I love building and fixing stuff, inside and outside our house, simply “doing it myself”. It might not be perfect, may take longer to complete than buy off-the-shelf, may even cost more, but hey, I do it mostly for fun :-) I like the learning and getting better, and sometimes I surprise even myself how good the result turns out. And the money saved is awesome as well.

I’ve started my journey towards DYI skills, and especially woodworking, after buying our house and finding out it’s really useful to get at least the basic skills to fix stuff around house. Besides, being educated as a software engineer, it’s really awesome to create something you can actually touch and be present in the physical world.

Not sure where exactly, but most likely by some YouTube recommendation mystery, I ended up seeing some videos from Samurai Carpenter. It was a long time ago, maybe around 2017 – before he burned out from all the content creation and online schools, before he went crazy and moved out to the woods with his family. Before he burned out again and eventually realized it’s not the paradise he imagined, but a tough life out there in the wild :-)

I haven’t seen most of his videos, definitely not the middle part of the latest ones. The old ones focusing on basic building techniques and tools are the best and most valuable IMHO. I bought few japanese saws because of him, they are nice and crazy sharp (my left hand could tell stories :-) but you can do without them. The main message I took from him was “Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, leans to do manual things, build beautiful stuff that will last years to come and maybe even outlive you”.

So I built a playhouse for kids, playground in the garden with swings and slide, wood shed, house for cats, sturdy workbench from spruce beams, a loft in our garage to store our seasonal stuff, several bouldering walls and more. It was not always an efficient way time- and money-wise (in the beginning, when you don’t know the darn stuff), but a ton of fun anyway.

Over the years I built some things, and I’m most proud of these: a sturdy workbench, few climbing walls, play house for kids, simple backyard playground with swings and stuff and other sorts of stuff.