Doll house for the girls....shhh, it's for Christmas

I started this project thinking it would take me just a few evenings.  It ended up taking lots of evenings, many more than expected.  Anyway, this is hardly fine woodworking but I'm hoping the girls get a kick out of it.  It's about 4' tall, made from 2x2's and cheap plywood, and probably weighs 60 pounds.  It's definitely more sturdy than anything we would find at Walmart.  I'm not this creative, got the plans from ana-white.com/.

Yes, that's real vinyl flooring.

I used free carpet samples from a flooring store.

This room even has chair rail.

Here are some pictures of the build.  A lot of time was spend sanding the very rough 2x2s I had on hand.  I wanted to make sure this thing was splinter free.

This is after the first coat of shellac.  I did this first coat by hand.

Finishing by hand took way too long so I used my sprayer.  The frame of this house has about 5 coats of shellac.  The final 4 took less time than the first one I did by hand.

Pink shingles.

More pink and some baby blue.

The checkered floor is my favorite part.

Last years' Christmas gifts... I never did post these.

First dust collector duct run

Up to this point my dust collector was connected to a flexible host and I had to move it around to whatever machine was making dust.  Ideally I'll have duct work running to each machine.  I didn't realize how expensive this would be so it's slow going, but I do have the first run done.  This first one goes to the table saw.

See all the dust and chips in the collector bag.  That's all the stuff I didn't have to sweep up.

Oops, forgot the blast gate.

Blast gate installed.

Chad's Kitchen

My turn to make lunch for the kids.  Drew approved, the girls, not so much.

Sellers Cabinet Finally Done!

About 5 or 6 months ago we picked up a beat down Sellers cabinet on the cheap. Well it was cheap for a reason. One drawer front was busted in half, a door was hanging by one hinge, it was about 13 different colors and was soaked in grease. This thing was well used and some things I just couldn't salvage. I replaced a few things because they were broke, and others because they were just soaked in grease.

Here's what it looked like before:

And after....  The white top on this is porcelain so it's not something I could just paint very easy.  Yes, that green strip is ugly.  I'll figure something out...

Another before picture:

The rest are pictures I took during the rehab.  I estimate that I have about 40 hours in this project.  Most of that time was spent stripping paint.

Here is the drawer front I had to replace.

And this drawer needed everything but the front.  I salvaged the front and built a new drawer.  

Primer

Part way stripped.

This took the most time.  The roll up cabinet has about 15 separate wood pieces.  I couldn't take this apart so I had to scrape in between all of them.  This alone was probably 3 hours of work.

Done.

Small fraction of the stripped paint.

Start of paint.

Start of assembly.

The new hinges I bought had a different offset.  See the gaps on the left side.  Had to fill holes, re-sand, re-paint....

Getting there...

My spray booth took a beating with this project.

Garage storage - done.... for now

This post has been moved here.

Wine bottle balancers

The other week I was cleaning up the beat up, nail-filled ends of some reclaimed lumber I picked up on craigslist.  I didn't want to trash even these small pieces so I decided to make a few wine bottle balancers that are very popular on Etsy.com, lazy woodworker sites (like mine), etc.  I decided why not.  I fired up the drill press and drilled a few holes. 

Well, Miranda doesn't like them so they won't be holding any wine at my house.  No biggy as they only took about 2 minutes to make.  Anyone want one?  Mom, will these sell at your craft sale?