Those pesky geckos!!!

A few years ago (yes, I said years) my brother got me a used computer from his work in exchange for me building a shelf for him. Then the shelf became a cornice. First I needed measurements from him, which took a while. Then his project kept getting delayed because I had other projects that took priority.

Then I found out about the GECKOS! Yeah, like that cute little guy from the Geico commercial? Well, not so cute when I had to figure out how to cut them into the face of a 7 feet long by 8 inches wide by 3/4" thick board! So, I kept delaying it even more until I finally just put on my big girl panties and got it done.

There was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth as I hand cut the gecko on the right using a coping saw (a hand saw with a really skinny blade). Then, while I was using my dremmel tool to clean up the blade marks, the thing I was dreading the most happened. The curvy part by the tail broke and took part of a toe with it. Luckily, I was able to find the broken part and glue it all back together. No more dremmel near the gecko! After I got him all glued back together, I walked away from the cornice for the day (I might have gone inside to sew after that!) Before I had a chance to work on it again, my brother and his wife were at my house for a family party and saw the first gecko all done (and maybe I whined a bit about what a pain it was to cut) and they decided it would look cool to have one gecko cut out and have the other gecko as a cut out piece that attached to the front of the cornice. OOOO, much easier to cut out a gecko that way!!!

Since they wanted the piece painted and I think it's practically a sin to paint good hardwood (this one is built out of Alder) and they also wanted it sometime this decade, they decided they would do the finishing on it. So here it is bare naked!

Here it is sitting on top of one of my sawhorses in front of our ugly bush!

They wanted the top shelf area recessed so my sister-in-law can use it for a display shelf.

 

It's definitely not my taste in decor, but I think it turned out pretty good and they were really happy with it, and I'm happy that it's finally done!