I Cut Wood for 30 Days

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Because I’m a fan of bodyweight training, I come across a lot of YouTube videos like the one below.

Well, since I’m a little long in the tooth, I really have no interest in doing 100 pull-ups or push-ups a day for 30 days. I just don’t have the intestinal fortitude to push myself physically like that anymore. But I do like the idea of 30-day challenges. So to scratch this itch, and make Mrs. G happy, I decided to cut wood for 30 days straight.

Garage Storage and Workbench

I devised my cut-wood challenge because the Groovy Ranch garage was a blank slate and Mrs. Groovy and I wanted to adorn it with some storage shelves and a workbench. So I went online, and after a handful of clicks and some data entry, Lowe’s was commissioned to deliver 90 2x4s and 10 sheets of 4×8 plywood to Groovy Ranch.

Quick aside. Lowe’s delivered the wood two days after I placed my order. The cost of the wood—including taxes and delivery—was $570.45.

Once the wood was delivered, my next task was to devise the parameters of the cut-wood challenge. Here are those parameters.

1. Cut at least one 2×4 or one sheet of plywood every day.
2. Spend at least ten minutes every day assembling the storage shelves or the workbench.

Those parameters aren’t exactly elaborate or burdensome, but I thought they were fitting for someone who wasn’t well-versed in the use of a miter saw or a circular saw. Let’s now see the results of the cut-wood challenge.

The Results

A little over half the garage was adorned with storage shelves and a workbench—a little on the front wall, the whole left wall, the whole back wall, and a little on the right wall. Here are some pictures.

Thoughts on the Cut-Wood Challenge

I cut and assembled wood for 30 days in a row. Woo-woo! And even though I didn’t complete the shelving above the workbench (that will be done this week), I think I did some fairly impressive work for a ham-and-egger.

My main takeaway from the cut-wood challenge is that YouTube is a godsend. Armed with YouTube, any halfway competent layperson can tackle some fairly ambitious home-improvement projects. Here are the four YouTube videos that guided me through my cut-wood challenge.

Other thoughts on the cut-wood challenge are as follows:

• James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, is a big fan of little goals. He believes that in order to accomplish anything worthwhile, you first have to master the habit of showing up, and that’s where little goals come in. On the surface, my daily goal of cutting a 2×4 or a sheet of plywood and then spending ten minutes assembling my shelving or workbench was pretty small beer. But it got my ass in the garage every day, and once I “showed up,” I invariably cut and assembled wood for two to three hours.
• Creating makes me happy. That’s why I blog. I start a blank blog post and an hour later there are words and paragraphs and seemingly coherent thoughts. But no matter how long I peck away at my laptop, I don’t create anything physical. My eloquent prose is just zeros and ones on some company’s server. My storage shelves and workbench, however, are physical objects, and I just get a tremendous CMLT whenever I step back and look at my physical creations.
• If you’re doing straight cuts, the learning curve on the miter saw is non-existent. All you do is mark your 2×4 and then lower the laser-guided saw blade. Easy peasy.
• The circular saw is a different animal. It took me a while to get comfortable with it. For the first week, I screwed a 1×3 into the plywood parallel to my cut line and used that 1×3 to guide my circular saw. By week two, however, I got the knack of the circular saw and ditched the 1×3 guide. I no longer needed training wheels so to speak to make straight cuts.
• The Kreg pocket screw system was fairly easy to use and very effective for basic joinery. My only complaint was that the Roberston square on the screw head was too small for the Robertson screw drive that came with the Kreg pocket screw jig. This meant the screw drive couldn’t go into the screw head very deep, and unless I provided a fair amount of pressure on my cordless drill, the screw drive would slip out of the screw head. Not the end of the world. Just annoying.
• Finally, cutting wood and making physical stuff is a young person’s game, especially when cutting and making involves a lot of bending and climbing. For the first week of the challenge, every muscle and joint in my body ached. Things got a little better after the first week, but there was no escaping the limitations that age puts on a body. The cut-wood challenge was particularly hard on my knees and back. Every time I bent down or got up, my knees hurt. Every time I got up to walk, it took me about 15 seconds or so to straighten up. And on several mornings during the challenge, slipping socks and sneakers over my feet was a herculean struggle. If it weren’t for Aleve, I never would have made it through the cut-wood challenge.

Final Thoughts

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Do you find 30-day challenges to be fruitful or silly? And if you find 30-day challenges to be fruitful, what was the last 30-day challenge you participated in? Let me know when you get a chance. Peace.