Yesterday I had my last meeting of the semester, the end of term meeting for my Web Design students. I have to say that when the students showed up for their final demos there was a lot of feedback to be given. But boy did they work hard to take that to heart. Even though it is exclusively a front end course (I taught a full stack course also this semester) the students were using LocalStorage, Cookies, Canvas animations, and even parsing JSON responses from AJAX requests. I am quite happy with the results as well, a couple of them I had to pull myself away from the web app to write up my evaluation, because it was so good. But now that I am done it is time to get some of the long awaited Spring projects done.

First up was cleaning my workshop, lots of stuff accumulates on the counter over the winter. Also all of the liquids come inside so I needed to set things up to be able to work. And in the middle of this Chelsea brought home her bike with a broken pedal – after confirming it was a 9/16″ thread (one of the two standard options) I ordered some new pedals. That was an easy fix. Then I started to make a list only to be interrupted by an email from my partner wanting me to fix my keyboards so we can take them up to the cottage. My Roland JX305 has an unreadable screen (common problem) and my Roland D70 has a bum contact strip (this will be the second time I’ve replaced those). So I ordered an Arduino screen that will replace/upgrade the one on my JX and put the D70 on my list (I might be able to just do a cleaning and fix that).

Maple Cabinet Doors
Maple cabinet doors

On the top of my list is a repair job, I made these maple cabinet doors in 2014, some of my first shaker doors in the new home. This is from before I put spacers in along the panels for wood movement – so of course one of the blew apart this winter. I took it apart carefully, repaired a bit of the wood, cleaned up the joints and re-glued it. I’m just applying a protective coating and taking a wee break while one side sets.

Once the doors are done I have the following projects on my list:

  • Fix my keyboards
  • Assemble standing desk that Elyssa bought
  • Prepare the stairs for cladding with maple that has been sitting in my garage for a few years now
  • Renovate the main floor powder room
  • Grout the edges of the front entrance
  • Finish making the serving tray Sharon asked me to make last year
  • Make and install a shelf for Chelsea’s room
  • Make a holder for our Dominion tokens, little removable drawers in a tray that holds the basic cards (money, victory, trash, curses, and shelters)
  • Seal the blanket ladder I made for Sharon last year

This should keep me busy all summer actually. I’ll post some pictures of projects as I go along.