Saturday, March 23, 2013

Sunny Day

I was wishing for a sunny day and I got one. Yippee! We made an (unphotogenic) dumps run this afternoon. It's amazing how much garbage got left behind in the basement and yard by the contractors (lots of plastic). We've been cleaning that kind of stuff up and we brought in some household waste from our basement clean up.

I also went out this afternoon and sanded up the fir from yesterday's planing adventure. My goal at this point was to remove whatever dirt and paint was remaining on the boards. I was pretty successful, though there are a few that have paint embedded in spots. I sanded those as best I could and decided to leave the rest. We learned earlier our stain combo does an excellent job of covering paint spots.
Had I bought wood specifically for this project, I would have gotten wood without knots. But this wood was a total bargain and I can live with the knots, especially in the closet.
This pile of 17 boards was surely less than $50 worth of wood out of the whole stack. We spent $30 more getting them planed. We'll have to spend a bit more on another can of stain. But I believe these closet built-ins will cost under $100 for the hanging areas of our closets plus the shelves in Jeff's closet. (This doesn't include the rods or rod sockets, which I've already purchased but I don't recall their exact cost. I'll have to figure that out once we finish.)

Our plan calls for 16-inch deep boards, so now we need to edge join these and cut them down to size. I bought tongue and groove router bits, so we're going to try our hand at using those in the next few days.

3 comments:

  1. "less than $50 worth of wood"

    Those look like wide plank solid Fir, and if so, you might actually be shocked to know what they're worth. If you've tried to buy solid Fir lumber, then you might already have an idea.

    I remember that our woodworking company needed some a few years ago, and the few boards that we ordered cost around 1000$.

    Prices I'm finding online range between 5 to 12$ PER FOOT. By comparison, Cherry and Walnut are usually around 7-8$/BF.

    Antique (second hand) lumber is another story, however. A lot of it gets thrown into dumpster, or salvaged and sold for a fortune. The old grown (antique) stuff is way better than anything you can buy today.

    I'm looking forward to see the closets/shelves.

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    Replies
    1. They are. They're 1x12 and I paid $310 for that HUGE stack of it. I haven't priced wood this wide, but I know how much the skinny stuff is. Does that mean I'd be better off cleaning up this wood and selling it and going back to the plywood plan?

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  2. Ooooo, router bits. I wish I had a router. Maybe someday!

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