Day Eight-o-eight: hamper lid

Having taken a few diversions on the road to Hamper-ville, we got back on track this weekend by making most of the lid. We measured the finished dimensions of the hamper and it came to slightly less than 18 inches square. No problem, we used the miter saw to get the proper length and used the table saw to get uniform 1.5-inch wide strips, like so.

We wanted to make things a little more uniform because the boards came slightly thicker than 1 inch, so we ran these pieces sideways through the table saw to make them exactly 1 inch high. This also served to remove one rough layer and gave us smooth surfaces for the top of the box. Then we mitered them at 45 degrees.

Next we dug out a .5-inch channel using the table saw in the same way that we did before.

We gave ourselves a little wiggle room by making the .5-inch plywood top a little less than 16 inches square and fitted everything together to see if we got the pieces and measurements right. Fortunately we did, so we added a little wood glue and this is ready for finishing.

Now we need to figure out how to transform these leftover blocks from when we made the legs into a handle for the lid.

Postscript. We spent a few minutes with the table saw and turned one of the blocks above into a handle. First we made sure that the block was square. Then we ran it over the saw set to .375 inches and cut along all four sides, like so.

Do that about a dozen times, on each pass moving the saw guard over the width of the blade and you get this.

It's not attached yet but here's what we're thinking of for the final.

As a bonus, we glued the first side together because they're all stained. Only three more to go.

Day Seven-ninety-seven: another one-day project

Necessity is the progenitor of more projects. That may not be how the saying goes but it fits. We had a crying need for a little storage bin to keep near our front door. The things we have there now just don't cut it, mainly because they're too small. What's the solution? Try to build something new.

Step one: Gather all the necessary materials. In our case, we used some scrap .25-inch plywood and some of the excess oak floor boards from when we redid the kitchen.

Step two: Prepare the pieces. We wanted to make the final box 12 x 15 inches and have an invisible bottom, so we cut the plywood to be 11.25 x 14.25 inches, which would recess it a bit from the sides of the box.

A couple of the flooring boards were the right length (14.25 inches in this case), so we just needed to trim off the tongues on the side.

We also cut off the grooves on the four pieces we're using for the base to have the maximum surface area to glue to the plywood.

Step three: Lay out the pieces to fit the design. Each board is 14.25 or 11.25 inches because when you add the width of the boards (.75 inches) then you end up with the desired 12 x 15-inch plan.

The first box told two friends...

And they told two friends. And so on and so on and so on. Well, ok, not quite. We stopped once we had five levels laid out, which makes our box a little more than 10 inches high.

We went with a log cabin style that alternates direction, both for aesthetics and strength.

Step four: You can see in the pictures above that the pieces don't sit right because of the tongues atop the boards. We trimmed off only enough to let the boards lay flat because otherwise we wanted to take advantage of the tongue/groove to connect the levels. Here's the first corner we attached with the bit of the tongue cut off.

We drilled pilot holes (this is hard oak after all) and countersunk the screws somewhat.

After going once around we added a second layer. This time we flipped the corner clamp over to keep the loose pieces in place. Once everything was end screwed in place we put glue between the layers.

Step five: Lather, rinse, repeat until we had the desired height. We cut the top pieces smooth with the table saw.

Steps to come: Sand. Stain. Sand. Stain. Attach bottom.

Day Seven-ninety-seven: bookshelf's done!

Sorry to keep you all in suspense. This project's been done for a couple days but some other things (subject of future posts) distracted us. Anyway, let's bring this one to closure. Here's the piece still in work, with a couple coats of paint.

We decided to try a design that combines natural wood with paint, so we had to protect the parts we weren't planning to paint. Unintentional painting is always a hazard.

And voila! Here's the finished item up close...

from a jaunty angle...

and in action!

Day Seven-ninety: whirlwind of updates

We've been busy bees, so let's get straight to the latest.

First up, we weren't satisfied with the industrial, galvanized steel look, so we took advantage of a couple moderate days and painted the handrail and think it looks sharp.

The new bookcase is getting some design work that is in process. Every surface got a coat of clear stain to seal the wood and a few parts got their second and final coat. The spackle is meant to keep the knots in the wood from showing through.

We also stained the shelves clear. These are ready to go.

We also turned our attention back to the laundry hamper. With the stiles done and the legs sanded clean, we cut the legs to our desired 24 inches, like so.

Then we used the router to finish digging out the holes for the connecting dowel rods in the cross pieces...

and the legs...

For the legs we used a similar set up to hold them in place and marked the top holes at .5 and 1.5 inches from the end (to match the holes on the cross piece) and the bottom ones 4.5 and 5.5 inches from the end (ditto and to place the bottom piece 4 inches from the floor). So this...

became this...

Next up was to carve out the channel for the bottom, which will be .5-inch plywood. Our first choice was to use the router but it really didn't handle the wood well (we'll have to look into that). The fall back was to use a technique we'd seen online--set the table saw at a desired height (.375 inches in our case) and run our inch-thick piece over it several times, like so...

to create this...

With everything ready, it was time to field test the whole thing to see if our measurements and holes were exact enough. Here's the short version without the stiles. We had already identified which pieces we like for the front, side, and back, so we planned out which leg went in each corner. 

We added some stiles and dowel rods to prove the concept. Even without glue it can stand on its own four feet.

Day Seven-eighty-seven: bookshelf

So if you were worried about how we would spend our days without a kitchen or bathroom to redo, fear not. We have ways of keeping busy. In fact, the "to do" list seems to get longer after every project we complete.

We needed something to hold office supplies and whatnots and be a base for the printer. We'd been using a bookshelf but wanted something with drawers. We thought it would look a little more tidy. After some searching around online at several stores we settled on this piece from IKEA:

(photo courtesy of the IKEA website)

No problem. Whip down to the store. Pick it up from the self-serve warehouse. Spend an hour or so putting it together and presto we're done! Well, if you're a regular reader then you know that even our simplest projects are never that straight forward. Turns out, the dresser is somewhat shallow (no, we don't mean it's materialistic) and thus it was hard to get things into and out of the drawers. Quel dilemma. What to do? We pondered this a bit and thought, could we turn the pieces into a bookshelf? It was worth a try.

Here are all the basic components--shell of the dresser, a couple of drawer parts on top, and a piece of 1x2 pine that we had left over from another project.

One modification we had already made was to the feet. Instead of using the 6-inch pegs that came with the dresser, we replaced them with these little buns from Home Depot.

Our next step was to add an inner trim around the whole frame, both for appeal and to cover the ends of the supports for the shelves. We cut the 1x2 into the right lengths for the top, bottom, and sides and used the table saw to cut them lengthwise down the middle, making them roughly .75 x .75 inches. We glued and clamped everything in place.

The new trim is on the right of the two vertical pieces and the top layer across the bottom.

Next came making the supports. We didn't want to let all the wood from the drawers go to waste (and for once didn't want to make another trip to Home Depot), so we sliced up part of a drawer to make these pieces. We drilled holes through them the same size as the dowel rods that came with the dresser so we could reuse those.

Here are the supports installed with glue and dowels.

Finally we cut down the drawer fronts to fit the opening of our dresser-cum-bookshelf and laid them in to see the full effect.

Not a bad day's work. There's still the unavoidable sanding and staining (still deciding on whether to use clear or something else) to be done but otherwise this is ready to use and probably more sturdy than it was as a dresser. If IKEA starts offering a bookshelf like this then you'll know who sold them the design.