “line” has been anything but straight and predictable – and I’m loving every inch of it! The frequency of my posts has suffered greatly as Patty and I progressed through pregnancy and the birth of Kensli Raye Kuriyama, our first baby, and it probably won’t change soon! Therefore, I wanted to summarize the recent work I’ve done in the shop (recent = since around December), and to give a quick rundown of the Top 10 awesomest things I’ve learned in 5 weeks of being a new father in regards to woodworking.

     Here is the final product of the changing table that I built for Kensli. As I said in earlier posts, Patty wanted something that would serve as more than a poop catcher as Kensli grows up and learns how to either use the “potty” or change her own diapers, like I had to back in the day when I was walking uphill both ways to school. Ignore the fact that this would mean I was still in diapers when I was old enough to walk to school.

     After the changing table, as Kensli’s due date came ever closer, I scrambled to help Patty prepare the nursery. My sister graciously loaned us the crib her son has long since outgrown, but it was in storage and the finish was in pretty bad shape, covered in dings and gouges and scratches. Had I known that I would be restoring this crib, I would’ve been much more gentle when I helped her move it years ago: c’est la vie, eh? So, in the cold of winter, I began restoring this crib, which was finished in a deep cherry. However, when I began to strip the old finish, I found that it was a printed laminate covering some Douglas fir – still beautiful and select, but definitely not cherry. Here’s a pic of me restaining a top rail and the crib all finished and decorated in the nursery. By the way – if you’re looking to cultivate the virtue of patience and endurance, try refinishing furniture.

      I made a couple of jigs for my shop to help me make the most of my very beginner-level tools and equipment, and I also made a couple of simple storage racks to store things like my chisels and planes, using them as a chance to learn and brush up on some techniques. For instance, I am now an expert at scraping wood glue out of my fingernails – they don’t teach you that in shop class!!!

     I learned that when you have a baby, you acquire related items that fill roughly 60% of the livable space in your house (+/- 3% depending on your square footage). Our kitchen was the first thing to be overrun with “associated sundries” like bottles, formula, sanitizers, bottle warmers, bottle drying racks, etc., so I looked for a creative and attractive storage solution. Our pantry and our pot/pan cabinet are grossly inefficient for storage, so Patty and I came up with a stove-side cabinet idea. Since the stove/oven is close to the entry into the kitchen, we needed it to be slender, but wanted it as high and deep as the stovetop, which worked perfectly as a place to stash baking pans, cookie sheets, and the like. So I made a large door on the front to store sheets, made a place for a little drawer on top for cooking utensils, and the side will have a few shelves for storing spices, EVOO, etc. We will paint it white to match our current kitchen cabinets, but we were unable to match our countertops for something that small, so we thought “Hey, a cutter board on top would be cool and handy!” So I’m making a two-species butcher block hardwood top for this cabinet in contrasting woods (curly maple and walnut, seen below).

     I’m pumped about this, but it’s been put on hold because we’ve undertaken a new, more pressing project: we’ve embarked on a bathroom remodel, in which we plan to do 100% of the work, utilizing Patty’s taste and flair for design and my ability to redneck-ify even the simplest task. Here’s a picture of Patty’s ideas for the cabinet doors and vanity drawers: I’ve made the doors, attached a beaded hardboard front and framed it in flat 3 x 1 trim, which we’ll sand and paint. Hopefully, if all goes well, it will have a wainscoted look and (fingers crossed) will appear to be uniform – the trouble is ensuring that the lines in the beadboard match between the drawers on top of each other, an issue I didn’t think about until I’d made the 6 largest doors.

The items we picked for the remodel were all found at Lowe’s, expertly chosen by my personal interior decorator/wife/baby momma. We chose the Capri Rust tile for floor and shower surround, American Standard Estate bronze faucets for vanity and tub, and pewter panels for the backsplash, as well as oiled bronze square knobs for the door and drawer hardware. Here are some snapshots below. I’d like to get some before, during, and after pics of this big project to post as we slowly progress, as well as any tips/tricks/”whatever you do, don’t do this!” lessons that we learn along the way!

