Fireplace surround/cabinet

Another project that came out of the shop when I was building the bar room was this fireplace. With our home already pretty much 100% electric, I didn't want to add any more electrical useage to the house, so I opted for a ventless, propane fired fireplace and this one absolutely does the trick in heating up the bar room. I keep it low when the room is not in use, so when I go out there to prepare for entertaining, I turn up the heat with a remote that also serves as the thermostat and within ten minutes, the room is up to the desired temp and the fireplace doesn't kick on again for what could be up to hours.

The cabinet/surround was basically straight forward carpentry with some nice woodworking added in - such as the walnut dentil moulding. I did have to adhere to some code enforced measurements as far as dimensions around the firebox and how high above the firebox the top of the cabinet could be and how far out in front of the structure it could extend. With those things in mind, it was still easy to build. It came out very nice in my opinion.

Dart Board cabinet

Those of you who may have seen the YouTube video tour of my property and bar room may have noticed this dart board cabinet. I quickly highlighted it in the video tour of the bar room. In case you missed the video tour - you can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3rDptHlsGM

This cabinet was one of the last things that I built for the room. I wanted convenient dart storage and accomplished that with in-door storage that holds them firmly and they are always there ready for playing when you open the doors. I finished the red oak and walnut cabinet with high gloss Waterlox because I had used that for the rest of the rooms vast amount of wood and wanted it to blend in with the rest of the room and it does quite well. I added a small strip light in the top of the cabinet to assist in illuminating the dart board itself. All in all, a very nice project that was fairly simple to make.

Kitchen cabinetry

When our son Jim and his wife Mari purchased their home out near Allentown, PA, the home needed some sprucing up - as any home would. Included in that plan was replacing the horrid kitchen cabinets that were in place. I volunteered to build them, as this would get them new cabinets and save them a ton of money in the process. They REALLY needed new cabinets!

Nothing fancy - as at the time, they weren't even sure if they would be staying in the home for a long period of time. I suggested that they didn't go with something such as maple, oak or cherry since if they were going to move out in a few years, why bother. So, we went an inexpensive route and they still got some pretty darned nice cabinetry and the bonus that it was built by family. It really made a difference in their kitchens appearance.

Cigar/Cigarette pack holders

I ended up with a good amount of walnut left over from the tissue box project just below that I simply couldn't throw it out. It was already planed down to 1/4" thickness and I just couldn't bring myself to throwing it out into the kindling barrel. I came up with some other Christmas gifts for some buddies who smoke cigars or cigarettes. I made these little boxes that hold a cigarette pack or in the case of the photo accompanying this entry, a cigar holder. This box size is designed to hold two packs of the Middleton five pack cigars. Pretty simple design. I actually thought of this project because it allowed me to try a clamping idea that I had seen in the past, but had never tried. It involves using tape as a clamp mechanism instead of actual clamps. It actually works like a charm on small projects such as this.

Walnut tissue boxes

One of my most recent projects are these tissue boxes that I built for Christmas gifts. I originally made 14 of them - a few for our home and the rest for family and freinds for Christmas gift giving. I posted a picture of one of them on one of my favorite forums on the internet and a number of people expressed interest, so I wound up making over thirty more of them and sold a number of them to people all across the country and even to one guy up in Alberta, Canada!

I hadn't used my box joint table saw blade set in a while and wanted to get it out and make something with it. These tissue boxes were the result. Another interesting note about these boxes is the fact that the walnut used to make them was procured by myself from the New Hope Solebury School district. They had two walnut trees come down near their field hockey fields and wanted to know if anyone was interested in them for firewood. Fortunately, my wife heard about it (she works in the school district business office) and I claimed them before the trees were cut up. I hired a gentleman with a portable sawmill to come to the site and cut them up into useable lumber. I got a bargain in the process! The sawmill fee, some help and supplies all totaled around $400. When I added up the total board feet of lumber that I got out of the two trees, I ended up with about $1,400.00 worth of lumber. It definitely was a score. Anyway, here is a picture or two of the boxes.

Laundry Trellis'

The wife and I grew tired of the same old same old t-shaped clothes line support structures that I had built over the years and eventually having them either rot away or simply become week and not very sturdy. We bit the bullet the last time we needed to replace them and sprung for cedar and I built these really nice trellis structures that should last quite a long time. I started by digging down deep into the ground and lining the holes with rigid plastic piping and then set the trellis legs into them and filled them with stone dust that will (1) firmly hold the legs in place and (2) allow drainage so that water doesn't continually remain around the bottoms of the legs and eventually lead to rot. The stone dust packed down very firmly and after a number of years now being out there, the structures are as solid as ever!

As you can see by the picture, I have hostas planted below them and in the springtime, I plant some kind of climbing vine that eventually covers the lattice work and provides a beautiful scene in the yard and makes it much more pleasant for Karen when she is out there hanging clothes to dry.

An Armoir Home for our TV

We knew for a while that our television was heading South. When we finally got around to getting a new one, we ended up buying a nice sized Vizio flat screen LCD TV. I also knew that when we did get a new television, I wanted to build this nice entertainment type center for it for our family room. Well, I mulled over design ideas in my head and just couldn't come up with an acceptable style that I was comfortable with. So, I changed my ideas around some and came up with this armoir style cabinet and it really came out nice. Constructed mainly of 3/4" oak plywood, I designed angled sides into it instead of having it simply be a big box in our family room. Another consideration was the type of doors I would have on it. I couldn't just have two big "barn door" type doors on it because when they would be opened up for viewing tv, the one on the left side would be swung far open into the path to get out to the kitchen. That made the idea of bi-fold doors the most sensible.

I also had to keep in mind that the rooms thermostat was located on the wall just behind where the tv has always been located. With an entertainment center type of thing, I could have had it within an opening of the center. However, an armoir style piece would totally block the thermostat. So, I was limited as to how high I could make the thing stand. That wasn't that much of a deal as I did manage to design it large enough to be functional and still grant access to the thermostat on the wall. You can see it just above and behind the armoir. There is closet space down below the tv compartment and also a shelf in the upper section for the sattalite box and DVD player. One other thing I incorporated into the design was embedded magnets in the doors that act as catches to keep the doors closed when not in use. Some custom shop-made walnut dentil moulding circles the front and sides of the cabinet to set things off.