It's "Keezer" Time!

Now that I am retired...myself and a former co-worker who is also retired have breakfast each Friday morning to shoot the shit and stay in touch.  Besides that...it gets us out of the house and maintains a social life for us.  Matt asked me to help him with a  project he wanted to build.  He is big into beer and wanted his own beer tap set up at home.  He didn't want to buy the pre-made beer keg refrigerators that are on the market.  He searched the internet and came up with a set of plans utilizing a chest freezer..hence the name "Keezer"  Keg freezer I imagine.  Anway...the project necessitated that the lid be removed...a riser collar be installed on the cabinet of the freezer and then reattach the lid.  The collar would allow the placement of beer taps without drilling holes into the actual chest.  I did do that and I free handed box joints on the collar corners.  A mistake in measuring by Matt resulted in my needing to cut the depth of the collar and losing one of the teeth of the box joints.  Still, the collar fit amazing and it looked great once attached by silicone caulk and it works well. 


He went a step further and asked me to fab up a nice hardwood top to dress it up.  I had a length of white oak sitting around the shop for quite a long time...not knowing what I would do with it since I basically work with red oak.  This project would be a great way to get a use out of it.  Kept it simple with a minor bead detail circling the perimeter of the top on the sides and applied three or four coats of full strength polyurethane and then a couple more thinned coats for a good application that smoothed out in the cooler shop and left no brush marks due to a slow settling in of the finish.  The difficulty level of this project was minimal...but still, it made the Keezer look really nice and will be proudly used for years.

Rackin' Up the Fishin' Poles

I have to give lots of credit to my wife!  She has been putting up with my storing my fishing poles in our coat closet in the house.  Had some spare time today and was inspired  by the fishing pole rack my brother Dave has in his garage.  It is a simple design really, and I spent about two hours today erecting this one.  Problem solved.

A Captains Bed for a Little Girl

This is the second such bed that I have built in this fashion.  If you take a look through the archives of this blog, you will find it.  That one was for my niece.  This bed is for a buddy's daughter who was in need of a bed.  I was happy to build it.

A Hutch for the Kitchen project!

In fabricating the new kitchen cabinets....the wife wanted to include a slide out garbage container deal.  Which is good...I would like to eliminated the sight of the garbage can from the kitchen also.  However, it cost us a few drawers.  To make up for that....and to make up for a coffer mug shelf and a spice cabinet that were also lost to the new remodel, I built this hutch to take up the slack.  Came out really great with slide out drawers on the bottom behind the doors...a large pull out drawer just below the counter top and then up above...a mug nook and slide out spice drawer, as well as some additional storage behind a pair of doors at the top. Some pics of it's fabrication:

Our kitchen remodel this summer

It's been a while since adding any new projects into my blog.  A good reason for that is that I was busy a bee renovating our kitchen.  Before even getting into the demo of the old kitchen, I was busy in the shop fabricating the new red oak cabinets that were going to be installed in the renovation.  Here - a few pics of the cabinet building:

  Those pictures being from the shop....here are a few of the kitchen remodel once the cabs were built and ready to install:

  It was a heck of a large job, but I have to say...very well worth the time and expense!