Day 3184 Cherry on top

5th May 2026

I took my paper pattern down to John’s barn, I was excited and apprehensive at the same time.

In the back of my mind was “Does it fit the blank that we laid up last week?”

Knowing my track record, I had every reason to doubt.

The blank was still on the bench where we left it last week. I took off all the clamps, and stared at it, certainly it looked smaller than my pattern, but I also had allowed quite a bit of excess.

I laid one half of the pattern on the board, that seemed to fit fine, then the second half, that fitted as well, I was shocked and amazed.

I sprayed some contact adhesive on to the surface and stuck the pattern down.

Now the difficult bit, the cutting. Armed with my trusty jig saw I started to follow the line. I had brought different blades because I knew there were many sharp corners. Bit by bit the waste fell away, but inch by inch I worked my way around. John was smiling, this was interesting for him, it had been quite a while since he had used a jig saw, that was the best reason for me to do it myself.

As the last piece of cherry fell away the final profile was revealed, there on the bench was the shape of the state of Michigan.

There is a lot of edge sanding to do, but John was there with the sander to smooth the top.

I don’t know if it will sell, but Michiganders like to boast about their state and buy things like breadboard and flags, so why not a Michigan shaped coffee table?

Once I cleaned up the mess I had made, we headed back. Kelli had arranged that I pick up a dresser on the way back, and as it was only a few miles away from the barn, John came along for the ride.

I think he is getting pressure from his family not to get involved in the business anymore. As I have explained before his ability to communicate clearly with customers is almost nonexistent. Although he feels betrayed by his sons who do a lot the heavy stuff, they need to take over the day to day basis even though they have jobs of their own. What future do I have working with John on our fun projects? That I’m sure will soon be decided.

Then it was back home, eating my lunch on the way.

As soon as I walked into the house I knew something was different. The chairs around the dining table were not the same as when I left hours earlier. 

Kelli sometimes wants different dining chairs. I have lost count of the number of different chairs we’ve had since we moved into this house. The last ones were all painted different colours and quite different, now we had black ones.

These were acquired a few weeks ago with the intention of repainting them and selling them on,  but they were put in the storeroom and forgotten.

Now they have pride of place, and I took pictures of our old ones and Kelli posted them.

You can’t leave her alone for a minute 

We took the girls for a walk around the block, just a few yards up the road we saw four young deer staring at us from the wood, they were perfectly still for many minutes, so were our dogs, a sort of stand off, no barking, then the deers ran back into the darkness of the trees. That was pretty amazing, to see them that close at that time, does not happen that often.