The Garage: A craft-y type thread for handypeople

Go Maddie! And, why the fuck would someone put cement backerboard in an ordinary wall?? Sense, this makes none.

So, curious to know how the project goes thus far.

Well, right now, this minute, the extent of the progress is a hole I knocked in the wall that's about 16" x 12", from the six-foot mark down. The adjoining doorframe goes up to the 7' mark, so I'm thinking I'll run the shelves high enough to make the trim match up with the top of the door frame so it doesn't look silly.

pictures of the hallway project so far.

Also a Santa tree topper I made, that has nothing to do with the shelves project, but that didn't fit in any of the other albums...

Oh, resident lumber guy, what's your suggestion for which wood to use? I can get fir, poplar, FJ pine, red oak, or hemlock locally. I've never done anything with hemlock, the red oak is about 2.5 times as expensive as any of the others, and all I know about poplar is that it tends to have a greenish tinge to it that can make getting a reliable stain color a bit problematic.

My two questions: What grade is it, and is it green or dried? These things will impact your choices.

Also, what's on the other side of the wall? If its a bathroom (or any other source of moisture) I suggest making sure the wood is well-sealed.

The other side of the wall is the kitchen. Also plastered, plus tiled to about the 5-foot mark.

On the lumber, I was going to link to the pages listing it and I realized that it was all on the Home Depot.ca page. Yeah, 1x5 is only available around here in hemlock; kiln-dried and surfaced on 4 sides; grade C&BTR (I'm guessing "Grade C and better"?) at Lowes.

I need to see what I can get in 1x10 and whether there's a table saw I can borrow the use of....

edited 20th Nov '11 7:57:17 PM by Madrugada

Some places will rip it for you, but prolly not for free.

I think it's $1 a cut, but they explicitly "make no warranty about the accuracy" of the cuts.

Oh for gods sake. WTF is wrong with people?

Is there an actual lumberyard in your vicinity? Such is often a better bet.

For general recommendation; if you've got the scratch and the finished result is going to be visible, I would go with the oak. Failing that, the fir if you can get a good enough grade (fir and pine both tend to be knotty, which can cause all manner of headaches...try to get a nail through a knot, for example, and one will always end up right where you want to sink a fastening).

^^ I asked one time when I was having some 2x12 and 2x4 cut to length to make risers to keep stuff off the floor in the basement, and the guy basically said, "We lose too much money if we spend much time laying out cuts. We'll be within a quarter of an inch or so."

*shrug.* That was close enough for that project. It's not close enough for this one. If something gets screwed up because it was mis-measured or mis-cut, I want it be my fault, not some guy who was in a hurry.

^ Haven't seen one. There's may be one hiding over on the Iowa side of the river.

edited 20th Nov '11 8:23:33 PM by Madrugada

@Galeros, previous page: "Hemlock" refers to at least two completely unrelated plants. One is the poisonous plant; the other is a conifer tree, specifically the Tsuga genus of the pine family, common in North America and eastern Asia. The name is because the crushed leaves of the conifer are supposed to smell like the poison hemlock plant. It will be the pine that provides lumber.

edited 20th Nov '11 10:41:34 PM by Morven

I think poison woods sounds a lot cooler though.

Although I guess that would be impractical.

edited 20th Nov '11 10:41:42 PM by Galeros

@Maddie: Yeah, I highly recommend doing your own cutting. Sometimes equipment rental places have table-saws you can rent (not all do, because liability concerns...guess which tool people hurt themselves with most often) if you cannot find a friend's.

Alternately, a circular saw with a simple gang-cut jig can do wonders. Have you any saw-horses?

Saw horses? I believe that there's a pair in the garage.

What's a "gang-cut jig"?

Ooopsie, you're doing ripping cuts right? Like dividing a 1x10 into 2 1x5s? If so, my bad I recommended the wrong thing.

Anyhow, a gang-cut jig is just a pattern (usually a simple length of straight wood) clamed across the end of a group of boards so that they can all be cut the same length. You clamp the boards together, put a strip along them, run the saw along the strip and presto, your boards end up the same length. Gang-cutting is a great way to make sure that even if you're off by a little bit, you're off by the same little bit every time...which is vastly easier to deal with in a project.

Anyhow, doing rip cuts with a circular saw is pretty hard. The only way I know is to build a saw table to put said circular saw into...possible, but probably too much work for this project unless you see a lot of other projects down the road requiring a "table saw".

Yeah, this would be ripping them lengthwise. I'll find a table saw.

Good plan. Right tool for the job and all that.

And yeah, I'd recommend the oak...quartersawn if you can afford/find it. For that you'd probably have to go to an actual lumberyard (my experience with places like Lowe's in asking for specific cuts...you say "quartersawn" and they saw "bless you").

Commission work for a friend.

That's beautiful, and very evocative.

I'm going to vent for a bit.

I've been working on an 1868 -pattern smoking jacket — some of you may have read the posts I made about it in the Cobbies thread because I was too lazy to find this one.

And I just realized that I've made it much harder on myself than it could have been.

The instructions were brief and unhelpful, to put it mildly. I assumed that it was jacket and lining made separately, then put together, so that the inside looked nicely finished — you folks who sew know what I mean. You folks who don't sew, take a look at an expensive lined jacket sometime. Like that. Doing it that way makes it look polished and professional, but it means you make the whole schmear completely, twice, once for the lining and once for the outer fabric.

But now, that I have it very close to done, I find that all I was supposed to do was stack the lining fabric and the lining fabric, then sew the whole thing together as one, and bind the edges.

On the one hand, I'm so angry I could spit. On the other hand, it's going to look really spiffy when I get it done. Spiffier than it would if I'd done it the other way...

@Maddy: Oh geeze. I HATE lining stuff like that, even if it looks nicer. It's such a pain in the ass.

Bag linings always look better, hang better and wear better. So even if it was a pain Mads, you created a better garment.

I have one last thing to say about this latest project:

edited 3rd Feb '12 1:21:39 PM by Madrugada

More pictures later, with him wearing it tonight.