It’s finished!

All the wood bits on the floor, after going as far as I could yesterday:

I had to improvise on the cross beams, since Lowe’s did not carry 1×1 boards. You can see the holes that brought yesterday’s work to a grinding halt:

For reference, enlarging a quarter inch hole with a quarter inch drill bit doesn’t work. Not even if you tilt the drill bit and wiggle it. Not even then. No, really. It doesn’t.

So today I went out and got a new drill bit set. One that included a 3/8ths and 1/2 inch bits. However, even though I could get the half inch bit IN the drill, it wouldn’t actually drill a hole. So I improvised, yet again. Luckily the 3/8 inch drill bit had no such qualms about drilling holes. Or re-drilling holes, in this case. Thankfully I had purchased an additional 3/8ths dowel, and had enough to replace what should have been 1/2 inch dowel. Yay!

Here is the base all assembled, with a dowel stuck in for testing:

I had a few issues with getting the nails to actually hammer in, but with some help from the trusty drill and it’s newly charged batteries, we managed to get all those nails in just fine. Which resulted in this:

I have dubbed it Rudolph, as it reminds me of a reindeer on crack. Rudolph is in need of a brother or two, so Dasher and Dancer may be next on the to-do list. With, of course, more improvisation. /grin