This all started when earlier this week I really had a craving for some onion rings. But not the fat, thick, heavily breaded onion rings you might be thinking of. The thin, stringy, flaky ones that I used to get as a kid when my parents would take me to this great old steakhouse in Kansas. Something like on top of this burger:

This recipe from the Pioneer Woman looks exactly like what I'm going for.

All this to say, I want to deep-fry some onion rings, but don't want to do it in the house. I got to thinking that I could just hook up my portable camping stove out on the deck, and do my deep-frying there while the weather is nice. However I didn't have anywhere to actually do this cooking; my grill doesn't have a side-burner, and I'm not going to run a burner on our outdoor dining table. I set out searching, and I came across these plans from Andrew Harris Woodwork that looked like exactly what I needed!

I put this table together over the course of 2 of the hottest days we've had in Omaha so far, here are some progress pics.

Everything started with a trip to Menard's to pick up the lumber. The table is made from about $90 in western red cedar boards.

Boards for the table frame were cut to size and put together. Everything is held together with glue & pocket screws.

Here are the two end frame pieces.

And the entire frame put together.

Then I cut & attached the slats to the bottom shelf. They're supported by two 3/4" x 3/4" runners glued and nailed to the frame. Each slat is glued and nailed to the runners.

It was time to make & attach the table top. I kind of forgot to take any progress pics here, but let's just say it involved a lot of sanding.

Once everything was assembled, I sprayed down all surfaces with a generous coat of Thompson's WaterSeal. I had never used this product before, and I'm really happy with how much it made the cedar pop after it went on. We'll see how it ages exposed to the sun & elements.

I had to run the table inside one more time though because it needed 48 hours before being exposed to rain. Doesn't look too bad in the house! Maybe it can serve double-duty as a buffet table in a pinch.

Well, I finally got around to making another set of shelves for the garage. We had an awkward area between the fridge and the door to the house that had become sort of a dumping ground. It housed some cheap plastic stacking shelves where I mostly kept all the paints and stains. In front of that became the permanent home of a kid's wagon and other outdoor toys.

So, instead of tripping over all that stuff for the rest of eternity, I put together another super simple set of shelves!

While there's nothing particularly special about this unit, what really makes it really nice for us is that it's 100% custom built to fit the space perfectly.

In this post, I really want to call out how much I appreciate the free online version of Sketchup. Almost anything that I build of my own design, I first model in the app. I'm a visual person, and creating something in Sketchup gives me the confidence that if I can model it, I can build it.

My wife, who is the organization specialist in the family, came up with some specifications for these shelves. I went to work on the computer, and after a couple of iterations came up with a design for what we wanted to build.

At that point, it was as simple as just putting things together. I first built the 3 shelf frames, and then attached the 4 legs. Once I was satisfied with the frame, I cut some 1/2" OSB down to make the shelf tops. I was able to do the whole unit out of 2 sheets of OSB. The bottom two shelves are one solid surface, and the top shelf is 2 parts cut from the excess.

And here's the shelf all loaded up:

Actually since I started writing this post last year, we've already made some modifications. We got a free ride-on car off Facebook Marketplace, so I took down the whole rack and adjusted the height of both shelves to better fit everything we needed to jam in there.

We moved into a new house back in May of this year. We got a much bigger garage, giving me some space to set up my own little shop area. Now that I had the room, I needed some way to store all my stuff.

I decided that I needed a set of shelves that I could run along the back wall of the garage. Somewhere that I could store my miter saw, shop vac, and all my larger, loose tools.
I wanted the shelves to be free-standing, so I could easily move them around as my organizational needs change, and I didn't want to spend a ton of money.

After much searching on the internet, I decided to make a really basic two-shelf unit out of 2x4s and OSB. I ripped a 4x8-foot sheet of 5/8" OSB down the middle into two 2-foot wide and 8-foot long sheets. Next I built a frame for each sheet out of 2x4s. I took six more 2x4s, cut them down to about 5 1/2' and attached them to the shelf frames. Then it was a simple matter of sliding in the OSB sheets and screwing them down to complete the project.

