Step Five: HURRY Up and Finish

I Believe in Miracles

I was sure we could finish the project this weekend. I believe in miracles. Not usually I don't, but I could taste the finish line ribbon snapping against my chest as I sprinted home. It had to be soon. And it was, but not this weekend. Here are some pictures as I continue to trip it out, use wood filler to fix some problem areas, and stain the pallets....

Sideview. Love it all coming together now.

Microwave view. Here the backside of the base of drawers has been added.

Up close of the FREE oak trim. 

I am swooning. This is turning out even better than I had anticipated!

Pallet detail....

I'm ready to stain.

Stained with Cherry. In hindsight I would have stained the pallets before I put them on the island.

I'm in a hurry today. I need to get the final pictures on here.  So give me a few minutes, will ya? I need to hurry up and finish!

Step Four of The Island Project: Start Putting It All Together

The Day of Cartwheels

It was two months later. Two months after I had joined some boards together with my grandpa's old biscuit joiner. Life has a way of getting in the way. We had proms and graduations and a beach vacation. 

No where in that mix did a good solid day of devotion to The Island Project present itself?

But I came home from my beach vacation full of piss and vinegar and one idea, one word: FINISH. This is not a concept I'm super familiar with. I'm not a huge fan of FINISH. I'm world's number one fan of START. And I don't get down on myself about that. We need all kinds. I'm the starter. Here - you FINISH. But this time it was on me. And I had some motivation from my favorite guy, who, often lacks vision, but was also beginning to see what we might have here. (Which was awesomeness. We had awesomeness.)

In fact - it was on this sunny June day that he said, "I'm beginning to think I won't be embarrassed to have this in my house."

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So, do you remember the boards for the base? Here they are. They are glued and joined. Then routered dado joints to hold two dividers of the future drawers. Doesn't it look pretty?

Finally, I was the step I wanted to be at. Trim work and all the touches that would turn this strange, awkward grouping of wood into something magnificent. Something my eye had seen months and months ago. One problem I had in my design phase was what to do with the plywood on the "new" cabinet? And how to "marry" the professional looking freebie to the homemade cabinet? Wood/cabinet shops use veneers or very expensive hardwood ply. I had used cheap, construction grade. I had painted it to shut up the naysayers that said you DO NOT use plywood (oh but you do) and the paint hadn't helped. But in my design phase I had come up with a solution. And the solution had been a free one.

So months before, while visiting "home," we had pulled and pryed and crow-bar-ed and sweated and cursed to end up with a lot of free wood.....

And that is how my kitchen island ended up on the Pallet Board Bandwagon. I cut the pallet boards to length, sanded them and sanded them (and then I decided to sand them.) I picked and chose the best pieces I could. I was careful to leave some space at each end for the eventual corner trim and facing that would go on.

A closer view. I was ecstatic. Doing cartwheels. Bye bye ugly plywood.

Oh dear god. I did some more cartwheels. Here I had started to trim out the corners and edges. Now - something wonderful had happened a few weeks prior. My wonderful guy had come home with his van packed (slight exaggeration) full of oak trim. The job site he had been on had made a mistake or there had been a change order or something and who cares? I had free oak trim. So I made some quick design modifications to use FREE. I always want to use FREE when I can. I'm actually not always a fan of CHEAP because sometimes that leads to CRAPPY and I have plenty of crappy. But FREE often leads to such inspiration and fun and greatness.

Loving. More cartwheels.

Here's where I pulled a hamstring. I shouldn't be doing so many cartwheels. Honestly, I haven't done them in years. What business did I have? Oh geez. Look at this. Ends are on the base. Oak trim on the face of the cabinet covering ugly plywood ends. This is the "back" of the island. On the backside of the microwave is a spot for cookbooks. 

We were now on a Mutual Mission to FINISH. And soon. With my helper fully on board, it's just a matter of weeks until this is completed......

How excited was I? OH SO EXCITED. Yes.

STEP THREE of the ISLAND PROJECT

Can We Just Be Done Already?

It's early April 2014. Six months prior I had dreamed (a genie) of a beautiful, custom made island in my tiny kitchen. It's main purpose was to house a microwave that took up (oh so!) valuable space on my kitchen counter. 

I had dreamed it. Researched it. Drew and drew and drew it. I wrote down all the features I needed (WANTED.... HAD TO HAVE) and when I dream, I dream big. It would have a butcher block top, a spice drawer, a place for my crock pot and blender, cookie sheet and cutting board dividers. Electric. And... the base of the whole thing would have drawers.

