Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Attempting to make a hobby profitable




          I am a woodworking junkie by nature.  I have been working with wood since I was a kid in school.  It's in my blood.  I come from a long line of carpenters.  I was a carpenter myself for a large portion of my life, but thanks to the economy crash back in the late 90's I ended up leaving that career field.  Now I work in an office, and only have passing memories of the hundreds of homes that I've helped to build during my younger years.

           So, I recently celebrated another birthday.  My "soon to be" Father-in-law and Mother-in-law bought me a new table saw as a gift.





  This new gift had a marvelous affect on me.  It forced me to clear a little space in the garage to put together a little woodworking shop.  After I cleared out half of the garage, I promptly pulled all of my old woodworking tools out of storage.  I then built myself a new work bench, bought a few more tools that needed replacing, and got busy making things.

          Before starting on any "Projects", I needed to build a few more essentials.  Besides the workbench (pictured above and below), I built a stool to sit on, and I also designed a little storage space for some of my hard to store tools.....





          Next, I painted the stool, and after sitting on hard plywood for a few days, I added some padded cushioning to the seat.....




          The first thing on my list of projects was a jewelry display for my fiance.  She loves reclaimed wood and asked me if I could use it to build something for her.  She gave me a clear idea of what she wanted, so she and I went to the hardware store together to pick out the proper hardware.  She made her selections and I went to work.  This is what I gave her...




          She absolutely loves her display.  The reclaimed wood that I used was from an old fence that was torn down at her parents house.  I ended up with a small stack of lumber to use for other projects.  I had already used up quite a bit of that lumber a few weeks prior doing an accent piece in our bathroom behind the toilet....





          My next project was given to me by my niece.  She has a new baby boy named Jaxon.  She asked me to make a baby gym, like one that she saw on Pinterest.  I told her to buy the new toys that she would like to hang from it so that I could decide upon measurements.  The day after Thanksgiving, she gave me the toys.  This is what I made for her....





          My fiance shared a picture of her jewelry display on facebook and instagram.  She received so many compliments that I decided to make a couple more of them with a few different variations...






          We decided to create an Etsy account to see if we could sell a few.  I'm not looking to get rich.  Making enough to pay for my hobby would be nice though.  Plus I'll need to make space for new items as I build them.  I already have 3 new projects in the works.

          I am also starting a new blog to solely for my woodworking projects.  I will try to keep both blogs up-to-date in between work and spending most of my free time in my little workshop.

          Thanks for reading this post.  Click the link below to check out my new Woodworking blog.  Currently there isn't much to it, but I plan to spend more time taking photos of my work in progress and possibly use the new blog as a tutorial on how to build the items that I build.

Newlywed Woodworks

No comments:

Post a Comment