The one item that I didn’t get with the Ural when I originally purchased it a few years ago, but really wanted, was a windshield for the sidecar. Unfortunately, at about $250 for a factory unit I didn’t feel like I’d get what I was paying for so instead I decided to build my own. Total cost: $40 and about 3 hours of my time. There isn’t much to it so the photos below pretty well show what I did. However, if you’re going to go out and buy the materials, this is essentially what you’ll need.

Extra strong safety-coated plexiglass, an 18×24″ piece of this will run you about $20 at Home Depot.

Piece of galvanized sheet metal (don’t need this but I thought it added a finished touch).

Handful of bolts, nuts and washers.

Piece of hardwood that’s about 4x4x24″.

You can use a jigsaw to cut and shape the plexiglass and then an orbital sander to give the edges that nice rounded look. The wood I used was a piece of scrap left over from my Adirondack Chair Construction so it was pressure treated and then I put a couple coats of polyurethane mahogany stain over it. I’m pretty pleased with the results.

Gail mentioned that it might be nice to have some adirondack style chairs in the front yard for enjoying the passing traffic of cars, cyclists and pedestrians. This was a great idea! Fortunately my major projects for the year were complete (i.e. painting the house and putting in the last of the new windows) so I formulated a plan in my head to use some pallets that they were throwing away at work.

The first thing to know about making anything with pallets is that, if you plan on pulling them apart for the sake of using the wood you will break some of it in the process, and the process of breaking down pallets into individual boards is, to put it mildly, a total PITA. But otherwise it is free treated lumber.

I’d love to post up some plans to help guide you through this process but I just eye-balled everything. The pictures below should give you a good idea of how it all came together though. Also, while I was working on this, Sophie made us some “polka-dots” for the back side of the house. I love them!

I’ve loved this style of lamp shade/chandelier for some time now although I never found out who the original designer was, regardless, as of late lots of folks have figured out how to make inexpensive versions at home with some spare yarn, glue and light components. I’m not going to go through how I made this since there’s an endless number of tutorials online already but I’ll link up one good one, and then you can Google around for others.

Here’s the tutorial: http://www.pickles.no/whirl-it-lampshade/

Here’s how it worked out for our house.

After making do for some time with a fill-in sofa I was itching to get to building the couch that haunted my mind. I’ve never built a couch before nor have I done much upholstery (almost zero), so this was a leap of faith. I think it worked out pretty well though. The fabric came from the Herman Miller factory store which, fortunately, my mom lives down the road from. If it hadn’t been for a very inexpensive purchase of a mass of upholstery fabric I probably wouldn’t have been so cavalier about this project, but fortunately I had extra yards to fall back on. Having lived with the couch a few weeks now I can see things I might do differently if I have to re-upholstery it at some point. The sketch is pretty much all I had to go on, the rest of it just sort of worked itself out in my head. Alright, enough words, now for the pictures.

The wall sconces/reading lamps above worked with the old couch but not with the new couch, mostly because they bonked heads. Sadly moving them up or out wouldn’t work, so I made these sconces out of some spare parts. Ultimately I think we’re going to want something else but this is a good fill in for now.

Finally, a picture of the room as is now.

This past year I became interested in making things from my youth. While I haven’t gotten round to building a tree fort yet (YET!), I’ve managed to make some other fun items that Sophie and I have had a lovely time with. Here are some photo’s of those projects.