Garden Box

In early April, with snow covering the ground at this elevation, it's time to start prepping for a garden. We wanted an area we could fill with good dirt and that we could seclude from rabbits. We opted for a fenced garden box. We also wanted a gate so it's easier to weed and kids can get in and out without destroying the fencing.

The fence was made with leftover cuttings from the basement shelf project and held together with 2x4. It turned out to be much sturdier (and heavier) than I needed.


The box frame was made from a couple larger boards. I added 2x4 supports for the fence and gate. We stained everything with deck stain so it would last longer outdoors.


Meanwhile, we'd planting seeds indoors. The weather here is unsuitable for planting before Mother's Day, so seedlings need to start indoors and transplant later.


After clearing out a section of grass in the back yard, we placed the garden box and laid down weed barrier before adding fill dirt and compost.


After transplanting the seedlings, I added on a mesh to keep out rabbits and we're done. Luckily, deer have on interest in jumping the fence to the back yard, but rabbits will make quick work out of any garden they can access.

Simple Shelf

Our basement has some under-stair storage area where we cram stuff like luggage that we don't need most of the time. It's always been badly lit, so we kept a flashlight down there to make it easier to rummage through stuff. Looking at it, I thought it would be nice to expand the storage area a bit with a simple shelf and maybe improve the lighting while I'm at it.


I used 2x3 boards for support underneath, planning to use some OSB (like plywood) for the shelf itself, which I had left over from the garage shelves a few months ago.


Unfortunately, one of the boards split while I was nailing it in. In retrospect, the nail was a little too close to the edge to have driven it in without any sort of pilot hole. I didn't want to remove and replace the board, so I fixed it in place and added an additional nail below the split.


The first three supports were easy to add. The fourth had to be secured to its neighboring supports, which meant installing screws at an odd angle. For that, I made a dead-simple jig using scrap 2x4 and my miter saw.


After adding the OSB panel, I installed some LED strip lighting I had left over from last month's under cabinet lighting project. They're plugged directly into a half-hot outlet, so they turn on automatically with the lights. No more flashlights!

Under Cabinet Lighting

Under cabinet lighting add a nice, modern touch to kitchens. They seem popular now, but most solutions look expensive. I put together my own version for less than $10.

I need a controller for activating and dimming the lights. I didn't have a readily accessible light switch I could use for them and I thought it'd be fun to control the lights over wifi with your phone/tablet/computer. To that end, I designed my own circuit board, had it printed, and soldered on my components. I also programmed up an ESP8266 chip to have its own web server. If all of this seems like too much work (it is!), you can also get IR remote controls for cheap that will work on LED strips.
 

The web interface works for any device on our wifi network. It gives you the option to control how bright the lights are and to automatically turn them off after a set amount of time. It's great for watching movies at night.


The next step, of course, is to install the LED strips. These are both cheap and easy to use. They have a self-adhesive on one side and I applied a little hot glue to make sure they wouldn't come off over time.
In the first picture, I'm attaching the strips and fixing the broken cabinet bottoms at the same time. The wedges I'm using are left over from the basement shelves project. They turned out to be more useful than I'd anticipated.



Once everything is hooked up, I tested it out in the daylight before cleaning the kitchen. It adds an accent to the kitchen.


But it's much cooler at night.

Tool Pegboard

This was a pretty easy and quick project that makes accessing tools a lot easier. I found a guy selling lots of pegboards on Craigslist, so I grabbed a couple.

The first step is to size some spacers. If the pegboard is mounted directly against the wall, there won't be room behind it for the hooks to fit in. To create a little space, I used some leftover wood scraps from the basement shelves.


Once everything was fitted and checked for size, the spacers were attached directly to the garage wall.


After I drill pilot holes, my wife attached both pegboard panels with washers. She loves organization and was very excited for this project. She mentioned that her mother once set up a similar pegboard for her father in an effort to keep the garage cleaner, but her father didn't like the bother of replacing tools back in their place afterwards.



She also arranged all the hooks on the boards. It's convenient to use and easy to find the tools I want. I even put them back afterwards. :)

Basement Pantry Shelves

Yes, another post with even more shelves. These are going in the unfinished area of the basement that holds the furnace and water  heater. The area is spacious enough to accommodate some good shelves for storage and, because it's inside, I wanted them to look a little nicer than my garage shelves. I settled on these plans for their nicer appearance, even if they were a bit more work.

