Our house in Aptos needed a new fireplace mantel. The prior owner had taken out the mantel and insert, so I needed something that looked nice. There was a huge area that needed to be surrounded by something, and I couldn’t just paint it in, as the paint would be really hard to match. Here’s a “before” picture taken with my iPhone:

After taking some dimensions, I whipped out Sketchup and did some work with various designs that I liked and came up with this:

I constructed the mantel out of two sandwich bread pieces of 3/4 MDF, with some spacers in the middle. I then nailed on a nice looking trim piece on the edge to make it all look nice. The square pillars were also made of out MDF; just simple 3 sided squares with false backs (all butt joints, with a 16d nailer and glue holding it together — it is incredibly strong and sturdy). The pillars are screwed to studs and the floor. The mantel was then screwed to the pillars, the wall (where available) and steel studs on top of the fireplace portion that protrudes out from the wall.

I pre-pained everything before attaching it to the wall. Initially I painted it a light gray/blue color that Louise picked out to match some of specks in the paint.

I didn’t like it, and it looked too dark (she agreed, after seeing it), and decided to start over on painting. This set me back quite a few hours, but I’m glad I did. I went with a more traditional white color, and framed the sides with some more trim pieces. It turned out great!

The fireplace insert is from Santa Cruz Spas and Stoves, and the install of the stove was done by Jon Marden.

Louise and I need a shoe rack that looks nice. I decided to design something pretty in Sketchup. Here is what I came up with while on vacation:

The vertical side pieces have a slight curve to them, and the bottom pieces have a slight arch. I’m planning on using cherry for the outside, and staining the outer pieces slightly darker than the inside sheet pieces (which will be 1/2″ cherry ply). The shelves will be 3/4″ maple. The overall size will be 52″ tall by 28″ wide by 16″ deep.

Download the Sketchup file (coming soon, email me to get it).

Here’s the big pile of maple and poplar that I got for the project:

Building the face frame was super fast and easy to do with pocket jointery:

I wanted to start work on my built in dressers for the upstairs, but first I needed an out feed table for the tablesaw. I wanted something that doubled as a work space, and added some additional storage. I also wanted a built-in sanding table, but I decided to do that another day.

So, using some pocket hole joints, old 2×4s and 2×6s ripped clean and glued together, I made a really rock solid outfeed table. The top is two pieces of 3/4″ MDF glued and screwed together, with counter top stuff on the top to protect it and add a smooth surface to slide pieces of wood on.

It went together really fast, and has already been a great help. In particular, it makes sawing long pieces much safer, as they just catch onto the outfeed table instead of dropping down.

In the above picture, you can also see the updated router table that I made.

….built-in “knee wall” dressers for the upstairs!

Here’s a couple of pictures from SketchUp. I will give anyone the models, if they are interested in seeing how I designed them.

I purchased a bunch of wood from aura hardwoods yesterday, and I’m hoping to start building tonight!

I recently went to the weddings of a few of my friends. Last weekend Tom and Nancy had a “Wedding Camp” celebration, and two weeks ago Andy and Irene got married in their barn. Both weddings were amazing, and Louise and I were very happy to be there with our friends.

In the pursuit of avoiding standard gifts, I decided to employ my woodworking skills and make them some boxes out of “nice” wood. Here’s some pictures of the building process.

I used cocobolo wood for the top; it is an exotic hardwood. I try to avoid exotic woods for obvious eco-reasons, but I just couldn’t help myself. The wood is beautiful, and I had seen it several times at the Global Woodsource store and just had to buy a piece. It is expensive, and I bought a small $60 piece.

The bottom of the boxes is made out of an american wood — sycamore. When quartersawn, it has a beautiful speckled pattern. Best of all, it is a cheap wood, and $20 bought me a nice huge piece of wood.

Here’s a shot of the boxes in progress:

After gluing them together, I used my newly built router table to route out some slots for keys:

A few hours later, the keys were glued in and dried. I cut them off with a saw and sanded them smooth:

Next the top was cut off the boxes using the table saw. I don’t cut them all the way through, and leave a tiny bit on (seen in the photo) that I cut through with a utility knife.

After a bunch of sanding, I finished the boxes with a eco-friendly water-based finish (sprat on):

The keys are actually centered from top to bottom, but it would have looked better if I centered them up to the chamfer on the top.

I’ve been working on my “Woodshop” (aka: the garage) in preparation for some larger projects (in particular, kitchen cabinets). Jason Beaver, who works with me at Apple, clued me into how bad it is to breath wood dust. So, I ended up getting a dust collector.

Here’s a picture of my current layout before I began work on the dust collector:

Grinder stand:

The dust collector — I purchased the Grizzly G1030 3 HP Dust Collector. I wanted something that could move a lot of air, and supported 6 inch ducting, which is better for moving fine dust away from the machine and out of the air. This is a non-cyclone dust collector; my intent was to vent the air to the outside. The machine was also much cheaper than a cyclone — it was only $395, plus $74 shipping to my door. A cyclone would have been at least $750 for the machine alone, and probably would have been 1.5 or 2 hp and not 3 hp.

Of course, this required rewiring the shop, as it needed 220 volt. But, that was okay, as it isn’t too hard to do, and I really wanted a larger circuit breaker box and to make my table saw run 220 too.

I wanted to vent the air outside, and not hear the sound of the machine. So, I built a shed out back. I poured a 3″ concrete slab, 3′ by 8′ in size. This was my first concrete job, and it turned out pretty good. I ended up having to spend about $200-$300 on plywood and hardware, but most of the wood was recycled from the deck project.

Here’s a picture of the dust collector peaking out from its new home:

After building the back shed, I could cut the hole in the wall and run ducting. I ran 6″ out and dropped in a T to fork off to two machines and a floor sweep with 4″ flexible hose. The picture below shows one machine not hooked up yet (the jointer — which I need a dust hood for).

Then, I ran the 6″ directly over to the tablesaw:

I need some 6″ flexible hose, so the 6 temporarily drops to 4″ flexible tubing for now.

Next up is to run some more ducting over to my “welding area” to suck away all the fumes generated by melting steel.

I’m also going to build a new router table, and table saw out feed table. The out feed table will double as a work table and down draft sanding table (also hooked up to the dust collector).

View all the pictures.