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Day 1 of Kitchen Tower Construction

This went much faster than I was expecting!

I started off in the morning heading to Houston Hardwoods. The prices there are much cheaper than at Home Depot for that sorta thing. I guess Home Depot is probably price competitive on pine 2x4s, but then it makes up margin on hardwood products.

I bought 5 milled planks: 3 1x6s and 2 1x4s. I used stock that was already cut to different lengths, most around 8 foot. The 9.5 foot board just fit into my Mazda SUV by going all the way to the bottom of the windshield. All told it was $68 and change.

After heading up to the shop, I laid out the cuts with pencil, just to get a rough idea of the pieces. I then cut everything on the chop saw to a slightly longer length… half an inch or so, just to make sure. This was probably an unnecessary step, but it went fast enough that it wasn’t a problem.

I then ran the planks to width on the table saw. I cut the wider pieces first and found that I could still use the leftover strips for some of the smaller support pieces. After making all the rough cuts, I ended the day with an extra 1×4 plank, which I suppose I could return.

I cut everything to the true length next. I used a stop on the chopsaw which made it quick work. When that was finished, I laid out all the square pieces to see how it would all fit together.

From there, I started making the decorative cuts. I tapered the legs using a taper jig for the table saw. It’s a little hard to estimate the exact angle, but I left a little straight edge at the bottom of the taper to be conservative. I think it looks pretty good like that, so I decided to keep it.

Next up, we used some scraps of veneer to trace an arc on the support pieces. It’s a three handed job that way, so it helps to have a friend. Then I began cutting them out on the bandsaw when the bottom bandsaw tire came loose. It looks like it either wore out in the heat or was a faulty one, because it should have lasted longer than it did. We tried to fix it, but it was just too loose on the wheel, and the slightest knock on the blade would send it spinning.

So that brought the day to a halt. My dad is buying a new tire. Hopefully it’ll get to the Woodlands soon, so I can keep going.

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Another Boozy/Non-boozy Attempt

Maybe it should be called Sorry Not Sorry.

I’d like a complex, neat cocktail with Seedlip as the base “liquor” for the drink. The trouble comes from the fact that there isn’t that bite from the ethanol… which is an important part of that cocktail.

This time, I’ve mixed in some stronger booze… stronger in taste… and strong booze itself, to try to get a bit of that ethanol flavor.

  • 1.5 oz Seedlip Grove 42
  • 0.5 oz Myers Dark Rum
  • 0.25 oz Appleton Estate Rum
  • 0.25 oz Pear Liquor
  • A dash of orange bitters

It still has something missing. Maybe the Grove 42 is simply too light to serve as a base, which is a shame because the flavor profile is spot on otherwise.

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Punch

I had brunch with a few friends, two of which are pregnant. I was responsible for bringing the beverage as is my wont. I aimed for a guava Seedlip punch and it came out rather nicely. I added orange juice to brighten things up a bit. I had planned to add some lime juice, but the orange juice alone was sufficient.

Then I added some Chinese Five Spice bitters to the mix to up the level of interest. The Seedlip Spice 94 and the bitters combined to give a spicy Pacific tasting blend, that was delicious and hard to place. Then topped off with soda. Quite nice.

  • 32 oz Guava Nectar
  • 12 oz Seedlip
  • 12 oz Orange Juice
  • 4 dashes Chinese Five Spice Bitters
  • 48 oz Soda

Mix in a pitcher. Serve over ice. Drink by the pool. Imagine tropical beaches.

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Drywall and Kitchen Tower Selection

First day up and trying to do some woodworking in my dad’s shop. I wanted to have a quick warm up project, and decided to make a kitchen tower stool for my son. It’s at best a temporary piece of furniture–not exactly an heirloom piece–so it’ll be fine if I make some mistakes.

My goals got a little railroaded though because my parents needed some work done on the house. They’re shower plumbing fixtures were apparently lemons, and they had a plumber out to repair it. But that left a quarter sheet sized hole in their den closet that needed fixing. A very easy starter project.

After cleaning up the hole a bit, I added some crosspieces to the existing studs with some scrap plywood from the garage. That gave something to which I could attach the new sheetrock. Then cutting down the sheetrock to the right size–we had some spare old sheetrock already–and attaching it to the crosspieces.

It was a bit of a pain because of the non-uniform hole size. And even the studs weren’t quite square, so there was a lot of rework, going back downstairs, back out to the garage to trim down pieces. Measure twice, go up and down the stairs once. But in the end, there’s a well covered hole with some unpainted old sheetrock.

I would like to learn how to do this right, floating and taping the sheetrock so it’s seamless in the wall. But at this point, the unfinished cover was all they needed and wanted. (They still worry that they’ll want to go back and open it back up.) Maybe in the future I’ll go back and fix this properly as a good learning project.

From there, we picked a kitchen tower that we’d build. The Wood Whisperer has some plans for the kitchen tower and I decided to go off of this. It’s a bit overwrought for what I need. (It’s likely going to end up painted in our kitchen.) But I like the idea of learning some of the joinery. And we’ll take some shortcuts:

  • We’ll use plywood for the standing platform instead of glueing together the milled boards
  • We won’t use the crazy expensive Festool domino joiner, and go with the dowels instead
  • We’ll use something cheaper than cherry. Probably poplar.

Finally, we went by Home Depot to look at the hardwood selection there. Using poplar, it’d end up costing around $120 for lumber costs. That seems a bit high. I’m going to go by a hardwood specialty store to see if it’s cheaper, because they can cut things to precise lengths.