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We were at Costco last night & they have a nice prefab poly shed that would hold all out bikes & stuff, and would get it all out of my shop/shed.
IIRC, they're $899. I need to measure & see if it'll fit, would make things much more organized here.
Yepper.... Just got to get Motivated to start doing exactly that. I'm 73, and suffer with various Spinal and Joint ailments incorporating Osteo-Arthritis (OA) systemically affecting my entire Spine , Knees, Hips and SI Joints, making many days very tough with terrible Stiffness and Chronic Fatigue. So, I need to start with "baby -Steps" of just start Chucking stuff. Procrastination contributes to the feeling of Overwhelmingness which spawns more Procrastination!.
In the Midst of trying to do that.... Still, as Retirees on fixed incomes, gotta watch the pennies as well as the dollars. There probably is a Thread here or elsewhere about Retirement. It's Not always what everybody thinks it is... There are lot of "hidden" expenses and consequences to it!!
Quick update on the mud room built in project, got almost all the cabinet carcasses built and assembled and ready for face frame build.
First up is the drawer cabinet, this is the cabinet carcass that the face frame will mount to, just need the back panel and it's done. I don't plan on doing a toe kick on these because it's a mudroom build so the bottom face frame piece will go all the way to the floor. After face frame, I'll build the drawers and drawer fronts for these and be ready for paint. Also, I've learned through many fuck ups learning opportunities to label all your shit as you cut it so you don't run into problems later, hence all the blue tape on these pieces.
This is the tall cabinet carcass complete, also needs the back panel and I'll cut them both out at the same time. The inside will have shelves...so I should also get the shelf pin holes in there lol. There will be a big top part with a door and the bottom will have one bigger drawer.
For the cubby part that goes over the bench, I was unable to use pocket hole screws as everything is visible so I had to go old school with dado joints and glue. This is also done (no back panel needed) and ready for face frame. First pic is the layout marks on one piece and completed dados cut into the other. I used a jig I made to cut the dados exactly to the size of the piece of plywood that goes into it and cut them with a router and template bit.
Dry fit assembly.
Tighter than your mom.
Next step will be to buy some poplar lumber for face frames which I plan on doing Friday this week and start processing all of that. I have some maple on hand that I'll use for the rails/stiles of the doors and drawer fronts as it's a bit heavier and harder wearing. Face frames generally go pretty fast so I'm hoping to get this whole thing to paint before it starts to get cold.
I'm in the hard part of marathon training now so time is tight lol.
Good for You, Man... I can paint, I can hang wallpaper (not sure anybody does that anymore) and put furniture together (from Kits), BUT For whatever reason I Cannot cut a piece of wood straight LOL,,,, I mean it ! Maybe because my right leg is 1" shorter than my left ? Fractured my right Thigh playing HS Football in 1966 - resulting in it being 1" short (probably a little more now) . Without making this a Medical Thread, I can tell you that the "Trauma" (which was left Unaddressed by the DR at the time) has wreaked Havoc with my Physiatry! The list is Big as to the Spinal Maladies as a result of this. I wear corrective shoe ( on some shoes, some it can't be done) but was done Too Late, the damage was done. Aside from Spinal Spondylosis, Dextroscoliosis, Bulging Back Discs all the way up the top of the Neck, and sites of Stenosis and chronic Sacroiliitis and OA in both Knees and the left Hip. SUX Big Time.
The slow and steady march towards completion continues...but at least the drawer fronts are done lol.
I don't know if I've shown how I make cabinet doors/drawer fronts on here before but here we go. If you've seen this already, feel free to stop reading here lol.
Step 1 is to cut all the rails (horizontal pieces) and stiles (vertical pieces) to length. The length should include the size of the opening to cover as well as the overlay amount. I did something different and have a different overlay in the horizontal direction (1" per side) and vertical direction (3/8") just because of how the cabinets are assembled. In the picture below you can see much of the joints already cut and I'll show more but the big takeaway from this image is the 1/4" wide by 3/8" deep groove centered down the middle to accept the center panel.
