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Building a toy box for your child or grand child can be a fun weekend project. The materials required are not terribly expensive and finishes are limited only by your imagination. You can cut a two foot wide, two foot deep by four foot wide toy box out of two sheets of plywood with some left over for your next project. Picking a finished faced, three quarter inch thick plywood such as a birch or oak face, makes for a beautiful, long lasting heirloom that will last many, many years. You can of course construct a beautiful toy box using paint grade plywood as well. Using individual boards, installing biscuits and edge gluing is a little more than many homeowners are equipped to do so we will work with plywood sheets for this toy box. When purchasing your plywood, get four heavy duty caster wheels, some one and a quarter inch wood screws, some good carpenters glue, a four foot piano hinge and a handle if you wish to add one. You will also need about thirty feet of three quarter inch wide trim to cover the exposed edges of the cut sheets. Paints and stains can be purchased once you decide on the your desired finish.

If you have a large table saw, cutting the plywood into panels is a snap. If not, using a good straight edge clamped to the plywood to guide you while you cut, works just fine. Use a good sharp blade made just for plywood in your circular saw. The trick is to get good sharp clean edges on all your cuts. The first sheet of plywood will be marked in two foot increments so you have four two foot by four foot pieces when your done. These are the top, bottom, front and back panels. The second sheet will have only one two foot by four foot piece cut from the sheet and then cut that piece is cut in half to end up with two, two foot by two foot pieces. These are the ends of the toy box. Now to keep this simple, cut an additional one and a half inches from the length of the two ends and the bottom panel. Not the height, just the length and here is why. When you assemble the toy box you will construct the rectangle portion using the ends and front and back panels first. When they are all assembled the rectangle will measure exactly two feet wide by four feet long. Cutting the inch and a half off the ends allows you to lap the front and back panels over the end panels and the result is a two foot measurement. Now after checking the inside measurement cut an additional inch and a half off the width of the bottom panel and then drop the bottom panel inside the rectangle. The provides the minimum exposed cut edges of the plywood. Assemble all these panels using your wood glue and screws and apply your pipe clamps making sure all panels are plumb and square to each other and set aside to dry. Once dry do a light sanding of all the edges to assure no nasty plywood splinters are present. The top piece measuring two feet by four feet will sit flush on top of the toy box. You want to install the piano hinge in such a manner that it will allow the top to flip back from the box when opened but close flush with the front when closed. Once done, install a short piece of small chain inside to prevent the lid from flipping backwards and ripping the hinge out of the box. Install the handle if you purchased one or cut a hole four inches long and two inches wide lengthwise in the front portion of the lid and then round over all the edges inside and out. This will allow small hands to fit inside and lift the lid. Install the three quarter inch wide edge trims to the ends of the box and the edges of the lid.

Now install the four heavy duty casters. A full toy box can weigh a great deal and when the box

becomes a seat for two kids having lunch, you don't want the casters to collapse. With all the hard work done finishing the toy box becomes a great project with the kids or grand kids. Once the base color is applied, try having them use their hands in different colored paints to leave their small hand prints behind. Date the prints for them, and then apply a good finish sealer. Your toy box will be a treasure they will remember doing with you for a long, long time.

Pete

Your Friendly Building Inspector

http://www.Wagsys.com

BCES-Building Inspection & Code Enforcement System Software

Pete is a 30+ year building inspector with experience in both public and private construction industries. From schools to treatment plants, from private homes and condo projects, to large residential landscaping projects, he has worked both in the building design areas and field construction in the Eastern US. In 2006 he formed along with two other building inspectors, Wagsys LLC which produced software for municipal agencies in the fields of building departments, planning boards and Zoning Boards of Appeals.

End It Well: Good Movies Ruined by Poor Endings

There's many things that make a good movie and there's a lot more that make a great movie. One of the deal breakers between a movie going from good to great or falling away from good to a waste of the audiences time is the ending.

Sometimes it feels like the writer just ran out of ideas or had gotten the film's plot so convoluted that when he realises the run time has breached the two hour point the ending is suddenly cobbled together and rushed through.

Perhaps the worst possible end to a film, and indeed any story, is for the main character to suddenly wake up and find it was all a dream. So we sat there and got involved in a story for nothing? What was the writer trying to say?

There's other cardinal sins in ending films: losing the big game or fight (Tin Cup); after a film-long build up the bad guy goes down ridiculously easily (Rocky 3); the whole thing is resolved by something completely outside of the story line so far (Raiders of the Lost Ark); the writer doesn't know how to explain things clearly (Revolver) and leaves the plot so confused that numerous viewings still leave you thinking "what?!!"

