2024 Woodworking Year in Review

16 min readJan 19, 2025

An overall view of the woodshop — a single garage bay with a lot of tools on all the surfaces and props and supports to facilitate working with larger pieces of wood despite not having big tools.

I read Andrew Thaler’s article on how woodworking is an act of resistance (Furniture as Revolution) earlier this year and it hit home. I work in forest fire severity mitigation and do worry about the impact of lifestyle and community; that heat pump thing didn’t happen by accident you know. So when Andrew shared his 2024 Woodworking Year In Review, I knew my assignment.

The picture above is my single-bay workshop as of January of 2024, the green tape line is where my car pulls into, so I know when I’ve cleared enough to get it inside. My car only spent a couple nights in the bay this year. I made a lot of sawdust through the course of 2024 and took on some foolishly large projects — loving nearly every minute of it.

January

The work in progress above is a storage shelf I built for the shop, having watched a YouTuber build one for his shop. I made a couple more earlier in 2023 for the kids to provide storage for important things like stuffed animals, and knew there was a lot of work coming in 2024 so I got this up on the wall first thing — and promptly forgot it wasn’t always there.

A shop-storage shelf on the wall. There are several compartments and the face has been edge banded with heat treated maple, giving the shelf a high contrast two-tone appearance. There are a variety of tools, shelves, and working surfaces in this compact side of the garage style shop space.

I also put in a little more on the annual “Christmas gift for my brother that I haven’t finished yet.” It didn’t get done in 2024 either, maybe 2025! I did discover that at this size the LED lighting wasn’t going to work, so I’ll have to go bigger this year.

A wooden panel, actually a sign, with the word “Staneff” carved into it. The S is stylistically the curve of a flamingo’s neck. I’d hoped to have the Flamingo here illuminated with a pink LED, but the curves are too tight and lines too close together to make it work at this scale.

And we had a cold-snap and a friend’s furnace broke. So I cobbled together a Franken-heater certain to blow any circuit connected to the standard wall plug you stick it into.

Two exterior 1500W electric heating units attached to a fence post supported with plywood leg-flares. Emergency heating for when it is really cold and your friend’s furnace breaks.

And lastly, sometimes things go wrong and we fix them. A patch for my shop table was required as a cut-through claimed the corner. Now it is real shop furniture. Small task, but essential and hits a lot of different skills to fix a thing rather than replace it or throw it away.

Corner of my rolling shop cart’s worksurface, with a diagonal cut from a track saw that was set a big too deep. The black surface is now broken with the straight line of brown wood.

February

Strangely, none of my photos were on the phone, they were in text messages sent or sent to me — must have been too busy trying to beat the start of the year’s big project. We planned to replace every floor in the house with sustainably sourced Oregon White Oak flooring, from a forest and mill I visited in 2022. Before that project started we had to raise the sunken living room by putting in a new floor above the old floor, and move all our furniture out to the garage, where my shop was and all the materials required to replace the floors. A log of material juggling to be sure.

The 2"x10"s here are about 1.5" above the original floor and both are screwed together throughout to ensure this new raised floor doesn’t reverberate like a drum (the R30 Rockwool helps here). Neatly, the fireplace sits about half an inch above the final floor level, so we tucked the ends under the lip and it looks tidy and clean.

Composite showing the starting and ending state (before laying down the 3/4 plywood, which is completely uninteresting) of the floor-raising project in the family room.

March

A quick bathroom remodel started off March. I finished the sunken family room quickly, so took on the hardwood to tile replacement, put in a new toilet (replacing the broken floor flange), discovered the old main water cutoff for the house was at EOL (rebuilding the valve), and really turned a small space into a bear of a project at the last minute. It won’t be until October (!) until this room is back together again. Woodworking joined by tile work, plumbing, and general remodeling here — but at this point mostly demo.

A 25 sq ft powder room with nearly everything stripped out, the mirror shows what is behind the door (place for a toilet). None of the elements of the bathroom are currently in the bathroom, the floor and walls are about to be replaced.

April

Floor Replacement Begins (demo started on the last days of March). As the flooring guys did the demo and installation I worked on newels for the stairway — I carved off the stairway rebuild as my part of the flooring update because I wanted to build a stairway. So I spent April milling material for the cove, bullnose, shoe-rails, and prepped the existing newels to accept my new box-newels over the top.

At the start of the project, things looking a bit messy. A pile of flooring raised in the kitchen, in a house with all the flooring pulled up.

Flooring in progress in mid-April, showing the newly flat kitchen to family room transition.

Mid-April flooring install, showing the integrated floor vents in the dining room. The mill made these as well as the treads and nosings for the stairways, from the same sourced wood as the flooring itself.

