Creating the Shelves and Slow Progress on the Crown

I bought 1x8 boards for the shelves with the intention of using two side by side to create shelves that are wide enough to hold the microwave.  I started down this path with out a clear way of how to attach them.  By some luck I ran in to someone that suggested using dowels, or if I had a table saw I could cut a line down the edge... this reminded me about the biscuit cuter.  The biscuits are the wafers on the shelf below:

The biscuit cutter makes slots that these fit into, and when glue is added the biscuits expand and hold the board snugly.  Above is a picture on the last shelf to be attached. Below are the 2 completed shelf boards (minus one final coat of finish). The blue x's indicate which side of the board I thought turned out better.  Also if I had known that this is how I was going to attach them from the get go, this process would be done before any finishing. But here I am, two steps forward one step back.

Below are the shelf brackets that I purchased online:

They are maple and will be finished with WaterLox to match the counter tops.

And then there is the cabinet crown.  50% was cut to size on Sunday.  Dad and I ran into several problems including chipping. Last night I stained the ends in hopes of being able to hide it after a coat of varnish. I'll let you know how that goes.

Undercabinet Lights

Last year Bryna had mentioned how awesome the tape on LED lights are for undercabinet lighting.  They're are a bit confusing looking at online.  But at BBC lighting they have a nice display and the salesman got me set up with all the different components that I would need.  Also we could compare the entire system quotes against a more traditional system and the LED was slightly less expensive. Dad had hard wires to connect the lights to so that they would go on with a switch.  And because this was an electrical project, Dad came down to help.

Here is the largest of the transformers that I needed with a 10 inch section of lights attached on the right side.

so the wire come out of the wall and goes into a mini junction box, where it connect to the transformer.  The transformer has wires that connect to the light tape connector (yes there really are this many connectors) and finally the lights in a piece of tape.

The cabinet crown molding will hide the components.

but the cabinet crown is a whole other story (that is far from done)

4 Hands

Remember this little guy, with the broken off fo-drawer front (from Thanksgiving)

Well it finally got glued back on.

Thanks (again) to Dad, because this project took four hands.  We would have used more but no one else could  have fit in the room. And so far it has stay attached!

Cabinet Crown Color Conundrum

I figured that I could stain the crown in the same why that I have been staining the shelf boards

1.       Wood conditioner

2.       Light purple water-based stain

3.       Dark red-brown oil-based stain

I would say that luckily I have gotten better at this whole sort of thing based on the fact that I try it out even if I think it will work.  No one would call me a patient person so this whole 'testing' process is a patience test for me. The test piece of crown looked horrible, it is all blotchy, the wood grain wasn't defined, I could hardly believe I used the wood condition on it. It was bad (see the top piece in the picture below)

I consider trying to make it look like the tag-a-long door, mixing paint and stain, but that had a terrible technique issue, the trying to have the correct ratio of paint and stain on your brush was not a science, it was all about guessing correctly- seriously it was ridiculous.

So my next idea was to use the paint and stain separately.  I tried the paint in two different ways- a dry brush technique and normal wet paint.  I did two coats of the paint, sanded lightly and then put a coat of the red brown stain on.  It was good but I thought maybe a second coat of stain would make it match better.  

In this picture, the surface matches the cabinets, the top test piece is the first stain method, the bottom piece is the paint first then stain and the ends have a second coat of stain for each technique of painting. Except the middle, I don't know what I did there.

I thought it was close, looked good next to the cabinets and will look better with varnish.  Last night I put the first coat of paint on all of the crown pieces.

Updating the Lighting in the Workshop

Since I bought the house the workshop has three permanent lights, one on a pull string and 2 on switches, their own switches. 

So as my shelf project and cabinet crown projects have been giving me trouble and are simply slow going due to dry times between coats of varnish.  Dad was down and feeling VERY motivate to make headway on the lighting issues, so that is was got tackled this past Saturday.

Dad started with a few basic ideas for the lighting:
1. He knew that all the lights should be on 1 switch

2. I needed more light

3. I suggested bulbs with globes so that if they get hit it hopefully won't break the bulb.

Dad found these at Fleet Farm, yeah he showed up ready to tackle this, there wasn't even an trip to home depot:

We installed two on each side of the workshop part of the basement. (And one is the 'mud room/stain' side)

 it is impressive how much better it is. This picture is just to show how bight it is:

I do think that I am making headway on the shelves and crown now, but that is a different story.