Another recent job had us travelling to Fairfield, CT to transform an older built-in desk and bookcase to meet the clients’ 21st century needs.

The client had oak bookcases that ran 2/3rds of the desk, which were adequate but fairly simply constructed, and they wanted to spruce up this work station, provide for more storage, and lighten the room by painting the upper and lower cases. The client also wanted to keep their existing oak lower cabinets but they were going to paint them. I also created a solid counter top out of 5/4 cherry to replace the particle board counter that was there previously.

The bookcases are built using our usual methods; 3/4″ plywood for the sides, tops, and shelves and 1/2″ plywood for the backs to give the cases strength, rigidity and to ensure that they remain square, and maple for the face frames because it looks better painted. Some idiosyncrasies of this particular job are that I made beaded face frames and double beaded maple edging for the shelves.

We also arched the top of the bookcases and arched the top panel on the end. In order to maintain the 2″ reveal between the stepped out center bookcase and the two sides, I dado-ed the center cabinet sides 1/2″ deep, made the inner stiles of the two side cases’ face frames 1/2″ wider than they needed to be, and glued the cases together on site to lock the three separate cases together.

Here are some shots after the lower cabinets have been painted and the recessed lighting has been moved.

Careful planning and preparation made for an easy install and finished product that the client loved and will enjoy for generations.

-CB-

One of the jobs that has gone through the shop over the last few months was a bookcase job for a client in Weymouth, MA. While the construction of the bookcases was straightforward, the site provided some challenges for the install.

The install ran the entire length of a staircase that leads to an office upstairs in the client’s barn. Unfortunately I left my go-go gadget arms at the shop, but luckily I had my trusty Little Giant ladder to help access the different levels that the bookcases were located on. Also dealing with the different pitches of the roof and the fact that it was horribly out of square in places, as this was a typical New England barn that has gone through many transformations, helped add to the install excitement.

I used 3/4″ plywood for the bookcase sides, tops and bottoms and 1/2″ for the backs. This gives the cases extra strength and ensures they remain square, even if the barn doesn’t. The client was not sure if he wanted to paint the bookcases or finish them natural so I used a simple face frame construction out of maple, which costs a little more than poplar but looks much nicer painted, if the client decided to go that route in the end.

Overall, the install job went quickly over the course of two days, and, most importantly, the customer was extremely pleased with the transformation of his space.

-CB-

While the wall was going up, it quickly became apparent that we needed to do something about the floors.

Anything that touched the floors came up stained a dark brown; 2×4′s, knees, tools, my oldest daughter, anything. Not so great if you are building fine furniture, although we could instantly create a 150 year old patina on a project, just by kicking it around the shop for a few minutes. A quick trip to the Home Depot rental center and we were off to the races.

I think we developed a pretty good system; a belt sander hooked up to a Oneida Dust Deputy, hooked up to a shop vac, all on a hand truck. But after looking at Oneida’s website we are not the first to come up with this system.

Here you can really see the extent of the problem. I know many of you will notice that we are sanding across the grain, but the floors have enough dips and valleys that sanding with the grain we ended up with mixed results at best.

Here are the finished results after a sealer coat, 2 coats of high gloss polyurethane (for durability), and one coat satin polyurethane (to cut down on the glare).

In this picture you will notice the darker streaks on the floor. We are not sure what caused this, but we have some theories. We think that at one time there were rows of pallet racks on the floor, and this is either where the racks were or the space between them. Either way it is really strange.

The floors are 1″ thick rock maple laid on top of 4″ thick sleepers set perpendicular to each other on top of poured concrete. One of my shop-mates, James, espoused an interesting theory that you can tell an old floor by the length of the floor boards. In a really old floor the lengths are shorter because the methods for moving the logs out of the forest were more labor intensive and therefore early lumberjacks sawed raw logs shorter to make them easier to move.

One obvious problem though is that we are going to have to refinish the machine room floor. Too bad most of the machinery is already in place.-

-CB-

Truth be told the blog is not running in real time (shocker). There is about a six month lag between what is happening here and what is really going on at the shop. Several large projects have come and gone, but I will try to bring this part of the website up to date. Also, some people have expressed interest in the process of setting up our shop.

I walked you through my thoughts for the shop and the decision to divide the shop into three rooms:the finishing room, the bench room and the machine room. We decided to use an existing office as our finishing room so that space is already built out, although some modifications will be necessary. Our insurance company is mandating that we have explosion proof lighting and a fire-proof cabinet, which we were lucky enough to find on craigslist for a mere $75 and $100, respectively. God Bless the internet. We also need to provide an exhaust fan and a filtered inlet for fresh air. In addition, we are going to build a loft above the finishing room for storage. (More on that SNAFU later.)

The first major hurdle is building the wall between the bench and machine rooms. We were able to accomplish that in a timely manner. These rolling stairs came in so handy that we decided to purchase a set from our landlord.

Rolling Stairs

Framing

Bench Room Side

Machine Room Side

We decided on painted sheetrock for the bench room side to help bounce the light around the room to brighten it up for close hand work, and we used OSB, (oriented strand board) on the machine room side to make it easier to hang hang jigs, clamps, duct work, patterns or your favorite Studley tool box poster.

At the center of the wall will be a pair of 4×8 doors on double hinges, which will be the main passage way into the machine shop. At the far end of the wall is a second 4×8 door that will be next to the lumber rack in the bench room and next to the radial arm saw/band saws in the machine room to help with work flow. The doors are oversized to make the moving of large materials (4×8 sheets of plywood) and machinery a little easier.

Now for the fun part, starting to fill the space up with machinery…

-CB-