I'm not going to look to heavily here at those films which are obvious set-ups for the sequel as I still hold these as a waste of time - films that are franchises rather than installments in a series a-la Godfather.

One of the real irritants in a bad movie is when the character receives absolutely zero pay off for the struggle they've been through in the previous two hours of film.

Castaway, with Tom Hanks, is a prime example. We, the audience, spend the majority of the film watching Tom Hanks struggle to live on an island, losing weight, growing a questionable beard, developing an eerie relationship with a volleyball and desperately struggling to get back home to his loved ones and, specifically, his wife. When he does make it home he finds everyone has given him up for dead and his wife has married and had a child. So what does Tom Hanks' character do? What is our payoff for watching this story? It's Tom Hanks staring at a truck going down a road and smiling. Well that was worth all that struggle. Good have been a good film but ruined by one of the biggest let downs in cinema.

A great film can also be demoted to a mere good film by a let-down of an ending. Take The Sixth Sense. A child psychologist, Bruce Willis, trying to help an annoying little kid who can see dead people. The director, M. Night Shyamalan, masterfully builds up suspense throughout this film as the psychologist encourages the kid to help the dead people. Parodied many times but a pretty good film bordering on the great, until the ending where we find out that Bruce Willis' character is dead.

Bit of a let down and a poor twist - how had anyone not wondered why he was wearing the same outfit throughout the film? Oh, and the kids mum finally believes the kid can see dead people.

As a small point, Shyamalan is one of the biggest perpetrators of bad endings on pretty good films. Signs, for example, masterfully built up and then the aliens turn out to be allergic to water. I haven't even seen Unbreakable simply because so many people have told me how bad the ending is.

Some bad endings are so bad they can kill an entire trilogy. Godfather 3, for example, nearly killed the trilogy just by it's mere existence. A hugely and overly convoluted plot bought shuddering to a series of questionable scenes finalised with Michael (set sometime in the future from the plot) sitting in a chair in an Italian garden, he puts on his sunglasses then dies, a dog sniffs him and the screen fades. Great way to end what had been once billed as the greatest saga.

Speaking of great sagas, there's the end (or endings) of the Lord Of the Rings trilogy. What could have been a huge film in terms of battle, resolution and final feel good factor is ruined by not knowing when to end. Something like a dozen endings follow the films logical conclusion point (Frodo waking up and being greeted by all the survivors) one of which seems to be there only as an attempt to quash the questioned homosexual relationship between Frodo and Sam, thus ruining a film which could have been the best of the trilogy.

So, for all those budding screen writers and the film makers that keep committing cardinal sins when wrapping up films, here are some tips.

Don't rush the end but know when to leave it alone - we don't want to know what the character did for the rest of their life just the end of the story you're telling us. Don't make it too confusing, if you can't explain it clearly don't attempt to be clever - for every The Usual Suspects there's a Revolver.

Don't make your main character to something completely against grain and nature just to wrap things up or attempt a twist - "oh he turned out to be evil" is not a twist.

Give the audience a payoff, they've spent upwards of two hours on an uncomfortable chair watching this story they don't want to see someone merely shrug the events off as an attempt at a symbolic gesture and try not to kill your lead too easily if you must kill them at all.

Look at Pulp Fiction: John Travolta's character gets killed ridiculously easily halfway through the film but thanks to some clever sequencing, is still alive when the credits role as the films money-rollers knew that's what the audience wants to see. Nobody wants to spend the films duration relating to and liking a character only for them to get hit by a car at the end and die.

I'm not saying all films end badly, there are many, many great endings that make a film even greater.

My own personal favourite ending is Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. A great film with a great ending. The characters don't suddenly change, they don't die on screen. They may well die but we don't see it. They remain true to their friendship and attitude, deciding they can shoot their way out not knowing that while they've been planning the entire Bolivian army has gathered outside to await them with a hail of gunfire. We don't see that though, what we see is our film's hero's bursting out smiling and then held in position as the credits end.

When you roll those credits, do it well.

About the Author

Patrick is an expert research and travel consult currently researching Manchester airport parking

How did world war two end up affecting european society?

All countries were in debt and ruin

Two jailed for gun sales
PITTSFIELD - Two separate criminal cases came to an end this week after a pair of Pittsfield men were sent to state prison for admitting to selling guns to an undercover police officer and a police informant.

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