I use a piece of scrap plywood as a sacrificial fence on the table saw that my dado stack cuts into to give me the ability to make a full width cut in one shot without destroying my actual table saw fence. With this, and a miter gauge set to 90deg, I cut all the 3/8" tenons to fit into the grooves cut in the last step. These are only cut on the rails, the stiles just have a groove.
You then stick the tenon into the groove (giggity) and this is what the door frame looks like.
And this is what the joint itself looks like. There's a small gap in there to allow the outer shoulders to seat nicely. This gap can be filled later on before paint but gives a nice tight joint up on the visible face.
Next up is the panel which, in my case, are 1/2" MDF panels cut to the size of the inside of the door frame plus the depth of the groove on all sides so an extra 0.75" in both directions. The dado stack is again used to cut a 3/8" rabbet on all sides to fit into the door frame with the height of the blade adjusted to take off enough material to leave a rabbet to fit into the groove in the door frame. Looks like this when you're done. You may ask why not just use a 1/4" panel instead of 1/2" and that's two fold. One because the heft of the 1/2" MDF is really nice and two because it leaves a flat back to attach to the cabinet. This isn't a big deal for doors but is a huge deal for attaching the face to a drawer box. Using just a 1/4" would leave a gap between the face and the box that you'd need to figure out how to fill.
And this is what a finished face looks like! Just needs a quick sanding before paint. The great part is that sanding is just to even things out and smooth it over. These will be painted so no need to have a great perfect sanded surface which is a refreshing change of pace lol.
And this is why I keep telling people to buy more clamps lol. I think I only had one or two left on my clamp rack after getting all of these glued up.
And that's it! All that's left now is to make the giant door for the tall cabinet and we can get into painting. I'm slowly working through all of this but it's taking forever because my life currently revolves around running as the marathon is October 5th. Then my schedule frees up considerably.
I like the thought of using 1/2 mdf for the center panels to leave the backside flat for attaching later on. I wish I had enough space to set up a wood shop. I love building shit, just no room!
I saw the plans for this mobile workbench that can be broken down and thought that was pretty sweet.. i would love to get wood shop up and running too.. now i've just been making do in my garage.. https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/s/uX71hjMRBV
They have workbenches that fold up and store on the wall. My neighbor has one and it's pretty nice. I'd look into something like that before building whatever is in that reddit link.
I saw the plans for this mobile workbench that can be broken down and thought that was pretty sweet.. i would love to get wood shop up and running too.. now i've just been making do in my garage.. https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/s/uX71hjMRBV
This is not what I was expecting. That seems like a PITA. I was expecting one of those flip top middle of the shop work stations. I stil want to build one of those I think in my shop but not completely sure yet.
This is not what I was expecting. That seems like a PITA. I was expecting one of those flip top middle of the shop work stations. I stil want to build one of those I think in my shop but not completely sure yet.
That looks beyond unstable and really hard to get a nice flat surface to work on simply from the complexity of it all. Looks great in CAD, probably not great in execution. If you have the space I wouldn't bother with something like this and just do a normal workbench lol.
That looks beyond unstable and really hard to get a nice flat surface to work on simply from the complexity of it all. Looks great in CAD, probably not great in execution. If you have the space I wouldn't bother with something like this and just do a normal workbench lol.
It is definitely going to be a little work but I think there are some micro adjustment flip hinges out there. I mainly want it for the planner at the oppposite end of the table saw. The router in the middle since you can just put the bit down so it doesn't have to rotate. It would just help only needing one set of feed rollers for the planner instead of a feed and exit set.
Still sounds like a massive PITA that I personally don't think is remotely worth it unless you're super tight on space. These workbenches you see online and in YT videos are nothing more than clickbait for views. They don't actually work all that well in real life.
I also would not trust a few screws to hold a planer upside down and, again, aligning the infeed and outfeed sides is super important for planers to avoid snipe. Did you buy a table saw yet? Depending on what you get you can put a router table in one of the extension wings which is what I plan to do with mine.
