Tag Archive | woodworking project

Living Room Built-In {post 3: The Reveal}

First we had a flurry of activity around here to get the Living Room built-in finished before Christmas hit, and now I’m settled in by the computer with a flurry of snow accumulation happening outside, as I write up the reveal post for the Living Room built-in (we think about 6-7″ right now and it’s still falling). I’m breaking from my regular format and doing the reveal before all of my write ups on the process this time, for no other reason than I want to My goal was to have everything done but the doors before we had Christmas at our house, and it ended up that the entire thing was done! Yay!

Befores and afters:

November 28, 2012

Adding a hutch to a desk {The Reveal}

If all I had done was add a hutch to a desk, then the reveal post would have come about much sooner. But before I could add the hutch, I had to paint the desk:

The desk was a dirty, yellowy, whitish color and the handles and horizontal metal inserts were a brassy, gold color with worn, white parts on them.

I didn’t sand the desk down. I bought some bonding primer at Lowes (hope I don’t regret not getting the Sherwin Williams version I’ve heard others use–I was already at Lowes and got lazy…). I also skipped the polycrylic topcoat I’m fond of using and bought a semi-gloss finish in the paint instead. I didn’t get the really smooth finish I’ve come to love, but I did get done with the project a little quicker, which I also love.

Repair a chair. Paint the chair. Recover the chair seat. Spray the chair bright pink. Discover bright pink doesn’t work. Repaint chair white.

The chair needed help in two different spots. It was pretty wobbly before I put in the pocket hole screws, but now it’s solid. I had to put the pocket holes on the outside because of the funky assembly on the inside.

And spray paint the handles and horizontal metal inserts a nice, brushed nickel.

I washed the hardware with some soap and water, dried it well, and primed it with some Rustoleum regular primer in gray (because I accidentally grabbed gray). I used Krylon in brushed nickle as the color and I left off the topcoat for this project.

But now it is all done and in her room! Here’s a before photo to refresh your memory about how the room looked, well…before! I didn’t purposely take such awful before shots, I wanted the Hubs to take the desk down so I could paint it, but I needed before photos…and it was at night. Flash photos + no natural light =no good

I love the brushed nickle spray paint! Look at the difference in the hardware.

It’s coming along in there. I’m working on a couple more projects for her room right now that I’m hoping to have done by the weekend. Now that I’ve said that out loud it’ll get jinxed somehow

Here are all the posts in the series:

Adding a hutch to a desk

Adding a hutch to a desk {post 1}

Adding a hutch to a desk {post 2}

You might notice that the drawers in the plans didn’t make it into the hutch. That is a sore spot for me at the moment, since I did some incorrect math in my head…I was dreading going out in that garage in the cold, I procrastinated for a few days over the long weekend, finally went out and got it done, took it up to her room, and discovered they weren’t going to work as is. Sigh.

If you’re ever in need of feeling better about how your own projects are going, you know you can always depend on me for a mistake or two!

**This project (and all my plywood projects on here to date) are made using PureBond Plywood because I’m concerned about the air quality in my home.

October 22, 2012

Adding a hutch to a desk {post 1}

I promised plans today and here they are! Hopefully I’ll be seeing how a sheet of plywood fits into a Honda Pilot today. A Home Depot employee and I had a discussion on this matter several months ago, and he assured me that the old model Pilot fit a sheet with no troubles, while the newest version fits a sheet, but just barely. We traded on our 12 year old van for a Pilot in July–the Honda salesman was a little bewildered by my interest in fitting lumber in the trunk We bought the old model, so hopefully no worries.
I’ve kept the pictures at a large size so that you can click on them to enlarge and see the dimensions better. I don’t know if that will work, but we’ll try it out.

Obviously this is not to scale. As a general rule I like to use graph paper and get it somewhat to scale so I am not surprised by how the project ends up appearing. Today I am walking on the wild side.

