Adventures in Woodworking

Brandon had mentioned before in the past that he might be interested in learning to do woodworking. I have always hoped to encourage hobbies other than video games. I don't have much against video games, they're good stress relievers and fun to play, but sometimes you need a hobby that is enriching to your mind, has useful skills and invokes a real sense of accomplishment.

For Christmas Santa brought Brandon a new drill, hammer drill, and a nice ratchet set. The first thing he asks is what should I build with my new tools? Some brainstorming went on and we decided on making a bench to put in the hallway to organize our shoes and make a convenient seat for putting on shoes. For years we've had just a large wicker basket to hold our shoes and up until recently, all the kids shoes plus the 4 pairs of shoes Brandon always wants in the basket, it just wasn't enough room and Ian had really taken to dumping out all the shoes so he can flip the basket over and stand on it to reach things on the counter (who teaches these kids these things?!).

We both came up with a general design we liked and then Brandon worked out all the measurements and details and purchased the materials. The bench is 18"x16"x6' has 6 cubbies on each end and a large open space in the center. Each cubby is large enough to fit an adult pair of shoes side by side. Brandon decided to make it from solid pine with oak cubby dividers and stained in pecan. He wanted a darker stain like cherry, so I don't know why he chose a pecan stain. I guess he figured the soft pine would absorb more stain than it did. It looks fine anyway. The whole assembly is grooved, glued, and screwed. It's not gonna fall apart anytime soon. We learned after the fact how to route a straight groove through the center of the piece of wood so he had to do a lot of wood filling to close up the gaps in the seams. It's not too noticeable unless you're looking for it.

When it came down to sanding it before staining, it sat in the garage un worked on for several days. I know how these projects go when you get to your least favorite part of it. After the excuses kept flying, I went ahead and did all the prep sanding myself so Brandon could get right to staining and the garage could be restored to order. It really bugs me when things are out of place and especially half finished! So he spent all day Saturday staining it up, the most beautiful day ever. It was like the perfect spring day. Seriously, is it really winter? While he was doing that I went out to find just the right set of baskets for the center space. After digging through and measuring about a billion baskets at Michaels, I found the perfect pair. These baskets were made just for this bench. Better still they were 50% off. When it was all done and put together, we brought it in and it fit the space perfectly. The shoes fit in just right, the kids were so excited to use the new peice of furniture that they both went running all over the house to find every shoe possible to put in the bench. When Zoey asked what the baskets were for, I told her they were for socks and hats and gloves and the like she immediately went upstairs to find socks to fill them. So funny. I just hope its a while before Ian realizes he can take those baskets out and dump them out and flip them over to reach things on the counter :-P

Funny thing is he only briefly used his Christmas drill, but no other Christmas tools for the project. I think it cost about $140 for the bench. Pretty good price for a solid piece of custom furniture. Brandon is pretty proud of how it turned out ad I really like it too. For a first project with no prior experience, it's downright amazing. We learned a lot, I see plenty of future projects. I intended to take pictures of the whole process of the bench building but somehow that didn't happen so here's the finished product.

Brandon probably should have wrote this blog himself, be he said men don't blog, so check the comments, I'm sure he has something to say for all this.