I built the newels mostly at a friend’s shop, he’s got bigger nicer tools and it was a joy to work with them. Also, my whole house was stacked in my garage, along with all the material for the flooring install. Here is a time-lapse, I started by milling the boards, then routed flutes, cut locking miters at the corners, and then assembled each box newel and started attaching the details like flares and trim pieces (in May). These were the cleanest locking miters I’d ever cut, so that was nice.

4 images together showing a time lapse of construction from stacks of boards to five and a half box newels.

And since my mother was graciously allowing my family of 5 to move in during the remodel I finished a couple small projects around her house, including a new brace for an old table and new gate for her back porch. The below brace had to be removable and allow the for pedestal table to collapse down, e.g. to not get in the way of closing together the two halves of the pedestal.

An old American Oak Table — circa end of the 19th century, when factory manufacturing brought veneered oak furniture to the masses. The veneers here were close to 1/8" thick, and the repairs from 50 years ago showing their age. The table is dark brown, there is a light brown brace near the floor, keeping the legs from splaying out.

By the end of April, things were starting to look like they were ready for installation. The box newels fit nicely, the shoe rail and bullnose were in place, the trim and details were ready for finish on both the upper floor and the newels themselves.

Something between a dry-fit and installation. The bullnose and shoe-rail were fitted but here the newels were still removable. The upper floor is down, save the top step of the stairs, but the rake hasn’t been started yet.

May

A lot of finish work on the newels, balusters, installation of the shoe-rail, bullnose, cove, trim, etc. etc. etc. The flat runs went smoothly, the rake was enough to decide I never want to build another stairway again. After boring 32 angled holes in the white oak handrail to slide over the tops of the balusters, dry fitting, and putting adhesive in each hole it then decided there was too much friction to get it to seat properly. So I ended up changing direction, cutting a channel, and fitting plugs between the tops of the balusters. A lot more work, but it worked. The end result looks great, so what’s done is done.

The newels look great, in white with clear finished white oak trim pieces. The caps are solid white oak to minimize hand-prints and maximize wear. The tall newel is new, meant to mitigate the two-step drop on the corner and eliminate a super janky gooseneck in the original handrail. I traded that for two goosenecks, but these are compact and solid. The bullnose and shoe-rail blend right in with the rest of the floor, job well done if I say so myself. This image was after final install and before final touchup, the paint tape is still visible here and a plug from where I had to move the attach-point for the rake handrail after adjusting plans during the installation.

After the work is complete, things look amazing. So much labor wrapped up in this image, it boggles the mind.

The big project here was the hand-rails, which started with 10/4 stock and made use of a few profiling router bits.

Handrail pieces, white oak, at different stages of shaping. A few still have the blue-paint of the end of the board. Working with the bigger pieces made milling a challenge, the longest run was 13.5' which is hard to work with end to end.

And they didn’t get easier to work with during the installation, I had to change from drilled holes for the top of the balusters to a channel in the handrail.

This was a nerve wracking day, many projects die when you get to the glueup and this was looking like becoming a huge dead project. We couldn’t not have a handrail on the stairs, so I had to find a way to make it work. You can see the channel cut in the test piece and the angled holes bored in the handrail that failed to install properly. This crisis was resolved over the course of a couple hours.

Getting the handrails up was critical to getting everyone back in the house. Once the floor was finished and the finish aired out, the timer started again to get the stairs safe so the kids wouldn’t fall through the gap. The original rail was not to code, a 6" spacing on balusters, so I tidied that up at the same time.

This happy little jig helped me get the handrails in the right place.

Balusters and handrails installed on the upper hallway over the stairs. This part was the easy part, it looked great and was fast to install.

I also took on a quick day project just to ‘finish’ something and feel like I was still capable of making progress. I made this cute bunny plate frame and display, and then I refinished it with a better colors before it was ready to go up in a place of honor in the bunny room. It was made with off-cuts from the handrail, and spares from the flooring. I shifted from a mechanical attachment to epoxy to give it a cleaner look and greater stability. Finishing it twice meant taking another day, but it was worth it. The original was with a clear finish, the final used Rubio Monocoat Cotton White and Ice Brown for greater contrast.

A frame for displaying a silly bunny plate. The bunny is eating a coco-puff, which is not something you’d want to plate your chocolate covered espresso beans for instance.

And, then we moved back into the house. The 3 week project took 7 weeks end to end, we’re still unpacking at the end of 2024.

The new white oak floor in the family room, looking natural and wonderful without the step down from the kitchen.

The whole stairway, finished at the end of May

June

Three projects for June, because moving back in was just the first step to putting our home back together. As part of packing everything up we realized a few of our pieces of furniture weren’t really that great. Either too large, badly suited to our needs, or just not right for the kids. We pressed a test piece into service (chest of drawers I hacked together the year before) and found new homes for some of the larger pieces we got for free in the first place. That meant we still had to fill in the gaps (and get back to work on that powder room from March).