Any time you have stuff that moves like this is an opportunity for things to get out of alignment and that's super important when it comes to planers and router tables.
I fucking hate painting. Decided to not bother with buying a sprayer and just went for the brush/roller. Turned out pretty good. Main cabinets are all done and ready to be moved upstairs to their final locations. Will start painting the drawer/door fronts tonight. Hoping to wrap up this project by end of next week!
I'm still loving our cutting board Thanks again for that amazing piece of art Sam
I say you go buy a cheap paint sprayer and get to spraying! I've heard it's a game changer. (I too despise painting)
Glad you're still loving it! Hope you actually use it instead of displaying it as art haha.
Sprayer is on the list if I have to do more cabinets (which, according to the wife, I do). My issue with doing this is that I have to spray the outsides of the cabinets as well and that would make a huge mess. I wouldn't be able to get the big cabinet boxes into a spray shelter to contain the paint spray and didn't want to do it outside to avoid having crap fall into the wet paint. I may buy a sprayer to paint doors and drawer fronts though. I don't think I have to paint cabinet boxes for any of the other projects I have coming up though...
I know less about paint equipment than I do about woodwork, but have had good results with a quality HVLP without a ton of overspray.
Still cover everything, but not as bad as I would've expected.
Luckily, my dad knows this stuff & has the gear. I just get his help when it comes to that.
My biggest issue with getting a sprayer is that I have a finite number of projects that I would need it in and then would just be sitting on a shelf collecting dust. Don't really want to blow $250 on a good sprayer when I can get good results with a brush/roller.
It has been a long time coming but finally got these painted and installed. I'm now doing the epoxy fill work on the wood slabs that will make up the bench and countertop. As an excellent influencer, I did not take pics of the epoxy fills lol. It unfortunately takes a while to do the filling as I can only do one side at a time and it usually takes 2-3 rounds of filling as the epoxy flows down and fills cracks...and then 5 hours of cure time in between pours.
Looking good. I have to request pictures next time of the epoxy work. As much as I love all the stuff you are building, I have to say that part really interests me.
No, I've always hated epoxy river stuff. Looks so tacky to me. The epoxy fill for really any slab project is more so to fill any cracks/holes/whatever in the wood so you can end up with a clean surface to work from. Also helps to fill cracks on the edges so you can conserve material rather than just cutting it off. I use essentially dark brown/black epoxy so it doesn't stand out all that much from the wood.
Alright, so here's some epoxy content! These are pics after the first pour round but whatever, the process is the same. I use West System's epoxy with slow hardner (less heat, less sensitive to pour depth, 5hr cure) mixed with some brown pigment to make it blend better to fill in all the cracks, bug holes, knot holes, etc that are in a full slab. All of this would get trimmed off and disposed of when making actual lumber but it's a fact of life with slabs.
You can see in this picture how the cracks/holes get filled. It's a long process of pouring in...waiting for it to settle...pour some more...let it settle...etc.
Then after you get it as topped up as possible, you let it sit to fill down in further and cure for the 5hrs only to find that you definitely need to add more lol so sand flat any excess from the first pour and rinse and repeat the first step.
When you get everything filled and sanded flat, it looks like this. This pic is after 80grit so it's really rough but as this gets sanded finer it blends in really nicely. I did one more pour last night to fill in some more holes/rot on the edges and should be ready for final sand/processing soon.
I also got these cabinets installed, next step will be to build the top for this as I can't find any maple slabs. The premade butcher block in maple was like $500 for this size so it'll be a DIY butcher block lol.
My wife also roped me into doing permanent xmas lights for the outside of our house. The lights come with VHB sticky pads that don't work great in the cold so I'm printing brackets to screw the lights into the soffits. Hope to install these on Saturday this weekend, renting a boom lift to make it better/faster.
That's all for now lol, more to come on the epoxy stuff.
Thanks again for that amazing piece of art Sam 
