Being a Grandpa
I am now officially Papa Marty. I went to visit my daughter Rebekah after Christmas. Her daughter, my first grandchild, Vivian, was old enough to call me ‘Papa’ and so it’s official. Next year my Grandson, Mr. Otis, will hopefully be able to call me the same.
When Rebekah was young her Grandfather, Dwight Johnson, was around a lot. He was a fixer. With an engineering degree 2 times over and a mechanic’s mind he could and did fix, install, repair, build and rewire most anything. Didn’t matter if it was a car, a house, a washing machine or a wheelchair. Didn’t matter if it was electrical, gas, water, air, big, or small. He would figure it out. I learned a LOT from him over many years.
I also learned a lot from my own father, who was quite handy with a saw and drill, and from my own grandfather, Papa Powell, who was an excellent woodworker with his own beautiful woodworking shop in the back of his house. I learned a LOT about how to use hand and power tools from them both.
So, when I went to visit Rebekah I saw a number of projects I could do to help them out, carrying on the Grandpa tradition. Here are the ones that were the most fun.
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The Table
This looks like a photo of a collapsed and broken table, and it is. But it’s secondary to the task at hand, which you can see on the far right, that white bench area. I had been looking at the window bench area, thinking it would be cool to have a cushion there for Vivian or someone else to sit on. Their breakfast area is very small so an extra seat would be great.
We also were putting thin plastic over the windows to help insulate the house from the cold. But, to get a good look at the bench area and to put up the plastic I needed to move the table. The table, unbeknownst to me, was in a precarious state and promptly fell apart when I moved it. Oops!
So, after putting the plastic over the windows I went to the hardware store and got some brackets to put the table back together. I used the brackets (and glue) to attach the legs to each other and then to the table top. Easy peasy. Vivian approves!
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The Window Bench
Now we could work on making a cushioned bench top for that space. It wasn’t something I had done before so I did what any good DIYer would do, I went to Pinterest. I searched under ‘window bench’ or something like that and the very first item that came up was a ‘how-to’ on making a window bench. It took me about 5 minutes to read it (if that) and I was ready to go.
I needed the following material:
- Peg board (or some other type of very thin, sturdy board – masonite of some sort basically)
- Foam
- Fabric
- Fabric Glue
And the following tools:
- Measuring Tape
- Stapler
- Saw
- Scissors
- Box cutter knife
First I measured the space and drew a drawing of it with measurements in all 3 dimensions. Then Rebekah and I went on a shopping trip to find the material.
First stop was Home Depot where we found 4’x6′ peg board. We needed it cut since it wouldn’t fit in the car. We ended up getting 3 identical pieces in size, plus 3 smaller pieces. We brought them all home in case our first effort was a mess up. Patrick, Rebekah’s husband, was also needing pegboard for his tool area in the basement so it worked out great. We also got a stapler and the staples I thought would be long enough to go through the fabric and the pegboard effectively. We looked at foam at Home Depot but the pieces were too small and not of very high quality.
We then went to JoAnn’s fabric store in Fairfax. When I was looking up fabric stores on Google the reviews of Joann’s had been terrible for customer service but they were fantastic when we went there. The woman waiting on us explained why we should use a certain type of marine quality vinyl for the fabric. They also had a large piece of high quality foam that we purchased. They explained what spray on glue would be best as well.
Patrick and I worked on putting it together. First thing Patrick and I did was mark and cut the pegboard to the right size. We used a handheld jigsaw which was pretty easy. It was a bit nerve wracking getting the measurements right but I felt confident we had, plus we had 2 extra pieces in case we blew it. Always nice to have a back up!
We then put the pegboard on top of the foam and marked it. At the store the person cutting the foam for us had used an actual electric knife, like you use to carve a turkey at Thanksgiving. We didn’t have an electric knife so I used a box cutter knife. It wasn’t quite as smooth but it was sharp and did the job just fine.
We then put the pegboard and foam together and measured and cut the vinyl to fit. We were told by the woman at Joann’s that we needed at least 4 inches to overlap on the backside. The foam was 3″ thick so it was a total of 7″ larger on all sides than the foam/pegboard.
Before we put it all together I took a test piece of pegboard and vinyl and stapled the hell out of it to see who well it would work. I found out I REALLY needed to press down on the head of the stapler or else they just wouldn’t go in. I also folded the vinyl over a number of times to see how well it would staple in that thickness. I figured it out through practice and it worked fine.
We took the whole thing outside and Patrick sprayed each section with the glue as I held the fabric out. We then quickly folded it over and stapled it. We had to work fast since it was about 35º out and the glue was only suppose to be used at 60º or above. We tested the folds at the corners first before gluing and found we had a lot of extra material. We cut that all away before we sprayed and stapled.
And about an hour later we had our window bench done. It looked and felt great, just the right height and the right amount of cushion.
Here is Vivian trying it out for the first time, right before bedtime. The vinyl is durable and washable, something that was critical when you know a toddler is going to be sitting on the seat!
The next morning at breakfast she walked right over to it and tried to climb up. It’s going to be a perfect place for her to sit and eat and play. Even though it was a simple project, I think my grandfather, father and father-in-law would have all been proud!
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The Tile Patch
The other thing I did was patch some tile in the guest bathroom. It was crumbling right where I had to stand to use the sink so I went and got some patching material and fixed it. The small tiles had been coming up for a while and I wasn’t confident I would be able to find all of them so I bought one 6″x6″ tile to cover the main area. I wouldn’t have done that but they are hoping to completely gut and remodel the bathroom next year so a weird tile stuck in the middle of the bathroom is no big deal temporarily.
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