finishing pictures

So yeah, I managed to get the cooler out of the garage over the holiday weekend, giving me my shop space back just in time to figure out what to make next.

Sunny & ready for drinks. Just seeing this pic makes me thirsty.

I took the lid back off to get the lid and top trim as cleanly done as possible, and to make it light enough for me to carry the thing up to the deck myself. Woof.

Broke two sponge brushes getting the poly on too.

One of the lid boards was pretty far off, but is a lot closer now thanks
to a few passes with a blench plane.

Just the right size to finish on the bench vs on the cooler.

All in all it did a good job for a cookout Sunday night, but now that I'm sober and hung over I'm a little aggravated I didn't get the spigot right. We'll have to see how hard it is to pull it back apart and try something else.

But I think it's going to stay there; the bottom shelf is the perfect spot to stash the table cover while it's off so things are looking very summer-y on our deck right now. It makes long weekends that much more fun, now I just have to make it through the shorter weeks.

Worth it.

Things kind of got away from me over Memorial Day weekend, but the cooler performed admirably.

The spigot was horrible, but I drank enough that I didn't mind.

I found it's final form!

Well, that came together rather nicely.

For not having a single straight line on the cooler and looking pretty crooked half-way through, this thing rounded into shape pretty nicely.

One big help: even though it's the same area to cover, I realized it would be easier to put the bottom shelf supports on the side and cover it with long boards versus supports on the wide side and many more short boards. Saved me some time and it was easy to cheat that last board to look straighter when compared to the bottom trim. At least I realized it while I was still working on it vs after things had been sealed and left outside for a while. And that's why it's usually better to have a plan.

That trim saved me a lot of headache too. Much cleaner.

The many short boards approach was alright for the lid, although it did leave some oddly short openings to cover to keep everything symmetrical. It looks better completely covered though vs leaving evenly spaced openings.

That did make the lid a lot heavier, but it still balances to stay open.

There's still lots of sanding to do, and seal, but if I can get this out to the porch next week there's lots of other stuff I can poly on my first Friday off. Sounds like a good way to spend the day to me.

Cooler progress

Even if it wasn't ready for our small Mother's Day cookout, I managed to get some progress done on the cooler box between all the yard work Saturday.

Most of this is superficial; trimming the bottom of the box to hide the mess, getting the top framed with flat trim, and getting the lid framed up and attached.

Opens smooth with good balance, thank goodness.

I'm tempted to leave this open for the cup holders.

Unfortunately after cutting for the trim and lid, none of the leftovers were long enough to cover either the lid or the shelf. So there's at least one more board-buying trip in my future. But I'm pretty happy with how things are looking.

Spigot's looking good too, hopefully it dries to waterproof.

So things are looking pretty good. A few more boards to cover the lid and the bottom shelf, and then seal it once I've picked up some more poly. Just in time to start my summer schedule with an open workshop. Or at least, more open than it is now.

Eureka, I have a spigot

This is probably more expensive than simple PVC parts to get the water out of the cooler, but it'll work and it was less plumbing to figure out.

I randomly found a 5' hose adapter while we were out getting gardening supplies, and it happens to fit one of the cheaper spigot options at the nearby HD, so viola, I have my drainage plan.

I cut the other end off with my new dremel to get the spring off, and it fits right into the drainage holes left in the cooler and the stand. With some caulk around the inside of the drain hole, and an extra scrap piece to hold everything in place on the outside, we'll have drainage. Viola.

I see you peeking out down there...

Needs some extra support to keep it in place, easy.

This project has kind of stalled lately; I was hoping to have it done for our Mother's Day cookout but with everything I have left I don't think that's going to happen. Unfortunately it's a really busy time for me at work and every weekend lately has been spent getting the yard in better shape, so the cooler is on the backburner right now. There's a light at the end of the tunnel; next week is my last 5-day work week until August and I have some mornings free since there are some late nights on my calendar. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to start my summer by finishing this up though.

Man I want a beer so bad right now.