     And now, without further ado, I present the Top 10 Awesome Things About Being a Woodworking New Dad!

10.          Prepare for an onslaught of project ideas! From decorative to functional, you’ll have 1001 new needs to meet and moments to celebrate – keep a notebook or file where you can jot down or sketch new ideas for when your kids are 30 and you actually have time and money to do them. Obviously, by that time, you won’t need them because your kids will be grown, but build them and give them to younger new parents who have no clue what they’re getting themselves into!

9.            Your underappreciated work and artistry suddenly becomes precious and desirable! Wives, parents, grandparents, and other loved ones which once thought “There he goes again to play with sharp tools and make a mess” will now see your new baby-related work and say “Awwww! Make me one, too!” Some call this pandering to the audience; I call it increasing demand for sub-par woodwork!

8.            You’ve got new reasons to learn new skills and techniques! One of the most awesome things about a hobby like this is that there is always room for improvement and growth! So use this growth of your family as a chance to grow your woodworking techniques. Never made frames? Start making cool frames and shadow boxes to brush up your mitering and measuring skills! Are you a bandsaw or scrollsaw novice? There’s nothing like building toys like rocking horses and puzzles to make you a master curve-cutter!

7.            You finally have a semi-unselfish reason to ask for permission to buy more tools! Repeat after me: “Honey, I really want to make a <random project> for our beautiful baby to enjoy and someday pass on to our grandchildren! The only problem is that I don’t have a <random tool>.” If she responds, “Why don’t you use the <random tool> that you bought for the last <random project>?”  just hang your head, shrug your shoulders, look lovingly at your new baby, and sadly say, “Yeah, you’re right honey. I just don’t want to give <random baby name> anything less than my very best.” Blam! Here’s your shiny new <random tool>! You’re welcome.

6.            You’ve got new chances for profit! Ever been to a baby store with a pregnant woman registering for a shower? They have 8 trillion items in stock, but only 3 of them are geared towards dads. In business school, we call this “opportunity”! Ever seen those gaudy, unflattering, unmasculine paisley-covered baby carriers for dads? Pfft! Scoff! Sneer! No thank you, I’d rather exhaust my arms! But what if a guy started making padded mahogany baby boxes that strap to my chest like this tastefully doctored photo? Yes, please! Inlaid wenge diaper box on wheels? I’ll take two!

5.            Children make the biggest fans! Show another woodworker your work and he’ll start evaluating: checking joints, looking for blemishes and uneven finish, etc. But kids don’t know any better! How awesome is that?! If dad made it, it’s an instant classic. Take advantage of this, because once they’ve got about a decade of life under their belt, you begin to be more and more of an idiot in their eyes. But until then, they’ll eat up every chair, horse, tea table, and toy chest that you make just for them. My 5-week old daughter just tweeted how much she loves the tiny picture frame I made for her sonogram.

4.            Your work takes on new significance! When I became a father, I began looking further and further ahead: days in the park, camping trips, counting stars laying on the trampoline, vacations, recitals, and the like. Likewise, I began looking at my woodworking with the next generation or two in mind, compelling me to look at my projects with longevity as the goal. Clean lines, solid joinery, and extra attention to detail have begun to push my mindset from “hobbyist” to “artist.” And though I’m not there yet, the focus on quality will progressively develop my skills to match.

3.            Your 9-month investment just birthed you a free shop helper! While there is a great deal of sharp, heavy, fast-moving equipment in the woodshop that is definitely not kid-safe (or for some adults, just to be fair), there are also a lot of really cool projects that you can get your little niño to help you with as they grow up! With a little help, using hand tools and materials you cut while they were safely out of the shop can make for some really fun and really important times with your kids that they’ll remember forever! I still smile when I think about times my dad would invite me out to the garage to “help” with something; though I probably made more work for him and ensured that nothing was accomplished that day, I got to see my father’s heart and learn so many things about life and love out there in the garage. I want to do the same for my little ones!

