Here are a few photos I took this afternoon of the various colors found around our yard.

Fall 2008: Colors from around the yard

Yesterday I put the final touches on the distressed finish of the trundle bed, added the handful of hardware components, and put her all together. I’ve been working on it over the past four weeks or so and am very happy with the results. I was really focused on building this thing, and not documenting the process so most of the pictures I have are just of the completed project. Here they are…

A closeup of the headboard design:

The extended trundle:

A detail of the arched design in the footboard that I carried through to the trundle:

The distressed finish I used throughout the piece:

This past week I picked up my order of fresh juice from California. I’ve got two 6 gallon buckets fermenting right now of Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay. While I was at the store getting my order I listened in on a conversation one of the staff was having with another customer talking about their SO2 PPM count. They were talking about the varying levels in red and white wines. When I jumped in and asked how to test for them, the guy gave me a testing kit called Titrets® which measures your sulfite. I still have to do a little more reading up on this but it’d be helpful to know this info right before I bottle. From what I understand proper SO2 levels help maintain the shelf life and flavor of your wines.

On Friday I finalized the designs for a trundle bed I’m going to start work on this month. I based it on a few different references I came across and that were provided to me, but for the most part it follows a typical panel style. I was asked to make it so that it supports a full mattress on the top, and a twin for the trundle.

Finally got around to racking the Merlot again. I think one more racking will do just before I bottle it. At this point it tastes pretty decent, but it definitely needs to mature itself some more.

I haven’t gotten around to posting anything in a while and wanted to quickly put up a shot of the completed cabinet. I finally got around to painting and staining it a few weeks ago. The top drawer is very sticky so I picked up a pair of drawer slides that I’ll install at some point this week. But anyway, here it is:

So our neighbors/friends recently asked me if I’d build them a new laundry cabinet.  

I was going to sketch something out for them tonight, but instead decided to use Max to create something that not only would be able to show them what the piece would look like, but would also help me figure out all my lumber sizes, joints, etc. 

I’m realizing this method might save me some headaches during actual construction of these kinds of pieces. I can take the time here in this 3d environment, placing all my pieces where they need to go, figuring out what kinds of joints I need to make and where, and be able to see it from all kinds of different angles. - something a traditional sketch would never allow.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve come up with for this new project:

The piece will have two fixed shelves, where the bottom shelf has two pull out drawers, allowing for easier access to stuff. Since this will sit over top of a washer and dryer there’s a need to be able to easily reach often-used items.

Tonight I finished up the top, added a couple feet to the base, tacked on the rear panel, and finally constructed the doors.

The raised panel bits that I had picked up a while ago that are used to create the stiles and rails worked out really well… The panel bit however caused me some grief. It simply was too large for my router table and even the router’s face plate. Against my better judgement I hand routed the panels, without the router’s face plate, but just taking off a little bit at a time. It took a while, but in the end seemed to work out well.

I screwed up royally too… I cut the stiles to the wrong length (somehow missing that, even when I checked them prior to routing) and went through the whole process of routing all four of them before I realized they were too short. I couldn’t figure out what I had done, until I realized I simply read the wrong measurement off my papers. Dummy.

One of the doors:

Now it’s finally looking like something:

Since the family is away for a few days I’ll be able to spend some time in the garage and finish up construction of the cabinet. This evening I worked on the drawer. It ended up being a bit deeper than I thought, which is a good thing. I was afraid it was going to end up too shallow and unusable.

Assembly was pretty straightforward. I think the trickiest part was figuring out how to create a set of guide rails so that it 1) had something to rest on and 2) wouldn’t tip when you pulled it out. And here’s what I came up with: