Sows Ear Silk Purse

A spur of the moment purchase without a game plan, a titch unusual for me. But something about the $20 cupboard said “take me home” so I did. Where it sat collecting dust and taking up space in the garage for just a little while.

Oh it’s ugly all right!

Until a while ago when it spoke to me again and said “it’s time”. So I measured and pondered and then ran my ideas by the real carpenter.

I think the project spoke to me because I wanted a challenge. I’ve blogged before about wanting to increase my carpentry skills. This seemed like the perfect project for it plus it then gave me the cupboard space up in the attic I had been missing.

It always starts with demo and seriously, if you’ve never ripped something apart for fun, go for it. Demo is just the best even if you are doing salvage. Then it was on to lots of scrapping, sanding, chemical stripper, scrapping and sanding. Oh and then more of the same. Just when you think you are done – nope. There’s one spot that looks like crap.

Oh and painting. How could I forget painting? It seems I always have a paint brush in my hand according to one neighbour. My skills also extend to being able to apply a nice stain and varathane coating. Not my favourite but hey they can’t all be the fun jobs can they?

Fancy New Skills

I reinforced my skills (I use that term loosely) on the compound mitre saw. My measuring still isn’t precise enough to be a finish carpenter though. I totally mastered a brand new tool – the biscuit jointer. Super cool and I even figured it out myself but alas I did not get a picture of myself using it.

That little hole gets the “biscuit” and it adjoins to the corresponding hole in the next board

Challenges

It’s hard to believe but, after all this time, the biggest challenge on a project like this remains hammering in those little finishing nails. Ugh, over and over and over again, Ugh. Like why can’t we use a nail gun like they do on the fancy HGTV shows? Nope – gonna stay old school says the man reading over my shoulder.

First cut – smidge off. Second nail – through the back. The clamps are holding the first set of biscuits together.

A close second in the challenge category is patience. I just like want to be done and move along but the finishing work takes so much time. Alas when it is my project I can not just go off whilly nilly and leave someone else to finish it. So each day I set aside some time to work on the next aspect but man waiting for the glue to dry……. not my strong suit.

The hardware also turned out to be a long drawn out process that was a challenge. Not everything fit back properly, screws were missing or the wrong type, etc. etc. etc. etc. See the above paragraph for how I felt about this seemingly unending delay. Ready to move on but it’s not done…….but in all honestly I kind of walked away at this point and the engineer took over. Which I thought was ok because really I just wanted to learn the woodworking part or I could just be honest and say he is better at those finishing details than I am.

Bonus Points

The custom green from mixing random amounts of green and white together hit the garage floor. Nice and thick it sat on the newly swept floor. I went into overdrive and the doors got scraped, sanded and washed. On went the custom green paint to the inside of the doors and the insets of the fronts. Fortunately there was enough paint from the floor for coat one and enough left in the can for the remainder.

It does not look green in this photo but it is!

Second place bonus points for the inventive use of the egg carton as a stand for the kazillion little screws that needed to be spray painted. Of course I also spray painted the little latches and then they would not work and I had to strip them. So always think about function before aestethics I guess would be that take away lesson.

• Demo Day

  Design Options

  Scrap/Sand/Clean

  Rebuild or repair

  Paint/Stain/Varnish

  Hardware/Touch up

It’s now been manhandled up to the attic, no easy feat. It may move over a bit and we are undecided on whether or not to add a little base at the bottom. Like the kind an old dresser would have. I was thinking of using the jigsaw but there is a brand new band saw that apparently the engineer is keen to use. Or perhaps it’s just good as is.

I’ve also taken the opportunity with this post to work on a few blogging skills. I hope that the time line shows up as it should but I’m not that hopeful! I’ve worked on headings and fonts and colours. The classic issue is that my phone doesn’t seem to support what the computer word Press does so who knows what you will see?

Bernie