Finished Bench

I finished the bench order and I am only waiting for the pickup. This makes me happy to be able to finish it up and clean up and move on to the next project.

But first. Here is the bench all shiny and pretty. The first picture is with my cell phone so not as clear. BUT, it does show the color better than the others. The flash for some reason makes it look a bit reddish when the stain is a dark walnut and not red at all.

If you look really carefully you can see the pocket screw wholes I used to attach the middle brace. Can you see it? Those tiny ovals at the bottom? At least I know they don't detract from the look since you can barely see them.

Next I REALLY need to start my chairs. I also REALLY need to clean out my garage a little and get more than a thin path to walk in there. I have decided to base it on Anna's Parson Chair plans. I don't know if I will use her plan exactly as it is, or if I will find myself changing it a little like I have her other plans. Either way, it has been a crazy weekend with my daughter's 3rd birthday party, drama at work and a raging headache that just wont go away. I am looking forward to the weekend coming up, but I am afraid it wont be any better because I have an even busier weekend planned than my week.

Go away headache, you are sooooo slowing me down!!!

Projects On the Rise

After finishing the sign and the last set of orders, I was able to relax this last week and only work on one project. I have a friend who ordered a custom bench and it has been fun to work with her on the design and making it come to life. Its a simple bench based on Anna's Spa Bench. Well, it started out as that and then got bigger and the trim got adjusted and this was my first attempt at making anything other than a straight piece of board as the bottom trim. 

Here are some progress photos and some of the staining I did tonight. I can't seem to get to my photos I have of the beginning of the project. The initial try at the base trim wasn't all that great, but with a little rounding out, I like it a lot better. It is not sure fancy, but the simplicity of it is really nice. 

I always try to explain to people how staining is like magic to a project. You take this simple bench and while it is pretty enough without stain (it doesn't look as good in the photos as it did in person), but check out the look with a little dark walnut stain! The backing is laying on the table in front of it. I wanted to stain it separately and then attach it once complete. It helps me to be able to reach all the way through sometimes.

And yes, I will go back and stain the underside as well. I just forgot to do it first like I normally do.

I sold my old dining room table and chairs. We now have only tables I have built in our house. This makes me happy. It also makes me desperate for chairs since we are down to the bench I had built before and some computer chairs for around the table for dinner. 

Once I complete this project and she picks it up, I have to build me some dining room chairs. I also need to build another 10 chairs for the school per our agreement. So it looks like I will be neck deep in some chairs for awhile. Hahaha. Can't complain though. It is nice to be busy.

Enclosures

After delivering those tables and breathing in and out for a day or two (with much guilt given I hate to take nights off) I had to move on. 

I dedicated this week to putting in a bid or two on a job for a bench and making a sign that was ordered a month ago. Luckily she was VERY understanding about my schedule. August is always my busiest month for travel, prepping stuff and life's twists and turns.

I was able to get the sign done with a very cute result. It is curing right now and will be in the mail first thing Monday (first thing being lunch time at work).

With the sign finally done, I was able to do some housework (shocking right?). The kids had WAY too many clothes in their dressers that were too small for them. So we made a HUGE pile to give to goodwill, we cleaned the playroom and got the house vacuumed. I didn't get the garage cleaned out, but hey, you can't win them all!

Tonight after a movie with the kids and their bedtime routines, I headed out to finish what I could on the enclosure. Thankfully my husband had read online how to cut plexi-glass with a jigsaw instead of the score and bend thing ( I did that before and always managed to break it in the wrong place). With my jigsaw I was able to finish up the enclosure pieces. I took a picture right before the sun was all the way down, and then I installed the last piece of plexi-glass on the left side after dark so I didn't get a picture of that. I am mostly happy with how it came out. I wish the screws were countersunk just a hair more, but I think I will end up putting trim over the edges just to give it a more finished look. 

I really like the trim piece at the bottom. It makes it match the top of the tower more. You really have to dig the light I pulled out there and set on the ladder as a make-shift spotlight so I can work just a tiny bit past sunset. :-) 

Tomorrow I have that order for a bench to begin and another work week to dread beginning. 

Tables for the Chairs

I am happy to say that I have finally finished the tables for the special order from my daughter's daycare. I hope they hold up against the abuse the kids can put into them. The best part is that it means I can move on and tomorrow I am allowing myself to work on the castle playhouse again. At least for the one day. After that I have a couple of small orders to do for friends.

The tables are done! They do look wet in the photo, but I had just put another coat of finish on there. 

Please ignore my brown excuse for a lawn. I am not very good with growing things....especially grass.

Anyway, tomorrow brings the hope I can finish enclosing in the porch area as well and hopefully putting in the screens in the 2 little front windows. I am not delusional to believe I will get enough time to build the windows I designed for the plexiglass, but at least I can get the porch area done. That will take a load off my mind at least. I can't believe its been all summer trying to finish the castle. Oh well, wish me luck!