This was to become step three. The base. How very, very much this idea nearly ruined everything.

So first. Let's admire the picture above. Here you can see the cabinet I found for free on the side of the road on the left. The cabinet on the right is the one I built with all routered joints. The joints are all glued and some, that I felt may have pressure as it gets moved and situated, are nailed. 

My future eye can see the spice drawer, top left. The cabinet to hold all my baking tools bottom left. The mircrowave on the top right, the crockpot and dividers on the bottom.... sigh..... I just wanted this to be over already!

But first. I need to finish. FINISH? What's that? 

So My Base was to be about 8" tall. Consisting of three boards (I wanted plywood but my helper balked. No. No. No. You make things RUGGED!) So three boards. Three boards on the top, dividers vertically for the eventual drawers, and three boards on the bottom.

Now I had these three boards on the top of the island because I like to "see" things. I like to keep the finished vision in front of me. But these three boards (actually 6 until we are done) will eventually support the entire contraption for all eternity.

Another view. I do my projects on the weekends - due to my extreme commute there is very little, to no time, when I get home through the week. So Monday through Friday it sat in the garage. And I would pull my car in and just look at her. And I could see a peanut butter sandwich being made. I could see friends and family gathered around, heads thrown back in laughter, oh ha ha ha, what fun we will all have. Oh yea. I gotta finish this first. 

So. I joined these three. And the way I did it was with a biscuit joiner. Ahhhh, I forgot to mention my biscuit joiner! AND that it was my FIRST time using it. 

You see - when I'm doing BIG, IMPORTANT projects I like to use techniques and ideas that have never proven themselves or been used before, in my little garage. Oh yes. I branch out. Can we make it MORE complicated? Why yes. Yes we can. Absolutely. 

So I learned about that biscuit jointer. And I learned I love it. And then I also learned I needed to buy a planer. But that's for another day. 

I joined the "top" and the "bottom" of the base, each board to the next, with my grandpa's biscuit jointer that I had bought at his auction as he readied to move south. It was so special to me to have this tool. And after they were joined I realized I had NO CLAMPS long enough. So I had to buy some. The entire day was devoted to simply cutting to length, sanding, gluing, joining, and clamping and.... waiting.....

OH HOW I HATE WAITING!

Here is my incredibly humble little set up. Someday, I hope to have a nice wood shop. But I'm trying to learn to appreciate the present. And presently I'm just so happy to have the ability to set up and do just about any little project my heart dreams up.

But first I had to finish the damn island.

STEP TWO of THE ISLAND PROJECT...

 

The Day We Routered....

 

I often get all philosophical on myself. All the time. About everything. Nothing is sacred. And I wonder why I get the joy I do from running my power tools and creating something. The end is such a gratifying, climatic moment for me that I often rush the process, skipping details I had wanted to add or taking short cuts I know I shouldn't. Just like life. Just like my own life. I can't wait to see what's on the other side, what it looks like when it's all done, and before I know it, it WILL be all done and I won't have appreciated all the small joys on the way to getting done....

 

They say "to stop and smell the roses." I'm trying. I'm trying to live more and more each day with my goal being to make it count. To enjoy myself. Sometimes that's being weird, and different, and having to MAKE myself not care what someone thinks. And to try new things.

 

Like my router. My favorite tool. It's made to do a lot of awesome shit. And I only ever have used it for one thing: fancy edges. I know that's not very technical. But I'm talking about, for instance, a Chamfer, or Ogee, or Cove edge. I love them all. I bought a router table but never set it up.... Always free-handed it. Posted on Facbook one day - "router tables are for pussies."

 

But the BEST USE of the router, really, is to make a dado or rabbet cut and create a nice, strong joint. Now that's just my personal opinion. But, I'd never done it.

 

With the island, I decided to attempt it. The one cabinet that I had to make for my new kitchen island,  is constructed out of plywood. Yes, cabinets are made out of plywood people (for the most part.) I had drawn out the cabinet as I showed in my first post about the island. My goal was to make all the dado cuts (which are basically grooves in the wood that another board can then slide into) for the two side pieces before I ripped them into their respective sides. Sorry I'm not very good at explaining this. (I think I blog more for my own purposes than it may help anyone.) So, to further dig a hole here, I'll say it like this - if I needed say, each side to be 2'x4' (for ease of explaining) and they were to have a 3/4" dado cut in the middle to slide a shelf into (also forming a solid joint) I left the 4'x4' piece whole, routering the dado joint where I needed it, and then ripped the 4'x4' into half to create the sides. When I did that, I then was left with 2 2'x4' pieces that had exactly matching dado joints routered at the exact same place.

