Dayna, Ana and I have moved to a new home in the rapidly growing city of Waukee, Iowa. We searched high and low, with fairly specific specifications that the right house would need to have in order for us to proclaim that it’s the right house for us. More on that in a future post. Let me just say that finding the perfect house doesn’t mean that you just move in furniture and call it done.
Oh no.
What that means is that you can now begin to customize it to your liking! Thus far, I have started my woodworking hobby by building shelves for the basement. They are 6′ high, 2′ deep and have at least enough room between the shelves for a standard tote to reside. The first one I built is 12′ wide and the other two are 8′ wide each.
While I’m not proud of my present woodworking skills, I can certainly look at shelf #3 and see a pronounced improvement over shelf #1! Also, I found an error in the plans that I assumed was my user error, but have since confirmed that the person who shared these plans hadn’t accounted for the width of the boards surrounding the shelf bases. Did I adjust the plan to make sure the bases fit the boards? Nope, I have been adding boards to reinforce the shelves as they are. In retrospect, I should have corrected the root problem rather than accommodate it. I’m sure there’s a life lesson in here somewhere.
My next project was to build a workbench, which was completed Saturday. Here is the plan I used from The Family Handyman, by the way. The plan is dead-on, but I did add some extra legs to support the middle of the bench. I don’t know if it was necessary or not, but I decided to do it now rather that possibly wish I had later. All I need to do now is add a peg board and a shop light to it.
Next is the garage. I need to build in storage for boxes, bicycles, garden tools, and more. My ideas for this project are twofold.
- I’d like to build some shelves similar to the ones in the basement, but of my own design, accounting for board width, and the entire shelf should only be a foot in depth.
- I want to install a self-made French Cleat system. The French Cleat is a pretty straightforward way of hanging just about anything on the wall.
Most of the commercial garage wall systems you can buy at the big box stores use their own proprietary cleats to hang their own hooks from, and are not interchangeable. It’s like buying a razor. The handle isn’t too expensive, but they’ll get you with the blade cartridge refills. I want to extract myself from that scenario with something that is a hybrid of DIY and repurposing the hooks that I purchase as I go.
I’m still a novice at this, and I will be learning as I go! The first thing I need to learn is how to cut wood at a 45º angle with a circular saw.
Workbench plan: http://www.familyhandyman.com/workshop/workbench/how-to-build-a-workbench-super-simple-50-bench
