Outside fun

When my dad moved out of his house and into an apartment a few years ago, we ended up with a lot of stuff, including most of his old tools and his "just in case" lumber stash. It's been sitting around downstairs for ages, but this weekend we decided to get our wood together and get something done with it.

We organized all the scrap lumber we had. Between my dad's stash, and the stuff we had left over after taking down an old wood fence, and the bits and pieces you acquire over the years, we had stuff in the workshop, under the stairs, in the shed, in the wood pile, and a few odd pieces in the rec room downstairs. We pulled out all of the 2x4s, including all the leftover pieces, and I got to work.

I have wanted an outdoor Jenga set forever. Today was the day! I measured the wide of three 2x4s, and got a measurement of 10 3/16ths, or 256 mm. And away I went. I cut them, and my partner in gaming sanded the rough edges and took off the worst of the grime. Unfortunately, we had to quit before we were finished because our neighbours were having a barbecue, and they are good folks so we didn't want to be jerks with our power tools. We will try to finish the cutting and the sanding next weekend. Then we'll be staining and painting the pieces. I'm 99% sure I have some old deck stain downstairs. And we may go and pick up some small cans of different coloured stain on the cheap just to add some colour to them.

Even though we didn't finish cutting, we still got a good start on our 3-in-1 project. We gathered and organized the wood, got started on the Jenga pieces, and all the small leftover scraps were thrown into a bin for future burning, so we also have a fun bonfire in our future.

I'll post the finished set once it's done.