Rough one

Whew! First interview in a while was a rough one! Good thing I have some of my buddies from Munich by way of La Crosse waiting for me at home. I think I'll go paint a while.

Floating shelves for the boy

2x2 project number 2: getting the boy some shelves for even more flat surfaces for him to put his crap on.

I try not to be the parent always talking about how much better my kids have it than I did, but man oh man do my kids have it good. Without going into detail, let's just say our kids are not wanting for experiences or chances to explore what life has to offer. And the boy already has tons of trophies and medals to show for it. But along with the ridiculous amount of toys that show up any time the grandparents/uncles visit, all the trophies and medals are starting to clutter up his space. After stepping on some putting him to bed the other night, I thought it was time to make something to help get them out of the way for now.

Hence a pair of floating shelves, using all scrap from the media stand. 2x2's for the frames, boards for the actual shelves. Plus a few dowels to hang medals off of.

After the painters canvas I was pretty much down to some small scraps of the 2x2, so the two longest pieces dictated how long a pair of shelves would be. And I had scrap 1x12 and 1x10 to decide how deep they are, with leftover 1x3 to hang over the front. I was going to try and box the frames in completely but wasn't 100% sure the materials would be there. So I went simple instead. The frames would go into a stud, and I'd just lay the boards over them.

Getting a plan with lots of scrap to sort through.

I really need to clean at this point.

Kregged the 1x3 on with one edge needing a bit of a squeeze

Test fit from beneath

I added the dowels to one side of the bigger shelf to hang medals from, which had to get painted to match the rest of the frame. And since I was painting I lacquered the boards, leaving them natural.

Everything steady? Seems good...

Okay, think these will work for now.

This is my favorite part, obviously.

Getting these on was easy once we had decided how high and where to place them. They're each in one stud, with a drywall anchor too just in case. The shelf boards each got one screw in the back to keep it on the frame. Easy. I actually like how leaving them un-boxed turned out with the contrast and think these look good for now. They might not be permanent by any stretch but will do the job, and they'll be easy to replicate if he wants more later.


The last thing I want to do is just keep adding surface area for the boy to clutter up, but these are good for small stuff that's more for display vs playing with. Plus it's keeping his desk a lot clearer, just in time for school to start. Anyway, I think I've used up about all of my scrap now, so maybe I can actually get around to cleaning up which I keep putting off to do more of these small projects.

It's a palomojito, I guess?

After a 12 hour day at work yesterday, but before going back to work Saturday morning, I thought I'd come home and spend a pleasant night drinking and enjoying some family time. I was planning on having a few mojitos, since I could have a couple and not wake up feeling horrible on the way into work tomorrow. Unfortunately I was an ingredient short; my club soda supply was non existent.

However, I did have some grapefruit-focused soda around, and since I really wanted a (more than one) drink, I thought I'd give it a try. It wasn't half bad, and would definitely do in a pinch. I make home mojitos a little off recipe anyway, so tossing in some different soda isn't really that much of a departure for me.

Here's my usual recipe:

-One healthy scoop of sugar. Refined if we've got it, if not regular is good.
-Half a lime, halved again. If they're big limes I use whatever ratio gets me the same size.
-Handful of mint leaves. My plant looks really good right now, so it's all good.
-Two jiggers of rum. Yes, jiggers. I don't know how much this really is.

The mint looks really good right now. 

Start with the sugar, and squeeze the lime bits over it. Drop the rest of the lime in, and add the mint. Give it a good muddle, really getting the lime busted up. I use a single-drink shaker since it's tin and can stand up to it. Add the rum, and if it hasn't been in the freezer it never hurts to add an ice cube or two either. At this point, you can add extras if you're going for other flavors. This is when I typically add coconut. And yes, since I use a shaker I give everything a good couple shakes. I like it frothy.

Dump everything in your vessel of choice, and top it off with the appropriate amount of club soda. If you've got it. Which I did not. But other soda ended up working fine. B/c the kids are in bed and I'm on my third one of these tonite, so mission accomplished.

Tomorrow at work should be fun. This recipe is not perfect; it's a good mix of practical technique and short cuts, but still close enough to a mojito recipe I feel alright calling it that. It took a lot of trial and error to get it to something simple enough to replicate each time but complex enough to be close in flavor profile to solve a craving. But even with club soda it still doesn't quite capture the pure awesomeness that is well-made bar mojitos. Adding different soda took it a step further away from that but these are definitely still palatable. Maybe it I have some tequila around next time I'll toss that in too.

DIY painters canvas

As much as it pained me to change the media stand plans and not use the expensive 2x2's I bought specifically for the base, clearly I was going to hang onto them and use them for something else. Turns out I used them for TWO something-elses.

