Doing It Ourselves

New shelves for the desk

2006-12-04T20:41:46Z

Wow, it's been a while (again), although this past weekend was super productive around here. One project that's been on our plate for a little while has been to add shelves above the new desk we built in the study. Between waffling on where we wanted the shelves to be hung and either being out of town or having visitors, building the shelves got put off for a little while, but it was at the very top of the to-do list this weekend. We ended up going with two shelves above the main surface of the desk, both 15" deep and built from 3/4" birch plywood with 1x2 pine tacked and glued across the face. I originally wanted to hang them the same way the desk is hung -- with ledger boards on the three walls supporting their weight -- but we ended up using shelf brackets instead since the sides would have rested on ledgers that weren't tacked into joists in the front (given that the joists are 16" apart, and the shelves are 15" deep). We want to be able to put some serious weight on these shelves (medical reference books, magazine archives, that sort of thing), so the idea of using drywall anchors made me just nervous enough to go with brackets for support.

One related interlude: we started out with the idea that using low-profile brackets like these might work out OK, sacrificing what felt like just a little bit of load-bearing capacity for the benefit of a bracket that didn't create as much of an obstacle underneath it. Thus, we hung the first shelf with these brackets, and immediately realized that the weight of the shelf itself was enough to start bowing the supports -- and that's when we both got the mental picture of what would happen when we started loading the shelves, and then immediately took the brackets down. We ended up with these, which are very slender and yet feel like they could support me up on the shelves. If we end up hating how they look or function, I can always try the drywall anchor approach, or add a backer board between the joists and then anchor a ledger into that.

A few things we did to make the results that much nicer (to us, at least!): I routed a rounded edge onto the front of the shelves using a 3/8" roundover bit, and we added a few under-cabinet lights to the bottom shelf so that we could get rid of our desk lamp and still have great light on the work surface.

Should I become ReadyMade?

2006-11-12T18:40:38Z

Does anyone subscribe to ReadyMade? I got a subscription offer in the mail (pay one year and get two more years free), and it looks like it could be interesting. I already get Make (less about home DIY, more about tech DIY) and Family Handyman (pure, unadulterated awesomeness for someone like me who's just starting to get into the DIY world); ReadyMade looks like it could be a neat mix of the two. Opinions?

(As an aside, wow have I been quiet here lately. I'm taking my board exams for my medical subspecialty certification this week, so hopefully I'll be out from under this studying soon...)

On the importance of home inspections

2006-10-25T14:53:28Z

For those who haven't seen them yet, This Old House has two galleries of photos up (one, two) that show the worst of the worst things found during home inspections. Most of it is in the you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it category; wait until you see the light switch in the shower stall, or the 220-volt plug hard-wired bare to the incoming power line. This kind of stuff makes me cringe, mostly because it reminds me that any of my neighbors might have done something like this and I won't know until their house comes (crashing, burning, rotting, or flooding) down to the ground.

The study, now 1000% more usable

2006-10-25T01:25:56Z

After installing the quarter-round molding across the back of the surface and then touching everything up with a final bit of paint, the new desk is installed, and I'm pretty damn happy with how it came out.

The back surface of the desk is 20 inches deep, and we opted to put the PC there since it's the computer that we use the most in the office. Since the office is pretty narrow, we went with the return being only 15 inches deep, giving us more work surface without sacrificing breathing room. I doubt that we'll stick with that lamp, we have a little bit of cable management work to do, and I'm almost certain that I won't be allowed to keep the Iron Giant on the desk. (I have been promised a little bit of a shelf for him, though!)

In the end, there are a few silly little things I'd do differently were I to do this again, but nothing that comes close to me feeling like this wasn't a home run for us being able to use the study. I can't wait to get the shelves planned and installed... our inclination is to put them on the short wall above the main desk surface so that the room doesn't start to feel even more narrow, but we've bandied about the idea of partial-length shelves on the long wall. We'll see which way that debate settles out, and we'll enjoy the hell out of the room in the mean time!

Deskalicious!

2006-10-23T00:28:48Z

One of the things that really attracted Shannon and I to this house is that it has a small "extra" room upstairs, too small to be a regular bedroom but definitely workable as a study (or perhaps someday a nursery!). Since we moved in, we tried our hardest to make the furniture we already own work in the room, but it's been a struggle -- the desk, file cabinet, and drawers I had in my luxuriously-large study back in Brookline made this room really tight, and Shannon and I realized about a month ago that it was the one space in the house that made us both annoyed whenever we had to spend more than a few minutes in it. That's not so good, so I decided to see what I could do to improve it, and came to the conclusion that a built-in desk would make a world of difference.

