I’ve always loved advent calendars. They help kids deal with the seemingly endless stretch to Christmas. And I love seeing what’s behind the next door every morning.

This year, I made one. In part, it was an excuse to buy power tools, but also I had a lot of fun making it.

I used a jig saw to cut out the pieces, starting each piece by drilling a hole just large enough to insert my smallest jig saw blade, and also drilling a larger hole directly in the middle, exactly the same size as the dowel rod. You can see that in some of the pictures. After cutting out the piece, I sanded off the end of the dowel rod, cut a piece between one and two inches long, and inserted it into the center hole with some wood glue. Each piece was numbered (1 to 25) as I took them out.

When I was done cutting out all the pieces, I laid the board over the backboard, and traced out each hole on the backboard in pencil, and put the piece number on there too. Then I stained the front board and painted each piece and wrote the number on it in silver marker once it dried.

I then painted something in each space on the backboard, and erased the pencil marks, and wrote the number on there, too. I used a spray shellac to seal all of this so that it will last for a few years.

Finally, I used wood glue to put the front and back boards together, clamping them for several hours.

See the finished results on flickr.