Guest Room Before & After!

Sweet Pea approves of ur makeover.

Holy cow, did Kress and I work our collective BUTT OFF yesterday!  The guest room went from a big empty space to a finished guest room in about 7 hours.  My back huuuuuuurts.  But it's done!

Not everything is as it should be, or will be in the "final," "finished" room; but the room's ready for an actual guest - who will be arriving next week.

Wanna see the room "before"?  Hope you're sitting down...

Before


Toldja!  Crammed full of music gear, a drum set, and 8-year-old carpet that was naaaaasty.  The drum set was sold, and the carpet removed - Kress suprised me last week by removing the carpet and readying the slab floor while I was at work.  Yay!

The white walls are really just primer'd white, from baseboard to ceiling fan.  Bo-ring.  One day there'll be a color in here...once I decide what that color is going to be.

a garage full of crap that was waiting to go into the room

After 

Bed and nightstand: free, from a friend.

Curtain, and the tablecloth over the wooden bookcase:  already had.

Wooden bookcase:  already had (actually, Kress' dad built that, a million years ago).

All of the bedding is new, from Kohl's - the only new pieces we bought for the room, aside from the flooring that we installed yesterday, which is the same flooring from Ikea that we used in the craft room.

Most of the artwork was already in the room;  I added the mirror, and one of the document frames.

The clock is the one from my sewing room.

While the room isn't finished, I do like the overall feel of it.  The comforter is polyester, and feels pretty gross.  It was a quick, cheap, "Oh, shit, we don't have a comforter" type thing.  It'll do for now, but I do plan on replacing it pretty much as soon as I can.

The closet doors are the blue ones that were once in the craft room, when I thought I wanted a blue closet, lol.

There's Sweet Pea on the bed again.  He and Rabi CLAIMED this bed pretty much the second it was set up and dressed - neither of them have left it since.

The more I look at this room, the more I really, really like it.  It's kind of random and homey.

Kress, hard at work on nailing the baseboards back on, after five hours of putting down the floor itself.

I'm pretty impressed with our materials estimation abilities, LOL.  We ended up with only half a box of planks left over - not much to store, and perfect for finishing out the thresholds in this room and the craft room (whenever we get around to that).

This room still has to double as a music room, which will require some creative furniture arrangement in the future;  but for now it's ready for company next week.
:)

Tiny crappy screwdriver:  not a nail set!
Whoops.  (My bad).








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Wildebeests: Guitar Rack (Part I)

Remember the old desk I broke down the other day?

Yesterday the largest piece - the desktop - got cut into pieces...

...which got put together into one of these:

It's a guitar rack - or will be when it's done. :)

Obviously the first order of business was the stain - namely, that each piece was already stained on one side. 
I used Liquid Sander on those bits (I love that stuff), making three passes to make sure the clear-coat was dissolved and that I'd be able to re-stain without sanding (which: YAY!)  I stained the whole piece over again in the original color, blending the old in with the new into one seamless coat;  then gave it a second coat in a lighter, orange-maple-y color to warm up the wood tone a bit (the deep walnut-y brown I used was a bit...flat). 

There were still a couple of places that need touching up (because I got glue on the wood and hadn't realized it, argh!), and the whole thing needed a light sanding and a final clear-coat.   But while the first couple of layers cured, the next step was to stain all the other parts to match:

These pegs will be wrapped in this foam pipe insulation (it looks gray here, but it's black) and attached across the top cross-bar of the stand.  The guitars' necks will rest between them just like in the picture I linked to above.  Only the flat end of each peg will be visible, so I didn't have to do much staining.  You can see what the maple stain looks like on bare wood here, though. 

Same deal with the longer bars that will be inserted into the bottom "box" part of the unit, on which the bodies of the guitars will rest.

Tonight, pegs and bars get installed, as well as other parts of the stand that need to be cushioned with foam to prevent damage to the guitars' finish and strings; I'll also attach feet to the bottom of the unit to keep it from scratching the floors in the house.


I'm done with the power tools portion of this event, but I managed to use nearly every single one that I own:

• Jigsaw:  to cut out the curved/angled side pieces
• Table saw: to rip the cross-braces across the bottom and back out of what was left of the desktop
• Sander:  ...I bet you can guess this one, lol.
• Dremel:  most of the desk had been nailed together with a nail gun, so that the nails didn't show on the outside, but when I pulled the wood apart, I had lots of them sticking out everywhere.  I removed as many as I could; but some I couldn't pull out, so I just cut them off at the surface of the wood as close as I could get with wire snips.  I used the Dremel to grind down any remaining nail stubs so they wouldn't be in the way, and so that they wouldn't snag and scratch anyone reaching into/through the finished stand.
• Compound mitre saw: to cut the dowels for the pegs and lower bars to length
• Drill:  to screw the pieces together

...that's everything but the router.

Finished piece tomorrow!  :) 

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Pardon Our Dust...

What was I thinking, when I thought I was going to build a whole shelf in one evening?  I swear.  Glue has to DRY, hello! 

So I built half of the pot rack last night.  I'll finish it tonight, and then get started painting.

I have learned something about myself, though:  I hate putting joints together with dowels.  I always try to incorporate a new method or technique when I build something, in order to learn new things and broaden my experience - really, I'm still pretty much a novice carpenter, so I like to stretch my carpentry muscles as often as I can.

So, I'd never joined an entire piece with dowels - I used some when I built my bed, but for the pot rack, the entire piece is going together this way.  No screws, no nails.  Just wood and glue.

In the plus column:

• no visible hardware
• smooth seams/joints
• very sturdy end product, if you do it right

But then...

• this is totally a pain in the ass!  ARGH. 
• I have arthritis, and a very heavy drill.  So....OW!!!

I like my big heavy drill, though.  It was a gift from my ex-father-in-law a few years back - it was his favorite drill, and he liked it so much that he got one for me for my birthday that year.  (Anything with the Dad Seal of Approval is okay in my book!)  It's heavy, but it's also powerful and fast.  Mwahaha.  *flex* 

But I do wish, half the time, that either (a) it was lighter or (b) I had still a cordless to use for things that don't require the power of my big drill.  I  had a cordless once - two, actually.  But as always happens, the charger broke, and by the time I needed a new one, they didn't make that style anymore, and it wouldn't fit the universal chargers they sell, so I had to buy a whole new drill.  For some reason, this happens all the time with Black & Decker, but I've never had that problem with any other manufacturer's cordless tools.  So guess what I won't be buying, ever again!  o_ô

ANYWAY.  Half a pot rack: done.  More news as the situation develops; stay tuned.  I have to say, I'm enjoying working in my shop again.  I haven't done it in forever.  Mostly because my garage has been so messy I couldn't even go into it without wanting to run back into the house to hide.  Clean shop = awesome.



P.S. - drill or no drill, you know what I need to break down and buy for myself?  BAR CLAMPS!   I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I use nylon towing straps and weights to block joints together while they set up.  And last night?  I couldn't find my straps anywhere.  I ended up resorting to...wait for it...tape.  *facepalm*  


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