The Drawer Factory, cont.

 Oh my goodness!  My last post was on August, and now it's December.  This from someone who used to like to post twice a month.  I've now finished a new batch of drawers, but not the number originally intended because I ran out of wood, and the wood store is an hour away, and there's been the COVID thing and the dogs . . .

Drawers take a lot of time.  There's building the box, and making the drawer front, and installing the slides . . .  I originally had eight half-blind dovetail drawers on the list, but the ran-out-of-wood thing happened.  I use half-blind dovetail joints for drawers that don't need to support a lot of weight or won't get a lot of use, but you also don't have to install slides, and don't have to make separate drawer fronts, so a lot less work.  Also, when cutting the half-blind dovetails in the jig, you cut both sides of the joint in one pass (so four passes per drawer, versus eight passes with "through" dovetail joints), so looking forward to the eight half-blind drawers coming up.  And they're just really cool-looking!

So.  Once you set up the dovetail jig and the routers, you want to cut out lots of drawer sides, fronts, and backs—they go quickly.  Then cut the slots for the bottoms.

Then assemble them to make sure they fit.  

Then cut out the bottoms, and glue the drawers together, making sure they're square!

 Then round over the upper edges of the drawer, sand, and apply a couple of coats of clear finish (or whatever you prefer).  Then measure for how far up on the side the slide needs to go, and install.  I build inset drawers, so I need to measure carefully for the separate drawer fronts to ensure an even gap around the drawer front.  I use a jig to drill the mounting holes in the fronts for the 3" wire pulls.  Then I shim the front in its opening, and when it looks okay, I hold it in place and drill through the pre-drilled holes in the front into the front of the drawer carcass (or box).  I insert the two machine screws through the drawer and front into the pull and tighten the screws enough to hold the front to the drawer box.  Then I close the drawer and check the gaps, and adjust/move the front (there is a little play with just the pull mounting screws) until it is centered in the opening.  Then I drill for four screws inserted from the inside of the drawer into the front, which secures it.

Here are the new drawers in the kitchen (east side):

And west side:

Photo below—the six plywood drawers in the garage workbench with their fronts.  I also cut out five out of the eight integral fronts for the upper half-blind drawers (before running out of wood).

There's four new drawers on the other side of the garage that will be used for garden tools and "stuff."  I've had to edge-glue the 3/4" maple for the fronts because I didn't have wide enough boards, and if I don't have enough maple (or whatever), I will use whatever is around to make up the difference.  In the drawer in the photo above, that's cherry and walnut in that one drawer front on the right.  For the drawer on the right (below), the odd piece is cherry. 

Here's detail of one of the drawers showing the through dovetail joint:

For the pottery studio workbench, I've finally finished the last two drawers:

So, that's it for the drawers (this time, anyway).  I've built 85 drawers so far for the house remodel, with about 70 still to go (sigh).  

In a moment of quiet, I finished the foyer closet (six years after finishing the foyer).  That involved tearing out the carpet on the closet floor, and installing tile that matched the foyer. 

And after:

I also extended the shelf out and added a new shelf above that, before and after:

So I need to build more drawers, but I also want to finish the guest bathroom, the big part of that is to install a new large soaking tub.  But that's a challenge I'm going to put off (along with other things, as I'm trying to reduce stress levels, and having too many things on my to-do list with not enough time stresses, which is not healthy).  

There are some other landscape projects I have decided to contract out (not as easy as it would seem).  The first of these projects is my front walkway.  I started this, but the rest is grunt work, digging out a trench, filling with gravel and sand and compacting, etc.  

The other project is to make a video tutorial on one-pedal driving an electric car.  I did an experiment with shooting with my camcorder (in the moving car), but the image bounced around so much as to be unusable.  I've ordered a GoPro Hero7 Black which reportedly has fantastic image stabilization.  Hoping that does the trick.  

Garage — Part 11 + The Drawer Factory

 Forgive me, it's been two months since my last post.  