And here goes the disclaimer: Use these plans at your own risk!! I already modified some dimensions, that affected other dimensions, and although I think I did a good job going back and making the changes, I’m not guaranteeing that!! From here on out I’ll be in the garage and lucky if I remember to take the pictures I need, much less jot down the corrections to the mistakes I’ll probably find.

I always feel better after saying all that, ha ha. But the changes I made allowed me to utilize the entire sheet of 3/4″ plywood more effectively, just by shaving off 1/4″ of the width on the sides of the hutch (which also changed the width on the shelves). I went and measured some of her books, and 10.25″ is plenty of width for even the biggest ones she has. I am using up some various pieces of scrap ply I’ve got from other projects, for the sides of all 6 drawers–love using up scrap! I would have preferred to use 1/2″ ply for the drawers, but I’d rather utilize the entire sheet, so 3/4″ it is.

There you’ve got it! I’ll be trying out my brand-spanking new Kreg Rip Cut on this, as well as the Kreg shelf pin jig. I got those back in June/July for my birthday, if you recall. Sad that it has taken me this long to break them out of their packaging, but I can’t wait to use them now!

February 14, 2012

Build some under the sink storage

Happy Valentine’s Day!

This post was originally a guest post for Brittany over at Pretty Handy Girl a little over two weeks ago. I so appreciate that she featured me over there! If you didn’t catch it then, here is the Pink Toe version

***

Based on today’s post, I’m going to predict that 2012 is going to involve some embarrassing photos. Embarrassing to me specifically. But the “after” results are so worth the embarrassment that I’m going to show you some of the messy areas of our my house. That cannot read “our” because no part of My Man is messy. Been with him 18 years and the man hasn’t made a mess yet. Me? I’m the fertility goddess for messes—they breed all around me. So I decided to tackle one mess at a time in 2012 and my latest project is organizing under the sink in the master bath.

I mean look at this (if you are male and uncomfortable looking at feminine products, you can just skip on ahead here…if you can even find it in this mess. This photo could be a page in an I Spy book).

Ack! I swear it looks worse in the picture! You can now understand that when I saw this on Pinterest I got pretty excited.

source: Pregnant…with power tools

Actually I got a LOT excited…dollar store bins! Scrap wood! Cheap and easy DIY—what’s not to love??

So I went off and I built some stuff and now it looks like so:

AAAHHH! I love it so much now!

First thing you need to do is go get yourself some bins. This project cost me $4 because all I had to buy were the bins and I got 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree. You need to know also that bins vary in quality and usability for this project. Look for rigid bins with side edges that are uniform with no obstructions like these: Read More…

February 8, 2012

Scrap lumber project for small animal friends

First I want to apologize for this post being sent prematurely several days ago. I have no idea what happened–I started writing up the post, left the computer for a bit, came back to finish it, and discovered it was published. So sorry about that–and it was blank at the time it was published as well!

I had some time recently and I needed to solve a little problem…the little problem is a Netherland dwarf rabbit named Annie. She recently moved from the basement to the dining-room-we-never-eat-in-that-is-scheduled-to-become-an-office-in-the-near-future. Her cage needed prettied up. A lot.

So today I added a new house. All scraps, so it was totally free!

I actually started out just wanting a box to contain the corn cob litter we use. It started out like this:

I even fancied it up with the small strips of 1/4″ plywood.

I didn’t have a tall enough piece of 3/4″ plywood, so I had to piece some together.

But then I got the idea of putting a roof on, and it took off from there. Read More…

February 5, 2012

How to Build a Closet Organizer {The Reveal!}

Woohoo the reveal! I love. love. love this closet organizer. I couldn’t be happier with it. More importantly Pip is happy with it and she is excited that she can find all her stuff in there now!

The viking hat got a place of honor

Dress up jewelry for now!

What do you think? Was it worth the effort? Got a spot for one in your house? I want to do ALL the closets in our house now!

