It's been a little over a year since I surprised my wife with her dining room table (http://www.bt3central.com/showthread.php?t=56159) and her birthday is well...in hours.
My plan for the last week or so was to give her the gift of organization. Since she isn't very easy to buy for and she gets frustrated easily with how the house gets messy, I was going to buy her a couple of bookcases to help with the home schooling. One would be a replacement, the other additional. Since barely anyone anymore sells decent bookcases for a decent price, I was going to go Ikea, since we have had good success before.
Unfortunately for the last several months they have been out of stock locally. So early Friday morning (I'm talking 3-4 am) I came up with the idea to make her a matching sideboard to her table. Same height, with the ability to move school stuff over when it becomes dinner time and a place to store school materials on some shelves. I had the concept in my head in a few minutes, and I formalized it in Sketchup this afternoon.
I stopped by the lumber yard after school dropoff and picked up some 8/4 soft maple for the legs. After lunch it was back with the bigger car for some domestic 3/4" birch that I had to crosscut in half to get it in the SUV. Back home I started cutting the pieces down to size on the table saw. It was worth spending more for the domestic, it cut so much better. Unfortunately there isn't as many plies and voids are more noticeable.
I ended the evening jointing, planing and ripping four legs out of the maple. They started curling immediately, so I set them in a press using my newly flattened workbench. I also put dados in the case on the top and bottom, plus a starter set of 8 shelf pin holes for the set of adjustable shelves.
All this happened in about 3 hours or so of work time. Perhaps slightly more. I was amazed at how fast and easy things were this time. I can't explain why. Didn't have time for pictures unfortunately, but will take some tomorrow.
For tomorrow, I need to finish the shelf pin holes, assemble the case, notch the legs to fit the corners and glue everything together. Then it's hardwood trim on the exposed front ply and sides, a plywood back, and the top with a hardwood perimeter. I'm hoping another three hours will do the trick, as long as the legs stabilized okay. It will be stained when possible to match the table with the same General Finishes Java Gel Stain.
This is the concept:
My plan for the last week or so was to give her the gift of organization. Since she isn't very easy to buy for and she gets frustrated easily with how the house gets messy, I was going to buy her a couple of bookcases to help with the home schooling. One would be a replacement, the other additional. Since barely anyone anymore sells decent bookcases for a decent price, I was going to go Ikea, since we have had good success before.
Unfortunately for the last several months they have been out of stock locally. So early Friday morning (I'm talking 3-4 am) I came up with the idea to make her a matching sideboard to her table. Same height, with the ability to move school stuff over when it becomes dinner time and a place to store school materials on some shelves. I had the concept in my head in a few minutes, and I formalized it in Sketchup this afternoon.
I stopped by the lumber yard after school dropoff and picked up some 8/4 soft maple for the legs. After lunch it was back with the bigger car for some domestic 3/4" birch that I had to crosscut in half to get it in the SUV. Back home I started cutting the pieces down to size on the table saw. It was worth spending more for the domestic, it cut so much better. Unfortunately there isn't as many plies and voids are more noticeable.
I ended the evening jointing, planing and ripping four legs out of the maple. They started curling immediately, so I set them in a press using my newly flattened workbench. I also put dados in the case on the top and bottom, plus a starter set of 8 shelf pin holes for the set of adjustable shelves.
All this happened in about 3 hours or so of work time. Perhaps slightly more. I was amazed at how fast and easy things were this time. I can't explain why. Didn't have time for pictures unfortunately, but will take some tomorrow.
For tomorrow, I need to finish the shelf pin holes, assemble the case, notch the legs to fit the corners and glue everything together. Then it's hardwood trim on the exposed front ply and sides, a plywood back, and the top with a hardwood perimeter. I'm hoping another three hours will do the trick, as long as the legs stabilized okay. It will be stained when possible to match the table with the same General Finishes Java Gel Stain.
This is the concept:
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