Jelly Cupboard Build Day 4

Well today is day four of the Jelly Cupboard build.  I got a late start tonight so I didn’t get as much accomplished as I had hoped but on the positive side the rough carcass is together

There are a TON of clamps on there,  two for every shelf.  I am very happy with it.  I have to do some tuning to the mortises.  Some of the mortises were not as tight as I would have liked so I added a few shims to each of the shelves it really tightened things up on the mortises.  They are much tighter than they originally were.  I will take a utility knife and cut away the extra shim after the glue has dried.  I also took the time tonight to use my new mouse cam.  I figured I would have the little guy take a shot of the decorative arch.  I used a jigsaw to cut the two arches out.  I’m not the greatest at free hand cutting with the so there is a little clean up that needs to be done.  Honestly one of the most amazing things that happened is when I checked level on all the shelves.  This is what I found. 

I can honestly say I am shocked.  I didn’t really think that the shelves would be that level.  This is probably the biggest projected I have taken on so far in my short time woodworking.  I think I am starting to get the hang of all this stuff, but I have a LONG way to go and so much to learn.  I hope you will stick around and learn with me. 

Have a Great Day!

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Jelly Cupboard Build Day 3

I spent a few hours in the shop tonight and got some things accomplished.  I was able to get all the all the dados routed out for sides.  These are my first ever dados.  I did okay.  They are a little loose in some spots and a little tighter in others.

I clamped the two sides together and marked the dados and then routed.  One thing I stared doing to improve the dados after the first one was to cut on the inside of the of the lines and make micro adjustments.  I kept a scrap piece of the shelf to test fit in the dados to make sure I had not over done it.   I also had to rabbet the back of each side so that it will accept the boards for the back that will be attached.   Here are a few pictures of that the back looks like.  I spent a little time dry fitting the frame together and was pretty happy. 

 

 

 

 

I stuck a level on it just to check it and see if it even came close.  I am pretty happy with it of course it doesn’t really make a hill of beans at this point since it is just being dry fitted but there is potential there.  Hopefully in the next day or so I can get things glued up and assembled.  I cut the face frame pieces to short so I had to re-cut them.  Glad I tested that out before I glued or nailed anything together.  Shouldn’t be to much longer. 

I also wanted to let everyone know about another project that I am going add to the list before a few others.  I am hopefully going to be working with a local primitive store to build some shelves benches, etc.  Here is a picture of one of the designs that I am going to build for them.

I would love to know what you all think.  It’s a single bowl shelf.

 

 

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: jelly cupboard,furniture,primitive

Jelly Cupboard Build Days One and Two

I started the build on the Jelly cupboard last night.  Here is a picture of what I hope the end product resembles.

I am planning on painting it.  I am going to use milk paint we are going to use Sea Green.  Which isn’t so much green as it is a bluish, grey green.  My wife will be doing the punched tin.  If anyone has any experience in punching tin please let give me your tips and tricks.  She(we) have never done it before and I have a good idea how I am going to do it but I wouldn’t mind some expert advice.  Last evening I only had a short time in the shop but it was enough time to get both sides of the cupboard cut and glued up.  Here is my stack of wood that I will be using.   I used a biscuit jointer again to join the sides together.  I don’t really think they add much strength to the joint but it sure does make aligning the boards a whole heck of a lot easier. 

These are the slots that the biscuit saw creates.

 

 

 

 

These are the biscuits installed in the board you put a biscuit in one half of the joint and then place the other half on top and align the board you have a little play each way with the boards. 

This is the first side of the cupboard, rinse and repeat for the second.

Tonight I spent some time milling the rest of the lumber.  Here is the stack of milled parts labeled and ready to be assembled.

One thing that I am going to do with this piece is trying a Ship Lap joint on the back.  Tonight I ran some test pieces to see how the joint worked and looked.  This is what that joint looks like.

 

With this joint I will only attach the top and bottoms of the boards to the back of the cupboard and this will allow the wood to expand and contract through the seasonal changes and moisture changes, plus it just looks really cool.  Anyway that’s all for now.  I will update you as I go along.  If you have any questions please feel free to shoot me an email.

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: furniture,jelly cupboard,country,woodworking,Ship Lap Joint,Biscuit jointer

Shop Clean up Reorganization, Projects, Projects and more Projects……

Well I have not had a lot going on in the shop lately.  That is getting ready to change.  I have a few new projects that are hitting the plate here.  So in an effort to prepare for them I spent a little time last night with my new shop helper wife cleaning up the shop.  Man can that woman can clean.  Now the shop is nice and clean and you can walk out there again.  Okay back to the projects.  I have a couple in progress that we will finish up, 1) The Restoration of the 5 Drawer Dresser should be coming to a close very soon.  I need to finish the stripping process and then repaint. 2) The shutter mirror is assembled and should be getting a few coats of paint over the next several days. 

