OK, so that weasel ratted me out last week for not having a clean reference area. Fine. You want to play the game that way, I’ll play along. So, this week when i got home from work, I decided it was going to be time to clear out some items which had been accumulating in my reference storage area for a few years to see if I couldn’t neaten a few things up.

It was not going to be easy. I mean, I had books and magazines going back to the late 1990s on these shelves, and in those cabinet there, and near the nightstand… well, you get the idea. It was going to be cruel, but I knew it was going to be for the best. After all, without a way to catalog these items, how was I ever going to find anything that I needed?

So, I went into full purge mode. My rules were simple:

• Reference books, I kept
• Magazine special editions with design or shop ideas in them, I kept
• Plans I was given or bought, I kept
• Magazines I had actually built projects out of, I kept
• Photos of old projects, I kept

I was stunned by how many things I had gotten and forgotten about years ago. I mean, there were plans for projects I see every single day around my house, and plans for projects I no longer have. My son’s rocking horse. The half-round table at our entry. My youngest son’s bookshelf. The Halloween coffin we put out for the holiday.

I tucked those carefully into a holder and kept them for the day I may want to build them again. I also spirited away a few other choice magazines with plans for projects that caught my attention. You never know…

The rest? Well, the rest of the material went into three piles:

• Magazines and books I didn’t need anymore went in piles to the library
• Crap I accumulated over the years that had no value, I put into a recycle pile and
• Winning lottery tickets, I cashed.

There were not a lot of items in the last pile, but the kids spent most of yesterday trucking scores of magazines off to the library for others to learn the craft. I feel good that’s where they went.

Now look at that shelf. It’s easy to find the things I need, and it gives me some room to put a few more quality reference books. I’m liking the new space,

Now with that done, I can turn my full attention to what lies within these boxes from Bell Forest Products. And, is it ever beautiful… But, that’s another post for another day.

I loved – and still do love – the original Star Trek series. It was so forward thinking in its scope. I mean, it had Earthlings exploring deep into space, encountering new civilizations and attempting to make peace with them to bring them into alliance. Trying to avoid war at all costs, but not afraid to kick butt when it was important enough to do it.

Of all the character in the show, DeForest Kelly’s Bones McCoy was one of my favorites. He was grouchy, excitable, moody – but there was no one in Starfleet who was as skilled as he was. He could diagnose and treat just about anything that ailed the crew, and his country doctor mannerisms endeared him to the crew.

I must be getting the same reputation for fixing broken chairs. Back in 2011, I fixed a chair for friends who brought an antique model back from Sweden. Now, this year, I got a call from a couple of friends that Rhonda and I know very well. It seems they had a similar issue at their house where someone had broken one of their dining room chairs. Ooops. Could I fix it?

Damnit, Jim, I’m a woodworker, not a furniture repairman. But, knowing that our friends really needed the chair fixed, I agreed.

Wow, was it busted. The chair was held together with hanger bolts through the front legs and some wooden corner brackets screwed into place. What had happened was that someone had bounced onto the chair and snapped the corner brace, which loosened the entire assembly. OK, I had to think how I was going to do this.

The rails of the chair were held in place – well, there was no joint holding them in place. They simply butted to the leg, with this corner brace system. This was a blessing in disguise, because I knew I could help rebuild the joint using some other system. After scratching my head for a while, i thought that dowels would be the best option. So, the first thing was to take the piece apart.

With them all apart, I broke out my Joint Genie doweling jig and set it up to cut a series of holes in the rails and the legs. The jig gave me good alignment and made drilling matching holes easy.

With the holes bored in the rails and the matching holes in the legs, I filled the holes with dowel pins, but no glue. I figured that the chair may one day need to be broken apart again for repair, so using the dowels for alignment and joint reinforcement would make sense.

With the dowels in place, I clamped everything together and mounted the corner braces back in place. They had enough material left over to lock into the grooves on the rails, and I screwed them back into place and bolted everything together tightly.

Once I had that taken care of, I then reattached the seat to the frame with four long screws, and voila, the chair was ready for a test.

It’s actually a very comfortable chair, and it looks like it’s ready for many long years of service at the dining room table.

In the immortal words of Bones McCoy, I’m beginning to think I can cure a rainy day…

Isn’t it amazing how furniture needs and styles have changed over the decades?

The reason I bring this up is that twice in the past month, I have seen some sweet looking armoires. One was a piece that my friends Chris and Sofie gave to another one of my friends who needed a closet space the ‘den’ of a house he bought. Another time was when I was in Yuma in the Casita next to my friend Kevin’s home on the big western swing. The Casita didn’t have a closet.

Why did these two pieces stand out so much? It’s because in most houses, they are 100% unnecessary. That hasn’t always been the case. Before today’s home with walk in closets that – in some cases – are larger than most bedrooms, people just didn’t have that many clothes.

Add to the fact that the average home built today has an extra 1,000 square feet than the average home built in 1973, and you start to get the idea that a separate piece of furniture to hold clothing is becoming a quaint anachronism – kind of like a pump to draw water from a well to do the cooking. Or building a hope chest for a young lady to keep her wedding dowry in – wait a second, I have built three of those!

Another piece that has changed dramatically over the years has been the TV entertainment center. In years past, entertainment centers were built around deep, heavy picture tube TVs, which required a great deal of size. Today’s flat screens, well, I’m surprised by how inexpensive they are.

Back when the kids were little, Rhonda and I bought a 32 inch picture tube TV for about $800, and we thought we got a heck of a deal on a store demo model. I built my breakfront entertainment center around the dimensions of that TV, and I ensured that the piece would serve as storage and a center for all of our viewing needs.

This past weekend when I was in Best Buy (I had to buy a new Mac Mini because the hard drive on our seven year old MacPro bit the dust), I saw 36 inch flat screens for $239.

Now, if you look for plans to build an entertainment center, you will find that most are low-slung affairs with space for the TV to perch on top or be mounted to the wall above.

What has become of those large TV cabinets made of those choice hardwoods? Well, they are being converted into home offices, bars, craft centers or even clothing armoires.

Go figure.

What does this mean for us as woodworkers? I’m not sure, but it will be interesting to see what changes happen over the next ten years as the way we use our homes changes.