Day Eight-twenty-five: hamper finis!

Phew. At last we can keep our laundry nice and tidy. The final product is below, scroll down if further if you want to see the final stages.

The first we had to do was finish putting clear stain on all the pieces. Here are the cross beams, legs and bottom. These had to catch up to the stiles which had been done and waiting patiently.

Then we had to try assembling the sides for real. With glue. No turning back now. We laid out all the pieces...

...and did the deed. The only wrinkle was that the dowel pieces were all a tad long.

So we ended up with a pile of nubs cut off of each one.

With all the sides together and attached to the legs and bottom, the final step was to install the hinges. We opted for some upper-end ones from Rockler because, like a laptop hinge, they can stay open at any angle. Given that you often make deposits and withdrawals from a hamper with only one hand we thought it would be handy if the lid would cooperate.

We created a little template for the part of the hinge that overhangs.

This was necessary because the hinge is only .75 inches deep but the cross beam is 1 inch. So we had to carve out a little notch for the hinge to fit.

Attach screws to the hamper and lid and you're done!

So how'd we do compared with our original design? Aside from the little handle, which we decided against because it was too small for the lid, we kept pretty true to our word.