Now on to the new projects.  I will be doing a build of a Rustic Jelly Cupboard with Punched Tin panels, I will be finishing out our downstairs  windows with the curtain shelves that I started.  These are super simple and look awesome when they are in place.  I will share some tips that I learned building the first two.  This is the first one that I built.  I know my wife is going to be excited since we get to go curtain shopping.  IKEA here we come.    I designed these using dimensioned lumber from the big box stores so that you only need a few basic tools.  3) I am also going to take the shop to the next level.  I am going to be building a Portable stand that will hold both my Lunchbox planer and Compound miter saw.  The top flips 360° so that one tool is on top and one tool is on the bottom out of the way, with it being on wheels I will be able to move it out of the way when not in use.  I also am going be building Cabinets for the shop to provide some needed storage for our tools as well as to get all of my wife’s stained glass out of harms way.  I plan on building these from plywood and lumber from the big box stores using a Kreg Pocket hole jig that I reviewed a few weeks ago.  Do you think that is enough?  Yeah I don’t either. 

So I am also going to be doing a review of the Kreg Crown Pro they are supposed to be available at most Lowe’s stores now.  It is supposed to simplify the process of cutting and installing crown molding.  We shall see.

This leads into the remake of one of our guest bedrooms, the 5 Drawer Dresser and Shutter Mirror are parts 1 and 2 the crown molding will be part 3 and the finale to the guest bedroom makeover will be a modified Farm House Bed designed by Ana at Knock Off Wood. 

Oh yeah and I am going to do a series on learning to hand cut dovetails.  Time to go buy some new tools.  I’m sure I will also get brave in all of this and add more projects. 

Okay well I have put it out there so I guess now I need to follow through.  Honey get ready it’s going to get dusty.

 

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: makeover,woodworking,knock of wood,Kreg,Crown-Pro,Pocket Hole,Refinish,refurbish,DIY,Crown Molding

5 Drawer Dresser Makeover/Refurbish Progress

Sorry no pictures as of right now.  I ran out of the paint stripper the other night and have not been able to get much more done.  I was able to get the two sides stripped and most of the drawers.  Tonight I hope to get some more Formby’s and stripe the rest of the paint off.  I did take the chance last night to spray some paint I had mixed up on it and decided I really don’t like it.  It’s very odd as in some light it looks a little purple, then blue and even black.  Oh well… You live and learn.  Oh yeah I said in the last post that I was going to stain it. Well… I’m not, okay not totally…….

After getting the two sides stripped and some sanding done I realized that the original stain was very deep in the wood and wasn’t going to come out 100%, and the wood was freaking ugly, so I will be painting the body of the dresser a color to be determined probably black cause I feel monochromatic and stain the top with some ebony stain.  I hope to finish up the project this weekend.  I was able to stabilize the dresser from raking back and forth.  When I get back into the shop with the camera I will show how I accomplished this.

Have a Great Day!

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Restoring and Refinishing a Five Drawer Dresser PT. 1

My wife and I inherited this five drawer dresser from her grandparents.  It’s a great old dresser.  The current finish has about four or five coats of paint on top of stain.  You ask how I know that it has stain under all those layers of paint, I know because I took a belt sander to the top when we first got it to the house.  I quickly realized what I already knew you don’t take a sander to a restoration project that has paint all over and OLD paint at that.  Not only did I have a ton of dust, it was one of the worst smells.  A combination of a musty sock drawer and that funk you get after about an hour on the treadmill. 

 

Here is what I was able to do with the power sander before the belt gummed up from all the paint and heat.  I discovered there was some great looking wood under there.  I honestly had no idea what I would find.  You can see in this picture that there is some stain underneath all that paint. 

Formby’s Paint and Poly Remover to the Rescue

I went to Lowes and got some Formby’s Paint and Poly Remover.  This stuff works great.  I really didn’t expect it to work as well as it did.  You paint it on thick to your surface and wait about 20 – 30 minutes.  After that you take a scraper(just a typical plastic spackle blade) and scrape the gunk off.

This is after the first coat and scraping.  I was shocked at how well it took it off in the first pass.  There were some stubborn spots so I reapplied the paint remover on the troublesome areas.  After another 25 minutes I scraped the rest of it off.  There were only a few spots so I just sanded those spots off.  My wife joined in the fun and games and helped with the side of the dresser.  After a couple of coats and a little bit of sanding we have an almost bare dresser side.

There is some wood missing on the bottom foot.  I am going to spend some time figuring out what I want to do with this.  I believe the wood is oak so I could get some oak and make a filler for it.  I might also just leave it as is.  The dresser does rake side to side when you push it.  I will go over how I resolve this in a future post.

