It’s been a while since I posted about one of my husband John’s woodworking projects.

I set up a website/blog for him for his Mighty Moe Creations – but I never got the posts from my tierneycreates blog on his woodworking transferred over so it is not really a functioning blog yet.

So for now I will continue to share his crafts on my blog 🙂

John was tired of his desk which he bought used like 15 years ago from a neighbor:

He wanted a smaller profile “Mission” style desk and found images like this one on line to inspire him:

With no formal project plans or any instructions, John figured out how to build himself a desk. First he had to learn a new skill – using little dowels for joining the railing on the side pieces of his desk:

He was pretty proud of himself for making it through that which was the most challenging part of the build.

From there he went on to build the rest of the desk:

Then stain and polyurethane it:

And finally to add era/style specific handles to the drawers that he had to special order:

Here is John very happy at his new desk!

Now he plans to build a coordinating station for his printer with an attached 2-drawer file cabinet.

(In case you are wondering what the sign behind John in his bar “Pog Mo Thoin” means, it is Gaelic for “Kiss My Arse” – we picked it up in 2022 while in Ireland. John’s nickname is “Moe” and so he got a kick out of the sign!)

From the Woodshop

From the Woodshop: Adding an Outfeed Table

March 12, 2024March 12, 2024 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

It’s been a while since I’ve shared what my husband John has been working on in his woodshop in our basement.

Recently he finished an Outfeed Table to butt up against his Table Saw. According to Fine Woodworking: “A good outfeed table is essential for safe woodworking, because it allows you to control the workpiece as it moves past the blade and off the back of the table saw. Without it, you’ll have to push down hard on the back of long boards, which makes it difficult to guide them safely past the blade.”

That sounds like a good idea! I want John to keep all this fingers so anything that makes woodworking safer I support 🙂

So John watched a bunch of YouTube videos and then set about designing an Outfeed Table that worked for him and his small woodshop.

He laminated the top of the Outfeed Table to make it easier for the wood to glide on it. It was his first time laminating and it seemed a little scary but we watched YouTube videos together (I provided moral support) and it was easier than he thought it would be!

The final stage was to add “bench dog holes” that allow you to clamp pieces on the Outfeed Table while woodworking. He used a special template to do this and he was pleased with the results:

It looks a little messy because this is the woodshop in use – I forgot to take photos when he first made the holes.

Speaking of the “woodshop in use”, John has been teaching his eldest son to woodwork starting with making cutting boards. They get together once to twice a week afterwork and on Sunday afternoons. They’ve made a lot of cutting boards so far including a 3D cutting board.

It’s been a great father-son bonding time!

They’ve also been working on a serving tray to replace an old store bought serving tray that is on its last leg.

They have another side to add and then handles.

And they’ve started their first big project together: a new entertainment console for the basement movie area. So far they’ve made the top of the piece.

It’s going to have a Scandinavian furniture flare, like our bedroom dresser that John made a couple years ago:

(see post Out of town guests? Put them to work!)

So that’s the update on John and his woodshop!

(By the way, someday John will be selling his cutting boards online through his shop Mighty Moe Creations, we just have to figure out what platform that will be besides Etsy.)

From the Woodshop

From the Woodshop: Mudroom Complete!

September 25, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Our mudroom (please see link if you are outside the U.S. and unfamiliar with this term), was fairly generic – a place to do our laundry, use the utility sink, store some shoes, and to hang clothes as they dried. It had generic white metal racks from a home improvement store.

It is the way you enter our home from the garage and the first area of our home visitors might see if we bring them in through the garage (i.e. if we pick them up from the airport in our car, etc.)

John decided to make our mudroom a lot more interesting by building storage and adding convenience items.

The first thing he made was a topper for our washers and dryer to make laundry easier to fold (see post Never Bored When Making Boards (From the Woodshop)):

This was a “game changer” when it came to laundry folding!

Next he made a bench with shoe storage so when entering or leaving the mudroom you had a convenient place to deal with your shoes (see post From the Woodshop: A New Bench and Beginning of the Mudroom Remodel):

You can see a little of the white metal shelving we had before and the hideous brown old storage unit to the right that we had.

After the bench was complete, he worked over the past 6 months (sporadically), to complete the rest of the mudroom storage build out. Here are some photos of John’s work in progress:

And Mike the Miniature Schnauzer had many trips to the home improvement stores to get supplies!

Mike loves being in his box riding around in a shopping cart!

And finally here is the completed mudroom!

Definitely worth the wait!

John designed the entire storage piece himself not using any formal plans, just inspiration from images online and YouTube videos!

From the Woodshop

From the Woodshop: Mighty Moe Creations

April 22, 2023April 22, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

My husband John is a self-taught woodworker (so many YouTube videos watched) as many of you know. I’ve featured some of his projects on my blog post category: From the Woodshop.

