Day Eight-eighty-one: a shed in a day

Lovely weather made it too tempting not to tackle an outdoors project that has been on our minds for months. With the garage turning into a regular workshop we decided that we might want to move some of the non-project items out of it to make more room. Basically this means evicting the garbage cans and lawn tools (mower, edger, seed spreader, etc.). Luckily we have a nice, level place behind our garage that used to have a rickety old tin shed. It's our storage place for rocks, bricks, etc. that we don't have an immediate use for.

We'd gone back and forth on what sort and size of shed to get and did we want wood or plastic. After toying with the idea of two small sheds (one for garbage and one for the lawn stuff) we realized that we'd much prefer one larger shed for everything. This little beauty had been on our radar for some time so when the price dropped we jumped at the chance. One thing that two small sheds had going for it was ease of getting them home from Home Depot. Fortunately, our local HD rents flatbed trucks so cleared up how to get 350 pounds of shed home.

Once out of the boxes the shed seems more shed-like, if only two dimensional.

And here's the final product, 3+ hours later. We realized after the fact that we should have taken photos along the way, but you'll have to trust us that it went pretty smoothly and by the (instructions) book. These guys could learn a thing or two from IKEA on how to streamline a self-made project, but it was still far easier than starting with lumber. We need to build a little ramp up to the platform and do some weed/mud control in the area in front but otherwise it's ready to go.

Day Eight-eighty: the bench is done

Despite our detour to work on bookshelves, we finished the little bench that will shelter our bags inside the front door.

After the first coats of stain we had a nice dark base on which to build.

Here you can see how the stain accentuates the distressing marks we made on the wood to give the bench a weathered look.

The first coat of a stain with a bit of polyurethane added a little sheen to the pieces in addition to making them hardier.

The final coats, with a reddish stain with poly, gave the bench a dark chocolatey color and preserved the light satin finish.

A couple screws for each board of the seat and voila!

And here's our action photo.

Day Eight-seventy-seven: new bookshelves

We know you're waiting for an update on the bench, but we had to take a detour down bookshelf lane. The final missing furniture piece in the studio (where most of our projects have been lately) was to replace the existing, low-budget, and somewhat shaky bookshelves with something new. Fortunately, as we found out with the dresser we turned into bookshelves, IKEA products are solid pieces that are readily adaptable.

We started with these two shelves. They were bought at different times and stained at different times, which explains the non-matching color.

The height of these is fine so you're probably wondering, what we needed to modify? why not just move these over as-is to the studio? Well, you may have noticed that we said only that the height was fine. Standing next to each other in the available spot the shelves are too wide by about a foot. So after taking them apart (again, being from IKEA was a bonus here) we had to cut six inches off each shelf. The table saw made quick work of that. Then, slightly more tricky, we had to redrill holes on the cut side to match the predrilled ones.

Next was some cosmetic work. Where these bookshelves had been in the library you couldn't see all the extra holes that IKEA provided to allow you to put the shelves at different height options. In their new location at least one side of the shelves were going to be very visible and somewhat unsightly, so we decided to patch them.

With such a big space we needed some sort of filler before applying the spackle, so we cut .25-inch dowel rod into a ton of pieces and glued them into place.

After plugging, patching, sanding, and painting the extra holes are no more (the remaining ones are where we want to put the shelf).

Here you can see the extent of the holes that we had to plug.

With all that done we could apply the first coat of paint.

Next time we'll have updates on this project and the little bench.