Author Topic: Office Remodel  (Read 24033 times)

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #50 on: April 05, 2016, 07:33:10 AM »
While waiting for the garage to warm up a bit this morning to start making drawer fronts, I thought I would post a picture of the drawer bodies installed. This is the right side of the desk and a mirrored copy of the left side. The inside two drawers on either side will be filing cabinets and the outside two drawers will be storage.

I ended up buying about 40 board feet of oak from the sawmill and will just make solid drawer fronts with perhaps some sort of routed detail around the perimeter to break up the face a bit. The doors will be solid oak rails and stiles with a finished plywood middle.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #51 on: April 08, 2016, 07:34:09 AM »
The stack of drawer fronts awaiting stain when the garage warms up a bit this morning. I made them out of solid oak and was able to find boards wide enough (coming from a sawmill I have to buy them as they come and can't sort) that I only needed one glue and biscuit joint to make them wide enough. Because I only have a 12 inch chop saw and my table saw is only big enough to rip boards 10 inches or less, the only way I could cut these to size was to use a straight edge and my skilsaw. I put on my best blade and went slow. Oak is pretty forgiving and splintering the edges was not an issue unlike poplar or pine would have been. I also put a decorative wavy s profile along the edges so they just don't look like scare boards. A little bit of detail goes a long way towards making them feel like purchased high end furniture. I also got my drawer handle hardware in the mail the other day so hopefully in a few days, I can start mounting them to the drawer bodies and transferring my filing cabinet and other supplies to my drawers and out from under the stairs where everything is right now.

john6221

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #52 on: April 08, 2016, 07:47:13 AM »
How do you cut your dovetail joints? Router?

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #53 on: April 08, 2016, 12:44:30 PM »
How do you cut your dovetail joints? Router?

Up until this project, I have most cut box joints on my tablesaw with a homemade jig and a dado blade setup. However, I used my Porter Cable dovetail jig for the first time making full dovetails on this project. I bought it as a kit so it came with the proper bits and collars needed but because my router is a Bosch, I had to buy an adapter to convert it to the Porter Cable sized opening. It was a little finicky to get adjusted that first time but once you get it set up, I cut all the dovetails in a hour probably. If I had done the same on my table saw, it would have taken me the better part of a day.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #54 on: April 11, 2016, 04:01:59 PM »
Well the drawers are finally completed with the drawer fronts and hardware now installed. Of the eight lower drawers I have, the inside 4 are filing cabinets and the outside two on each side (some not visible in the below picture) are just storage drawers. This effectively doubles my filing capacity which was maxed out and probably increased my storage capacity by a factor of ten compared to my old desk. That is not even counting the overhead cabinets which I am going to start making doors for next.

The other picture shows the opposite wall of the office which will be a 'spare' bedroom. The Murphy bed that I built is in the middle with a combination dresser/nightstand/closet to the left and a bookcase to the right. I will be building a door for the upper closet part of the combo designed to hold a dozen shirts on hangers. I love how it turned out. It has always been a dream of mine to have a nice office instead of a desk tucked into the corner of my living room.

Still to do is:
 - Doors for all the cabinets
 - Trim
 - Touch up paint
 - Hang up some artwork on the walls

Not a long punchlist.

john6221

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #55 on: April 11, 2016, 08:53:30 PM »
Got a general question for you...how do you secure your workpiece when you use a plunge router? I just got a router and am excited to use it...but I can't figure out how to use it without clamps that just seem to get in the way.

dess1313

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #56 on: April 11, 2016, 09:12:26 PM »
Wow i wish i could work with wood at the level you are!  All of it looks fantastic!!!  Nice job on the remodel, and the ideas on how to make it multipurpose with the hidden bed. 

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #57 on: April 12, 2016, 07:09:04 AM »
Got a general question for you...how do you secure your workpiece when you use a plunge router? I just got a router and am excited to use it...but I can't figure out how to use it without clamps that just seem to get in the way.

Best way is to buy yourself a router pad. They work well. http://www.amazon.com/Big-Horn-19116-24-Inch-Non-Slip/dp/B003NE5AY6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460466465&sr=8-1&keywords=router+pad

Another way is to use a vice and dog system on your workbench. I don't have that so I just use the router pad.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #58 on: April 12, 2016, 07:14:32 AM »
Wow i wish i could work with wood at the level you are!  All of it looks fantastic!!!  Nice job on the remodel, and the ideas on how to make it multipurpose with the hidden bed.