My time was diverted to yard work after an unfortunate fire abatement order, and then there was that COVID-19 thing which limited trips to buy hardwood for drawers.

But none of that prevented me from posting about the SwissTrax plastic garage floor tiles, which I installed more than a month ago.  So first, the tile install, and then progress on the drawer-building front.  

The SwissTrax tiles are substantially thicker and larger than the Weather Tech tiles I installed in my music workshop, but the installation method was substantially the same.  Two edges of the tile have loops and two have prongs that go into the loops on the next tile, locking them together.  Here are photos of the top and bottom of one tile (cut in half).

As with the Weather Tech tiles, I cut them to fit (at the edges of the garage) with my band saw, and fit them together with the aid of a hefty rubber mallet.  Knee pads are advisable for old knees.  I started at the front and worked my way to the back, moving large tools from the concrete on to the finished tiled surface as I made my way toward the back.

I inserted a stripe of darker color tile to aid in aligning the car as I back into the garage.  There are special beveled (black) tile pieces that can be installed at the front edge to ease the car up onto the thick tile.

Here's what the finished floor looks like (toward the west), and another shot looking toward the east:

And of course these tiles are designed to have cars rolling on them.  The tiles are an incentive to keep the floor clean. :-)

The Drawer Factory

I build drawers in batches, because a lot of the time required is for setting up the table saw for the tongue and groove cuts, and for the dovetail jig for the solid wood drawers.  I use plywood for drawers that are too deep (vertical) to practically use very wide boards (which tend to cup).  Making nice plywood drawers is actually more time consuming than making solid wood dovetail-joint drawers, so plywood drawers are not inferior (although dovetail joints look more impressive.  

Either way, it pays to cut as many drawer pieces as practicable, once the tools have been set up.

For the current drawer effort, I planned to build ten plywood drawers and sixteen dovetail joint drawers.  I started making the plywood drawers first, and cut out all the sides, fronts and backs, but ran out of half-inch plywood before cutting out the last two drawer bottoms.  I had enough maple for most of the edging (to cover and reinforce the plywood edges).  Here is the stack of fronts, backs, and sides (before cutting tongues and grooves):

Here is one of the drawer carcasses (for kitchen), clear-coated and installed:

This drawer (above) will get a maple front.  I installed another drawer to the right, and had enough materials to make the maple and laminate drawer front (although it's not yet finished or installed, and no drawer pull either).  Here's the front just sitting in place:

The garage workbench gets fourteen drawers, six of which are plywood.  Four carcasses were completed with two coats of clear finish, but the other two are still waiting for drawer bottoms.  I went to Home Depot to get another sheet of plywood for that, but their panel saw was out of order, and because of COVID, they didn't know when they could get someone to come in to fix it.  Whole four-by-eight sheets of plywood will of course not fit in my car.  

These workbench drawers also need hardwood fronts, which will require a two-plus hour round-trip drive to the wood store.  I've been limiting trips to stores because of COVID, so it will be a while longer before these are done.  The eight drawers above these plywood drawers will be made of hardwood (poplar) with some variety of hardwood fronts (and half-blind dovetail joints).  Altogether, sixteen dovetail drawers waiting for wood.  Sigh.

In my last post, I showed the installation of drawer slides in the workbench before that was assembled.  I was not so prescient during the construction of the kitchen cabinets, so I now have to install those drawer slides after the fact.  The challenge looks like this:

 

 The only drawers I completely finished in this batch were those for the master bathroom vanity, and actually this was just one drawer and the door for the open space under the sink.  These two pieces completed the bathroom, and have been missing for years, so I'm very happy to have finished them.  And they're fancy!

I built the vanity from scratch.  It's 40" high (compared to s stock 26" vanity) — nice since I'm about 6'3" (189 cm).  The front is mahogany, mostly an impressive striped mahogany that I found at my hardwood supply store.  They only had a small quantity, and the other drawer fronts used almost all of my supply.  I only had a few pieces left.

