New Bed Slats

We bought Alexander a new bed a year or so ago from Ikea. It's a Kura, and it's pretty cool because it can function as either a bed with a frame over top, or as a top bunk without a bottom bunk. So we actually got two, one to make a reading cave in his room, and another to sleep on.

A few weeks ago two of the bottom slats broke (the wood that holds the mattress up). So in the middle of a pandemic we were looking at maybe some sort of a long drive to wait in line to get into an Ikea to try and get replacement parts ...

or...

Making our own! Allison ripped a standard pine 2x4 down to size, I routed the edges with a 1/4" rounding bit, and Alexander helped install them.

Our potential savings here was definetly in the ones of dollars, but it felt really good to be able to fix our kids bed with a quick trip to a hardware store. The Ikea slats are several boards glued together and they appeared to break at a joint, so hopefully this will prove even stronger.

On Gaining New Skills

One of my favourite things about learning more about cooking isn't my ability to follow a complicated recepie, it's being able to look at what I've got around me and make something happen. When we've got some left over chocolate cake I can whip up a quick chocolate sauce with stuff we've got lying around. When we're hungry I can combine a few things to make a spagetti sauce, etc.

While we've been working on learning more about woodworking we've taken on a few projects like building an Arcade Cabinet, or a self irrigating planter.

And while I really value these things we've built, I think it's the ability to fix things we already have that I value the msot about our woodworking.