Thanks! Most of what I have done has required a very basic set of tools and skills to accomplish. The drawers were probably the most technical and required a more expensive set of tools to make, but, there are many other ways to make drawers using much simpler methods and tools. I know others who buy drawers and then build around them. At the end of the day, I enjoy working with wood as my medium. I someday hope to actually do so out of a proper woodshop instead of just a half bay in my garage after I back all the cars outside.

dess1313

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #59 on: April 12, 2016, 03:53:03 PM »
I can do the basics, frame a wall with a bit of help, or put trim board up.  I can also shingle a roof.  Its the making of cabinent boxes and the finishing type of work that im not experienced in.  Maybe one day

pbkmaine

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #60 on: April 12, 2016, 04:07:31 PM »
You may have shown this already, but how do the doors open for the Murphy bed?

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #61 on: April 14, 2016, 06:42:57 AM »
You may have shown this already, but how do the doors open for the Murphy bed?

In the picture above you can see two handles about five feet up on the bed. If you pull those handles, the entire face of the cabinet with the bed lowers down. There is a leg that you can unfold partway down that keeps the bed up off the floor. The entire weight of that is supported by two shocks so one can easily do all this with one hand. Right now the forum isn't letting my attach any other pictures but when I can, I will attach another showing the bed in the open position which will give you a better idea.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #62 on: April 19, 2016, 08:33:43 AM »
Here is a photo of all the doors glued and clamped up. I've said it before, one can never have too many clamps for projects like this. Fortunately I bought most of my clamps at an estate auction a number of years ago for about 1/4th of new price.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #63 on: April 19, 2016, 08:35:53 AM »
You may have shown this already, but how do the doors open for the Murphy bed?

In the picture above you can see two handles about five feet up on the bed. If you pull those handles, the entire face of the cabinet with the bed lowers down. There is a leg that you can unfold partway down that keeps the bed up off the floor. The entire weight of that is supported by two shocks so one can easily do all this with one hand. Right now the forum isn't letting my attach any other pictures but when I can, I will attach another showing the bed in the open position which will give you a better idea.

I finally figured out how to get a picture posted again. Here is the Murphy bed in the lowered position.

Bracken_Joy

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #64 on: April 19, 2016, 08:56:39 AM »
Incredible work! Posting so I can follow and find again later. I want to learn much of this. =)

john6221

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #65 on: April 19, 2016, 10:00:23 AM »
How did you assemble the doors? Tongue and groove with the panel inserted?

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #66 on: April 19, 2016, 11:25:46 AM »
How did you assemble the doors? Tongue and groove with the panel inserted?

That is exactly how I did it. I did all the joinery work on the table saw. I attached a picture of the pieces before I glued everything together. The panels were cut from 1/4" plywood.

john6221

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #67 on: April 19, 2016, 12:09:05 PM »
Cool! Did you use a dado stack? Any tips on how to get good dado fits? No matter how careful I am, I always seem to have a few thousands gap here and there on the tongue....it's frustrating.

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #68 on: April 19, 2016, 12:19:43 PM »
Cool! Did you use a dado stack? Any tips on how to get good dado fits? No matter how careful I am, I always seem to have a few thousands gap here and there on the tongue....it's frustrating.
I was going to ask the same thing!

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #69 on: April 19, 2016, 05:29:47 PM »
Cool! Did you use a dado stack? Any tips on how to get good dado fits? No matter how careful I am, I always seem to have a few thousands gap here and there on the tongue....it's frustrating.

For the dado, I just used my regular tablesaw blade and ran the board through off center one way, rotated the board 180 degrees and ran it through again. I have a dado stack but I don't really have a combination that will do the slightly under a 1/4" slot that I need. The kerf on my regular blade is 1/8". It takes a few tries to get the right fit. I usually use a scrap board of the same thickness and sneak up on the final width of the dado slot so it fits nicely with the plywood. Due to variations between sheets of plywood, I try to do this for each new sheet I use. For this project, I only needed one sheet for all the door panels so I only had to adjust my saw the first time.