The first step was to cut a bunch of 2x3 boards using a circular saw, rather than the World's Cheapest Table Saw, which I really do need to replace at some point. The circular saw worked well enough. I used a miter saw to angle the ends of the pieces on the left, which will be inserted at an angle later in the process.


I assembled the cut pieces to 2x4 boards using both nails and glue. Nails will hold it into place while the glue dries, and the glue will ultimately provide a lot of the reinforcement.


All three beams were assembled and ready to go in the basement.


In the basement, the beams were attached to overhead supports. I used furring strips to form the lateral surfaces. My wife dug through the pile at the hardware store to find the straightest ones they had available, which saves some money vs. using common board.


The rest of the furring strips are placed and secured with screws. Then the shelves are filled with food, nicely complementing the small pantry next to our kitchen. Despite appearances, the shelves are sturdy enough to stand on, though we haven't tried that while the glass jars are on them.

End Grain Cutting Board

With my wife's birthday coming up, I wanted to surprise her with something fun. She's a big fan of fancy kitchen stuff and had been eyeing my mom's custom butcher block from a couple Christmases ago, so I decided to make a high-end cutting board. I found some popular plans from another blog to help with this.

I purchased some purple heart and hard maple from a local supplier. Purple heart is extremely hard and dense. It's also rather expensive.
 

The varying thickness of the cuts will make a fun pattern when everything is complete. The next step is to alternate colors and glue it back together.
 

Once everything cures, it's back to the table saw to cut it again. It feels a little silly at first to glue pieces together only to cut them apart again, but it's entirely necessary to achieve an end grain cutting board, which are higher quality boards considered better for chef's knives. The easier way is just to mill a board to a long grain cutting board, but that would have been too easy.


The newly-cut pieces are turned sideways (end-grain up) and alternated in direction before being glued together. Several of the original pieces, seen in the background, had pits, breaks, or other problems with them that made them unsuitable for a cutting board. As a result, the final board ended up shorter than I had planned, but it's still a good size.


Unfortunately, an end grain piece can't go through my friend's planer safely, so achieving a uniform thickness on all surfaces turned into a couple hours on his belt sander instead. It took forever, but the result was nice. After that, a hand sander smoothed out the board with finer sand paper.


The board was seasoned with several coats of butcher block oil. Here you can see the first coat adding some character to the wood.


Lastly, I added some rubber feet to the board. A block like this would be fine without the feet, but I wanted them to help prevent slipping on the counter, to help the board dry after washing, and because of a knot on the underside that I worried might otherwise trap food particles.





Despite its size, the cutting board was my most ambitious project to date, in part because I lacked the tools to do the cuts, planes, and sanding. With the proper tools in the garage, this would have been a lot easier, but still rather time consuming.

The board itself turned out great and my wife was ecstatic. She refused to use it for a while, worrying that she'd ruin it. Now she uses it all the time. It's something I hope will last for a long, long time.

Folding Workbench

I made my own workbench from a very sturdy, solid (65 lbs) door just a year ago using plans from another blog. It has been a great bench, but I find myself increasingly running out of space as heavy tools, like the heavy scroll saw, increasingly find a permanent location on the bench.

I needed a work space that would be kept clear to use for occasional projects. If nothing will be atop the new bench most of the time, it would be nice to have it store away easily to take up less garage space, so I set about creating a folding workbench.

I started by mounting a 2x4 at the same height as my existing workbench.


The legs were also made from 2x4. To make them sturdier, I cut some rabbet joints. Lacking fancier tools, I used a circular saw to make the initial cuts, followed by the hammer and then the chisel to smooth it out. The three legs were all cut at once, which saved a bit of time.



A neighbor moved out and gave us the top to a modular desk she was about to throw away. With one straight side, it's a perfect fit. In a pinch, another solid wood core door would have worked, too, but the desk is larger and has a fun shape.


The legs are mounted along a 2x4, which is connected by a couple hinges. A 2x3 along the bottom of the legs lends the bench more stability. The 2x3 has rabbets cut into it the same way as before, which help support the legs and make it look nicer.


Three strong hinges are added to connect the bench to the wall's studs. They don't support the bench when it's down--the 2x4 on the wall does that--but they support the full weight of the bench when it's folded up, so it's important they're robust.

The bench turned out well. It's easy to pull out and fold away with the gate latch up top and it's large enough and strong enough for most weekend projects.