Recently he decided to take on some commissions and make a little money on the side with his woodworking. We figured he needed a business name and we came up with Mighty Moe Creations, as his nickname is “Moe” (a childhood nickname adapted from his middle name which he used as his first name when he was younger).

He wanted to have a wood branding iron to burn/emboss his name on wood items he creates and so we created a logo for Mighty Moe Creations using Canva:

I am new to using Canva but I was proud of myself of being able to draft a logo which he and I finalized.

Earlier this week the branding iron he ordered came in the mail and he has been practicing branding scrap wood until he perfects his technique and is ready to brand pieces he makes.

We were pleased how crisp the image comes out from the branding iron compared to the original logo we created and sent to the company that makes wood branding irons!

John’s been busy working on his commission piece in his workshop, a large 3D looking custom serving tray similar to the one in this post – From the Woodshop: Tray for our Ottoman.

John’s studio/woodshop in our basement is a “hot mess” right now but he’s making progress on his commission:

I can’t wait to see the finished commission with his new logo branded onto it!

Oh and here is Mike the Miniature Schnauzer peeking into the woodshop (he is never allowed inside the shop as we are worried about wood splinters getting into his paws) to see what his humans are up to!

From the Woodshop, Studio

From the Woodshop: Some Additions to My Studio

February 24, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

John, my resident woodworker, was working on a remodel of our mudroom/laundry room beginning with a new bench (see post From the Woodshop: A New Bench and Beginning of the Mudroom Remodel ) but he is waiting on a new toy (a track saw) before he starts on the next part, the broom closet.

So he’s kept himself busy on the weekends instead with a couple projects for my quilting studio.

NEW EXTENSION TABLE

First he replaced the small plastic extension table with a pine slab on top that I was using next to my sewing/crafting table, with an actual table:

Here is Mike the Miniature Schnauzer checking out the new table:

The table has the schnauzer-stamp-of-approval!

Mike reviews the quality of John’s work (ha!) when he isn’t napping under the cutting table in the center of my studio:

Hopefully you can spot Mike somewhere in the schnauzer pillow…

MINI FRIDGE STAND

In the post The Horizontal Diaries, February 8, 2023, I shared that John had set up a breakfast station in the upstairs guest room when I was spend a lot of time resting (being “horizontal”) with my left leg elevated after breaking my ankle and having surgery.

Well I am spending less time horizontal these days and more time up and about; and I returned to coming downstairs for breakfast each morning. So we decided to move the small refrigerator (or “mini fridge”) out of the guest room and into my studio!

John built a stand for it and now I have a drink and tea area in my quilting studio:

I think John is encouraging me to spend as much time creating in the studio I can with beverages and snacks…

DECORATIVE STORAGE

When John was first teaching himself (via books and YouTube videos) on how to make drawers, he made a lot of practice boxes to start. He recently repurposed a couple of those practice boxes as some additional storage for my studio:

I think we’ve run out of projects for my studio for now, so John is probably going to return to making cutting boards (see post Never Bored When Making Boards (From the Woodshop) ) until his track saw shows up!

From the Woodshop

From the Woodshop: A New Bench and Beginning of the Mudroom Remodel

February 9, 2023February 9, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

John’s been up to it again in his workshop, this time making the bench/shoe storage that is Stage 1 of the long awaited MUDROOM REMODEL.

When you enter our home from the garage you enter immediately into the laundry room which is allegedly supposed to be also like a “mudroom” where you could take off your shoes, etc. But ours instead has sort of been a “hot mess”room.

John did try and spruce up the laundry room/mudroom by building a topper/board for the washer and dryer a couple months ago (see post Never Bored When Making Boards (From the Woodshop)), as well as putting in a shelf above them. But still when you first walk into the area from the garage there is no place to sit and take off your shoes…plus it is kind of messy and cluttered there with Mike the Miniature Schnauzer’s dog food, our reusable bag collection, clothes that are hanging dry, and various random crap.

John’s been wanting to turn the laundry into a real mudroom/laundry room for a long time (and no longer dread whenever we need to bring in people through the garage into the house); and he decided the best way to start was to make the mudroom in a modular fashion – beginning first with a bench that you can sit on and take off your shoes.

Here is the bench in progress in his workshop and then in the garage being stained (John designed the bench without formal plans/pattern from watching YouTube videos and looking at online ideas for benches!):

And here is the completed bench in place in the (someday to be) mudroom/laundry room and John happy with his handiwork:

Next he will be working on building a “broom closet” to store the brooms, mops, and vacuum cleaner, as well as some cleaning supplies.

From the Woodshop

From the Woodshop: Getting Control of “Spicetopia”

July 9, 2022 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

My partner John and I enjoy cooking and trying new recipes. As a result we have a large collection of spices in our kitchen. We call our collection of spices “Spicetopia”.

