JK Building the Dream Blog

As a kid, hide & seek is an all time favourite game. Finding little nooks and crannies to hide in while others looked was always fun. When we finished the rock garden by the air conditioner, the planters beside the big air conditioning unit, just lost some of its lustre and beauty. So we decided…

Last year I built a raised garden bed for my mom for Mothers Day. She had mentioned wanting another, as well as a privacy planter for her deck. I love homemade gifts, so I offered to make her whichever one she preferred. She decided on the privacy planter, so I found a few options for…

We have grown many peppers in our garden. Sweet, jalapeño, Thai chilies, hot Hungarian and now banana peppers. We have also pickled most of the peppers we have grown, with the exception of the sweet peppers. They are all really good, but so far the best ones for pickling have been the hot Hungarian. I…

I love our fresh vegetables during the summer, whether they are in a salad, grilled on the BBQ or added to recipes. I also love using our frozen or canned veggies during the non-growing season. Heading into this holiday season, it is nice to be able to make warm loaves for when company comes, or…

So my fall creations from the garden continue...sort of. These two delicious recipes ingredients came from someone else's gardens, but they are tasty none-the-less, and are getting me prepared for when we have our fruit trees. Our plan is to have peaches, pears, apricots, apples and cherries. I would love some citrus trees, but they…

So my fall creations from the garden continue...sort of. These two delicious recipes ingredients came from someone else's gardens, but they are tasty none-the-less, and are getting me prepared for when we have our fruit trees. Our plan is to have peaches, pears, apricots, apples and cherries. I would love some citrus trees, but they…

We had another great year with our strawberries. I wasn't a huge fan of strawberries until we started to grow them ourselves and I realized what a strawberry should truly taste like. Store bought are just a hint of what a strawberry really should look and taste like. Our strawberries are big, juicy and red…

K has talked about building some fishing rod racks for a while now. We have enough rods that it certainly would make sense to build a few. We have a few nails in the wall of the shop that we hang some of the rods on, and then some go into cases and are laid…

When you are young, your parents teach you not to play with knives. When you are older, they might be the person who teaches you to play with them. That is the case for me. I like to think that I take after my parents in equal measures. There are a lot of things about…

Wood, wood and more wood! I am surrounded by off-cuts, angle cuts, circular cuts, random lengths, shapes and sizes. It is amazing the amount of scraps a person can accumulate, so it is time to start using it. Some of it will be smaller projects. I want to dabble in carving wooden spoons, gluing pieces…

This is a little later than expected, but working from home and then writing blogs in my spare time can be a little daunting. Especially when the sun is shining and I desperately want to get outside and enjoy it. Below are the plans for each of the planters we built for our front garden.…

Here are the plans for building the trellis that can be added to the planter boxes I previously provided plans for. You can also use these plants to add trellis to existing planter boxes you may have, with a few adjustments to the measurements. LUMBER & SUPPLIES NEEDED 3 - 2” x 3” x 8’…

Once we got the leak issue sorted out, we focussed our energy on building beautiful planters with lattice for climbing flowers. I spent a day drawing out the planters, how they would be built, figured out a cultist and what it would cost us from our hardware store. I will put a separate post out…

Throwing it back to a little earlier this year, I thought I would share one of the projects I worked on in our beautiful shop. I didn't take a lot of photos as this was more of an experiment and I didn't think the first draft would actually turn out as well as it did...lesson…

Gardening and renovations are just a few of the hobbies that K and I enjoy. It can sometimes be difficult to prioritize which hobby we want to do, we have so many. Among them (some of which I have already noted) is fishing, biking, exploring the backcountry, hiking, camping, cross-country skiing, etc. One of my…

Our photo-bombing pooch, Ellie, is getting a little older now, and we notice she sometimes has issues eating from her bowls. It's like she needs to stretch an arm out and stretch before she can continue. It also could be that she feels that she must gobble her food as fast as possible so that…