 

 

 

 

 

My first attempt ever, using my router to make a joint cut resulted in me LITERALLY jumping up and down freaking the hell out! No matter that the joint was way too tight!

 

You can actually see here that the joint was so tight the plywood looks squeezed into the cut. I corrected it the following weekend after a WEEK of coming to terms with the fact that it would need to be redone. But when I did re-do it - it was great.

 

One of my favorite pictures of the entire process. Seriously. Of all the pictures I will show for the island, this represents something significant to me. This took HOURS. I was soooo lucky to have my guy helping with some double checks on the measurements and the depth of the cut. What you are looking at (above) is beauty. I love this perfection. The two pieces laying left and right are the sides. Picture them connected. I did the entire dado cut before they were ripped. The piece laying closest to the camera in the foreground is the very bottom of the cabinet and the three cuts are for 1/4" ply "dividers" so I can house cookie trays, cutting boards, etc within easy reach. The piece standing up, you are looking at the bottom of what will support the microwave....

 

Are you starting to picture this? Go back to the first post about the island and check out the sketches if they aren't too light....

 

 

The aerial view.

 

My second greatest creation ever was beginning to take shape. So back to philosophy. I have begun to think - do I use all of my skills in the best way they were made to be used? If I wasn't using a simple power tool to it's potential, I know I'm not running my own life, using my own skills to their greatest potential. How can I do better? This I ponder.

 

As the most excellent man I've ever known would say:

 

Sermon for the day.

The Beginning of THE ISLAND PROJECT... Planning

OK - so my great rental farm house that I took up residence in after The D word has literally 4 feet of counter space.

And while all the rooms are big and airy and have lots of windows, not the little, teeny, tiny kitchen. Didn't people "back then" value their kitchens? It was a mystery why the kitchen was so short-ended. Even more for me was where the hell to put my microwave. I contemplated not even having a mircrowave but already get strange enough looks not having cable or a TV bigger than 10" (or whatever size it is!)

So - the microwave took up some of that precious counter space and plans for making a super-deluxe kitchen island started taking up precious brain space.

I started with a month of planning. Yes. A month. It takes a lot of hours of brain storming what do I want, what do I need, and what can I accomplish with my tools, space, and skills. After many hours of pinterest browsing I came up with a small sketch & list of "needs/wants."

These were my final notes to myself completed on 10/27/2013. In the end, the island looks very similar to what I sketched out.....

I'm sorry for the bad quality of these notes. They were made in pencil.... but once I knew what I wanted I had to start working out how it would get built and what materials would be needed. I think one misconception I had was that it would be "cheap" to build. All in, by the end, it was probably several hundred bucks. BUT - it started out very cheap with these finds:

These are cabinets I found on the side of the road. While I'm not prone to grabbing other people's trash, this was hard to pass up. I took it apart before I took the picture but this cabinet has a door, all hardware & a working drawer.

This was me playing in the garage with an arrangement. I knew I wanted the island to have a microwave cabinet on one side. Could the microwave go on top of the single cabinet on it's side? In the end, this didn't happen. 

I taped an aerial view of the island on the kitchen floor and we walked around it for a few weeks trying to see how it would feel in the already small kitchen. I read a lot of sites that said at minimum, have 36" of walking space around the island. I wouldn't have that. I'd have 27". But the oven door could open and so could the cabinets under the sink. I needed the 6' of counter space I was creating to say nothing of the storage & microwave "home" more than I needed a comfortable 36" of walk around.....

.

And so this is the start of my second greatest project. It turns out just amazing. Over the next few weeks I'll be spelling out the steps. I took a lot of pictures. This isn't beginner carpentry but someone handy could do all of what I'm about to show. This project took us until July of 2014 to complete. Almost 9 months. But it was worth it.

NOW WHAT?

LOOK IN THE MIRROR & CLIMB THE LADDER

Life doesn't always feel like it's good. Life is up and down, happy and sad. I used to think, as soon as I get past this, it'll get better. Then I realized as soon as I got past "this" there was a new "this" and it was a never ending cycle. I realized when my girls were little that we can't control other human beings. Which sucks. But then, where would be the fun if we could? 

