Introduction
I just published my first Vlog to my YouTube channel which you can see above. This was my first attempt at putting a shop update in video form. It will be interesting to see what kind of reception it receives. Whether or not it turns out to get much traffic, it was a good exercise for me. It forced me to organize my thoughts with regard to what I have on my plate right now.
Recent Happenings
Before getting into what I have coming up in the near term, I want to spend just a minute talking about what I have been up to lately. The short answer is YouTube.
I decided at the end of January/beginning of February that I was going to put some effort into learning how to produce content. You can read more about that here. Needless to say, it has been a steep learning curve. There is a lot more that goes into producing decent quality YouTube videos than I had imagined.
That is not to say that I think I am there yet. I do believe that I have gotten better but there is still so much room for improvement. At this point, my goal is to try to get a little better with each video. I definitely have much more respect now for people who produce high-quality content.
The first big project that I knew I wanted to tackle was a shop tour video. Producing that video showed me just how much I needed to learn. I published it on March 9th and the reaction has been much greater than I imagined. As of writing this, that video has over 10k views. As far as YouTube goes that is just a drop in the bucket. Considering the total views for my channel were in the low hundreds before that, it has been a welcome change.
Since then I have published four more videos including the Vlog. The response to each of those has varied and nothing has matched the shop tour but that’s fine. Each video is a learning opportunity.
The first video was about a tool that I purchased some time ago from Woodpeckers and had recently received. The tool is a jig for making loose tenon joinery.
The idea for the next video came from a comment that I received on the shop tour video. That video was about the overhead dust collection on my table saw.
The third video was the most fun to make of all the videos I have done thus far. It was a video of my youngest daughter Megan and I building a birdhouse for our backyard. Of my recent videos, it seems to be getting the fewest views but that doesn’t bother me because of the time I got to spend with Megan making it.
Coming Up
I have a growing list of videos to make based on comments I have received. This list includes my downdraft table, my folding outfeed table, and the dust hood over the miter saw.
These will need to take a back seat for a little while, however, because I also have a growing list of clients who are waiting for me to get to them.
Client Project #1: A Corner Hutch
The most pressing client project that I have is a corner hutch. Over the last several weeks, I have been working off and on with a couple to nail down the details of exactly what they want. I started by visiting them at their house to talk to them, take pictures and measurements as well as make a rough sketch of the corner where the hutch will go.
Since then I have had several conversations with the wife by phone and email further refining the details. I started by making sure that they really wanted something custom built. There are a lot of options for corner hutches out there and I wanted to make sure that they understood that a custom-built piece would be more expensive.
I also realized early on that I needed to really understand the client’s overall goal. I wrote about this a few weeks ago. It occurred to me that this was just as important as knowing what they wanted the finished product to look like. Were they just looking for something to fill an immediate need and I should just get that done as cheaply as possible or were they looking for something that would last and could even be passed on to their children? The answer to this question would go a long way to informing how I chose materials and the details of the design.
Client Project #2: Rustic Occasional Furniture
The next client project in the queue should be a fun one. The exact details are not yet well defined but basically, I will be building some occasional furniture pieces from some reclaimed oak beams of various sizes.
A good friend of mine has a lake house in Georgia and sometime in the last year or two, he had a boathouse built. He used reclaimed oak beams in the construction and saved nine pieces. Now he wants me to come up with a plan for building some combination of side and end tables and possibly a coffee table as well. His primary goal is to retain as much of the character of the beams as possible.
Client Project #3: Storage Base for a Bed
The final upcoming client project is for a previous client. At the end of last year, I built an addition to an entertainment center for a couple that lives in my neighborhood. They loved how it came out and I knew when that project was finished that the wife had something else in mind that she wanted me to do for them.
That is to build a new base for their California King bed. The current base is for a waterbed which they no longer have. Some number of years ago, they replaced the water mattress with a regular one. This works well enough but they want to replace it with a new base that incorporates drawers for storage.
Also, they really like the current headboard. It is a storage headboard that has bookshelves. So the project involves designing and building a new storage base for the mattress that will attach to the existing headboard.
Wrapping Up
I’m excited. I have a lot on my plate. In addition to the client work and videos, there are numerous things that I would like to do in my shop and furniture that I want to build for our home. Not to mention the list of home improvements and repairs that is always getting longer. I have never been busier and I wouldn’t have it any other way.