We had been sharing an overcrowded closet for around a decade. With our oldest in college, we rearranged the rooms in which each of our children live and made the room next to our bedroom a “changing room”.
The closet is made of melamine coated particle board and is face-framed with maple. It features full-extension drawer slides and chrome closet rods.
Melamine is a heavy material that puts out awful dust while using. I would not recommend it. Instead, painted plywood would be much nicer, even though you have to wait for it to dry.
Gratuitous Gallery
drawers installed and face frame unpaintedpainted face framesthis is the complete setup
My daughter shared that she would like a nightstand. We measured the height, width and length needed and reviewed what it would hold (school-issued chromebook, phone, google home thing, her latest book). So, 16″ tall would be flush with top of the bed frame and it needed to be around 14″ wide and any length, but after 30″ might get in the way.
These dimensions were ideal for my off-cut bin, so I started last week…selecting stock. I milled and cut to size. Since the bed and wall are perpendicular, the piece would be least intrusive if it were a right triangle, or a conoid. I had an off-cut where the main trunk bifurcated to the large branch. The hypotenuse is a live edge. (see pics or leave comments if that is confusing)
Once the wood was flat, I taped the backside and filled holes with epoxy, including a tint that would darken to a dark brown color.
The base is trestled and attached to the top with figure 8 fasteners that allows for wood movement.
The new owner gladly finished the nightstand with boiled linseed oil. Installed today 🙂
Since the beginning of my working from home adventure, I have been interested in improving my home office and a big part of that is the desk at which I compute. This project’s materials come from my bountiful maple milling project of 2018.
The desk is made from two pieces of norway maple and features a live edge on the front side and 15 degree bevels on the sides. The legs are 1 1/2″ square at the top and taper on two sides to 1″ square at the bottom. The top had a substantial crack in it, which was filled with a dark brown tinted epoxy. Legs are joined to aprons with mortise and tenon. The rear apron has a usb and some peripherals attached. The front apron is arched for optimal ergonomics. The desk was frankly over-finished but I will describe it. First, I used several coats of boiled linseed oil and gave that ample time to cure. Then I did a few coats of blonde shellac. Finally, I gave it a durable finish with 3 coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal and gave that 30 days to cure, according to the product instructions.
Gratuitous Gallery
inside view of mortise and tenon joinery
outside view of mortise and tenon joinery
finished desk, curing in the basement
a view from above of the desktop and its epoxy filler
We have a nice collection of knives, right to left:
CCK Small Cleaver
LL Bean Carbon Steel Chef Knife
Wusthof Chef Knife
12″ Lasting Cut Slicer
Scanpan Scalloped Bread Knife
Scanpan Carving Knife
8″ Flexible Boner
Scanpan Utility Knife
4 Paring Knives
Honing Steel (cropped out accidentally)
The Scanpan knife set came with it’s own knife block but it wouldn’t include some additional knives. I started the job by measuring and drawing each knife and then drawing the block itself.
I took some maple scraps and cut them into roughly 8 pieces, measuring 6″x13″x1″. Then, I had a choice of routing the slots with a router bit or a dado blade. I decided on the dado blade and it worked fine, using several passes, until complete. Then I glued the pieces together. For the internal pieces, I nailed them together and then sandwiched the outside with the cleanest pieces and no nails. Sanded to 180 grit and finished with boiled linseed oil.
The people from RISE Engineering gave us a proposal to put 14″ of insulation in our attic. The attic had a room in the back that needed to be demolished. Since we wanted to use the attic for storage and the existing joists were 6″ deep, I put 2″ x 8″ joists, perpendicular to the existing joists and demolished everything that had to go. I know from my bill at the dump that I removed 3000 pounds of garbage. In the process, we updated all knob and tube wiring to modern romex. In all, it’s really clean and satisfying to be done with such a major project.
Gratuitous Gallery
two truckloads like this to the dump
Facing West, after project
Facing West, during demolition. The center section had no insulation at all.
Facing East, after project
oops! put my foot through the floor/ceiling
new subfloor installed
insulation down, floorboards are ready to lay
There was a room in the attic, with hardwood floors and a heat radiator. Archeological evidence suggests that a teenage boy lived there in the 1960s.