2.            Collaboration is awesome! My wife is very creative and artistic, which means that any project that we partner on becomes instantly cooler and more appealing to many more people. For instance, the Scripture inscribed around the border of my changing table was totally Patty’s idea! I am planning on making a rocking giraffe for Kensli when we finish our remodeling, and Patty suggested that instead of staining or painting the giraffe-skin pattern, we use glued-on fabric patches for the pattern. How cool is that? You could sell something like that, which could fund more tools, equipment and supplies – “win, win, win!” It also brings you and your wife closer and makes you a creative team, rather than solo artists! Throw another “win” in there!

1.            Woodworking can become less of a hobby and more of a craft! God gave Adam the task of cultivation, of tending the garden and all of its inhabitants; while all the area around the garden was wilderness, here was a place where cultivation (creation + dominion = cultivation) flourished, and so did everything that lived there. The earth bore fruit, the wolf and the lamb laid down in the shade side by side, and Adam and Eve delighted in all that God had made as they walked with Him daily. And though our sin broke everything, Christ has come to reconcile all things back to the Father, and we get to see a little glimpse of that in woodworking: the beauty of the things that God has made by His hand, and the work and skill we apply to it (also given by His hand) creating together something beautiful to lay at the feet of Him who redeemed us and brought peace again between Creator and created.

The Changing Table - Laboring

As my impending fatherhood comes very near to fruition, and as my daughter Kensli beats up my wife from the inside, I can’t help but think of Romans 8:22-23:

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

I started this changing table back in late August, just a couple of months after we found out that Patty was expecting (I started to say “we were expecting,” but there are some mothers who have pointed out to me that there is no “we” in pregnancy. I beg to differ: conception is definitely a team effort. TMI, right?). Patty was getting back into the swing of school and people left and right were ooing and ahhing at the prospect of babies and pastels and soft fabrics; you can come see our nursery if you have no idea what I’m talking about. However, for me, the idea that we had just taken part in God breathing life into another human being still wasn’t “real” to me…it blew my mind. Eve’s postpartum words “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD” hadn’t sunk in yet, so I set out on a project to solidify in my mind the reality that it is no longer “Patty and I,” but “my family.”

As I started designing and planning the changing table, all of my thoughts were on the end result and the images of the beautiful heirloom piece that I had envisioned. I thought of the eye-catching beauty of a wood I was unfamiliar with, of the guests walking by and seeing it and leaving our house saying, “Truly, I never knew beauty and elegance and majestic craftsmanship until I saw your poop-cleaning table!” I thought of Kensli’s husband and I moving this table into their nursery one day as we prepared for their first child. Then I started drawing and cutting the boards, and the visions started to blur.

As I started measuring and marking, making initial cuts with my very entry-level tools and equipment, I soon realized that this wasn’t going to be easy: some bad cuts and poor planning soon turned this vision of grandeur into a pain in the butt…and I stopped working on the project for 3 months.

Come December, Patty began decorating trees and wreaths and warm, cozy smelling candles, and as she decorated the Christmas tree she put up the ornament of our first Christmas together and gave me that sideways glance and a smile. She chuckled and said, “Next year, the ornaments are going to have to be a lot higher on the tree!” and I was sold. Again, the vision of what was to come filled me with vigor and resolve, and I soon headed back out to the shop.

Though the wood had yellowed from sitting unprotected so long, a few hours of sanding peeled back the raw beauty of potential, the promise of “what could be” that I find so captivating in woodworking. Though my tools had gathered dust on the shelves, a little sharpening, a few drops of oil, and a jolt of electricity brought them back to life, and I set my hands to the task once more. Nearly every day throughout December, I spent late nights out in the shop, meticulously shaping the table into what I had pictured in the beginning, seeing each board, each joint, each grain pattern against a background of the life and love that this table would witness.

