Birthday Project #2

Russell is really good at woodworking. He made our bed headboard, foot board, and frames, refinished an old dresser for Emily and now has made her two birthday gifts, her rocking chair and this stool. All of his projects have turned out so nicely. Nice work, Dear!

This stool is also a puzzle that will teach Emily to spell her name. We saw the stool in a magazine (see below) and we wanted to get it for Emily for her birthday. The only problem was it was $50! We decided that was a little expensive for our tight budget. We were bummed. Then we looked closer at the picture and we decided we could make one for less than $50 so we started making blueprints.
The first thing we did was decide what supplies we needed, so we took off to Lowe's. Of course all of the boards were warped so we had to get the least warped ones.

Then we made a stencil of the names we were going to do. We realized we had enough materials to make three stools so we made one for our two nephews, Paul and Alex, for Christmas.

Here is Russell working away on his project.

The tools we needed. (Just so you know, we used a lot more than one sheet of sand paper!)

After drawing on the stencil, Russell cut out the letters.

Then the sanding began!!!!

Keep sanding Russell!

After all of the cutting and sanding was done, we needed to paint and stain the pieces.

The painting supplies. This was my job.

This is after painting and staining.

Almost done, now we just have to put on the legs.

The finished product!! I think the stools turned out good! Well there were a few problems but we were able to fix them. Because the boards were warped, when Russell put the bottom board and legs on Emily's the top board (the one with her name) cracked. We were so mad but we were able to putty it and you can't really tell where the crack is now. Also, Emily's Y dipped down too low and when we drilled the hole for the leg, we drilled all the way through so we had to putty and repaint that too. The stool still turned out really good and you can't tell where the problems are.

All in all, we made three stools for the price of the one in the magazine.

We let Emily play with it when we finished and she loved it. But she liked to beat the pieces together and made a few dents in it so we took it away until her birthday. Hopefully she doesn't destroy our hard work!