For the tenons, I could use my regular blade but it would take quite a bit longer. For the setup, I set the fence to the outside of the blade distance to the length of the tenon. I then place my piece against the fence and push it through with the miter gauge. Then it is just a matter of moving your piece away from the fence and nibbling away the material, flipping the piece over and repeating on the other side. On the first piece, I sneak up on the blade height which determines the tenon width to get a good fit for whatever the dado ended up being dimensionally. I had 1/2" long tenons which meant a minimum of 4 passes using my 1/8" blade if I was dead on and ends up being more like 6 passes. So to save time, I do put on a dado stack of about 3/8" and make two passes per side. I have an old Skilsaw table saw and it takes only about 3 or 4 minutes to change over so it saves me a lot of time in the end when I had a lot of pieces to do like this project.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #70 on: April 25, 2016, 08:35:51 AM »
First batch of doors are now installed. I ran into a little hiccup but I think I will be able to work around it. When I designed the cabinet carcasses, I chose a 2" faceframe because that seemed aesthetically pleasing. At the time, I didn't know what I would do for doors. Flash forward to when I calculated door sizing, I arbitrarily decided to make the doors overlap the openings in the faceframe by 1/2" all the way around. So when I have two doors side by side, that leaves me with only 1" of real estate for two pairs of hinges. When I ordered hinges, I didn't think about this fact and the hinges actually are about 5/8" wide.

The solution to this problem is that I thankfully don't have an entire wall of cabinets like this. I pushed the center doors as close together as I could and centered them but I have an extra 1/8" on each side that I now have to deal with. When I go to install the set of doors on either side of these doors, they no longer will overlap evenly in the openings though they will have an overlap and it won't be noticeable until you actually open the door and maybe study things for awhile. Because the next set of doors on either side of these center doors are the last doors, any extra space I didn't count on can be consumed by the 2" faceframe up against the walls. Instead of the 1" margin I envisioned in my head, it will be closer to 1/2". If I could do things over, I would have chose 1/4" for an overlap and things would have been cherry.

Anyway, the project is finally coming to a close as soon as this second batch of doors is complete. I can't wait to move onto the next item of my honey-do list.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #71 on: April 29, 2016, 11:49:18 AM »
All good things must come to an end and so does this topic. I am considering this project done for all intensive purposes. I have to put up the trim and do some touch up painting but who wants to see that. I started this project right after Thanksgiving when I gutted the room so in all, it has taken me around 5 months of working a few hours here and there. It probably cost me about $700 in wood and another $300 in stain, paint, poly, hardware, etc and probably another $500 in drywall, insulation, lumber, ceiling system and carpet tiles. So all told around $1500 for a complete overhall done completely DIY style.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #72 on: April 29, 2016, 11:56:03 AM »
And for kicks and giggles since I never showed these to start with, what it looked like when I started.

ShoulderThingThatGoesUp

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #73 on: April 29, 2016, 02:25:01 PM »
That really looks fantastic. I hope you are proud of it.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #74 on: April 29, 2016, 04:18:32 PM »
That really looks fantastic. I hope you are proud of it.

Thank you! Although I have made pieces of furniture before, this was my largest to date plus the first time I have built filing cabinets and overhead cabinets. I am really happy. I've always wanted a desk that had plenty of outlets to plug things into and didn't have a wad of wiring underneath along with just a lot of space and good lighting to work at and not always shuffling things around. I also ended up with a spare bedroom that doesn't take up much room except for that few days a year when the Murphy bed gets folded down. I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Frugal Lizard

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #75 on: April 29, 2016, 06:03:09 PM »
Sweet job - congratulations on the craftmanship

With This Herring

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #76 on: April 30, 2016, 09:39:33 AM »
*snip* I am considering this project done for all intensive purposes. *snip*

FTFY: "I am considering this labor-intensive project done for all intents and purposes."

Seriously, though, you have done some gorgeous work!  I love your cabinetry and how neatly you made the the Murphy bed blend into the rest of the work.  It has been really cool following your progress on this.

lthenderson

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #77 on: May 02, 2016, 08:19:28 AM »
*snip* I am considering this project done for all intensive purposes. *snip*

FTFY: "I am considering this labor-intensive project done for all intents and purposes."

Seriously, though, you have done some gorgeous work!  I love your cabinetry and how neatly you made the the Murphy bed blend into the rest of the work.  It has been really cool following your progress on this.

Thank you for the grammar correction. Living in a rural area, I find my daily life surrounded by bad grammar and sometimes it infiltrates my writing despite my best intentions.

One of the reasons I went with the Murphy bed was because it can be blended to its surroundings. I've seen ones with tables and even loveseats that pop up when not in use.

pbkmaine

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Re: Office Remodel
« Reply #78 on: May 02, 2016, 08:22:36 AM »
Lovely job!

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!