In that light, I wanted something that would bring some significance and timeless "weight" to this project; man is but a breath, but the word of the Lord endures forever. So, I cut and moulded some planks and had Proverbs 31:28-29 engraved, then stained around them (check out your bible or go to biblegateway.com). You can see the table top below as I started to join the engraved border, making a nice backdrop and fence for the changing pad.

 And through my laboring, God began, again, to work on my heart:

The runner races with the finish line as his aim. The farmer sows with the harvest as his reward. The mother labors with her child as her prize. And the Christian daily dies with forever Life as his joy. In God’s story of redemption, there are some epic, cosmic, eternity-shaping exchanges, like Christ exchanging His glory for our shame and God exchanging our shame for Christ’s glory. Christ also said that if we would come after Him, we must lay our lives down here, so that we can pick them up again forever. It is death here, and life everafter; we can also make the opposite exchange, choosing life here for death everafter. But when Christ comes to dwell in us, He begins to open our eyes to see the surpassing joy set before us that outshines every gain and loss here in this life. This is why Paul can say in Philippians that to keep on living is Christ to him and to die at that moment is gain – if you kill me, I’ll be with Christ. If you let me live, I’ll run with the gospel of Christ. If you imprison me, I’ll witness to the guards. Bring what you may – my greatest treasure is unshakable because it is Christ Himself, and since you can’t take from me what I treasure most, I have nothing to lose! Go ahead, take my cobwebs and my crumbs, because my gold will never depart from me!

That’s having a vision of what is to come; that’s laboring for what will be, though it is not yet here. It is our prize, Christ Himself, that we fix our eyes on as we labor toward Him day by day, helped by His Spirit every step of the way. “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1-2

The Changing Table - Cultivation

It’s been a very long time since I’ve written for this blog, and there’s a few good reasons: for one, I felt awkward “chronicling” the story of my stupidity and my flight away from God. I understand that it is not primarily the story of a stupid young man, but the story of a great and gracious God pursuing and rescuing a stupid young man; if my shame brings glory to the name of Christ and hope to other stupid young men, then, as David said, “I will make myself yet more contemptible than this!” The second reason for the long silence is the beautiful distraction of thrilled and terrified preparations to welcome my daughter, my first child, into the world. In retrospect, the things we’ve been busy doing in readying our family for its third member haven’t really taken up that much time over seven and a half months; but like streaks of sunlight bursting through clouds, the anticipation has outshone most other thoughts and happily burned my eyes so that whatever else I look at, I see flashes and outlines of my impending fatherhood…and it makes me smile. The third reason is directly related to the second: since Patty and I are about to embark on the most beautiful, difficult, and ambitious journey we’ve ever known, I decided to embark on a smaller one, made of wood - I’ve been building a changing table for Kensli Raye Kuriyama.

Deciding what to build first for Kensli was pretty easy: she’s not going to be able to play with a rocking horse until she’s older, giving me time to build one. She’s not going to have mountains of toys for a little while, so I’ve got time to build a toy chest. She’s not going to be Houdini, so I didn’t want to “practice” my novice furniture-making skills on someone so fragile by building a crib/death trap. So my wife, ever the defender of children, lovingly suggested I build something that could not endanger our daughter:  “How about a changing table?” Brilliant! There’s only three things I have to accomplish with a changing table:

1. Hold up an eight-pound baby

2. Don’t give her tetanus

3. Make it semi-attractive enough that I don’t immediately depreciate the value of our home.

I psyched myself up, confident that I could meet the standards; if not, then two out of three ain’t bad! We thought that, hopefully, our children won’t be in diapers forever, so we wondered what we could do with the changing table then? Patty didn’t find it very funny that by the time our children will be done with the changing table, I’ll probably be back in diapers and will need the table myself. So we compromised on a changing table/dresser; I drew up a simple plan, drew out measurements, and started shopping for wood. For this I decided to use aspen, with which I’ve never worked or really even seen in lumber form. I’ve only seen either the trees or aspen wood shavings, but I found edge-glued panels at Lowe’s that I thought would make it interesting. As you can see from this picture of an aspen sauna room that I robbed from the internet, aspen is a pretty soft white wood that kind of handles like pine, but has far fewer knots and a much more even grain. In fact, I thought at the onset that this aspen was pretty plain.

