Woodworking projects finished
(Written by kencraw)
Throughout the last couple months frequent visitors of this blog have heard a number of comments about how I had these bookshelves and desks that I was “finishing up” and that’s why the posting wasn’t quite as heavy as I would like.
Well, they are FINALLY finished.
Not “only varnishing left”. Not “only the drawers left”. Not “only have to bring them inside left”. Not “only have to make the computer baby-proofing covers” left. Not “only have to put the floorboards back on left”. Not “only have to clean-up the garage to get the cars back in left”. Not ANYTHING left. I’m DONE!!!
See:
Note that you can click on the pictures to go to my gallery of pictures for those projects, if you are so inclined. Or if you want to see all of my posted woodworking projects go to: http://thecrawfordfamily.net/gallery/Woodworking-Projects
For those of you keeping track, yes, these ran WELL behind schedule. Originally they were supposed to be done in one week’s vacation from May 23rd to June 1st. When I wasn’t even close to done after that week, I worked weekends until my 2nd week off (and I had to dump going to a sailing regatta to do this) from July 19th through July 27th. When I was closing in on final assembly after that week, I was pretty sure I could wrap it up with a strong effort before heading down for my first fall practice on August 9th. When THAT didn’t happen, the promise I made to my wife was that it would be done before the season started. Then it was a promise ot finish it Labor day weekend just after the season started. After that, there were no more promises, just the knowledge that every day it wasn’t finished was a day I was not in the good graces of my family.
FINALLY, 143 days after the cars were first kicked out of the garage, I put the final touches on the project yesterday, the cars are back in the garage and I am back in the family’s good graces!
…and you’ll start to see more blogging.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I never thought I’d read something lamer than Dad’s Christmas Letter/recap of every mudane moment of his past year…
Way to prove me wrong.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Well, I aspire to greatness bro.
October 14th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Ken…nice job! I recommend a 26″ flatscreen monitor to replace the current monitor.
Nice woodwork! It’s fun to complete big projects! Did you screw the top of the bookshelfs into studs to prevent the bookshelf from leaning in the event it gets too top heavy?
October 14th, 2008 at 9:28 am
carp, thanks. I haven’t quite got the bigger computer monitor through the family budget process yet. I was pretty close when I though that monitor wasn’t going to fit so I “had” to get a flat-sceen LCD of some sort. When the stinking old monitor fit, my ‘bailout plan’ was no longer a necessity… DANG! I’m up against the same issue with getting an HDTV. Something about spending too much money on going to the Bears games…
As for bolting the bookshelves, no, I didn’t. If I lived in the bay area and earthquakes were a real issue, I probably would, even though I don’t think it’s necessary. Those things overlap in the corners and are wedged in pretty good. It took quite a bit of pushing and shoving to get them to slide in. In fact, all the way around everything was a tighter fit than I had intended. Literally a millimeter here or there would have required modifications to get certain pieces to fit.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am
very impressive…was it worth it to do it yourself?
October 15th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Hard to say rag. I definitely would have done them at separate times had I known how much work I was in for. I would have probably finished both in less time that way. I ran into a lot of “scale” issues with doing it all together.
But as to whether it was worth it to do it myself, the problem is the very custom nature of the project. There’s no “buy it” option. If there was, I would have most definitely done that. The only other two options are “contract it out” or “do it yourself”. The contract it out option can be VERY expensive and often there are certain aspects that you can’t control or don’t get the quality or some detail you want despite asking for it again and again.
Overall, I probably spent about $2000 in materials and about 200 hours of my time. I suspect a contractor would have charged on the order of $5K to $10K. Assuming the expensive end, is my time worth $40 an hour (or $15 for the cheap end)? Probably, particularly considering how little disposable income I have. But it’s still tempting to think I could have just paid someone to do it.
Summing all that up, I guess when I add in the sense of accomplishment and getting exactly what I wanted, yeah, I am glad I did it myself, even though I’d caution someone else who was considering it to be very wary of the size of the time investment they were making.
October 15th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Plus you can say “I Built It”
Just don’t say it too loudly, the State of California Division of Apprenticeship Standards is trying to copyright that expression…