DIY

Making things and general household maintenance.

Problems – Three coats of paint, rubbing down between coats, around 3-4 hours each. And the color of the paint doesn’t match the doors we bought.

Painting – Time to paint the utility room shelving.

Pantry shelves ready for finishing. With a lot of snow forecast, I needed to get the shelves out of the garage to make room for the car. +2

Well, that didn’t go as planned… As usual, things took a lot longer to do than I anticipated, and I made two annoying mistakes. Two-minute read.

My task for tomorrow … Is to turn this pile of wood into a ‘pantry’ and shelving unit.

And that’s the cabinets fitted – I’ve still got to make a pantry to fill the open space on the left, and another set of shelves on the opposite side of the room too. +1

Cabinets fitted on one side. Now for the cabinets on the opposite wall.

Ginger fitting hinges – currently we are adding some high-level storage for ‘little used’ items.

Boxes – we have some work to do today. The utility room remodel is getting out of hand! We had already dealt with several boxes when I took this picture.

Final coat of stain – Made a lot of difference to the color. Now to varnish it all, add door handles, and it’s finished. +3

Making the gear closet doors – There have been a few upgrades in the workshop. Black Friday Grizzly had a drill press and bandsaw on sale at a price I couldn’t refuse. The pair cost less than the bandsaw normally retails at. The bandsaw came in particularly useful for all the joints I had to make for the gear closet doors. One-minute read, +1

Gary in the workshop – Hindsight being the gem that it is, I now know it was a huge mistake to make the doors and not get them ‘off the shelf.’ +3

Distractions – A couple of weeks before Christmas the dryer broke down. We were just about to have the utility room, painted, so Ginger decided that she’d pop out and buy a new dryer and washer for the freshly painted room. And that’s when the work began. Two-minute read, +1

Gear Closet update – Still plenty left to do. Bottom shelf and kick space, shelf fronts, and … doors to make.

Hall Gear Closet – taped and first skim coat applied. Ginger, “Most people just buy furniture, they don’t build things in.” Gary, “It must be the Frank Lloyd Wright in me.” +1

Hall Gear Closet – Framing. New project. We have two-and-a-half closets in the house full of backpacking gear (and some overflow in the shed too). Doing something about it is long overdue. I decided to use the space that used to be occupied by the piano and convert it into a gear closet. Today I started framing the new built-in closet. +3

My job for the weekend is to convert this lot into a new front deck. 4 pictures

Garage Project – Just about done – For now… I’ve been tinkering with finishing this project for a few weeks now. It’s slowly getting there. Two-minute read, 5 pictures

Garage Project – Open sez-a-me. The doors are now fitted, and that’s all the main construction work complete. One-minute read, 6 pictures

Garage Project – Main storage area and the overhead shelving. One-minute read, 3 pictures

Garage Project – Ready to start building the main storage area. One-minute read, 4 pictures

Garage Project – The shop vac and compressor now have a new home. One-minute read, 2 pictures

That’s the corner cleaned up – The wall’s been patched, and the first coat of paint has been applied.

Garage Project: Getting Started With Stage IV – I forgot to take a picture before I started clearing away, so the corner to the right had already been cleared. One-minute read

I think I know what killed the fridge-freezer – The cats. Plus: Pride before a fall & I love it when a plan (albeit Plan B) comes together. 2 pictures

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