Thursday, January 24, 2013

Finally Started Our Closets

Jeff and I finally got around to starting our closets. We left it here:
And we're trying to get Jeff's closet here:
And my closet here:
A few weeks ago I scored a humungous pile of old 1x12 douglas fir from someone on craigslist. So, rather than go buy all this plywood (the stain grade stuff is around $100/sheet and we need 11), I thought it was worth a shot to see if we could get this old fir to work.

A couple days ago we cut all the pieces for Jeff's shelves and the two hanging-only sides. (I'm not ready to start working on the cubes yet.) I didn't have my camera on me when we worked on it, so no pictures of the stack of wood.

Then I spent a while sanding it, but the wood is fairly beat up on the finished side; I think these boards were installed as shelving in some sort of industrial setting. The underside actually still has a rough finish and I'm hoping it will clean up and will be our new "finished" side. I'm hoping for stain grade, or something close to it, here. We can probably deal with wood that is a bit less than 3/4" thick because these shelves are mostly going to be supported and we won't be storing a lot of weight on them.

I'd already ordered this DeWalt planer (and stand) and it came yesterday. So we just need to get it set up and give it a try. I also bought a tongue & groove router bit for the edge joints.

This project is probably going to take us a while. We're likely to work on it in fits and starts. Lately our weather has been too cold or too wet. When we can bear to work outside, we'll make progress.

2 comments:

  1. Very cool! I'll have to let Kelly know he should look on Craigslist for wood supplies. He scored a bunch of nice maple from his uncle, and I think there might still be a bunch down where he picked it up at the property.

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  2. You were working on a house project without your camera nearby? How are you going to document what you're doing without your camera?

    I have a huge pile of 1920s beadboard stacked in my garage, a CL score from a couple of years ago. A guy in town was remodeling his original garage. The garage door (made of beadboard) practically fell apart, and he sold the resulting pile for almost nothing. It almost perfectly matches the ceiling material used in our milk house (which is also stacked in a pile). I have no doubt that I will find some worthy project for this one day.

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