First, looking at the pieces standing up on their own, they seemed like a good size to make a canvas out of. I haven't had much painting time lately, but I do have a canvas drop cloth I've been holding onto for just this project. And a tall, thin canvas would fit perfectly where Vader currently is.

I started by cutting one of the longer sides at the 75% mark, and then set up a jig to make sure I trimmed the other piece at the same spot.

Then it was as simple as kregging the corners together, and viola, frame. I should maybe put a brace in the middle, or at least in each of the corners, but these are thick enough that if I get it square to begin with I think it will stay that way. It seems to be holding up so far at least.

Turns out it was just about the perfect size for the actual canvas, and I only had to cut along one edge to get it sized to fit over the frame. I did have to wash it though since the creases were pretty severe.

Eh, still not great but better

A few clamps and starting staples on one corner and things were ready to get stretched. This was exactly as difficult as I expected, since my obsessive/compulsiveness kicked in and wouldn't let me stop before I had stretched this entire things as taught as possible, but wasn't all-together impossible.

Not perfect, but tight and flat enough to paint on I think. Like I said, I've been preparing for this project for some time. So I've had some gesso just waiting to put to canvas. Of course, I had no idea how much was too much, or if I hadn't put enough on.

I swear, that's a different pic than the one up there.

At least, I think. Anyway, I left it to dry on my make shift easel until I find time to paint it.

It's about 18x42, really weird dimensions

In fact, it was so easy after this one was done I cut two scrap 2x3's to make a second similarly shaped rectangle canvas.

Cutting those in half still gave me an inch of material to work with, so I could still kreg the frame together. This one wasn't quite as clean on the corners, since there was a lot to cut off but I still kept things pretty tight.

This one's about 16x32

I loved this project for two reasons: I hated to see those 2x2s not get used, and I've been waiting to try putting my own canvas together for some time. Now I have two custom blank canvases ready to go and probably more in the future. I might not have saved any money technically on the first one since I was using expensive wood for the frame, but using actual scrap on the second probably put me back in the black. I can see this going much cheaper for future canvases. Of course, now that my summer hours are over and my workweek is back to 5 days I'm not sure when exactly I'll have a chance to paint but whatever, baby steps. Right now I have three ideas for two canvases, but probably only one that would get the wife's approval. Good to know how easy this is to put together. 

Recycling the old stand

With the stand done it was tempting to kind of fall into a lull and relax, especially leading into my last long weekend of the summer. But on the other hand, as tempting as it might be to just toss the old media stand on the curb and let the garbage men deal with it, I couldn't quite let go of all that MDF without putting some of it to use. But where?

The wife has been unhappy with some of the shelves in various closets around the house lately. Specifically, the shelves in the kids' bathroom and a hall closet we use for cleaning supplies are much shorter than they need to be.

Lots of wasted space potential here.

The bottom of the stand seemed like a good size to test out a deeper shelf with some trimming on the table saw, and it quickly got the wife's seal of approval. Unfortunately, that was the only piece of the stand big enough to trim and get a new shelf out of. To make more, I had to glue and support multiple pieces to get the right size.

This would be a lot to throw out.

Well, I was happy to spend an afternoon on the table saw to make the wife happy and reduce our waste from the stand. I ended up with four shelves, cutting and gluing various pieces together with this approach three times:

Then they got primed, and before I painted them white I put some plaster over the seams to make them less noticeable.

Ignore the glob of sweat, I did this after an evening run.

These are only getting towels and bath junk stored on them anyway, so they don't have to be perfect they just have to fit. In fact, with the bottoms braced they definitely are not perfect. But that doesn't mean I want to skimp on getting them as presentable as possible.

Decent-looking glossy coat

Lots of work for something no one will ever notice. Worth it.

And it worked pretty well, minus that unfinished edge on the top one. Other than that, if you didn't know to look for seams you'd never notice them now that they're in the closet. Anything worth doing is worth doing well I guess. But what happens to the old shelves? Well they get chopped up for the hallway closet. It's the circle of life people, it never ends. 

Okay, let's just call it part 10

Start to finish, here's about five weeks' worth of work.

 

Five weeks, and how much did it end up costing? Roughly, we're only talking about $150.

$10 for the 1x12 across the front.
$50 for 6 standard quality 1x10's.
$20 for 2 18" drawer slides
$5 for the cabinet hinges
$5 for the 3/4" plywood for the drawers
$13 for the triple coat poly
$45 for the 2x2's I didn't end up using 75% of (dammit)
$5 various other brackets and felt footings

Not the biggest project I've worked on but definitely the most involved, and I learned a lot on it. I liked being able to make builder-quality pine look a little nicer, at least nice enough to have out in the living room with the right kind of build. If I had more budget I would be up for working with nicer wood, but this way I'm not worried too much about messing up at least. I'm going to miss having something to keep me so distracted on my down time as the school year gets ready to start.