However, after I had prepped some tester pieces of the aspen and started to apply some stain (Patty wanted something darker to go with the rest of the nursery furniture) I was blown away by what the stain unlocked! Here is a picture of the bottom of the top of the table after I stained it the first time after I routed the channels (I believe they’re called “dadoes”) for the sides, back, and center panels.

You can see how the grain really popped! I had no idea how much figure was in this wood, how much character and shape and rhythm it had, just waiting for something to reveal it! Yup, I feel some analogies coming on!

I’ve been called many things: an idiot, a genius, the world’s most handsome man, “that guy from Ace of Cakes,” etc. One thing I’ve never been accused of is patience, stick-to-it-iveness, or having attention to detail (or a healthy BMI, for that matter). That’s why I find it so odd that I enjoy woodworking so much: you have room to slip up a little in carpentry, politics, and neurosurgery – but not in woodworking. And there is no task in woodworking more painstaking and monotonous than sanding. Through hours of hand-numbing work, your task is to remove every blemish on the surface of the wood, to lay low what is high and bring high what is low, to transform splinter into splendor. It is sweat and strain applied to what the wood is for the sake of what the wood can become. It takes something of a dreamer to be a woodworker – someone who, for the sake of what will be, begins and endures through what is. Immediately, my thoughts turn to our sanctification, of our transformation “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18), how Paul implores us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). There are two agents in our transformation: God, through His Spirit, and us, as we work with the Spirit step-by-step toward Christ. For instance, a good farmer can labor long and hard each day, but he knows that he is dependent on God to make the clouds rain, the sun shine, and the seed grow. A good farmer prays for rain and sunshine, but he also gets up every day and hoes weeds. This is our partnership.

But there is another partnership that has also become beautiful to me while I’ve been working on this table: cultivation. In Genesis 1, as God is finishing His last day of creating all things, He makes Adam and Eve and gives them this charge: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (v. 28). God sets mankind in the middle of a garden, which is in the middle of chaos. What’s the difference between a garden and wilderness? Cultivation. Cultivation is man making good things out of what God made and called “good.” Creation + Dominion = Cultivation. The Bible begins with a garden filled with God’s presence and ends with a city filled with God’s presence; so how do you get from a garden to a city? Cultivation. Agriculture, industry, commerce, art: these are not inventions of man but outflowings of the imago Dei, the image of God in which we are made (“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. And let them have dominion” (Genesis 1:26). These sections in Genesis are what theologians call the “Cultural Mandate,” the first command from God in which He said to us (paraphrased, of course), “I’ve made a big world and made it good, and in the middle of it I’ve cultivated a garden. Go and do likewise with the rest of the world. And have babies, because you’re going to need the help.” And this isn’t the only time that this topic comes up in Scripture: David glorified God for the tasks He’s given us in Psalm 8 (“Yet You have made him [man] a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet” [vs.5-6]). In the New Testament, Paul speaks several times about how and why we work, like in Colossians 3:23 (“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men”) and 2 Thessalonians 3:12 (“Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.”). Psalms and Proverbs are replete with references to hard work and bearing fruit and earning a wage and a living, along with a plethora of praises to God for the works of His hands. This is God’s likeness and image in us, that we also enjoy creating, building, designing, crafting, improving, beautifying. This is a good and gracious thing when done in the glory and delight of the Father!  

And this is why I love sanding and staining: in this process, I see the work of God’s hand in the wood and the work of my hands in the preparation, and see them explode in beauty, a dance between Creator and creation – God inviting me to work and play.