Stained Glass

We've made it to Friday once again - and we are ready for the weekend. As usual on Friday evenings we will be going dancing.

I've got the day off from work after putting in a solid 10 hour day yesterday. It was time to blow out sprinkler systems around town, so the boss and I started at 8:00 and finished a little before 6:00. It wouldn't have been so bad if the wind and rain wouldn't have picked up in the afternoon, add to that the temperature overing around 45 for the high and it just became a less than enjoyable day.

Enough about that though, I wanna share my progress with the stained glass window I am making. Laura informed me that I should be sharing that, so here goes.

Here's a picture of some of the work - it's actually what I did on Wednesday evening. What you are looking at is what will eventually be two swans. Something to note though, this is actually the back of the window - in the design they are swimming the other way. You're seeing the back because there is a template pattern stuck to the other side of the glass. Also, the glass looks much darker than it truely is because of the templates and because it is laying on the floor. Actually, here's the picture of the finished window from the book I am using. I actually redesigned the pattern to look 'better' in my eyes. I changed a few colors to keep the cost down as well. I also did some redesigning to make it a little easier to cut the glass out. The large piece of blue glass on the top runs about $12 a shot - so messing up is a costly mistake! I've completed most of the other parts of the water as well, but they don't really fit into place yet so I left them out of my photo. This afternoon I am headed to the glass shop to get some white glass for the swans!

Here's a random photo for the day - it's me and R2-D2 hanging out in front of Macy's in downtown Missoula a few weeks ago. In this case, R2 is actually a mailbox that has stickers on it to look like the Star Wars robot. The USPS released a bunch of these designs for the summer to promote the Star Wars anniversary.

Here's one more random picture for everyone. Occasionally I mention how strange things are around Missoula, particularly some of the amazingly strange people we see all over town. Well, when you have a bumper sticker that proclaims the town to be weird then evidently I am not alone. I spotted this on a light pole I usually park next to when I go play ultimate frisbee. It reads "Keep Missoula Weird - Do Your Part!" Well, I think it's safe to say that some people are overdoing it.






Finally, I had to show off some of our work from last week. We installed a patio at a house - there was already a concrete slab poured, but they wanted to extend the patio with paver stones.You can see the boarder around the pavers, I thought that was a nice touch. The trick was getting the stones cut to fit into those shapes. This is where I really have to show off some skills - particularly mine. You can see some of my handy work in the bottom of the first photo where the boarder comes together to meet. This was some crafty work to get this just right. See how tiny those pavers are? Not to mention the stager that continues throughout the narrowing... Here's a better angle. Check out how small that last sliver of stone is before the boarders meet! That was some fine tuning with the wet saw to get that to come out how I wanted it, but I got it on the first attempt, so that's how it was.

The next area I'm going to show off isn't all that impressive, but I still like how it looks. For the most part the patio didn't have much in the form of a straight section of boarder - that is, there were no straight edges on the exterior boarder. Except one spot that is a high profile are of the patio, and quite noticeable. The real challenge was getting the curve to come out nicely and transition into the straight section before curving the opposite way. I actually did this section before the skinny area, but I thought it was a lot easier - basically because the cuts were rather simple once I got started. The pavers were basically being cut in half and that makes everything much easier! Overall it wasn't a particularly difficult patio, but it was a good challenge. We are hoping to get started on a patio early next week before the snows start flying for the winter. That all depends on if the owners get things aligned and make a final decision though.

Otherwise, the weekend looks to be cold and rainy. Likely I will find myself hunting at least one day, if not two and before I know it, Monday will be here. So, on that note, have a good weekend! Until again

-=Nolan=-