The first castle joint bed was for my oldest. I cut her previous bed into pieces to get it out of her room because I didn’t make it with removing it in mind. The new bed can easily be broken down and moved in pieces. I saw this style on YouTube, changed a bunch of steps, and then just made it pretty quickly — easy-peasy.

A close up of the corner of the castle joint bedpost. The joint was additive instead of a cut notch, which was nominally easier to do but you still have to cut the rails so you are in for the challenge one way or the other.

The castle bed disassembled and finished with a dark brown finish.

A castle bed frame with a queen sized bed. There is a hand-drawn save the sea-turtles poster on the wall.

And a frame for a mirror, simple miters with a deep rebate on the back side to host the mirror. Getting a lot of work done with the Ice Brown finish color and off-cuts from the hand-rails.

Mirror in the powder room, a simple mitered frame. You can see some of the paneling on the wall on the back of the room, getting it all wrapped up to cover decades of wallpaper.

July

June, July, and August saw more field work and travel, but I still made progress on the powder room and started a second bed, a captured castle joint with slightly slimmer stock from the first one. Got the bed mostly read for finish, and the paneling up in the powder room ready for caulk and paint. The captured castle joint is ‘fancy’ and also the pinned rails were because the normal castle joint bed was popping the end of the rail off along the grain due to the expansion in the joint. I lost one corner that way, and a friend lost every corner on his fancier traditional version, so this was my attempt to get ahead of the problem. I’d use a brass pin if this piece was fancier. Some of those gaps are larger than I’d like, I’ll do something about that in August.

Close up of a captured castle joint, from above, that illustrates how the cross-over is narrower than the width of the rails. This prevents the joint from sliding in any direction — even before the interlock with the other pieces is considered.

The drawers are compact — I used sanded and waxed sliders for the 3.5" drawers, the cabinets at the bottom provide more storage than we had before. I finally figured out the shaker-style frame is full height at the sides and fills in across the top and bottom, so things don’t look so weird anymore. The central pulls out, and sits a little odd because the weight balance on the sliders is tippy. I may have to reseat it (but I’m the only one who notices so far).

This is the vanity I built for the powder room, using mostly leftover flooring material and some frame-banding from hand-rail offcuts. This dark brown is very popular with the family, and a good contrast with the vanity surface and flooring here and in the rest of the house.

August

This is the month I discovered my sins with the captured castle joint bed. I handled the gaps with a champfer, that actually looks really good. And pinning the ends of the rails in the joint both looks great and has addressed the grain-popping-the-end-off problem seen on prior builds. But my sin was more fundamental, this image makes it clear.

A very fine captured castle joint bed… that happens to be much larger than the mattress sitting atop it. It is the wrong size.

This made me laugh long and hard. I love this picture. I love this whole project because this bed looks really great, went together easily, showed real developing skill, and exposed a comical fundamental error. I had just assumed that because I love my children equally I’d gotten them the same size beds and that was not the case. I also modified my plans to slim up the pieces and strongly taper the legs, and because I used the same outside dimensions that meant even more of a gap around the mattress — it didn’t fit any standard mattress, much less this one. It is about 8" too big on each side. Fortunately 8" is deep enough to get beyond the existing joints. I can just recut four of the ends (half of them) and it’ll all be the right size.

A tapered leg at the corner of the captured castle joint bed.

Top-down view of the captured castle joint corner, with the champfer hiding any defects in the lines of the joints. The pins look decent even though they were difficult pine dowels and tended to break apart.

The captured castle joint bed, looking great in the room before I put the matress on it.

Oh, and I helped out the neighborhood in August building a playground at the tot-lot. Part of that was creating this shade around the port-a-potty so the closest neighbors didn’t have to look out their dining room window at a port-a-potty. Someone has added a line of shrubs around it as well, may it stand for 1,000 years.

A section of fencing wrapped around a porta-potty in a park.

September

After the wrong size bed incident I needed a quick project to put in the win column; enter three shelves built around a leftover stair tread. I made 3, because I have 3 daughters, and used a white chalk paint with a poly coat to keep it clean and smooth for what will become storage for DnD and gaming sundries. 3 shelves in 4 days, most of which was waiting for paint and glue to dry. The feet are simply 1" cuts from a closet rod dowel, rounded over on the bottom — dead simple no plans required. The top has a routed channel for the sides and back into the 1 1/2" thick top, for that I drew the line on green tape and cut it with a shaper origin — fast and easy for something that might have had a high chance of error with a palm-router and jig.

Three shelves with (fairly thick) edge banding being applied, at night in early September.

A finished shelf loaded with DnD sundries in early September. The corner of the captured castle joint bed suggests it is lurking just off camera.

