Dan The Man

One day while chopping wood for our fire pit I saw a piece of wood that was formed around a knot on the tree. I said, honey, I should make this into cute little gnome house for you. And then I stuck the piece of wood into our outside building to dry. It sat there for a year, and then I decided to give it a go. Once I separated the knot portion from the main log portion I had to grind the front edge. The split that formed from the axe was at an angle, so I had to grind the lower edge of the opening front “door”. I used a combination of electric carvers and hand tools along with multiple carbide rotary tools. I created two floors, and made a spiral staircase inside with the hand railings made from fresh clipped grape vines. I grooved the ceilings and the inner hinge area, completed the upstairs and downstairs lighting with Evan’s hobby light kits and covered the exposed channels with modeling wax. The rear wall features a “thistle design” stained glass windows. Then the outside was covered with moss and it was mounted to a large round of wood. It took me about 4 weeks, working on it for a few hours each day. All in all, it looks awesome, and my wife couldn’t be happier that her little gnomes have such a swag pad to move into.