How to build a closet organizer {Post 6} Assembling it all

The hard parts are over! Now for our DIY closet organizer, we just put the pieces together.

First put your side pieces into the closet. Put a shelf in the bottom and at the top of your shelf pin area on each side. Then use a level to make sure that the shelves will be straight. Screw the side into the wall at a stud in a few spots.

I had to use some scrap 1/4″ plywood under one side to shim it up and get it even.

Now we put the top on. Read More…

February 1, 2012

How to Build a Closet Organizer {Post 5} Drawer Fronts

Normally my mantra during a build is “Perfect is the enemy of done” because I tend to be a perfectionist about things. Well this closet organizer is done and it sure isn’t perfect. Had this been anywhere but a closet, the drawer fronts would have been redone. But my new and improved mantra for this build was “It’s going into a closet for gosh sakes.” I had to repeat that a lot…

I have had a difficult time in the past assembling framed doors and drawer fronts because you have to cut out a rabbet in the back of the frame to accept the middle piece of 1/4″ plywood. The first time I built some drawer fronts I used 1/2″ plywood with 1/4″ hobby boards glued to the front because I didn’t know how to use a router to make the rabbet. The second time I made some framed doors, I did use a router but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work with the rails and stiles, so I used mitered corners. This time I had read how Sandra does it at Sawdust and Paperscraps and decided to give it a go.

I used a router to rabbet out a 1/4″ on the entire edge of my 1×2 stiles and the whole length of the rails, but leaving 3/4″ on each end (if you cut it the entire way it leaves a gap on the outside of the drawer front).

January 30, 2012

How to Build a Closet Organizer {Post 4} Drawer Glides…Uggh.

I’ve told you that drawer glides will be the death of me in the last post, but truly, drawer glides are not all that bad, especially with the trick I am going to let you in on. In the storage beds they were not fun because there wasn’t a lot of room to work to get them positioned and put in. But this project had a wide open front and back for working in, and the first time I put in the five original drawer glides it went perfectly. But I had to go and complicate it. You see, it was my first time making overlay drawers (I’ve only done inset before this). I gave myself plenty of room because too much room is much easier to work with than too little. After looking at the plans, there was all this space! Space where I could squeeze in another drawer…a jewelry drawer!…And of course,complicate everything.

So after I put together the cabinet carcase

Very top of the bottom shelf is at 4.5" because that is how tall my base moulding is. On the bottom part of the cabinet I attached a cleat at the top and bottom (scrap plywood) to help keep the cabinet square and to use to attach the unit to the wall.

January 28, 2012

How to build a closet organizer {post 3} Building drawers

I love drawers. I do not love drawer glides. Drawer glides are going to be the death of me. It’s going to have to be a write in on my death certificate. Cause of death: drawer glides. But those come later…first we need to build some drawers.

I used to build drawers like I did in Pip’s storage bed. I don’t think I will put them together like that again. In this version I assembled the sides and then nailed on the bottom, whereas for the storage beds the bottom was inset. The only cost I had for these was the 1×2 drawer faces, glides, and the knobs–all the rest was scrap plywood from other builds!! Love. That.

So to build the drawers the easy way, first you cut the boards so that the sides are the width you want the drawer to be. Then the front and back pieces are the length you want the drawer to be minus your (plywood width x 2). So I want a drawer that is 14 width x 15.5 length. My sides would be 14″ and my front and back with 3/4″ plywood would be 14 also (15.5-1.5= 14).

To assemble this quickly, I modified an idea I saw on Pregnant With Power Tools. She uses scrap wood to make a jig for holding your wood square while you assemble. I had the idea to use some of these Rockler assembly squares screwed down to my workbench instead. Use Pregnant with Power Tool’s idea if you don’t have the Rockler squares. If I didn’t have the Rockler version, I would definitely build the scrap wood jig (being sure it is absolutely square) and save it after for future projects. Very handy!