The main work of the month was starting on a monster built-in for the master closet, we move along two chests of drawers after the flooring work and the kids got the two from our closet — it was time to close that gap. In hindsight, this project turns out to be as big and complicated as the stair rail project, there are 14 pieces to each of the 15 drawers and many steps along the way for each piece to come together nicely. The carcass, shelves on the sides, and shelves across the top and mezzanine went quickly enough — even with the face frame for the side shelves.

A large built in closet carcass. Shelves standing up along the left and right and an area for drawers in the three bays in the middle. Work in progress.

Finish going on the face frame for the shelves and the large shelf for across the top of the whole built-in. This shelf was also built with spare white oak flooring, a common theme for the year.

October

Ok, the master closet was shaping up to be a big project and the powder room was still lurking unfinished in the background. I didn’t have enough of the right wood on hand to make progress on the built-in, in particular the face frame and drawer faces, so I resolved to finish the powder room before the next daughter birthday (near the end of October). So October was a push to wrap up the powder room.

The completed powder room, with vanity, paneling, mirror, (tile floor), and new fixtures and fittings throughout.

This powder room was under construction for much of March through October, and offline from March through June with the vanity and sink out, it was good to have this completed. And it looked great, a nice bonus.

November

We spent 6 days at the end of November without power and I spent the beginning of it on the road in the field near Flagstaff.

A variety of old tools and meta tools used for sharpening those tools. There is a small sledge, a hatchet, a draw knife, a cold chisel, two diamond plate sharpeners, and a honing guide. There is also some white oak face frame material.

A log of ponderosa pine with the bark stripped off. This was fire salvage pulled from a slash pile in Southern Oregon.

The only woodworking I did was debarking a ponderosa pine log I pulled out of a slash pile back in July, for use as company anniversary awards next year. Used a completely different set of tools here, some that hadn’t seen use in 50 years (before my time).

December

Started December with the realization I wasn’t going to finish the closet built in by Christmas, and then got sick to make sure I wasn’t motivated to go work in the cold. When building the drawer boxes I had a lot of trouble with the pre-finished plywood. It had a super brittle and thin finish and top-veneer, both were chipping and separating from being cut, moved, stacked, stored, moved again, etc. all year. These are the perils of a small working area, everything is always in the way of all the other projects. In the end I decided to edge band the drawers, and after doing that (cutting white oak strips out of the leftover flooring) the flush trimming tore up the finish enough that I decided to sand the prefinished drawer box pieces and finish them again. I used the chalk paint and poly method from the white shelves earlier, but it was time consuming on a step that was meant to have already been done. I ended by using a palm router to roundover the edge banding, revealing it from the paint steps, and when finished with the drawer faces will really tie everything together nicely. It will look great, but will take at least another month to cmplete the work.

An in-processes image showing some of the strip cutting to create the edge banding for the drawer pieces for the closet built-in.

A stack of edge banding for the drawer components. White oak strips 4mm x 11mm x 550mm

Some of the drawer pieces in the process of being finished, after the prefinished material was sanded away.

I did start the rough milling of my log. Cut the cant and a variety of thickness boards easily enough, despite the relatively recent harvest date. This dry pine, post fire, log was under 30% relative humidity and therefore only twice the level of kiln dried wood. My friend and I had a lot of trouble with recently fallen logs binding on the blade and checking all over the place. The heavily checked ends were over 55%rh, and reading more or less as pure water along the interior of the cut, so we gave up for more drying time and/or more appropriate tools. We’re going to try again with a chainsaw mill or at least a green-wood bandsaw blade in 2025.

The rough cut pondo log being cut to different dimensions on a band-saw.

Pondo boards stacked for a year of drying before they can be used for projects.

The year ended with piles of stuff in the garage shop, loads of work done, and still loads left to complete in 2025. I’ve got another bed to build, a storage shelf for kid’s computers in the living room, oh and the built-in for the master closet to finish up. We‘ve still got some clothes in boxes and it is getting a bit old.

A lot of projects in this busy year past, but always more to do. I might have worked my table saw to death, which is a big deal as I didn’t like table saws as a tool until recently (preferring my track saw, miter saw, and router). It was the all-star this year, but needs some TLC.

At the end of the year, the shop was stacked high with work in progress.

In addition to the built-in closet, bed, and cabinet, I’ve got a long list of upcoming projects:

Year 3 (and then 4) service awards for my company
Curio Cabinet with arched top and glass sides (pair for the one we have)
Frame and Stabilization for hand-carved portraits (16x24x2" single slabs)
Router bit cabinet for the shop (OSB and Bloodwood, probably)
Enclosure for the 3D printer for climate control
Paneled box for the 80yr old rosewood board I re-sawed last year
Some cherry boxes from some recently acquired logs
Another wall shelf for the kids
Kitchen Cabinet Remodel
Revisit the laundry room (butcher block not wearing well)
and more!

With luck I’ll be able to park in the garage again before spring!