Wagon plans!

There is nothing like me when I'm excited about a project. My brain starts popping and fizzing, and I'm pretty much unable to use it for anything remotely useful or important, because I'm too busy sending all my synapses firing on The Most Important Project Ever -- which is the current one, obviously.

Dishes done? Floors swept? Dusting? You must be nuts. I can't do any of that! Because I have to sit on this computer, staring at pictures of wagon wheels and complaining about how much they cost and how far away they are!

I have a picture in my mind of how this will all look in the end and it consumes me. I spent my morning break  the other day wandering around the local secondhand building materials shop. They didn't have any wheels. Which wasn't exactly surprising and didn't bother me much because there's more to carts than wheels. You need a box thingy (technical term) to set on top to hold stuff! I found a 15" x 30" piece of 3/4" plywood and thought "Cart floor!" Then I stared at table legs and banister spindles for a while before deciding that they were too ornate and short for practical use as cart components or shafts. I tried to imagine how I'd attach wheels to my cart and figured there would be an axle of some sort. I bought some extra wood pieces to make a housing (or whatever it's called) for the axle. My entire expenditure for the materials was $3.

I bought dowels that will be fitted into drilled holes on the cart floor. I will weave basket reeds left from corseting to make the body/basket/box thingy and I even thought to make the front two corner posts taller so I could hang the bells there.

Yes, bells. Because while I was looking for wheels at a thrift shop, I saw this bag of 18 brass bells for only $2 and they were the perfect touch of fancy for my (still mostly imaginary) cart.

The weekend comes and there is yardwork to be done. We head to the hardware store for some needed items and my brain is all wheelswheelswheels and I coax Dave into looking at wheels with me. I'm holding a nice-sized grey-plastic-rimmed wheel in my hands, imagining the spokes painted brown to look like wood, and it pleases me somewhat. Then Dave interrupts my happily fizzing brain by asking, "How do you intend to attach these wheels to your cart?

"Oh, with a thingy. You know, that rod. An axel. Made of... something. Metal, I guess. Whatever. How do you make wheels stay on that thing, anyway?"

Dave makes mouth noises about something technical sounding and I realize that those noises are probably important to the success of this cart. So I immediately promote him to Chief Wheel-Attacher Guy. We end up not buying the wheels then because Dave says something something measure something. Also, priorities something something.

"It's okay," I say. "I'll just make the reed basket part and you can attach the wheels when they're ready!" But Dave says no, because he'll need to something something power tools something flip cart over something break it.

"Did I tell you I've got bells?" I interrupt him. "To hang on the front? They're gonna be perfect!" My hands make little grasping motions like I'm holding a string of bells and I make "ching-ching-ching!" noises to show him how incredible it will look and sound.

"Do you have a plan for this thing? On paper? With measurements? Anything?"

"...No...t yet! But I will!"

And so I came home and drew them up. See?

So technical! Woo hoo!