Lots of spices, however the “organization” (= none) of our spices was not working to find the spices we needed in an efficient manner (like under 10 minutes, ha!).

Exhibit A – the state of the cabinet where “Spicetopia” was stored:

John is a woodworker and figured he could come up with a simple solution to organizing the spices but every option we discussed still gave us a cluttered or semi-cluttered cabinet.

Then we thought: what about putting the spices in an entirely different area – in a drawer!

So a couple Fridays ago, we began with purging and consolidating our spices. Why organize stuff that is expired or that we never use?

Yes, we had cocktails while purging spices, it was our wild Friday night!

After seeing what was left to find a new home for in a drawer, we purged one of our kitchen drawers and consolidated our cooking utensils (sorry no photos of this exciting event, ha!).

Then John built drawer organizers which were a series of slopped risers for the spices, out of scrap wood:

Slightly raised and ready to hold some spices!

And here is our new “Spicetopia” drawer:

Oh look, I can now easily find/identify our spices in “Spicetopia”

We put the spices in alphabetical order for even more ease of use! We did get challenged with things like “Cayenne Pepper”, “Black Pepper” and “Red Pepper” – do you file them under “P” for Pepper or their first name?!?!? But we figured out these complex life decisions…

And here is the cabinet without all those spices cluttering it (we also did some purging and organization of the entire cabinet):

John and I are weird, we find organizing our kitchen a fun thing to do on a Friday evening!

From the Woodshop

From the Woodshop: No “Lazy” in the Making of a Lazy Susan

December 22, 2021November 15, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

I was going to post about my Etsy shop but I thought I would share what my woodworking partner has been up to instead.

Yesterday my partner John and I met up with our friends for dinner and gave them a handmade Lazy Susan for Christmas!

Sometime earlier this year (2021 is a blur for me) they mentioned they’ve been struggling to find a Lazy Susan for their large round table for quite a while. They have 3 kids and passing things about the table at dinner can get quite tedious.

My partner John, whose hobby is woodworking, never made a Lazy Susan before, felt he should put himself up to the challenge of making his first Lazy Susan and gift it to them for Christmas!

The first one he made came out 26 inches in diameter and he was not completely pleased with it as there were tiny mistakes (ones I did not even notice), and we decided to keep it for our table:

The Lazy Susan is his own original design. So not only did he make his first Lazy Susan but he did not use a published pattern, he just created the design and his own pattern!

For his next Lazy Susan, he made it 29 inches in diameter which was a better size for our friends’ large round table.

Here are some images from the creation of the second Lazy Susan:

Here are photos of the completed Lazy Susan (it is so beautiful in person, he did an amazing job with sanding the piece and finishing it off with layers and layers of a bees wax protectant):

From the Woodshop

Out of town guests? Put them to work!

May 6, 2021June 6, 2021 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

You can’t have your guest visiting from out of town just hanging out at your house and relaxing. And you absolutely do not want them expecting you to take them sight-seeing or anything like that while they visit!

Instead, you need to put them to work on home remodeling projects! (smile)

April was a busy month. Besides visiting Orlando, Florida (see post Oh Orlando), we also had two sets of out of town guests visiting.

The first set of guests (Marla Jo and Jason) we used to help build a new dresser for our master bedroom. Actually Jason and my partner John worked on the dresser while Marla Jo and I sat around and binge watched television shows, snacked and chatted (yes, that was exhausting work!)

No we don’t just invite people to visit us and then use them for home projects. Jason is very handy (he does amazing builds and remodels) and enjoys working on projects. Also he wanted to learn how to make drawers and John has become very good at making drawers over the past year.

Here are photos from Jason and John working on our new dresser:

The boys had fun playing in John’s workshop in our basement:

Mike the Miniature Schnauzer grew impatient as his Jason (Marla Jo and Jason used to be Mike’s babysitters when I lived in Oregon and went out of town) was ignoring him and not playing ball with him (Mike felt Jason should have been able to multitask, ha!)

So Mike kept tossing his ball between the back of Jason’s legs while Jason worked on the dresser.

We did actually take them sightseeing as well as out to a nice meal during their visit; and even visited with them. But most of their visit the boys did work on the dresser.

After they left to return to Oregon, John completed the dresser on his own and finished it with a beeswax and mineral oil mix that Jason recommended.

And here is the finished dresser in our master bedroom that two important men in my life worked on:

It was very exciting to put my clothes in it!

Postscript

Marla Jo and Jason are family to me and they have embraced my partner John. Jason drove my stuff 1200 miles from Oregon to Colorado when I relocated in April 2019 after my husband died in December 2018. They were both there on the most awful day of my life and watched my dog Mike when I traveled to see family and friends after my terrible loss.

