Category: DIY

Last summer, we were finally able to remodel our kitchen. Truthfully, I had very little to do with it. My wife designed it all and we have a great contractor that’s upgraded most of our house.

But my job was to make some shelves. We want to have a couple of 6′ long floating shelves that could support a lot of weight. I looked into various ways on how to make them and ended up making a frame with a solid walnut front piece. Then I veneered some panels for the top and bottom. I wanted it to appear thicker (1 1/2″) but not too chunky either.

I also made a cabinet on the other side of the fridge that’s also made of walnut and holds a microwave along with some other things. This turned out to be a nightmare for me, but it looks fine as long as you don’t look at it closely.

I was trying to make it fit perfectly and that was my biggest problem. Walls are never straight and things are never perfectly level. I should’ve made it with normal dimensions and angles and used shims to straighten things out when mounting it. But I thought I’d try to match all the different angles perfectly.

It would’ve worked out ok if I could’ve dry fit all of the pieces easily. But I had to assemble some of the parts to conceal the screw holes, and it just got too heavy to keep doing this. So I put together the pieces, hoping I had everything right. And of course, I didn’t.

I made the sides angled to match a crooked wall, so that it would appear straight. The problem was that I assembled them on the wrong sides and I think upside down. So the end result is the angles went the wrong way. I couldn’t really take it apart because I veneered over the screws, so I had to use a ton of big shims to straighten it out. Nobody even looks behind counters, but if you do, there is a huge gap and a wood block to straighten it out. So, it wasn’t my best work and there’s no picture for this one, even if the main problem isn’t visible.

I was working on these floating shelves for our 1/2 bath while I was working on the kitchen shelves. We had some store bought, white, floating shelves that we were using in the kitchen before we remodeled that happened to fit in the bathroom.

We didn’t want to go with white for these ones, so I bought some teak veneer for the tops and bottoms and used a solid teak board for the face like I did for the kitchen shelves.

But in this case, the teak veneer was so good that you can’t even tell that the face is any different. I guess that’s a good thing, but I didn’t have to use the more expensive teak board.

Of course, these walls are really crooked and there were some huge gaps on both sides even though the back corners were a perfect fit. So to fix it, I glued some shims on the edges so that it fills up the space and left the veneer a little longer to cut it in place when it was installed.

So, now it’s a place for my wife to display some knickknacks and toilet paper, which I removed for this picture.

I can’t recall when I made this, but a few years ago I built a small retro console.

 

I assembled a Raspberry Pi and loaded the RetroPie image that has a bunch of emulators for old game systems like the Super Nintendo.  It’s pretty amazing that you can build a fully working computer the size of a deck of cards for around $50, that’s also way more powerful than those old arcade game systems of my youth.

You can run this with a modern monitor, but I decided to go the full retro route.  I found and actually paid a guy a few dollars for a small CRT TV and built a cabinet around it.

This project was really for me to learn how to use a router (woodworking) and do some more veneer work.  So I built a basic box, then used the router to cut the rounded corners.  Then I applied the walnut veneer, but made some mistakes that I haven’t gone back to fix. 

I wanted to make a bezel, but I didn’t really figure out how to do this with the curves of an old CRT.  So, I just cut some wood strips with a chamfer bit to give it a small edge with an angled face and applied some adhesive foil to it.  It didn’t come out all that great, but I was ok with it.

I bought the legs since they were too much for me to make, and I used some basic drawer pulls for the faux knobs. And used some speaker cloth to conceal a bluetooth speaker mounted inside the cabinet.

Once I had this all put together, the only thing left to do was to play some old games from my childhood. I had so many fond memories playing games like Excite Bike, Punch Out, Zelda, and of course all of the Mario games. Then there were the action games, like Contra, with the cheat code that everyone still remembers 30 years later. And the sports games like the first Maddens and the NHL game that I loved, even though I’ve never been into hockey. And lastly, the original RPGs like Final Fantasy that I wasn’t into until later.

