Staining and the finishing touches

Is that a pun? I think it's a pun.

Getting some time to work this week, I stopped taking photos and just got going. Finished sanding everything, got the legs and door on, and stained. After thinking, I probably should have stained the door and then put it on, but live and learn.

I left the door two-tone to create some visual interest. I'm not sure how I like it but at this point it's done and I'm moving on. Hopefully it takes attention away from some imperfections in how it fits at least.

What I did really like was the legs. The wife isn't a huge fan of hairpin legs but I am, and thought if I went small enough they wouldn't get overruled. They're only 4", which were hard to find cheap enough to fit my budget, but I think they make it look more finished. And the whole thing is so much lighter than anything else I've made, I guess that's what happens when you figure out what to actually do.

Decent looking miter at least. I seem to be learning.

This is a dark walnut stain, which duh, but I ended up thinking it's a little dark for my liking. But it's going behind a black couch so it should match pretty well. I think there's about 5 coats of poly on at this point. Can't do too much to try and protect something from abusive wiener kids.

Put two hardboards on the back and viola, one behind the couch console table with wine glass storage. Two years ago when I built the first one I was so excited I brought it in and set it up by myself as a surprise. My enthusiasm is a little tempered at this point, it waited in the garage until I could get help. But it's getting high marks from everyone in the house so far.

It certainly got junked-up quickly enough. There's just enough room for all the movies we have and a rack of shoes both on the shelf and below it; you'd think I planned it that way (I did not). But I guess a behind-the-couch table has become pretty critical to our storage and space usage.

Whew! You'd almost think I planned that (I did NOT). 

My favorite part is the bar cabinet for sure; not only do the t-racks work perfectly, there was room to get my whiskey into a more sensible area. Now I just have to put a magnet clasp on it and hope the kids will listen to me and leave it alone.

The old one's going downstairs for now under the tv until we decide if it's too big for the space or not. But man is it ugly to look at versus this one! For now, I'm basking in the glow of really liking how this turned out. At least until I get my next project started, or better yet, until I clean up beforehand.

Adding some t-tracks

This sore throat just won't got away, but I'll be damned if I let some summer cold I caught from my damn wiener kids' daycare stop me from getting this table done.

Having mentioned we've lost wine glass storage, I want to put some racks at the top of the cabinet space on the table. Thankfully I have enough scrap around to pretty much recreate multiple rows of these in the build.

I used the old storage as a guide for how far apart they should be and think it worked out pretty well. I like having efficient storage built into a project like this, I just hope I do it well enough that it works long term. We don't use a lot of these glasses, but it's not like I want them breaking if they're in here.

The pictures pretty much speak for themselves at this point, there's not a lot of design going into how these come together. I ended up with 5 racks instead of the 6 we had, hopefully it doesn't mean throwing out too many glasses we don't use anyway.

With these in and the door ready, I'm hoping it's time to get sanding and staining. The legs I ordered should be here in the near future, and it's going to be hard to resist just getting them on and bringing this upstairs at that point. Better that it's ready to be finished first.

New behind-the-couch table

As proud as a I initially was of my console table behind the couch, time as not been kind to it. Adding other shelves, trying to cover the open sides, it's harder to look at every time I walk by. So I finally snapped, and put together a plan to build a new one.

Adding a wrinkle, we lost our wine glass storage space this summer when the in-laws moved and gave us their piano. A nice gesture but unfortunately the best place for it was occupied by our wine butler, which is now gone. So not only am I being bombarded by the atonal key bashing the kids apparently really enjoy, I also have to figure out where to put our stemware that's not taking up space somewhere else. Well why not just add a bar cabinet to the table, and maybe put my whiskey in there to free up other cabinet space too. At least that's the plan.

One door? Two doors? Maybe one to make it easier. 

So far this has really impressed upon me how great it was to have summer Fridays off. I didn't really need any help appreciating them but having a project like this really makes it clear. For one, I didn't really like any of the boards at my local places, but being pressed for time I felt like I couldn't wait. I ended up deciding to give the glued boards a chance. They've been fine so far but I'm a little dubious about what the finish is going to look like.

And then there's the time to actually do any of this work. If I ride my bike I don't have to run, but I get home later and then can't do any power tool work with the kids in bed at the end of the day. I'm also fucking exhausted when it's in the 90's and humid. The weekends are pretty much full of sports and kids activities, so I basically have to get up early and squeeze in a few minutes where I can. If I plan right, I can get straight to work and get something done, hopefully doing it right the first time. It's been kind of rough.

