Armoire Finished

I finished putting it back together upstairs last week. It took about 10 minutes to take apart, 10 minutes to bring upstairs, and 10 minutes to put it back together.



I putted the shelves together upstairs. They're just rails screwed to the sides, the the rest is brad nailed together. Today I did the rod for the other side. It's an old rod that I cut down, it must have belonged to one of the bedrooms at one time. I didn't bother sanding the rod down, it's got a couple coat of paint on it. I didn't have a 1 1/4" drill bit, so I used a 1" drill bit, and then cut it larger with the jigsaw. It's not perfect, but it's not too bad. Deb is going to paint a macintosh rose on the doors, then we're going to do a few coats of shellac.



There was a gap between the floors from the hallway to the bathroom. We were tired of everything falling in to the gap. I looked through my scrap wood, and found a piece that was almost the right length, it's maybe a 1/4" too short. We're going to have to do a new one anyways, when we tile the floor anyways. I did a 20 degree bevel with the tablesaw, the sanded it all down, and countersunk the screws. I'll do a couple of coats of waterlox, once the kids are in bed. I've been working 6 day weeks for the past 5 weeks, so we haven't been doing as much around the house. Next will be finishing the powder room downstairs.

Armoire progress

I've got the armoire I'm making mostly put together, I've been working on it a lot the last 2 weeks. I've managed to remedy most of the mistakes I've made. A lot of the problems come from the fact that the plans call for non standard sized lumber, and I made mistakes trying to alter the plans. It would have been easier to buy bigger lumber and cut it down to size, it would have been a lot more expensive though. A lot of the lumber was cupped, I'd be a lot more careful choosing lumber next time. I guess it's difficult to get good pine these days. The pine beetle infestation probably doesn't help the selection of trees. It has to come apart to make it up the stairs, so the pieces are attached using screws. I used the pocket hole jig for a lot of the connections, and to make the back. I probably could have just used a piece of plywood for the back. I followed the plans though. I'm going to brad nail the back on, it's easy enough to pull the nails out, if we need to move it again. It seems a lot bigger than I imagined, it takes up almost all of my small workshop. I have to tip it on it's back, so I can do the hinges for the doors, the hinges seem a little small, now that I've got them home, I'll change them if they don't survive. I tested the stain we're using on a scrap piece of lumber, we're going to cover that with a couple coats of shellac.