DIY Wood Block Tea Candle Votives
As I’ve mentioned before, we make our Christmas gifts in my family. It usually keeps the price down and adds a sentimental value to the offerings. This year, I made homemade wood block votives. Anyone who has access to a table saw, a miter saw, and a drill can do this project. I originally wanted to make the votives with rough-cut * 4″ x 4″ x 8′ cedar, but my table saw couldn’t manage lumber of that size. So I downgraded to using 2″ x 4″ x 8′...
Read MoreAn Easy Way To Remove Labels & Adhesives
I use old jars to organize the hardware in my workshop. It took me years to amass the jars necessary to build the first stage of my organizer, and I’ve finally collected enough to start stage two. Here’s what it looks like now. The sixteen new jars will be divided among two doors that, when closed, hide the existing hardware organizer. I use the same brand of jars so that the lids are interchangeable. But before I can hang them, I have to get the labels off. I could use...
Read MoreHomemade Thread Organizer
As you may or may not know, the wife is big into sewing and crafts. She actually offers sewing lessons for beginners in the Greenville area. Our house is way too tiny for her to have a dedicated craft room or anything like that, so she basically took over the guest bedroom. All of the storage except for the closet goes to her supplies. All I get to put in there is my guitar. For now. When I built my HTPC console a couple of months ago, we had no use for the rickety old armoir that used to...
Read MoreA Sampling Of My Homemade Furniture
I mentioned in a recent post how I’ve been making a determined effort to rid my life of tangible objects that have no utility. That might sound a little extreme, but if something isn’t useful to me in some way, I’ve decided that I just don’t have room for it. The wife is pretty much on board with this philosophy. When you live in a house as small as ours, you have to make an effort to keep the clutter from piling up. As a result, I’ve had to build a lot of...
Read MoreDIY Barn Wood Picture Frames
The HTPC console I recently built replaced an armoir that had been in the corner of the den. Now that the TV is on another wall, the wife and I decided we should hang some pictures on the wall that divides the den from the dining room. The wife usurped the old armoir and turned it into a sewing and craft organizer. We’ve decided to replace the old prints we have hanging around the house with original pieces from local artists and/or ourselves. The wife bought me a set of brushes and...
Read MoreBuilding a HTPC Console, Part 3
Like I said in my previous posts (part 1, part 2) I’ve been waiting for several years to pull the trigger on a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) set-up. I wanted to fit everything ‘multimedia’ into a custom console in my den that kept my entire system streamlined, organized, and hidden from sight. This is how it all turned out. I’m very pleased with how clean the design looks in the room. These pictures aren’t great. I think I got some dust on the camera lens...
Read MoreBuilding a HTPC Console, Part 2
Like I said before, I used the dimensions of my new Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) components to sketch out a plan for a multimedia console that would allow cool air into the storage space, block most of the light from bleeding into the rest of the room, and neatly store everything without showing any wires. This was my plan. My measurements had to be cut down by a couple of inches during the build, but I stayed pretty true to the original design. Here’s all of the lumber. Since...
Read MoreBuilding a HTPC Console, Part 1
I’ve been waiting for a couple of years to pull the trigger on a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) set-up. I wanted to fit everything ‘multimedia’ into a custom console in my den that kept my entire system streamlined, organized, and hidden from sight. When you live in a house as small as mine, you have to consider the aesthetics or else you look like a hoarder. I was pretty late to organize my media on my computer. The wife and I didn’t get our first iPod until...
Read MoreHomemade Christmas Gifts, 2011
As I’ve mentioned before, my family makes Christmas gifts for one another. Last year we made hollow book safes, beaded earrings and teacup candles. The year before that, we made some wine bottle stands and beef jerky. This year, we made chalkboards, barbecue rub, monogrammed aprons, and pottery Christmas tree ornaments. Most people think that DIY is always cheaper. It’s been my experience that the reverse is usually true. Almost all of the furniture I make costs double what...
Read MoreDIY Hanging Chalkboards
As a way to cut down on the amount of money spent at Christmastime (and to limit the amount of useless crap we each accumulated), my family decided to start making gifts a few years ago. It was touch and go for a while, but thanks to creative online showcases like Pinterest, the quality of gifts has dramatically increased lately. This year, we made these chalkboards for some of the ladies on both sides of our families. About a month ago, the wife saw this page in a magazine: She pointed to...
Read MoreHomemade Guitar Stand
I bought myself an acoustic guitar for an early birthday present. In an odd coincidence, I just found out that a couple of my oldest friends just started playing within the last few months as well. It must be part of a ⅓-life crisis or something. Anyway, I’m afraid that if I store it in a hard-shell case, it’ll become a pain to get out and put back up. So I decided to make a little stand to keep the guitar conveniently at hand. This DIY guitar stand is nothing special, but I...
Read MoreWooden Toolbox
As I mentioned before, I’ve been trying to clean up and organize my workshop. As I work on various woodworking projects, I toss the scraps into a bin beneath my workbench. I can pick up the scraps and immediately know if they came from my kitchen island, my coffee table, my guest bedroom furniture, etc. We use this scrap wood when we set up a fire pit in the backyard, but the unseasonably warm weather this year is causing my bin to overflow. So I decided to use some leftover pine and...
Read MoreMy Workshop
Despite all the furniture I’ve built in my workshop, I never got around to truly organizing it. I built a workbench and hung some tools on the existing pegboard, but I’ve had a huge pile of hardware laying around for years. I could pick up bags and boxes of miscellaneous hardware and tell immediately that it was what I took with me after moving from one apartment in DC to another, or from DC to Greenville. Now that the wife has a pottery kiln, she’s called dibs on a big...
Read MoreAbout The Author
Chad Chandler is a strategic marketing consultant and web developer to small businesses in the Upstate region of South Carolina. Learn more. 
As an experienced marketer and an avid social media user, I keep a hobby blog. It mostly exists as a public scrapbook for my out-of-state family. Feel free to take a look around and see what you like.
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