Ready for Production

Well I got the garage all cleaned up and ready to start making some furniture. In the past couple of weeks I've wired a subpanel, and added a few new circuits with new outlets so I have all the juice I need for some sawdust making. Here is a shot of the garage all cleaned up and ready to go. You can see the stack of plywood front and center, that should be enough to make all of the Record Storage Units.

The design has changed quite a bit since you guys saw it last. I may still build a unit or two of the other design, especially if any of you want to hire me to do it. The record storage is now going to occur in stacking pieces, just like the Tetris video game. It will be a much more flexible solution that will allow the unit to adapt with changes in location. So the image above shows two versions of the units with records and the image below shows the same units without records. I'm making it out of Baltic Birch plywood with an exposed edge and Walnut backing where needed. Let me know what you guys think.

I love Craigslist

Many of you know I have a little storage problem in the garage. Well its not really a problem in everyones eyes, for the past six months I've had about 1000 bd.ft. of Walnut sitting on the floor of my garage. Since I have this large woodworking project to complete (more on that in a few days) I figured I needed to get some lumber storage. So I spent last week scowering craigslist for my options, several phonecalls and a lot of internet research later here we go. The picture above was taken a week ago prior to me having any storage, that hunk of crap in the center is the pile of walnut with all kinds of stuff sitting on it.

This is a picture taken saturday afternoon. The shelving is partly up. You can barely see the Cypress siding I have left is on the top shelf.

The shelving fully installed and screwed to the wall.

I managed to get all of the walnut on the shelf. I think its around 2000lb's of wood and stuff on the shelf. I actually might be able to pull a car in the garage now. The best part about the shelves is I got all of it for $90, so if any of you want any its still on craigslist and the guy has a warehouse full.


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Workbench for under $200

Well I have the workbench nearly completed. I constructed the legs and got them clamped and glued together.

You attach the two sets of legs together with two plywood panels. I drilled pocket holes for screws to attach the top. It was the first time I had used a pocket hole jig and I have to say for a really simple operation it works really nice.

Here is a shot of the new bench sitting on the old bench. I must say those rubbermaid trashcans are quite sturdy. I would guess the bench is close to a hundred pounds.

I don't have the top screwed on yet but you get an idea of what this thing is going to look like. I have a vise on the way, so I should get that installed next week. Eventually I plan on making drawers to fill out the bottom of the bench. I highly recomend this workbench to anyone, its cheap, relatively easy to build, and extremely solid. I only have about 10 hours of work in it so far, 3 sheets of plywood, a quart of wood glue, and a box of screws.

Fighting through the mud

Ben and the dingo got all of the concrete around the pool, the side patio, and the driveway jackhamered as well. Next week the place should really take shape if I get the concrete in. Wish me luck.
After one day of drying, You can see they have a little bit of siding on, hopefully after today the will have three of the sides on. Next week I should get alot of conc. poured.
That night we got a good test for the roof. I believe we got 5in. of rain in about 4 hours. This is a shot out my front door looking where the patio was. Thats about 3-5 in of standing water. Needless to say it hurt my chances of getting any concrete in this week. But the roof didn't leak and Brush Creek didn't flood the house - so I'll take a little mud anyday.
The same day they installed the roof, my dad and greg worked on ripping out the patio in the front of my house. Two layers of brick pavers - the bottom layer was located exactly where the plans showed them.

EPDM

Here are some pictures of the guys installing the epdm roofing. I think it was pretty easy - at least they didn't complain to much.
Rolling on the contact cement. Once you get 300 pounds of rubber on the roof, then you put the adhesive on both surfaces let it dry and then roll out the rubber. The got all of it installed in about 5 hours. We still need to install the drip edge and put the seam tape on but its weather tight.

Before the EPDM went on

The framing is complete

Well the crew is finishing up with the roof sheeting today and has the rest of the garage framing complete. We are going to try and get the roof on it tomorrow, as well as rip out my old driveway and front walk. So if any of you have any pull see if you can't keep it from raining wed. or thurs.

After 3 Days of Framing

Morning of Day 3

Progress Photos

This is day 2 of framing.

Now it goes Quick

Day One 12 PM
Day One of Framing 7 AM

Full Steam Ahead

Well the weather finally broke, today its 65 and sunny you gotta love Kansas. I got the garage floor poured yesterday and the guys started framing today. They will be close to getting the walls up today and start working on the rafters tomorrow. My yard is a big muddy mess right now and we are supposed to be getting a big rain storm this weekend, so it looks like its going to stay that way.

The Garage is Gone

The garage is almost gone and it will be by the end of the day. It was attacked by termites and didn't fair to well the several times it flooded . Guess I can consider my self lucky that the termites chose to attack the garage and not my house. I have trash strewn all over my yard I'm sure the neighbors love me .....but I guess they are putting up with it in hopes I'm raising their property values.Before Day 1 of Demo
After day 1 of demo
I ended up having the guys wrap the exterior exposed rafters with cedar. They wer too rotted to really salvage them. This looks so much better and it has to be a ton stronger now.

Termites - Concrete - And a Huge Mess

Well its been a busy week at the ranch. The footing for the garage addition has been dug. They encountered a foot of frost through most of the footing so it took a little bit longer than it should have. I would call it more slicing or shaving than digging but they stuck through it and got it done.This much of the fence is installed and probably after today and tomorrow they will be all the way across the back of the yard. I really like how it turned out. The hole is there so that we can access the pile of brush to slowly burn it. I've been burning the brush slowly in the large piece of corrugated pipe you see. It actually works really well and I think it may be a permanet ficture in the new landscape.
A friend of mine Ronnie came down with his stump grinder and took care of the five stumps that were in my way. The machine he had was really nice and he wouldn't accept any payment for the work so that was even nicer. He said I just had to remember him when I got rich and famous - I don't know about becoming rich and famous but hey it sounds good. My yard is suffering from all of this work - Jessica thinks our house looks like white trash - I just tell her its a diamond in the rough and in a few months we will be in good shape.