And I'm already off plan @ this point, adding a middle support to the open shelf.

But the frame is rounding into shape. You can see in the design, I'm planning on putting this on short hair pin legs to give some room for shoes below it, and I think two open shelves will be more than enough for what's on the current table. Those cabinet doors have me a little worried, but let's cross that bridge when we come to it. In a month or two, at this pace...

You need legs to have a table

Alright, time to get back to work.

I might hem and haw about the type of finish to use, but I can worry about that once the legs are built. So I might as well get cracking on putting something together.

This table is a few inches longer and wider than the old one, so even if I had been able to get the old legs off in one piece they might not have worked. Fortunately I think I have a better plan for this one, plus keeping them separate will make it a lot easier to move them once they're ready.

These are nice, way nicer than the old ones. I don't think I'll even need finish.

I went with 7 8-foot lengths of cedar toned pressure treated 2x4's; the finish is so nice I think I'm going to just leave them as they are, or at least not stain them before I seal them. 7 of them only cost about $40, which will bring the total cost to around $100 if things go well. Math is not always my strong point though; I was worried about my numbers here and almost got an extra board but this was actually perfect to within a few feet. Here's to not messing up.

Trimmed four lengths to 29.5 inches, then four more a little shorter with room for the aprons to fit on.

Glued them all at once and left them there all day. 

These will hold the two long apron supports for the table, I just had to decide how far apart to put them. Turns out 27 inches would put the aprons right in the middle of the two outside boards, so that was my spacing.

Consider this proof of concept at least. 

Even dry fit this put me in a happy place. 

I was a bit stressed at this point as I had to figure out how to get the mower out and stored since the grass was getting pretty long. Eventually I moved the legs out just to have more space, and was pleased with how well things were staying together just balancing there. And I could do it in pieces and still move everything myself, so that was a bonus.

It sounds so simple in four sentences but this was more than a weekend's-plus worth of time working when I could. It didn't help that we also bought 15 bags of mulch and I spent some time putting that out. Ah, home ownership. It put me in the mood to be outside at least, so hopefully I can get this done in the near future.

They didn't stay planks for long

Yeah, having those boards lined up together meant they weren't staying un-joined for long. And now I'm happily finding a few spare minutes to see if I can make a better table top for this summer.

I'm doing this in part b/c I feel like I've learned a lot in two years since I put the last one together, but not enough that I wanted to join these together with something other than kreg screws again. I'm just a man after all.

Much cleaner than last time but still not perfect.

But as long as you have the tools you can get to perfect. 

However, I thinking about trying something something different with the breadboard. We'll have to wait and see how things flatten out to see if I'm up for something new. But hey, if you've got the tools you might as well put them to use. You just have to find the time. 

my new desk, start to finish

Ugh. This winter has me a little down right now, as I deal with a job that actually challenges me on a daily basis, and fitting in classwork. I don't have a lot of free time right now, so I'm trying to recapture the enjoyable feelings I get from working with my hands by posting a start-to-finish on the desk.

I need to take more pictures of the raw materials.

A quick aside: I don't know if I was just getting careless or getting through the year without any bruises finally caught up to me, but my hands took some punishment on this project. Got a decent looking blood blister on my palm when I pinched it between two plywood sheets, got another one on a finger moving the glued-up top around. And to finish, I slammed my thumb up against the bottom of the cut-out while I was trying to chisel it out enough to fit the outlet in. But for something using a table saw, planer, and router, I guess a few nicks is a small price to pay.

Yeah, I bought my chair. Not really something I felt like I could build myself and still match the type of chair I was hoping for. But there's plenty of room for me to spread out now, that's for sure. I've already spent several evenings there, either getting discussion posts done, drafting big chunks of papers, or finishing drafts and turning them in, and I love how I can have everything on one surface. Including a whiskey, as you can see in the pic below. It reminds me of being in college and taking over a table in the library. It's weird how nostalgic I feel about it.

Yup, even got some blinds for the window. 

It took a little longer than the week I tried to squeeze it into, but now that it's up and together it's been great so far. This went long enough into the new year that I guess this is a 2018 project instead of 2017, but looking back 2017 was pretty successful even without this last build. Being so busy I still haven't cleaned up from working on the beds and this so close together, which really needs to happen at some point. I'm wondering if I should re-do either the patio table or the console table this spring, but that's gonna have to wait until things get cleaned for sure. Oh well. Something to shoot for when this round of classes are over.