So I sat down to play these and played them for … about 5 minutes. Most of the time, I could over-look the graphics, then sometimes the gameplay. Some of them are actually real hard and the RPGs don’t lead you down a path or give you any hints if you forgot what you were supposed to do. It was then that I realized that so much of the appeal was purely just the nostalgia factor.

I’ve never really played it much, but I did end up playing through Final Fantasy and part of Chrono Trigger. I think the old RPGs are the most enjoyable because they’re more about the story and there’s something cute about the 8-bit graphics and midi music. But I would inevitably save the game and forget what I was supposed to do by the next time I turned it on, and then lost patience.

But every now and then, my kids still ask to play the bubble game (Bust-a-Move) or the Ninja Turtles on the old TV and that makes me happy.

So, my wife wanted me to make her a desk, so we made a trip up to our usual wood store. She found this figured teak board that she really liked. Most people really like figured wood, but I’m not normally a huge fan of it. I tend to like quarter sawn, long straight grains but this board was pretty amazing.

I’m always nervous to cut nice, expensive wood but luckily I didn’t have to make many cuts. And the grain lined up relatively well. So I just drilled some holes for some dowels and glued it up.

After a lot of sanding, I had to choose which teak oil to use – Starbrite or Watco. Anyone who’s ever used Watco can recognize it by the awful cap and the accompanying wrench that’s need to pry it open.

I tried both on some of the scrap pieces and… I couldn’t really tell the difference. I thought the Starbright was a little less orange and I couldn’t find my wrench, so I went with that one. And it sure made the grain come to life.

It’s hard to describe, but it looks almost like the grain is under a layer of glass. And all of the textures look almost 3D and reflect the light.

All that was left to do was to attach some hairpin legs my wife bought on Etsy and her custom desk was complete.

My wife’s former co-worker had some family that lived nearby and wanted to get rid of some older outdoor furniture. It was made of teak, so we both knew it would look great when it it was refinished, but they were ready for something else.

So we got it home and I sanded it down. I can’t remember what teak oil I used but it was probably the Watco one since I used the Starbrite on my wife’s desk – and I found my wrench.

I sanded and tested a small section and it looked great, so I kept going.

It was all cleaned up but it looked pretty plain. So I wiped on some teak oil and it looked much better.

We weren’t found of the chairs, but we took them apart and my wife is working on a project with the reclaimed wood. They also gave us a lounge chair seen in the background, but I haven’t gotten around to working on this and just end up sitting on it. Maybe next summer.

There’s a TJ Maxx around the corner from my house, which is probably where I buy most of clothes while waiting for for my wife to shop. So, after I browse through the clothes and take the kids to check out the toys, the only thing left for me to do is to look at the furniture.

Usually, it’s junk but every now and then, they have some things that are actually made of wood and is usually acacia.

One day, I came across this stool. I forgot to take before pictures, but it really looked nothing like this. It was very blocky and looked unfinished, like someone took a machete and chopped out a basic shape and left it as that. And there were lots of white streaks of sap wood and it the wood was an unusual color too.

But, I liked the basic shape of it and I recently worked with wood dyes, so I thought I’d be able to even out the sap wood. I picked it up and proceed to wait for my wife to checkout.

Sometime much later, we were home and I sanded this thing for hours. I think I found out what kind of wood it was in between sanding breaks, but I have no idea what that was now. It was pretty soft so I kept going until it was smooth.

Then I applied a bunch of different wood dyes more than a few times to darken the sap wood but it was taking. Once this was dried, I applied some gel stains and later finished it with Arm-R-Seal, which is a light weight polyurethane that’s not too thick or shiny. And I think I finished it off with some paste wax, but I really don’t remember.

I think it turned out pretty good and it looks like a much more expensive piece that it is. But more importantly, my wife likes it now and I got a little better with wood dyes and refinishing.