(An explanation of why a built-in desk was such an epiphany starts with the knowledge that the functional workspace of the study is just under 37 square feet, specifically 53 inches by about 100 inches. So every inch really matters -- and eating into that are baseboards that stick out slightly more than two inches from each wall. All of our existing furniture sat against that baseboard and hurt us by wasting the space behind it; realizing this led me to the built-in idea, and then embarrassingly, an episode of Toolbelt Diva that Shannon saw sold us.)

So, after a bit of design-by-Adobe-Illustrator, I came up with a desk idea that incorporates a 20-inch-deep main surface spanning the narrowest part of the room and a 15-inch-deep return that runs the length of the long wall, all supported by ledger boards and a few diagonal struts. The goal was to move the work surface to the most logical spot in the room and optimize the amount of floor real estate by avoiding desk-to-floor supports; that way, we can put drawers on the floor underneath the desk unimpeded by legs or supports, and we can turn in our desk chair without banging our own legs or being restricted in any way. Likewise, we wanted to see whether we liked the new layout, and thenfree up even more storage by hanging some shelves along the narrow part of the room above the desk.

The dimensions of the desk were just large enough to prevent the whole thing being able to be cut as a single piece of a 4x8 sheet of finished plywood, so I had Home Depot cut us two pieces, one for the main surface and one for the return. Using a router, I notched both pieces so they'd come together across a secure joint, and then mitered some screen molding to tack onto the facing edge. While Shannon was priming all that, I cut the ledger boards and tested them out on the walls, and just before bed last night we got the ledgers on the walls and the first coat of paint on the desk surface and supports.

This morning, Shannon started the second coat of paint while I mitered some quarter round molding to run along the back edge of the desk (thus hiding the seam where it meets the wall). We primed and painted that, and after the Eagles game this afternoon, I installed the desk on the ledger boards. As we speak, the wood filler is drying in the screw holes holding the desk onto the ledgers and supports, and later tonight I'll throw a third coat of paint on the whole setup. Tomorrow will likely bring the final step, attaching the molding to the back edge, and we should be all done! It's already clear how big a change this will be; that room will go from barely tolerable to one of my favorite in the house, and I'm sure Shannon and I will start to quibble over who gets to be sitting and working in there. We can only hope!

(Note that I put up a Flickr photo set with pictures of the whole process; the set includes the pictures from this post, but has a few more as well.)

How to buy a miter saw

2006-10-20T19:08:35Z

I'm not sure how I failed to find this during my great miter saw hunt a few weeks ago, but back in 2002, someone named Tom Judkins penned an awesome post to rec.woodworking that goes into how to decide on a particular type of miter saw. His level of detail is terrific, and he includes a lot of tips on how to check whether a saw will cut true, kick your work off of the table, and help prevent injuries. It's worth a bookmark in any woodworker's browser.

Wandering around the neighborhood

2006-10-19T02:19:47Z

Since I was out of town all weekend (and crushingly, haven't been able to play with my new saw yet!), let's take a swing around the web and see what the last week has brought.

From the Chicago Tribune comes a few tips: hanging an extra layer of drywall on either side of an existing wall will make a room a lot quieter, and working with glass blocks is much easier if you use a new system that trades mortar for plastic channels and silicone caulk. There's also an autumn checklist for projects that'll help make sure you're insulated for the coming cold.
Do you have cracks running down your walls? According to the Boston Globe's handyman on call, those cracks might only be in the paint layer and not the wall itself; fixing them might only take a light sanding and a final thin coat of paint. The folks behind the San Francisco Chronicle's Sweat Equity column address cracks that are run a bit deeper and appear at sheetrock joints, explaining why they happen and recommending how you go about repairing them so they look as good as new.
Do you wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of your toilet's water supply coming on and refilling the tank even though nobody's used it? The Ask the Expert column in the Seattle Times recommends dropping a bit of food dye into the tank to help pinpoint where the leak might be.
Finally, the Philadelphia Inquirer takes a look at "manspaces", from redone subterranean basements to backyard writing sheds, and likes what it sees.

Happiness is a new miter saw

2006-10-12T11:15:01Z

The U.S. government might be engaged in a heated debate over the definition of torture, but here in Casa Queso, it's pretty clear that the term includes such things as having to take a weekend trip to Chicago the day after this box arrived as my anniversary present from Shannon:

Seriously, I cannot wait to get that bad boy set up!