The Anatomy of the Chair

LOL, I so rarely have proof of people reading my blog, I can't help but jump at the chance to respond. I have been asked about these chairs I made. I started out with Anna's kid's chair plans... 4 Dollar Stackable Chair I built one chair like this, but then I wasn't 100% pleased with those front legs. Then I saw one of Anna's Fan's post a Brag Blog with a chair that seemed to be a cross between the 4 Dollar Stackable Chair and the Clara Table leg style. I love the Clara Table, but the Stackable Chair just didn't match it. Plus, I was asked to build 10 of these chairs for my daughter's preschool. This meant I needed them to be super sturdy and safe for rowdy 4-6 year olds.

Here is the chair I came up with. The flash wouldn't go so this is not the best photo. The legs are made from 2x2s and the seat bottom, side aprons and back support are all made with 1x3s. The chair is 26 inches tall overall, and it is 15 inches from floor to top of the seat. These measurements came from the height requested by the preschool owner.

Front Legs - 2x2 - 14.5 inches long

Back Legs - 2x2 - 26 inches long

Front/Back Aprons and Back Supports - 1x3 - 9.5 inches long

Side Aprons - 1x3 - 10.25 inches long

And a total of 34 pocket screws - Wow!



I started by cutting all the pieces. The front legs are 14.5 inches long, the back legs are 26 inches tall, the front/back aprons and back support are 9.5 inches long, and the side aprons are 10.25 inches long. I like to use jigs and stop blocks to help me cut them all even. I have my miter saw on a stand and I clamped a board in place at the right distance out so that I would only need to set my wood in place and cut without needing to measure and mark each piece. This is such a time saver people!

In order to center (sort of center) my 1x3s to the middle of the legs I used a jig. I found a piece of wood that was 1/4 of the height of the 2x2 while it was laying on its side. Or at least close to 1/4 the height. Then I could lay my apron on the piece of scrap wood and thus centering it on the 2x2. I cut pocket screws into all the boards before assembly. That took HOURS. Mostly because I have an older drill who's batteries are just not holding a charge longer than a few hours of pocket whole drilling. Anyway, over the course of 2 nights I got that done. I screwed the front apron to the front 2 legs. So the pocket screws looked like this. I used 2 inch pocket screws. That may be too long, but I wanted to be sure they wouldn't budge or wiggle under squirmy kiddos.

I then attached the side aprons to the back legs. The tricky part was to create a jig to insure I was screwing the side aprons at the right height so the chair would be level. I think I took a spare leg and clamped it to the table and then laid the long legs next to it to mark where I needed to attach the aprons. Then I attached the 2 sides to the front set of legs/aprons.

They looked a big weird, but that was okay. At this point the 2 back legs did NOT have the back apron in place. This is because I wanted to be adjust things a bit and be sure of levelness before attaching it. This is where I made many mistakes and got VERY frustrated. I have a large drill. This is a small chair. Want to know what drill wouldn't fit into the bottom of the chair to screw in the last few screws. ACK! I ended up doing something where I took it apart a little so I could screw the back apron into the 2 back legs and THEN screwing them to the from legs. My drill DID fit the other direction since the chair is deeper than it is wide. FYI, the back apron is not centered in the 2x2s, but rather is tight to the inside of the legs. I did that so the back of the seat would be flush with the back of the apron. It just worked that way with the measurements.

The seat of the chair is made from 5, 1x3s at 12.5 inches wide. This would make the corners flush with the front legs, but in between the legs you would have an overlap because I centered the side aprons. I again used my router to round off the tops of the legs. I knew I would round over the seat and I didn't want a rounded edge of seat against a squared off leg. Just a personal preference. It worked because I like the way the top of the legs look.

I liked the look so that's why I did it that way. No particular reasons sometimes. Especially when I am building from scratch with no real plans, I just go with it until I like how it looks and feels. I again used the pocket screws and screwed the 5 pieces of the seat together. Anna's plans do not have them attached like this, but I like a more solid seat and not have gaps. I have a fear of bugs crawling through the gaps in the chair seat to get at my booty. Its not rational, but it is why I designed my chair this way. That is the beauty of having no solid plans.

The seat is not a perfect square. I cut out notches at the back so that it would wrap around the back legs and go over the back apron. I wanted to be able to screw the back of the chair to that back apron so I needed it to go back that far. I just used my jigsaw and cut out the notches and then used my palm router to round all the edges on top and bottom of the seat so there would be no rough corners or edges.

I then attached the back supports. I just sort of set them in using a scrap board for a jig to keep the spaces even. I don't know why, but I didn't want to do 4 screws on each of the back supports so I did 3. 2 would have let them rotate so I did 3. I flipped them so that the side with 2 was not on the same side for both supports. I filled them with stain-able putty and let them set before sanding them down and staining.

Hours of sanding, staining and finally shellac-ing and I have 10 little chairs ready to go to school. Tomorrow I have to finish the 3 tables which I doing using a cross between the Clara Table style and the support system of the Farmhouse Table of Anna's. I can't help but change every plan just a little.

I know this was WAY more information than just the dimensions, but I am proud of my little chairs. They were a challenge in many ways, but I learned a lot too. I made the chairs so sturdy, I can sit on the chair and lean back slightly and it doens't creak at all. I wasn't too rough with it, but these kids are 1/4 of my weight so if I can sit on them (and I do for tea parties with my daughter) then it can handle the kids.