Bathroom remodel

Since Hurricane Issac rained out the Labor Day Weekend, and I was not able to get outside to work on the patio. I started the bathroom remodel.

First here are some before pictures. The bathroom was original to the house which was built in 1970. And the decor shows it's age:

Gutting the room proved to easier than I anticipated, and there were no real surprises. The only issue was a leaky toilet valve because it wouldn't shut off all of the way, and that was easily replaced. Here it is with all the fixtures removed:

I choose a 12 x 24 porcelain tile that I think helps with the size of the bathroom, making it feel bigger. I used an underlayment product from Schluter Ditra that I bought at Lowes. Here is a link to the product: http://www.schluter.com/6_1_ditra.aspx . It was easily applied, just put it down with thinset and laid the tile on top with thinset. It is supposed to help with shifting floors that normally cause the grout to crack and come out. We will see.

  

Here are some last pics of the layout and grouting and the finished floor.

Here are some more "after" pictures. It is mostly finished. I still have to alter the middle drawer in the vanity, change the hanging light fixture and put in a register cover.

First bowl

I turned my first real bowl on my new lathe today. The stock
On the left is what I started with and I finished it with some linseed oil.

I can't wait to try my hand at some pen turning.

Mallet

Box joints

Homemade sheet good rack

I recently built this sheet good rack that swings out of the way against a wall for storage, but will swing out so that you can pull your sheets out. I saw this in a magazine several years ago. It is made of a piece of scrap plywood I took off of the top of a skid, and a piece of scrap 2 x 10 I just had lying around.

I first cut the plywood (which was about 35" square) on a diagonal. I off set the cut so that it would leave a flat edge giving me some height for support out at the end of the bottom.

I then cut a piece of 2 x 10 35" in length to fully support the bottom, and used the left over piece to support the back.

I attached heavy steel casters that swivel to the bottom to support the weight of the sheet goods. I used two casters, one at the front and one at the back.

Attached a heavy duty door hinge to the back and attached that piece to a stud in the wall to keep the hinge point in place. All of the weight will rest on the casters at the bottom, but when the rack is fully loaded with wood it will be heavy and pull on the hinge. So it is a good idea to have a strong hinge and attach it well.

Here is the rack fully assembled and loaded up with sheet goods. It is a much better solution than leaning them against a wall like I was doing.

t

Keepsake box

Just started putting together some keepsake boxes for the girls in my family. I found plans for them in the September 2002 issue of WOOD magazine. They use two contrasting species of wood to make a box that looks like it has some very nice inlays. The work can all be done on a table saw and sander so it fits a small shop pretty well.

I made my prototype out of curly maple and mahogany.

I learned several things after building the first one, like glue up all of the sides in one long piece and then plane and sand to thickness. Also move the dado for the box bottom up to 5/16" from the bottom edge of the sides so that the groove doesn't hit the glue joint for the trim pieces.

Start to finish you should easily complete a couple of boxes in a weekend.

Here is a look at the trim detail on the side of the box. Make sure that you are cutting the trim pieces from the far side of a wide blank for safety because they are pretty thin. You can also see the splines sticking out of the end of the box that I haven't trimmed up yet.

Cross cutting sled

Here is my new cross cutting sled. It works pretty good. Will come in pretty handy for future projects.

Bird house

Here is the most expensive bird house around. It is made out of oak plywood. Coen wanted to build a bird house for his mom really bad, so I agreed one Saturday morning. After getting to the garage I realized the only material I had enough of was the oak plywood. He was determined to build this bird house today so we used what we had on hand.

How to build an oak end table in one day.

I scored some nice red oak boards at the local Menards fairly cheap.

Since I have no real good way of making curved cuts, I decided a simple design would be the most practical. You can see here that I put my Kreg jig to good use. I used it for all of the joinery in the table. I know, it would have been nicer with some mortise and tenons or pins and dowels, but keeping it simple and quick was the goal. And the pocket holes make a great tight joint. Notice the mouse traps that I used as shims to set the reveal on the aprons. They were about 3/16" of an inch and worked perfectly.

Here it is almost done. I am trying to decide weather I want the bottom shelf higher or lower.

The low position won. I think it looks nicer that way and you can put a tall vase on it if you want. Now it just needs some stain and poly to make it last a long time.

The table is 25" H X 16" W X 18" D. If anyone is interested, I will post detailed dimensions of the components.

Here it is with a first coat of stain.

-t

Pergola

I have made up my mind to build a pergola over the patio at my house. In researching my pergola, I have come across a ton of sites that list ideas and plans for them. Some for a fee and some for free. I am pretty sure I want to have just a standard pergola, however I have a bit of an odd shape. Instead of being a square it will be a rectangle, and this is causing me some headache. Most plans are for a 9x9, 10x10, 12x12 etc. so I will be going off the grid a little.

I plan on using this blog post to keep track of my ideas and document my progress. Since it is only March, I have a little time before construction begins. So here are my first steps: research and planning.

First I have looked at these websites:

1. http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/pergola/3352816

2. http://diygardenplans.com/pergolaplans/

Here is a picture of a beautiful pergola. This is very similar to what I am planning.

http://s907.photobucket.com/albums/ac276/baconaway/?action=view&current=patio.jpg

This photo came from this thread:

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/porch/msg0314220528218.html

More later.

UPDATE!

It is July and I finally got to building the pergola. Here are some construction pictures. We will eventually stain the wood black, but it will have to dry out for several months before we can apply any stain.

I am happy with the way it turned out. It is really beefy with 6x6 post, 2 2x12 girders at each side, 2x8 purlins, and 2x2 lattice. I will add 4x4 angle bracing at each post as well.

I put the posts 36 inches in the ground with 4 bags of concrete at each post, so it should be nice and solid for a long time.

Now that that is finished, I can move on to the side patio.

Day trading and losing weight

I know the two are not really related, but in my world they seem to be. I am listening to an audiobook called "The Big Short." and the only time I listen to it is when I am running on the treadmill. This means that the only time I am thinking about the stock market is when I am losing weight. I need a treadmill with a built in Scotttrade account for all of the ideas this book is giving me.

New outfeed / assembly table

Here is a picture of my new outfeed/assembly table. It will be on casters, and can be moved out of the way when not in use. I built it out of standard 2x4's with a MDF top.

Here is the table being put to use. I am putting together new slipper chairs for the wife. This is just an assembly however, I did not make these.

New saw

Here is a picture of my new saw. It is the Grizzly Polar Bear Series hybrid saw.

t