September 7, 2014
Last summer, as we ripped walls out of our kitchen to make it bigger, we knew we had a plan for the pile of 2x4 studs getting removed. We wanted to send as little as possible to the landfill from the destruction and construction of our kitchen/bath remodel and garage building project. We even made a choice to not get a refuse dumpster and deal with each material as best we could, the rest fitting in our regular trash bin. We did upgrade to a larger size bin for a few months and ended up filling it full almost every week. It's amazing how much debris is created in construction so it was good to be conscious of what could be reused. The project produced a pile of lumber, used boards or new scraps, that we've been using for other projects since.
Those 2x4 studs, though, we had immediately earmarked for turning into a workbench to put in the new garage. As we removed them, we used a marker to circle places where nails were cut-off and still in the wood so that they would not end up causing trouble in a saw later. Last month, we finally got around to finishing the workbench project.
This is the top after staining, but pre-polyurathane.
Rick cut, glued and clamped, and sanded eight of the boards to make a butcher block type of top. He used other 2x4s and a piece of plywood to create the base and "back splash". My job on this project was the finish. For the top, I used a mahogany stain that I've had sitting around. It matches a stain I used for a couple large hanging shelfs in the garage that store camping equipment, the same stain I used when refinishing a couple stools that now fit under the workbench. After staining, I protected the top with a few coats of polyurethane. For the base, I used a grey paint that we had bought on clearance to try out on the exterior and ended up not using. It ended up matching the grey of a vintage side table we are using as a battery charging station. The only thing we bought to make this table was wood glue and the leveling feet. The coordinating colors in the garage have become red and grey!
We designed the workbench table to fit perfectly over two tool cabinets we got to organize tools and hardware. The cabinets are on wheels so that we can move them out from under the table and have more legroom and more work surface area.
building (7), diy (13), garage (2), home (5), remodel (4), sustainable (7), tools (3), wood-working (10), workbench (1)
Crafts (26), Degree (67)
September 6, 2014
In March of this year we picked out a cat off Craigslist from a couple nearby who fosters cats rescued from high kill shelters. This little orange guy was considered unadoptable by Kings County Animal Shelter due to blindness in one eye. We renamed him Tajar (or Tajer or Tadger) and fell instantly in love with his sweetness. His visual disability does not slow him down and he's the most athletic and stretchy mini-beast I've known. We decided he needed a tower to climb, his first birthday gift for August 11th.
We sketched out our plan. We wanted it to include a bed level, a top lookout level, as well as multiple scratching surfaces and a spot for replaceable cardboard scratching pads since that was so far his favorite thing to scratch on. In order to not create more visual obstructions looking out to the garden, the height of the levels were determined by the heights of the window panes in the back door. We made notes of the tools we would need to borrow from the Santa Rosa Tool Library.
I wanted to use repurposed or scrap materials as much as possible. We picked out the materials and began cutting, sanding, staining, and assembling.
While watching TV, Rick and I took turns carefully wrapping cordage around the 4x4 post that was to become one of the back legs. We used a roll that I had sitting around of grass cord on the bottom section and hemp cord (the only material we purchased for this project) to complete the top section of the post. Our hands and forearms were tired and sore after wrapping that heavy post!
Very curious what we were creating, he needed to test it periodically throughout the project.
Rick cut notches in the two back posts to hold the middle shelf in place. The right post is a length of rough-cut redwood that was removed from the exterior of the house during remodeling last year. The middle leg and step post are scraps of sapele mahogany left over from putting trim around the garage doors. I had sections of foam padding removed from a former loft bed headboard that I had made and then disassembled when moving. We got a new cardboard scratcher refill to put in the frame I cut into the bottom plywood level using a jigsaw tool. There are three adjustable feet screwed up through the bottom into the three supporting posts. The feet were removed from some garage tool cabinets in order to put wheels on them.
I traced out patterns on newsprint to aid in cutting fabric we picked out from my crafts stash.
In order to make them removable, washable or replaceable, I used velcro to attach the padding to the tower. One side of the velcro is sewn to the fabric wrap-around tabs, the other side glued to the underside of the plywood levels.
The middle level has a contoured padding for a bed. We picked out some batik fabric I acquired in Bali.
Tajer gets very upset when he sees birds through the window, and does vicious damage to the feather toy we play with, so I joke that he hates birds. As a poke at him we centered the birds on his bed.
He doesn't seem to mind.
We are all very happy how it turned out and how well he uses it, all the sleeping and scratching surfaces, as well as actually climbing from the floor up the cord wrapped post to the top level as a more adventurous route up.
building (7), cat (7), crafts (25), degree (24), design (2), diy (13), furniture (4), sewing (5), sustainable (7), tajer (2), wood-working (10)
Crafts (26), Degree (67), How To (5)
Arianna Helen