After finally installing a proper toilet, I set about hanging the beadboard on the walls. I had been dreading this step because of all the intricate cuts that were involved. It would’ve been easy if it was just a matter of measuring and drawing lines; but as I’ve said before, nothing is plumb in my house. Beadboard is like graph paper; it’s easy to see angles on it. I was worried that even if I cut everything perfectly, it would still look bad as I lifted corners to make the seams fit snugly. I decided to start by lining up the two light switches. I’m a nut for symmetry. I took it as a good omen that the first piece of paneling only need to be trimmed once to fit.

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As you know from the last update, we encountered some unexpected grief from the kitchen sink. Once we got all of that sorted out, my wife and I were able to turn our focus back to finishing the room. We’ve been very busy with work and family lately, so we haven’t had more than a day or two where we could devote our attention to the house. I managed to get a little carpentry done after work, including building these 18″ deep shelves for the pantry:

The pantry space is over three feet deep. We figured there was no reason to install such deep shelves, as we wouldn’t be able to reach anything in the back. And we couldn’t treat it like a walk-in pantry with shallow shelves, because the space is only two feet wide. My wife balked at the idea of putting in a false backing, since we’d essentially be throwing away good storage space in an otherwise small room. She recommended that we put shelves in the back for things we seldom use (specialty appliances and seasonal china), and build a movable pantry to maximize the volume of the space. This solution is actually closer to her original design, except that the pantry moves on wheels instead of on expensive, heavy-duty slide rails.

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We don’t have a lot to report. We’ve been hosting people in and out of the house a lot lately, and that trend will continue throughout the summer. After work last week, my wife and I found some time to cut and install the baseboards. Some of the cuts were difficult, especially where the cabinets meet the walls next to the stove. They still need a couple of coats of glossy white paint, but getting this trim work on the walls covered up the last traces of the old room:

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After last week’s work, I started stressing about how to frame the rear wall in a way that would be either inconspicuous or elegant. In other words, my options were to try to hide the laundry area or to accentuate it. I actually lost sleep about it. I wasn’t happy with either option, and I felt relieved when my wife emailed me on Tuesday to say she’d figured out what she wants. She put together a portfolio of kitchen images that had design concepts she liked, and she drew out this design for our rear wall:

It’s a blessing and a curse.

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One random morning a few years ago, I got the itch to build something. My wife has a fetish for teacups, but didn’t have a place to put them. I had recently made her a corner cabinet to display her wedding china and tea service sets, and I thought I’d make something to show off her favorite teacups. We really didn’t have much spare room in our cramped DC apartment, but we had a small area between the pantry and laundry doors in the kitchen. I jotted down this design and got her to sign off on it:

If I remember correctly, I had some leftover 1x3s and some beadboard from previous projects, so I really only had to buy some molding and hardware.

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My wife and I have lived in tiny one-bedroom apartments since college, and we were at a loss when we bought a house and it came time to decorate a spare bedroom. We decided that we need storage as much as we needed furniture, and we just couldn’t find furniture that maximized the potential of the space. So, naturally, we decided to make a shelving unit that would also serve to store many of her her sewing supplies. This was the design:

It was to be matching cabinets with bookshelves that incorporated a shelving span over the matching headboard. My in-laws were coming up soon, so I worked overtime to get it all done.

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I’ve always toyed around with building and carpentry, but most of my projects were small in scope or fairly simple in design. The first project that I would consider a real piece of furniture was a computer desk I made a few years ago.

When my wife and I moved in together for the first time, we tried to replace as much cheap college furniture as possible. Since we lived in a tiny, one bedroom, basement apartment, there was nowhere to hide the computer. Nothing looks more ‘dorm room’ than having a computer/printer set-up sitting next to your bed or kitchen table, so I decided to make a unit that would look antique and completely hide all traces of electronics. This was the design:

It was meant to be like a large secretary desk that would hold the monitor in a drop-down position, and the cabinets below would house the tower, printer, and a file cabinet.

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I got the idea to build a bar for our little backyard patio in DC from a magazine article where a cheap potting bench was transformed into a serving station. I liked the idea, but thought I could do a little better than a converted work station. This was my design:

What was difficult with this piece wasn’t the building; I threw it together in two days and painted it on the third. The hard part was knowing that it wouldn’t really be finished for years. I tend to get a little obsessive about my projects, and it was hard to accept that I had to quit after 90% of the work was done.

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When I bought my house, it had these built-in cabinets in the dining room area. They look good from far away, but a closer inspection revealed how warped and worn they were:

They must have been thirty years old, and it looked like every owner of the house since then made some kind of change to them. My wife and I decided to demo them, but we realized too late that the hardwood floors had lightened considerably since the original built-ins were put in. Since the floor we exposed was darker than the rest of the house, and since there was no way we were going to refinish the floors after moving in, we reluctantly decided to build new ones.

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