A room of one's own

2006-10-05T20:27:39Z

From today's New York Times comes a pretty sweet article about homes designed with hidden rooms. I'll admit the same thing that one of the people profiled in the article does: this has always been a fantasy of mine, having a small space tucked away behind a bookcase or false wall; it has precious little to do with privacy and a tremendous amount to do with sheer dorkiness. Heck, after reading about Maggie and Jason's discovery of a hidden room in their house during a renovation, I'm pretty sure I had a dream or two that Shannon and I found one in ours. Nevermind that our lot is all of 15 feet wide, and we can account for every square inch of our home without even breaking a sweat... I can't imagine where I'd tuck a hidden room. But a man can dream!

Thoughts on miter saws?

2006-09-28T01:21:33Z

After planning enough projects I want to do around the house, and watching enough DIY television, I now realize that it's insane for me not to own an miter saw. Thinking about specs, it seems like a no-brainer that I should get a compound miter saw (in other words, the motor and blade shouldn't just create angled cuts, but should also create bevels by rotating around the front/back axis). But given my two big constraints -- cost and space (we have a tiny basement we use for all our storage) -- I'm not so sure that moving up to a sliding compound miter saw for the extra $400+ that it'd add to the price is all that necessary. I'd love to hear other people's opinions, on whether my assumptions make sense, on brands that would be good for a non-pro weekend warrior like myself, and on anything else that seems appropriate!

Finding a trustworthy contractor when you can't DIY

2006-09-15T16:06:53Z

The Washington Post had a good article two weeks ago that offered up an interesting perspective on the relationship between homeowners and the contractors they hire. From the woman who hired a friend (and regretted it nearly instantly) to the man who held a barbeque for his contractor and crew, the article boiled down to three succinct points: do your homework (check documents and references), use the word-of-mouth network as fully as possible, and find someone who fits your own style and expectations.

A new pegboard makes Jason a happy man

2006-09-07T18:22:04Z

Having my first bona fide basement, I've been pretty excited to get around to creating a little workbench area, a place I can use to do little projects and organize my tools. Of course, that's easier said than done, and with my new job and with the bunches of visitors we've had over the past month or so, I never got around to making that happen. This past weekend, though, I guess Shannon finally got tired of hearing my whining; she dropped by Home Depot and got a length of pegboard (as well as a nice kit of pegboard hooks and tool holders), and that's really all it took to get me moving on the project.

Our basement walls are brick and mortar, so all I really had to do was mount two four-foot one-by-twos horizontally to hold the pegboard up, and I was good to go. Then, I just emptied my toolbox onto the workbench and figured out what was worth hanging -- and I gotta say that I'm pretty darned pleased with the result!

As in all things organizational, the key is less in how the board looks today as it is how it'll look in a few weeks' time; we'll see if I'm able to keep it neat, since my biggest frustration has been being able to find the tools I want to use at any given point in time. Likewise, getting everything up off my workbench is awesome, but I'll be happier still when I'm able to resist cluttering that surface up again (or, in what might be my favorite saying from my mother-in-law, "crapping it up with shit")!

Catching up

2006-08-26T02:41:56Z

Wow, it's been a little while since I did any home improvement -- Shannon and I have been out of town for two straight weekends, and we have long-anticipated visitors this weekend, so our plates have been a little full! But that also means that I've got a bunch of projects on-deck, including something a little ambitious for me: building a new wraparound desk into our wee little study. I've been playing around with designs in Illustrator for the past few days, and I figure I'll have my materials list ready in a few more and then get down to brass tacks (or wood ledger boards!).

In the mean time, I feel like Kevin Kelly has been rocking it with simplicity over at Cool Tools, with the speed square on Wednesday and the magnetic drive guide on Monday. (My confession: after his post on Monday, I bought that magnetic drive guide, had it shipped via Amazon Prime, and have used it a half-dozen times already. I honestly have no idea how I've lived without it for this past ten to twenty years of using a power drill.)

DemoBags to the rescue

2006-08-10T01:58:25Z

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools site has another awesome equipment tip today that I feel the need to pass on: DemoBags. Made of tightly-woven plastic fiber, the bags are supposed to hold anything you throw at 'em, and withstand the abuse that's typical of demolition and renovation waste disposal -- which makes them perfect for the 400 to 500 pounds of broken-up concrete that I need to clear out from beneath our backyard deck. I ordered a batch of them from Absolute Home, and I'll let y'all know how they work out!

Non-contact voltage sensors

2006-08-04T14:59:22Z

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools highlights a tool, a non-contact voltage sensor, that I've found to be invaluable each time I try to figure out the maze of wiring that's tacked up to our basement joists. The one that the site features is the Fluke VoltAlert; when I was stocking up on new-homeowner tools, I went with the GB GVD-504A Circuit Alert, at less than half the price (and eligible for Amazon Prime or super-saver shipping). If you find yourself needing to work with electricity, it's a no-brainer that you need one of these in your toolbox.