They are very happy to see me in my life now and to also see that Mike the Miniature Schnauzer is doing so well. Jason took these adorable photos of Mike, posed with his favorite toy – “Beary”- during their visit:

From the Woodshop

November 24, 2020June 22, 2022 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Crafting wise I do not have much to report as I am finished with the granny square blanket (see previous post Attack of the Giant Granny Square Blanket) and I am currently working on hand stitching Seattle Scrappy (see previous post and the post An Update on “Seattle Scrappy” – Haphazard Stitching… ).

So I am going to take this opportunity to share what the other crafty person in the house, my partner John has been working on.

A couple months ago we turned part of our basement into his woodshop (we had it professionally drywalled as well as electrical added, while John put in the floor and did all the finishing work), so he could have his own “craft room”.

His workshop is a work in progress and evolving. For the first time in his life he has his dream of having his own dedicated woodshop beyond just tinkering in the garage.

John and I met in mid-2019 after suddenly each losing our long time spouses/life partners in 2018. We decided that since how long you have to live your life is unknown (when you become a widow/widower you think a lot about your own mortality in addition to grieving the loss of your spouse) we would not hold back from having our dreams (within reason and within financial possibilities of course!). One of his lifelong dreams was to have his own woodshop!

(One of our shared dreams is travel and pre-COVID pandemic we had many plans for travel in 2020, but you all know about “best laid plans” when it comes to 2020…)

Mike the miniature schnauzer did a guest blog post a couple weeks ago (yes, yes, stop your disbeliefs that my dog writes blog posts, ha, ha) on some of the projects John has been working on – Guest Blog Post: A Whole Lot of Remodeling Going On , but I thought I would share some of the projects since that post.

Wood Blocking Board

I saw on Instagram wood blocking boards for granny squares and asked John if he could make me one – and he did!

Here is an image of one I found online and texted him the image:

He watched a couple YouTube videos and checked out some on Pinterest and figured it out how to make me one:

It’s going to be great to use for making my next granny square blanket – I can stack my blocks pretty high with the long pegs.

Bike Holders/Storage

John loves Pinterest as a great source of ideas. He wanted to get our bikes off just sitting on the ground of the garage and found a cool design for a bike rack and made one for each of our bikes!

He made mine first so most of the images are of mine with some detailed images of the rack to include the little drawer he built for it also.

The little drawer is perfect to keep your biking gloves and other small items related to cycling. It is very easy to lift our bikes out of the holders.

Magnetic Board

I am obsessed with Scrabble letters. I have a collection of Scrabble letters from thrift stores and old Scrabble games. I’ve made gifts from them in the past like friend’s names spelled in Scrabble letters affixed to a magnetic strip. Recently while at a thrift shop I found a bag of Scrabble letters with individual thin magnetic strips attached.

This led to the idea of creating a magnetic board for my home office where I could write inspirational messages for myself with Scrabble letters! I asked John and he made it happen!

Currently up on the board I have the Maya Angelou quote:

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

Custom Tables for his Woodshop

The first table John made for his woodshop was a table/stand/storage for his Miter Saw:

He used purchased plans he downloaded online to make this table and then made some adjustments for his needs.

Recently he made himself another table/stand/storage, this time without pre-purchased plans! He designed a table for his Planer with storage drawers with cool pulls he ordered online:

Exercise Room for Water Rower

And the big project that John recently completed did not technically involve his woodshop as he did much for the work in the garage – he converted part of our unfinished storage room in the basement into an exercise room for our new Water Rower. This involved framing out and dry walling the room. A wonderful friend helped him with a lot of the initial labor related to framing, installing the drywall, and pulling electrical for lighting and wall outlets.

The artwork in the room was my idea and I found it at a thrift shop. John created the frame around the world map. I figured we can daydream about travel while we row. We found a television on sale and an inexpensive TV mount online so we can watch rowing instructional videos (or Netflix) while rowing.

We repurposed an old bookcase for our “gym” towels and water bottles like they would have at a real gym. John also put in a vent for the room for ventilation while we break a sweat.

Well I better go work on my hand stitching so I can have something to show you in the future – John makes me look pretty lazy!

Postscript

Do you remember how in the post The Inpatient Schnauzer: Update on the Granny Square Afghan (Guest Blogger), Mike the miniature schnauzer was getting impatient for me to finish the granny square blanket? So it is all finished but he seems to have moved on!

He is now in love with a new fleece blanket we recently picked up and has become inseparable from it!

I guess schnauzers are fickle!

Let me close this post with a sign/piece of artwork I discovered while thrifting that I put up outside John’s woodshop door. I think it goes with the aesthetic of a woodshop and also embraces how we are hoping to live our lives: