Cutting Board

We recently had a wedding for a relative on my wife’s side of the family and keeping with tradition I attached the gift to a heavy block of wood. 😃

The cutting board is made from hard maple and purpleheart. I’ve made 2 previously but tried a new design this time. My neighbour was nice enough to let me use his drum sander for the first pass of sanding, which reduced my hand sanding greatly. He also just finished making some cutting boards, so he still had his router table set up to make the handles on the side as well. 😁 Treated with mineral oil to protect the wood.

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Cup Holder

We use small Dixie cups in the washroom but I found small cups when browsing the mall one day. I decided to make an Oak cup holder that we could mount beside our mirror.

This project went very quickly. I started off wanting to use a 1/2″ piece of oak I had left over from a project a long time ago, but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to mount it. I had a small 1 1/2″ thick off cut from the entertainment unit that would work though, and it would allow me to use some extra floating shelf supports. I drilled in 4 3″ holes, and sanded using my oscillating spindle sander. That saved a lot of time drilling the round holes.

I rounded over the edges and put a small chamfer on the 3″ holes to let water drip down if they ever got wet.

I drilled the blind shelf support holes, sanded, and applied finish by hand. I love my sprayer to apply the finish, but didn’t want to take it out for such a small project. I kind of regret it though because it is so much better!

Overall, I am very happy with this quick and easy project!

Oak Entertainment Unit/Fireplace Mantel

After the Oak bookcase was complete, I started the next weekend on an oak entertainment unit/fireplace mantel. The design process for this started at the beginning of this year. We knew we wanted to build one, and we knew we wanted a fireplace in that location for ambiance. After looking around and watching for year-end clearance sales on electric fireplace inserts, we stumbled upon a clearance sale on a fairly large electric fireplace. It was a floor model that we managed to get for around $120. It was a bit higher, but missing the remote and mounting bracket, so I got another $50-75 off the clearance price. When I got home I found out my Logitech Harmony remote supported the fireplace, so no need to look for a remote!

Now that I had the electric fireplace dimensions, I can finalize my design. Originally I had planned on 2 top shelves and no cabinet underneath, but the larger size of the fireplace meant I had to make some changes. Overall I am very happy with my new design. This was also an excuse to upgrade my entertainment unit. Over the course of a few months we bought a new TV, sub woofer and home theatre receiver. Each piece being measured to make sure it will fit.

Early on in the build process I noticed that things were getting HEAVY. This unit spans the entire wall, which means a lot of oak, which also means a lot of weight. I decided to alter my design again and build the unit using break-down fasteners so I can take it apart to move it into the house. In the end, I left the main internals together and took off the back, top and sides for moving it into the house. It JUST fit through the door as we have a tight corner leading into the living room.

I tried to copy the overall design of the bookcase and added 30 degree bevels on the top and bottom, as well as use 1 1/2″ oak for the top, sides and bottom.

This was also the first time I got to make frame and panel cabinet doors! After a couple hours of set up and test pieces I carefully made my doors. Carefully because I didn’t have any extra pieces milled for “oopsies”. 🙂 This was also my first big project where I got to use my new shaper. 🙂

The entertainment unit is very large. It is 48″ tall, with the TV being 48 3/4″ off the floor. 🙂 It is also around 70″ wide. This is the largest project I have made to date. I had a lot of fun making it, but didn’t enjoy the 3-4 days of sanding I needed to do before finishing.

Finish was sprayed on as with the bookcase.

I am very happy with the finished product. I estimate that I spent around 90 hours making this. It weighs almost 200 pounds.

Oak Bookcase

Finally, a real project that isn’t a shelf. 🙂 We had a painted bookcase that acts as a room separator between our dining room and living room that I wanted to replace with an oak one. The painted one chipped very easily, and with our son running around more and more, I knew it was only time before it got chipped again.

I wanted to build it out of solid oak, no plywood. Especially the back since that is what most likely would be dinged in the future. I made the case out of 1 1/2″ oak, and the shelves out of 3/4″ oak. Very much like the original. I even replicated the top of the bookcase with the bevelled edges, which we liked. The back was made very much like a kitchen cabinet door. It is floating in an opening to help with expansion and contraction of wood over the course of the seasons.

 

The finish was applied using my HVLP spray gun. I love that thing. 🙂 The finish is super smooth and very happy with the results.  Installation went fairly easily since I made sure the dimensions of the oak bookcase were only slightly bigger then the original to help with not having to repaint that section. I reused the existing trim, which is also used in the living room/dining room.

 

Next up, an oak entertainment unit for our living room.

Oak Shelves

In our quest to replace every shelf in our house with Oak, I added 2 more to the list.

 

The first is an Oak shelf in the entryway. We had a glass shelf here, which was sagging a bit. Since our house is full of oak, especially the entryway, I knew this would be a nice addition.

 

The next is a shelf in our kitchen/dining room, which now holds a Pooh telephone. I wanted to put a shelf here to hold our phone. My wife was hesitant, so I knew what I had to do. I went onto eBay and found an old Winnie the Pooh phone. 🙂 She is a huge Winnie the Pooh fan, and I knew when I showed it to her she would agree to the shelf. lol  I rounded over the shelf to match the radius of the Pooh phone. It is very weird having a corded phone without caller id though. 🙂

Wooden Signs

My brother wanted to get some signs made for his camp/cottage. He asked if I had something to make signs, which I do. I never used it before this time, but I purchased a Sign making set for my router a couple years back. I planned on making a sign that said “Arcade” for my arcade I was building, but found a metal one that looked nice and used it instead.

 

Setting up and using the jig was surprisingly easy. We made 2 signs out of cedar and then used a blowtorch to scorch the wood to make the letters black. After sanding away the scorched wood from the non-letter part, it looked very nice. 🙂

Outdoor Swing Set

We recently adopted a child and I wanted to build a swing set in the back yard. Since I already had made the frame previously for our bench swing, this one was very easy to build.

I bought pressure treated 4x4s for the frame and brace, and 2x   2″x6″x10′ pieces for the top support. I glued them together with a good water proof glue, then drilled holes for the swing set clips.  I used 6″ structure screws to connect the 4x4s and the 2×6 header. In the future I plan to add a slide so I didn’t add any side-to-side bracing right now.

After installing the 2 swings I opted to switch out the rope for chains for a stronger support.

It only took a few hours from start to finish. Very happy with the results and my son loves it as well!