This would not be enough to for the door and the front for the large towel drawer, but it would be enough to frame the fronts.  I had a another piece of nice mahogany that I had bought many years ago for guitar construction, so I decided to use some of this for the field.  Given the size of the fronts, I decided to glue strips of this mahogany onto pieces of half-inch plywood.  The mahogany would end up being a quarter-inch thick.  

So I first sliced the mahogany thicker than the end quarter-inch, using my band saw fitted with a carbide resaw blade.

Then I ran the edges through the jointer so they would butt up against each other perfectly.  The plywood and mahogany pieces were all cut larger than the desired end dimension.  

Test fit, then wood glue was applied on the bottoms and edges of the mahogany, then weights and clamps held it all in place while the glue dried.

The glued-up front blanks were then cut to their finished dimensions, and run through the thickness planer to the final 3/4" thickness, which also made the front perfectly flat.

The striped mahogany edges were then cut out and trued in the jointer, and glued to the center panel using biscuits for alignment.

The door got European-style inset hinges.

Here's the towel drawer finished (not all the way open):

And the completed vanity (finally):

Next time: either progress on this current 26-drawer effort, or a report on a new front walkway. 

Tool room transformation — Weather Tech floor tiles

When I bought the house in 2013, it had four bedrooms—I only needed one.  The back bedroom had initially been created by a former owner by partitioning off the back part of the garage.  This left me with a garage that was too short (in fact, the prior occupant was using the garage as a fifth bedroom, complete with carpet).  To make the garage usable, I added six feet to the front (the subject of many blog posts).  I completed the first phase of that fourth bedroom remodel (windows, structure, upgraded electrics, etc.) years ago, and then started using it as a tool room, basically a place to store the tools and supplies I needed to do my remodel/renovation.  It became a disorganized mess.

Since I no longer needed it as a bedroom, it didn't need a closet, so I repatriated that precious space back to the garage.  The former closet opening then had to be walled off.  And to cover the old opening with drywall, I first had to dismantle and remove the heavy-duty shelves from the wall on that side of the room (along with all the tools piled high).

Then add drywall.

And joint compound and paint.  Then it was time to rip up the remainder of the old carpeting, and scrape the concrete floor clean.  While searching for possible plastic floor tiles for the garage, I discovered that Weather Tech (automotive floor mats, etc.) also made floor tiles, but they were only a quarter-inch thick, and not ideal for a garage floor.  But I thought they would do well for my new music-room/instrument workshop (I build electric guitars and basses, steel-string and classical acoustic guitars, and violins).

After placing a few on the floor and walking on them, I discovered they were noisy—mostly caused by the hard plastic clacking on the concrete when you stepped on them.  So I first put down an eighth-inch insulated underlayment, which was the same as I used under my bamboo flooring.  It did the job.

The floor tiles have interlocking edges that need to be pounded together with a rubber mallet; the most effective technique is discovered fairly quickly.

The tiles around at least two of the edges of the floor need to be cut.  I saw on some videos of Swiss Trax installations that cutting with a table saw could melt the plastic, so I used a narrow blade on my band saw and pushed the tile through quickly to minimize heat.  It worked well. 

So here are a couple of photos of the finished room:

Of course, it doesn't look like this anymore, since music room furnishings and much of the stuff I moved out (and didn't throw away) had to be moved back in while the garage is being completed.

I'm happy with the floor.  I will compare it with the Swiss Trax tile when I install that flooring in the garage. 

First I need to build the next group of about twenty-two more drawers.  Drawer factory.

Garage — Part 10 (the inside)

It's been four months since my last post.  Sigh.  My old goal was to do two posts per month, so obviously slow going.  I've been doing a lot of work, but finishing off the inside of the garage was a lot of the same thing, so not conducive to several installments.  And there is still the matter of the high-maintenance puppies—now eight months old—interfering with remodeling time.

When last I reported, I was waiting for a delivery of drywall.  So this post will cover putting up drywall, joint compound, window trim, painting, and cabinets.  At the same time I added one of the sheets of drywall to finish off the back-side of the garage wall, in the adjacent work room.  I ended up finishing off that room, which will be a separate post (also written today).

