Take up woodworking and build furniture

“I started work on small projects to learn a few of the things I would incorporate into my 'big furniture project.' I made a skateboard. I practiced sawing tails and pins. I chopped some practice mortises. I tried to build a dovetailed beer caddy and got mad at it and scrapped the whole thing [...] It began to dawn on me just how much more than I could chew I had bitten off with my original project idea. Back to my hall bench. It's going to be a custom entry way thingy that fits under a window sill but allows room for a heat return while incorporating egg crate shelves for shoe storage. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, except that I kept those dovetailed ends in the design and added a through mortise-and-tenon for the joinery for the middle leg. I started out planning to dado the sides for shelves, but decided I'd reign myself in and pocket-screw those. I've started sawing and chopping my dovetails and I'll go ahead and admit it – I should have built my first furniture project out of pine. I'm starting to think Megan might have decided to let me 'run my devil' – as my parents used to say – on this hard maple.”

“Although I had no practical experience, I did have my own personal philosophy on joinery. I, to this day, believe my best projects are devoid of nails and screws. In today's busy lifestyles, the luxury of such joinery is not always practical. However, I decided as this was my first ever anything project it would be a no nails or screws project. The whole process would be doweled together, no screws, no nails. This would be my ultimate accomplishment, my crowning glory. I was 20 – how brilliant was I? I wrapped a piece of masking tape around my drill bit a few times to act as a depth-gauge. Before I drilled each hole into the legs, aprons and tabletop, my wife would stand at the side. She would instruct me to tilt more forward or backward. I would control left and right axis; once the 'go' word was given, plunge and do again and again for a total of 80 holes. As you can well imagine, it didn't match up. There was always a slight deviation of axis from dowel to dowel. Holes didn't seem to quite match up with some of the dowels. At first it seemed like such a mess, what was I thinking… But here's the thing: it's really kind of a fluid assembly. A pound here or there with a hammer, a push and pop and, all of a sudden, things sort of just squeeze into place.”