Ramona helped me slide the shelves into place on the back garage wall. Then I found some scrap pieces which I used to level the legs the best I could. Some of the lumber I made the shelf frames from wasn't the straightest, so everything is far from being perfectly level.

And here's the shelving unit installed:

I have a long way to go to get organized, but it already feels great to get so much stuff off the garage floor. I'll probably do a similar but smaller set of shelves for another area where we're currently storing all of our paints and painting supplies. In the end this was a pretty affordable project for a sturdy set of shelves. I probably spent around $50 for everything, including 10 2x4s, a sheet of OSB, and a couple boxes of screws

So, I'm really excited, because the spice rack I made for my friends got installed over the weekend!

Here it is:

Shameless plug: The friends I built this for have a YouTube channel focused on Retro PC hardware/gaming/etc and a blog about Retro gaming artwork. They're pretty great and you should check them out!

Here's a project I've been wanting to do for a long time. It combines my recent obsession with drawers and drawer slides with the practical need to make use of all the space we have in the kitchen island.

Today it's super popular to have pull-out shelving installed in kitchen cabinets. Unfortunately our house didn't come with this option so I figured I'd give it a shot. I had a good amount of wood hanging around that would be just perfect!

I picked up a set of 24" full-extension ball bearing drawer slides from Home Depot as the key component in this build. We have face frame cabinets, so I had to build up some structure for the slides to attach to. On the side against the cabinet wall, I used a couple of 1x3 boards as spacers to ensure the slides could clear the cabinet door hinges.

This shelf was going in one half of a double cabinet, so for the middle support, I took a 1x2 and screwed straight down through it into the cabinet bottom.

Once the slides were in place, it was time to make the shelf itself. I had a leftover square of 1/2" birch plywood so I decided to use that for the drawer sides. Then I made another Home Depot run and picked up some 1/2" MDF for the drawer bottom. Nothing fancy here, I just used butt joints and glue to assemble the box.

And it's a good thing I didn't do anything fancy, because even after trying to be super careful, I made the drawer exactly 1" too big to fit in the opening! Somehow I forgot to account for the drawer slides. So back to the table saw where I sliced 1.5" off the side of the drawer, and then reassembled with a new piece of birch plywood.

But finally, after some wrangling the drawer was installed.

And fully extended:

So I'm really happy with how this project turned out. It took quite a bit longer than anticipated, I thought this was something I'd knock together in a morning and I probably put about 7 hours into it all-told. But, hopefully any future shelves will go faster.

I'm also wondering if using bottom-mount drawer slides could have saved me some time & headache, so that might be something to explore in a future post!

A few weeks ago my wife awesomely decided to get me a little "just because" gift: a thickness planer I've had my eye on forever. It was down to a reasonable price on Amazon so she pulled the trigger on it for me.

This sucker is HEAVY and I didn't really have anywhere to put it in my garage, so this could only mean one thing: I had to build a stand for it!

Earlier this year I built Steve Ramsey's Basic Mobile Workbench. I've been watching Steve's YouTube channel for years and I even purchased his Weekend Woodworker online course. The course is amazing; I've only had a chance to make the workbench so far but I plan to make all the projects eventually.

Steve's plan:

And my workbench (pretty much stuffed with every tool I own):

Why am I talking about this workbench? Well, since it came out so great (in my opinion), I decided to use the same basic concept for the planer stand. It needed to be strong, since the planer weighs 70+ pounds, and I definitely wanted it on wheels so I can tuck it away when I'm not using it.

