Monday, September 26, 2016

Fill, sand, repeat

Sometimes it feels like we’re stuck in an endless loop of filling and sanding with an occasional break for paint. Using cheap, knot filled pine boards means we do a lot of filling. In addition, the boards don’t line up well because of the twists and warps which means more filler. The end result is worth it though.

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We’ve built and installed three drawers. The drawers are made of 1/2” birch pine. The front and backs are joined to the sides using half blind dovetail joints. Doing the dovetail joints on plywood doesn’t always look real good as the plywood tends to splinter quite a bit, but it does create a strong joint. This isn’t so important on the small drawers but with the bottom drawer weighing in at something like 9 cubic feet in volume, we don’t really want the front to pull loose when opening the drawer.

The last tip-out drawer for the back bedroom was built, painted, and installed. After doing 6 of these, it’s getting easier.

Once we finished up with the 3 pre-built drawers and drawer trim, we were left with nothing more that could be done in the back bedroom. So time to start on the front bedroom. We decided on a design:

One wall will have a small shelf, a bank of drawers, and door. The other side will have a door, a bookcase, and another door. Because the door openings will be fairly wide, we’ll probably do double doors both to limit the size of each door and they’ll need less swing area to be clear around them. We used up the remaining 2×4’s and added some framing in the front bedroom. Hopefully the front bedroom will go a bit quicker than the approximately 14 weeks that we spent on the back bedroom.

Stay tuned for our next episode where we’ll answer the important question of how many drawers can be built in a week?

Back bedroom

  1. Dog cubby baseboard
  2. Dog cubby outside trim
  3. Figure out knee wall design
  4. Knee wall door trim
  5. Build/install bookcase
  6. Install hangers for clothes
  7. Install drawer carcasses
  8. Install drawer boxes — 3/10th done
  9. Install drawer trim
  10. Install baseboard
  11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
  12. Install conduit for ceiling fan — almost finished
  13. Build new ceiling fan mount
  14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

  1. Paint balcony door
  2. Frame knee walls
  3. Trim knee walls
  4. Door for closet
  5. Drawers and doors for knee walls
  6. Install baseboard
  7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
  8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
  9. Build new ceiling fan mount
  10. Install new ceiling fan
  11. Install grill cover for vent fan
  12. Install window blind

Monday, September 12, 2016

Another day, another drawer

Another weekend spent working on the knee wall drawers. Progress feels slow when you can sum up the weekends work in 2 or 3 pictures.

The tip out drawer for the first set of drawers was almost complete, one last piece glued in place and paint was all it needed and it was ready to install. It turned out pretty good. Now we just need some actual drawers to make it usable.
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Most of the effort was spent on the second bank of drawers. Each one had the new side pieces installed and the drawer slides mounted. I took a chance and tried to align all the boxes without double checking the alignment against the trim. Bad move. With all of them installed and in some cases glued in place we test fitted the trim. Other than the bottom most box, the rest were shifted slightly right and the right side trim was overhanging the drawer slides. The top couple could not be extended and one would only partially extend before it hit the trim. Rather than try to move the boxes, I elected to trim the trim. That meant taking it apart and rebuilding it such that it fit properly around drawer slides. It turned out fine, but with all the waiting for glue to set up, it probably set us back by about 3 hours.
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We’re using ordinary big box home improvement store pine for the trim. The boards are not perfect. I.E. they’re not straight and have a lot of knots. We fill the knots and once painted, they’re hidden, but the warps and twists mean that not everything lines up once installed. To fix this, we spend a lot of time sanding and filling. Given that our time is mostly free, this seems to make sense, but sometimes I wonder if we’d be better off spending more on better lumber.

Since most of the trim work is a one person job, Genny spent quite a few hours raking the rest of the yard. Everything is now raked up and looks really good. Now we just need to load up the piles and make yet another trip to the burn pile.

Back bedroom

  1. Dog cubby baseboard
  2. Dog cubby outside trim
  3. Figure out knee wall design — getting close
  4. Knee wall door trim
  5. Build/install bookcase
  6. Install hangers for clothes
  7. Install drawer carcasses
  8. Install drawer boxes
  9. Install drawer trim
  10. Install baseboard
  11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
  12. Install conduit for ceiling fan — almost finished
  13. Build new ceiling fan mount
  14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

  1. Paint balcony door
  2. Frame knee walls
  3. Trim knee walls
  4. Door for closet
  5. Drawers and doors for knee walls
  6. Install baseboard
  7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
  8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
  9. Build new ceiling fan mount
  10. Install new ceiling fan
  11. Install grill cover for vent fan
  12. Install window blind

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Labor Day

Yes, another long weekend filled with labor.

We made progress with yard maintenance by raking up about 1/2 the yard and hauling off four loads of yard debris to the burn pile. Unloading the piles from the trailer is almost more work than loading it but after a couple trips we came up with a solution. By laying a tarp on the bed of the trailer and loading everything on top of that, we could just pull the tarp out and everything comes out in one big pile. One of the secrets to making this work is to not fill up the trailer too much otherwise it’s too heavy and we’d need more muscle to pull it out. One more day of raking and hauling and we may be ready for winter.

Larry, Barbara, and Genny make the back yard/dog area look good again too. The sewer line was wrapped up to prevent roots from getting in and the trench and septic take covered up. No more trench in the back yard, Yay!

Upstairs, the custom cabinet work continues. One bank of drawers is almost ready for the actual drawers to be installed. Doing something like this for the first time is definitely a learning experience. We started with the premise that the drawers should be as wide as possible so I started building the carcasses so they’d just fit between the beams. But when we looked at adding the face frame trim, it became apparent that we needed the trim wide enough that the top tip out drawers were all proportional. It would look strange if the outside tip out drawers side frames were 4” wide but the middle one was 1”. This change meant that the carcass width needed to be about 6 to 7 inches more narrow. Turns out that building the face frame first and then building the carcasses to match would have probably saved 4+ days of effort. But nothing to do now but continue on with the oversized carcasses.

I think I’m down to about 2 hours per drawer carcass now that I don’t have to think too hard about what needs to be done. It’s just cutting fitting each custom piece of wood. It feels like I’ve been working on these for months and none of the actual drawers have even been built yet. Given that I have about 2 days of work into the first bank, I think I know what I’ll be doing next weekend….

Back bedroom

  1. Dog cubby baseboard
  2. Dog cubby outside trim
  3. Figure out knee wall design — getting close
  4. Knee wall door trim
  5. Build/install bookcase
  6. Install hangers for clothes
  7. Install drawer carcasses — a couple are set in place
  8. Install drawer boxes
  9. Install drawer trim
  10. Install baseboard
  11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
  12. Install conduit for ceiling fan — almost finished
  13. Build new ceiling fan mount
  14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

  1. Paint balcony door
  2. Frame knee walls
  3. Trim knee walls
  4. Door for closet
  5. Drawers and doors for knee walls
  6. Install baseboard
  7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
  8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
  9. Build new ceiling fan mount
  10. Install new ceiling fan
  11. Install grill cover for vent fan
  12. Install window blind