Bookshelves!
Oct. 10th, 2012 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateLeo made some comment once about majoring in physics being about facing one's fears; I occasionally find that certain home improvement projects appear to work on the same principle. At the moment, I'm avoiding the table saw-- excusably, I think, as I can feel the sleep like burning at the backs of my eyes, which seems like a bad time to deal with the sort of machine that can sever appendages at a moment's notice.
Upwards of twenty years ago, my father built a walk-in closet into the corner of my parents' bedroom. One wall is standard drywall, but the other is cedar panelled with a bookshelf sized for mass market paperbacks along the outside. Thus, most of my parents' paperbacks smell like cedar when you pull them out to read them, which I've always loved. And 1x6 cedar boards (while, like modern standard lumber, they do not actually measure 1 or 6 inches) are ideally sized for mass market paperback shelving.
Thus, my plan for built-in bookshelves in our new bedroom began with making the paperback shelves out of cedar. This (like all home improvement projects) has turned out to be slightly more complicated than perhaps it needed to be. As it turns out, Home Depot sells cedar 1x6x8s that come more or less smooth on both sides, though the last time I looked they also had a selection that was all warped, cracking, and/or moldy. For $1.20 less per board, Lowes has ones that are smooth on one side and rough cut on the other. Just as I was about to get cross about how much it was actually worth my time to spend an entire week sanding, grauwulf pointed out that my father (great collector of all wood & metalworking tools) has a planer.
So I calculated out how many boards I needed, picked up enough that should be workable, and then we took them down to my parents' house on Monday night, delighting in the federal holiday lack-of-traffic. And then we spent roughly half an hour planing down twenty boards to the point where it's almost safe to handle them without work gloves, so even with the driving time, that's saved me about a week off what it would have taken to sand them all down. I also spent an hour or two with my mother going through a couple boxes of fabric excavated from her mother's closets. We reached that sort of semi-hysteria that one gets to when approaching the bottom of a closet that hasn't been cleared out in far too long ("Er, it's blue. And fluffy. And looks sort of like it's suffering from mange..." "Oh. That's um. Very dated... I should have recovered cushion on the parlor chair with it; it would have matched the rug.") which is a danger somewhat inherent in things from my grandparents' house. But of the three piles we ended up with, the largest by far was the one to go off to the thrift store, and my mother and I are both far more likely to use some of the bits we're keeping than my grandmother is at this point.
Anyway, bookshelves! I've sorted out my uprights, and we set up the dado blade on the table saw (both hand-me-downs from my father, who went through a phase of using grauwulf as an excuse to buy newer classier tools) last night, and after much tweaking actually got it set up to make a cut that'll fit the boards. So now all I have to do is cut all the grooves for the shelves to sit in, and I can go on to the sander and the chop saw, which is smaller and possibly slightly less scary. Or at least, I can use it for this project without having to take the blade guard off. (The dado blade, set at 5/8" width, is just wide enough to chew up the table saw's blade guard, and the piece that holds it in place is set up for ripping boards, so when you don't actually split the board you're sawing it's in the way of the end of the cut.) And I shall be mighty, and a good role model of building my bookshelves my own darn self (seriously, now that we have the chop saw it's only the table saw I'm worried about) and attempt not to cut off any fingers.
Xposty from dreamwidth.
Upwards of twenty years ago, my father built a walk-in closet into the corner of my parents' bedroom. One wall is standard drywall, but the other is cedar panelled with a bookshelf sized for mass market paperbacks along the outside. Thus, most of my parents' paperbacks smell like cedar when you pull them out to read them, which I've always loved. And 1x6 cedar boards (while, like modern standard lumber, they do not actually measure 1 or 6 inches) are ideally sized for mass market paperback shelving.
Thus, my plan for built-in bookshelves in our new bedroom began with making the paperback shelves out of cedar. This (like all home improvement projects) has turned out to be slightly more complicated than perhaps it needed to be. As it turns out, Home Depot sells cedar 1x6x8s that come more or less smooth on both sides, though the last time I looked they also had a selection that was all warped, cracking, and/or moldy. For $1.20 less per board, Lowes has ones that are smooth on one side and rough cut on the other. Just as I was about to get cross about how much it was actually worth my time to spend an entire week sanding, grauwulf pointed out that my father (great collector of all wood & metalworking tools) has a planer.
So I calculated out how many boards I needed, picked up enough that should be workable, and then we took them down to my parents' house on Monday night, delighting in the federal holiday lack-of-traffic. And then we spent roughly half an hour planing down twenty boards to the point where it's almost safe to handle them without work gloves, so even with the driving time, that's saved me about a week off what it would have taken to sand them all down. I also spent an hour or two with my mother going through a couple boxes of fabric excavated from her mother's closets. We reached that sort of semi-hysteria that one gets to when approaching the bottom of a closet that hasn't been cleared out in far too long ("Er, it's blue. And fluffy. And looks sort of like it's suffering from mange..." "Oh. That's um. Very dated... I should have recovered cushion on the parlor chair with it; it would have matched the rug.") which is a danger somewhat inherent in things from my grandparents' house. But of the three piles we ended up with, the largest by far was the one to go off to the thrift store, and my mother and I are both far more likely to use some of the bits we're keeping than my grandmother is at this point.
Anyway, bookshelves! I've sorted out my uprights, and we set up the dado blade on the table saw (both hand-me-downs from my father, who went through a phase of using grauwulf as an excuse to buy newer classier tools) last night, and after much tweaking actually got it set up to make a cut that'll fit the boards. So now all I have to do is cut all the grooves for the shelves to sit in, and I can go on to the sander and the chop saw, which is smaller and possibly slightly less scary. Or at least, I can use it for this project without having to take the blade guard off. (The dado blade, set at 5/8" width, is just wide enough to chew up the table saw's blade guard, and the piece that holds it in place is set up for ripping boards, so when you don't actually split the board you're sawing it's in the way of the end of the cut.) And I shall be mighty, and a good role model of building my bookshelves my own darn self (seriously, now that we have the chop saw it's only the table saw I'm worried about) and attempt not to cut off any fingers.
Xposty from dreamwidth.