Wondering About the Shelf Gaps

The next step is either to glue the full carcase or shorten the long apron pieces to eliminate the shelf gap. I'm concerned about a gap between the shelf and the legs/side rails. So is Melissa. She thinks they will fill with crumbs and dog hair. The gaps were not intentional, but they probably lend themselves to better wood movement.

So I dry fit the shelf between the sides and attempted to set the length between the sides to be what it would actually be. My main purpose here was to see if the gaps on either side of the shelf are acceptable, or if I should shorten my long aprons to eliminate the shelf gaps.


I'll wait until after next weekend because I'll see my brother, Brek. I'll get his opinion before moving forward.

Mortise and Tenon Depth Oversight

Most of my coffee table joinery will be floating mortise and tenons. But I'll cheat and make them using the BeadLOCK system. Today I made the easy mortises; on the apron pieces.

I discovered an oversight in my design. I had the aprons too close to the same corner of each leg. I had not accounted for the depth of each tenon. The only fix I could think of was to make my tenons shallower and move my front and rear aprons further from the corner. This little oversight may mean I don't have enough wood for the shelf. Right now, I'm too lazy to come up with a solution. Considering I don't really have a choice, I'll deal with it later. Worse case, I buy another board. More likely I'll just come up with another design for the shelf. Darn.

Coffee Table - The Design

Now that we have our new couch,


Melissa has been threatening to buy a coffee table. I, of course, insist that I can make one better and cheaper than anything she could find. So she showed me some pictures, we discussed, customizations, materials, dimensions, and now it's time to get started.

I used Google SketchUp to design it because 2D models just won't cut it. Here is what I came up with.

The top surface is based on an awesome dining room table my brother, Brek, built. His design is ingenious. The breadboard ends are actually attached to the legs. This allows the joined panels, between the breadboards, to expand/contract freely without an over-engineered way of attaching them.

The second shelf was trickier but I think I came up with something that will also allow for seasonal changes. The bottom storage area is an idea Melissa spotted in a picture. Instead of cabinet doors, or drawers, that would need a wide swing, I'll use doors with hinges on the bottom. This way, if the user is perched between the couch and the coffee table, they will still be able to open the coffee table doors and have full access to the storage space. I think this is the most practical way to conceal storage on a coffee table, which will obviously be right next to a couch.

Planning for the Floor Tile

After staring at the floor for hours we finally came up with a plan and drew some guide lines to help us. Tile should look good when one enters the room but we thought it should also look good in the space between the toilet and vanity. This would be the longest space. To keep it from looking too long and narrow and to hide our unsquare walls, we decided to use the brickwork pattern we used on the shower walls.

After lots of Google image searches for pictures of brickwork tile floors, I realized nobody seems to be doing this. Oh, well, we think it will look more interesting...

Chair Rail Shelf

I added the chair rail shelf to one side of the bathroom. This was my idea to transition from the tongue and groove planks to the uneven plaster/drywall combo on the top half of the walls. It worked pretty well. I had to cut the back of each horizontal shelf to match the bulges in the wall but I can't imagine any better way of making this transition and hiding the wall imperfections.

I think the shelf will look nice when it's painted to match the trim and the tongue and groove planks are painted. We'll see...

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Sink Faucet

I installed the sink faucet and trim today. It was a relief that we had all the parts and everything actually fit our porcelain vanity top. We used all Moen stuff and I think it went together a little easier than the Kohler faucets I put in the upstairs bathrooms. But then again, I hate Kohler.

I was pleased with my vanity design. The open back made it fairly easy to install everything. I hate going in from the front upside down trying to get to everything.

I'm excited to get these faucets hooked up to some water but it will be a long time until we're ready for that. Until then, we'll have to just look at a non-functional vanity in our guest room.

Renovating the Renovation

When Pam the Plumber stopped by last week to get her materials list (to change our polybutylene to copper), she noted how narrow our finished shower was going to be. She suggested a different design but said she was ready to rough-in the current shower. After a sleepless night and lots of staring at our unfinished shower and bathroom design, I posted the question on Terry Love's Shower and Bathroom Forum and John Bridge's Tile Advice Forum. Is a 26" wide finished shower too narrow?