As I reviewed my photos for this project, I found I had few of hanging drywall and applying joint compound (and sanding).  Likewise painting all that.  I've had previous posts going into more detail on those mundane chores, so for this post, there will be just a few photos (and few words).  Most will be about the workbench cabinet I built to house tools (14 drawers), and provide a benchtop for miter saw, dovetail jig, vise, etc.

The house remodel has been something of a musical chair evolution, with my stuff being shuffled around from room to room, waiting until everything finds its permanent place (or sold or trashed).  So, clear out a room (moving everything someplace else), remodel the room, and then find space for the stuff inhabiting the next room.

So the "beauty shots" of the garage will have to wait until it gets its new floor and drawers made for the new cabinets.  Otherwise, there will be clutter.

On with the show.

Drywall starts to go up.  You can see what had been a closet in the back room, that space now reclaimed for the garage.  On the upper right, I've screwed a sheet of 5/8" plywood to the wall where solar system/battery storage electrics will be attached later this year—there will be a post for that.

In the next photo, the west wall has been covered with drywall and painted.  There are three pairs of large dowels inserted into the wall (into holes drilled into two 4x4s used in lieu of 2x4s when that wall was framed as part of the bedroom expansion—wall moved 21" into old garage space).  My three ladders will be hung on the dowels.

On the right side of the above photo, there is a recess in the new garage extension.  I built shelves in this space, with a drawer unit.  Drawer slides were installed before this drawer unit was assembled; drawers not yet built.  This:

I also installed the drawer slides in the six-foot wide workbench cabinet for the garage, while it was still in pieces.  It's very difficult to install the slides after the cabinet has been put together (something learned the hard way), and accuracy also suffers.  If you install the slides while the cabinet is still in pieces, everything can be open and flat on a workbench.

The base for the cabinet was made from 2x6s cut down to a 5" width.  Construction lumber often is of variable width, depending on how dry it was when cut, and how dry it is when you get it.  Make sure all pieces are uniformly dry, or each piece could end up a different width after a couple of months, after shrinkage—with poor results.

This is the cabinet carcass assembled, without the top and front trim.

Trim on the front plywood edges is just 3/4" x 3/4" pine, attached with some glue and finish nails.  I used a pneumatic nailer, which ordinarily gives excellent results, but if the nail gun is not aimed at right angles, the nail can veer out.  In this case, I was holding the trim in place with my hand, negligently, just where the nail was being placed, and the nail went through my finger.  Actually very little pain, and with immediate washing, antibiotic ointment and bandaging for a few days, it healed well.  Could have been a different story had the nail hit a bone or something else important.

For the cabinet top, I elected to use plain kiln-dried 2x4s, run through my jointer and thickness planer (to 1.25" thick), and glued together with biscuits.  I did that in three separate sections, then ran each section through the planer and trued each edge in the jointer, and then glued the three sections together.  I used a couple of pieces of mahogany I had for visual interest, and coated top and bottom with epoxy.  Nothing fancy.  It will have things screwed and bolted into it, and get dinged up.  The glue-up:

Below is a photo of the cabinet, minus the fourteen drawers—six heavy duty use with full extension drawers slides, and eight more without slides.  I'll be doing a separate post on a marathon drawer building session (for garage, kitchen, bathroom, pottery studio), hopefully soon.

This will give you an idea of what the cabinet will look like, as well as a couple of the new windows trimmed out.

I'm going to do the post on the back room remodel later today.  It's going to be the music room/instrument-building workshop.  The floor is covered with Weather Tech plastic floor tiles, which I had considered for the garage, but not heavy-duty enough.

I will be doing a separate post on the garage floor, which will use thick Swiss Trax plastic floor tiles, bought from Home Depot.  I will post more photos of the completed garage when all that happens.

There is also now a new Tesla Model Y in my garage, so that will be another "garage" post, hopefully with a demo video explaining features, including magnetic braking and one-pedal driving.