Hammer time

Looking at how other blogs have put together a cooler stand, one thing most seem to skip over is how to address the built-in spigot and expand it to the new box. And after dealing with it a little on my own, I understand why.

Since Coleman sells replacement valves, I just assumed I could screw the current ones out and work around that. Ooops. All I was doing was crushing the valve and not making any progress getting it out.

Finesse wasn't working, so I thought I might try a different approach. Out came my trusty mallet, and I used that to smash a hammer through the valve and pull the entire thing out. Sometimes brute force really is the answer.

With that out, I finished surrounding the box with my fence picket pieces, and measured how far from the cooler to the outside I had to bridge. Thankfully we're not going to be drinking out of this so the pressure to get this perfect isn't really high. I just need a place for the water to go once the ice melts.

That'll help make things a little cleaner.

To clean things up I think I'm going to have to trim the sides at the top and bottom to hide the uneven cuts at the bottom and give a lid frame something more substantial to sit on. So there's at least one more trip to get more boards in my future. Besides getting some extra boards, once those are on some hardware and some poly should just about do it. It doesn't sound like a lot, but without much time to work on this during the week it's been pretty slow going getting this all together. Throw in tiling the in-laws' backsplash and my project time has been pretty minimal lately. Hopefully it's together and out in time for our first big cookout, which can't happen soon enough.

On to summer projects!

I'm not counting down the days until my 4-day summer weeks, but I am paying attention to other people as they count down.

Thank goodness I got the desk and the chair wrapped up and out of the garage, b/c the mower and various scooters are already out for the season and that means much less room to work with in the shop right now. But that didn't stop me from getting an early start on one of my summer projects: building a stand around our hand-me-down coleman cooler.

Brrr.

Yes, the same one in the photo from earlier. Shamefully we left it out all winter after using it for our Christmas party, and it was already a little beat up when it came to us. It's missing its wheels so it's not very mobile anyway, so why not build something to make it a little more attractive this summer.

Admittedly I went into this project a little less prepared than I usually do. No sketches or plans but I did watch a couple of people put similar stands together on youtube. Building the planters really gave me the sense all I needed for a build like this was more cedar fencing and some 2x3's to help frame it up. And with that lackadaisical attitude in place I picked up some supplies and got busy.

I probably ended up with the most oddly shaped cooler to try this with.

But hopefully I can get things relatively square.

First step was getting rid of the cooler hardware. The reciprocating saw made quick work of the handle nubs I couldn't just muscle off. With those gone I did at least measure the cooler and add the width of some boards to it so I had a skeleton to go off of to start. Next was splitting some 3-foot lengths of pickets in two to form the legs. Jobs like this would be a lot easier with a table saw but with some patience the circular saw worked just fine.

Waiting patiently for glue to dry is not my strong suit.

See what I mean about the cooler? Not a straight line on there.

With the legs ready I framed up the upside down cooler and clamped the legs on to see how straight things were. Things looked pretty good, so out came the 2x3 to help keep the cooler where I wanted it in the frame. Up until then I was still using exterior wood screws I had left over from the planters, but for this I got the pocket screws out. Then I used the wood screws to attach it to the legs, making sure it was level (at least when it was upside down).

Wouldn't be my project if there weren't pocket screws in it somewhere.

That should work, although the back might need an extra shim.

Alright, that looks like it will work.

So far, so good. I had enough 2x3 left over to add rails to the lower legs to include a bottom shelf later, and it adds to the stability as well. I was planning on just nailing in the remaining planks vertically to cover the exposed framing on the cooler, but however I end up finishing it what I'm really worried about is figuring out the drainage situation. I've got an idea about attaching a spigot  but who knows if it'll actually work or not. That's one thing that doesn't get a lot of detail online so I'm on my own for that.

Even with drainage undecided, I loved having a chance to work on this so far. Despite the rainy weather lately it's been a good couple of weeks in the shop; there have been some stretches where I haven't had a chance to work on anything during the week but I've still been able to get some good stuff done. The backsplash kept me from getting much done on this project but now my calendar is clear and I'm excited to have some time coming up and a few more projects in mind to work on. Let's get to Memorial Day already!