When I read the first of many similar responses ("As long as you're not planning on using your arms to wash your body while in the shower, you should be fine."), I knew the decision was a no-brainer.

This will set me back several weeks because I have to remove framing, part of my tongue and groove wall panel, build a new wall, move my electrical, and determine how to install a deadwood stud without removing all of my finished wall.

I had my reasons for trying to build a shower in the old tub's footprint but I should have done more research and design. Oops. In the end, I'm sure it will be worth the pain, misery, and humiliation.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Tongue and Groove Planks

I've always hated drywall. I have limited experience working with it but I know it's a messy install and it feels hollow and cheap. I know drywall absorbs water like a sponge and weakens to nothing after water damage. One can easily kick holes in drywall or even do so by swinging a door handle into it. When it punctures or tears you see paper. It costs about $6 for a 4 X 8 sheet. How good can this stuff be? I just don't get it.

After Goggling "solid wood tongue and groove planks", something I had been toying with, all I see are post after post of people complaining about wood planks on their walls. Oh the horror! There are countless more articles on removing wood planks or covering them with drywall then anything praising both their aesthetic qualities and durability. What's up with this? My two favorite rooms in my 1920's house are those with the original pine planks.

So when it came time to determine a wall covering for our bathroom walls where the old tile used to be, I talked Melissa into tongue and groove planks hung horizontally. My original plan was to buy a router bit to cut the tongue and grooves. But my work colleague, Dave, brought me some samples of clean yellow southern pine sold at Lowes and HomeDepot that had the tongues and grooves cut already. Although, it would have been more fun to cut them myself, I went with Dave's easier suggestion.


The damn panels are a joy to hang and are thus far the most satisfying part of this bathroom renovation. They look a little country-ish now, for my tastes, but once painted, I think I'll get the old ship-type look I want.

Bathroom Renovation #2 - Plaster Demo

Melissa and I have had more conversations about how to tile the shower than anything else. Tile to the ceiling? Tile the ceiling? Tile the non-shower walls? Should the tile be flush with the wall board or overlap it? Should the glass block window have a tile frame or should there be wood on the top portion?

We think we've finally figured it out. The plan is to tile up enough to frame the window top, leaving the original plaster covered with its existing drywall above. The tile will overlap the wallboard at its transitions.

Ripping out plaster covered with drywall is one thing. Trying to do it while saving certain parts of it is another. Melissa used a utility knife and drywall saw at the boundaries. I used a reciprocating saw to cut the plaster boards where they could not be removed in their entirety. We used hammers, pry bars, and tin snips to remove the drywall, plaster, and mesh.

I stitched together 12 photos to show the future shower walls after the last messy chunk of demo. The plaster walls in the rooms on either side of the bathroom are visible. They appear strong and healthy after 87 years.

Designing With Google SketchUp

In the past, I typically approached project design by messing with scraps of wood out in my garage. I would hold them together and imagine potential joinery. Then I would start the projects using some basic design ideas and the rest of the design would fall into place as a kind of problem solving exercise.

This time, I stumbled onto Google's free 3D modeling program, Google SketchUp.

After the 5 minute tutorial I was hooked and I managed to spend about 2 days messing with my built-in shelf design. Although, it was frusterating to waste so much time messing with the 3D design, I flushed out quite a few bad ideas and narrowed my design down to something like this for now.

Mission #1: The Bathroom Cabinet

My mission? To build the perfect cabinet for the bathroom I just rennovated.

I have a few constraints, however:

Unlike my brother, Brek, who builds museum quality furniture, I devote a minimum of skills and tools to my woodworking projects. I'm fond of simple joinery like butt joints with lots of glue. My favorite tools are my Kreg pocket hole jig (essential for every good screw reinforced butt joint) and my Porter Cable power sander (essential for every mismatched joint and poor measurement). I also have a strict time constraint because I have many other hobbies competing for my free time.

What is this cabinet for? It needs to sit in the corner of our bathroom, against a knee wall, between a toilet and full length mirror. It will store bathroom stuff like toilet paper, poison ivy ointment, and extra soap.