I've been thinking about my little motto - to Live Passionately. How that extends to all areas. I try to be passionate about my Day Job, to enjoy it, to excel, to make the most of each day. I have a long commute - I try to be passionate about that. Just recently decided to try taking the train again a few days a week & if I have to have a long commute make some Jen time out of it..... 

Passion isn't about sexuality. Passion isn't even about being "positive" all the time. In fact, sometimes being passionate means NOT being positive. Making the hard choices and changes. We have to enjoy OUR life. It's the only one we get. We can't do that to the exclusion of others. But we do need to do it. Since we are PEOPLE and other people can't control us any more than we can control them, sometimes our actions aren't at all what they wanted. It can be a challenging balance being kind to ourselves, while being kind to others.... Where do  you find yourself not being passionate? Just going through the motions? 

OK, Here is my clever "Transition" from a weird little tirade to my DIY post.... look in the mirror and take a good look at where you are ho-hum and start climbing the ladder to find your passion in life again.....

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LOOK IN THE MIRROR

AGAIN - I made a really great project that the teenager didn't care about and didn't want.... It turned out great with one exception - DO NOT as other blogs tell you, use a cheap walmart mirror. Mine has warped and it's now a fun-house mirror. I will be re-doing this project one day to make it much more grand, but here are some ideas for you and perhaps inspiration to make your own.

VERY simply this is a full-length mirror glued on plywood, surrounded by fancy rope trim, and some small decorative details also glued/tacked on. Simple. Honestly.

A few things - glue flat & then hang this bugger up. I think that caused the eventual warping in mine. OR - brace the back with 1x2's or something to keep the plywood stiff.... 

Take your time. Don't make this a one-day project. For a one-day project see the ladder below.... This needs a day for the mirror to set in the glue before you start with the trim, or you risk it slipping around and ruin your square. I did manage to get the mirror perfectly centered between the sides and square all the way around. 

Close up of the detail.... I cut the mitered trim about 1/4 inch too big and then one-half a blade length at a time until it was perfect. Those are good fits. I had very little sanding to do and no filling. I LOVE the decorative pieces!!!

It seemed pretty empty at the bottom so I added this little dust collector. I still love love this mirror but since it did warp a little I wanted to make sure to tell you, don't listen to other little Pins that say "buy a cheap mirror." No, no, no. I'm not saying spend $50, but make sure it's decent. All in, plywood, trim, etc this cost me $32. I would have invested a little more for a long-lasting mirror!

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CLIMB THE LADDER

I love ladders. I have half a dozen in my garage loft begging for a project. But my very first one was an old, pigeon pooped, barn ladder that was like 100 years old. I wish I had taken more pictures of past projects progress (I get better at this with later projects I'll be putting on) but, this ladder was 

U G L Y.

I washed it. Sanded it. And it had the most beautiful red wood ever. I am not sure at all what it was. One day I'll be more educated on my woods... but anyway, I painted it flat black, sanded some more, and spray painted a protective clear coat over it. This is how I WAS using it:

Books on a ladder is super cool. IF YOU SECURE THE LADDER TO THE WALL, If you do not - one day the books will come crashing down and bust whatever (TV) is in front of it! But that is another story.....

NOW WHAT????

Meet Diesel Rabbit

Meet Diesel Rabbit:

Diesel faces a dilemma every year which, I'm quite sure, tens of thousands of bunnies face: school is over and he is left quite homeless..... The kids go home for the summer to sleep until noon, eat their families out of everything, beg for the car (if old enough.... or not), spend their parent's money and WHAT? the poor rabbits are left behind. Does anyone think of them? Probably not. And do you know why? Because some family will be suckered  volunteer to take him.

And so, we were that family. But I was happy to have him. No seriously. I was - even if he didn't seem to care for me too much and nearly ate through my curling iron cord, my lamp cord, and my window fan cord. 

The best part? He was housebroken!

But he needed to go outside. I wanted to build him a super deluxe rabbit hutch like this, but instead I opted to use (mostly) the wood lying around in the garage, picked up some wire at Tractor Supply, and built a very simple outdoor pen for Mr. Diesel Rabbit (do you think some redneck boys in that ag class named him?)

So this is what I came up with. It was my first wood project that Mr. Perfect (meant in love when I say these things as he is the greatest guy) and we learned valuable lessons in communication! I only took these after pictures. It took us one full Saturday and we finished by lunch on Sunday. 

It was/is meant to be able to be closed in and have a wintering box put inside but since, in Diesel's situation, he goes back to school in the fall, that will not be necessary!

NOW WHAT???