So I took the workbench concept, shamelessly stole the dimensions of the official WEN planer stand, and came up with this:

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! After I built the stand, I decided that I'd like a drawer too, so I can store things like the manual and extra parts/tools:

Making the drawer was the first opportunity I had to use the Kreg jig I got last December. The drawer frame is made from 1/2" Russian birch plywood I found at Menards, and the drawer bottom is 1/4" MDF that I had left over from a failed attempt at repairing one of our dining room chairs.

The stand is cool but I'm really thrilled at how well the drawer came out. The pocket holes were insanely easy and the drawer is super-sturdy and square.

I'm dying to make some proper cabinets that I can put up in the garage, and how well this drawer came out has really given me the confidence that I just might be able to do it.

Oh, and I still haven't actually run anything through the planer yet...

A friend of mine recently asked me to make her a spice rack. She felt like she couldn't buy anything that fit the space she had available, and that stored her spices in a way that was convenient and accessible.

I'm someone who always believes that the best way to learn is through doing, so I jumped at the chance to try to make something that would work for her.

A few months back my wife snagged a couple of old pallets for me from work. I was able to make a couple of sweet lightboxes for old arcade marquees I had from them:

My friend wanted a rustic look, and I had some wood left over from these pallets, so it seemed like the perfect fit!

Here are a couple of progress pics as the spice rack was coming together. I made some dados on the table saw in the sides that the shelves fit into.

I picked up 5 oak dowels from the Home Depot to keep the spices in check.

I had some 1x6's from another pallet that worked perfectly to make the back. I stained the whole thing with Minwax Classic Gray stain, gave it a single heavy coat of shellac and then a light sanding just to take down the sheen.

Delivered it to my friend, and I think she was pretty happy! As soon as she gets it installed, I'll have a picture of the rack in-action.

So I recently purchased the Anova Bluetooth immersion circulator, and I couldn't wait to try to make myself a perfectly medium-rare steak!

We started with a strip, a steak I've never had much luck with in the past. They usually come out overcooked and tough. Read on to see how it went!

Setup

I'm only doing a single steak, so I don't need a huge pot for this one. I decided that the inner pot from my Instant Pot would work just fine.

I filled the pot with water and set the temperature to 130 degrees.

Then I prepped the steak while I waited for the water to come up to temp. Just some garlic salt, kosher salt, and pepper. We have a rosemary plant that's doing ok so I threw in a sprig too just because. Everything went into the vacuum sealer.

Time to cook!

I clipped the steak to the side of the pot, and let it go. I later removed the spoon holding down the bag because I decided it wasn't necessary.

I pulled the steak at around 1:45, and prepped the grill for the reverse-sear. It's an interesting color, not really gray, more red-pink than anything.

I didn't get an amazing sear on the steak on the grill. It probably spent 1.5 minutes or so over as hot a fire as I could get. If I had this to do over again I'd probably let it go another minute or more as it didn't seem to overcook the middle at all. It'll be interesting to see how different searing on the stovetop is.

Finished product, as you'll see below I'm not willing to call this a success.

Verdict

The positives: I think the steak was cooked to just about a perfect medium-rare. Some parts of the steak were tender, flavorful, and delicious. The rosemary I threw in during the sous vide really came through, I would definitely do that again, and I'd probably add another sprig to have one on both sides.

The bad: The meat was tough, like some parts were shoe-leather tough. I'd estimate that 33% of the meat ended up in the trash. I'm not ready to blame this one on the cooking method yet though. I've personally never had a good strip steak, so I don't know why I chose this to be my first experiment. I don't think I had a particularly great cut of meat to work with; I checked the label and it was a $9/lb "Angus Reserve" cut from HyVee. Next time I'll make sure I'm working with a good cut of meat, probably going for Choice or better.

Final Thoughts

This was a fun experiment. The final temperature on the steak came out just about perfect, I think working with a crappy piece of meat really set me back. Clean-up was easy so I'll definitely be doing this again. Thinking the next sous vide experiment will be with a boneless-skinless chicken breast. I'm really interested to see what a piece of chicken that hasn't been cooked to 165deg. feels & tastes like!