 

 

 

 

We went back and forth deciding if we wanted to repaint it or not.  You may wonder why I would strip it if I was going to repaint it.  Two reasons 1) I really wanted to see what kind of wood was hiding under all that paint. 2) I’m not sure what kind of paint is on the dresser.  It might be lead based as old as it is but I am not positive and even though my shop helper doesn’t go around biting the furniture I would rather pull it all off and redo it, plus I have a better base to paint it.  If we decided to paint it, which is totally not what we decided to do.  We are going to stain it.  Out of curiosity I threw a little Cabot Ebony stain.  You can see that in the picture above.  I gotta tell you we both think it is going to look

great.  A few coats of stain to get a nice dark color on it and I think it is going to be great.  I hope to get this finished over the next couple of weeks.  Check back to see the finial restoration and further posts on shoring this thing up. 

Have a Great Day!

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Bedroom Makeover: Nightstand Edition

So it is now time to make over our bedroom.  It’s still in the drab white that was painted with the house built.  In an effort to maximize our dollars we decided to give our current bedroom suit a make over.  There are several things wrong with it all of which I will fix over time but the first thing that hits you is it’s just plain ugly.  We still haven’t totally figured out why we bought it 10 years ago.  I guess we were young it was in our budget and we needed furniture for the house we had just moved into.  That being said how do you take a 10 year old not so good looking night stand and bring it into the new decade.  Let’s explore this in a little pictorial.

The ugly nightstand

I guess really it’s not all that bad but it is far from our current taste in furniture and design.  I have some ideas on how I would like to fix this guy.  The first thing that needs to happen is that I need to remove all that molding next to the drawers.  I just think it really disrupts the look of the nightstand.  So what to do…..   Find one chisel well two actually and one hammer and presto you get the following result.

The Ugly Nightstand Molding Removed

Now how did I do this?  It is not that hard really.  The molding was nailed and glued in place and my goal was to have as little tear out as possible so take one of our chisels and place it on the back edge of the molding and start tapping it breaking the glue joint and prying the molding away.  Take your time and do a little bit at a time.  You are most likely going to get some tear out, not to worry we will address that in a minute.  Eventually you will be able to pry the moldings off of the project and you get to take a cool picture like this one.

Demolition Tools

As  you can see the moldings don’t always come off in one piece no problem I had not planned on using them for anything anyway.  Now we can address any tear out that may have occurred.  There are at least  two ways of dealing with it.  One if you are planning to paint you can fill any of the tear out with wood putty if they are really bad, do this before you start any sanding, let the pudding try and sand it flush with the rest of the wood.  Now if you are going to stain the project then the putty isn’t probably a good idea as the stain at least in my experience will be soaked up more and look different than the rest of the wood.  If you are in this situation or if the tear out is not all that bad then you can do what I did.  I sanded the faces down until most of the tear out was gone and anything that was real deep I smoothed out with the sand paper and made them appear and part of the character of the project. 

A Sanding we will go…..

Here is the result of a few couple of hours of sanding.  I wasn’t worried about totally removing all of the finish that was on the nightstand previously.  I mainly wanted to get it scratched up real good so that the latex paint I am using would have something to grab a hold of and stick to.  If you can get it to bare wood all the better but I didn’t find it totally necessary on this project refinish.

 
And now through the power of the internet we have a mostly refinished nightstand.
  This is the first of 2 coats of Satin Black latex paint.  I wasn’t worried about overspray so I didn’t mask off the interior of the nightstand.  Now that the main part of the night stand is taken care of lets focus quickly on the drawers.  Remove the hardware sand as you did with the main section and paint.

You can paint the sides if you want to, I decided it wasn’t needed as the drawers are closed 99% of the time.
Now that you have everything painted you can either put the hardware back on and be done or you can distress things just a little.  I spent a little time sanding off the paint in some key areas.  It is pretty hard to tell from the picture but there are several distressed areas.  I took the sand paper and sanded until I got bare wood and then took a little stain and stained over the area let it dry for just a little while and wiped the excess away.  Once I was done I had the following refinished nightstand.

So I hope you have fun taking on your own refinishing project.  If you have any questions please feel free to email.

Here is a before and after side by side:


Have a great day!  --Grover

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Chair Design

I have started working on potential chair designs for a new Dinning Table Set that I am going to be building in the near future.  My plane is to build the majority for the framing structure from 2x4’s.  The picture below is a rough sketch of what I am thinking about.  The sketch is not to scale or size currently.  I will post those once I get that taken care of and I also have a third design I am going to work up.  It will be the same principal however I will change the skirting just a little bit.  Here are the first two designs.  One thing to note is that the backs will be curved and slanted, I have not figured out how to do that yet in SketchUp.