Nature vs nurture

I spent many long hours designing our new kitchen, thinking, board by board, how much wood I would need, visiting a saw mill, getting a quote for the sawing, kiln-drying, planing, and the shipment costs of the wood. Here are a couple of pages of the 10 or so sheets of drafting I prepared to meet this challenge head on.





























Ultimately, however, my Kessler genes that got the better of me, and so I simply built some shelves in the bathroom instead.

Wedding bookcase

As promised in a previous post, I set about making a bookcase / entertainment centre for all of the wedding books we received almost a year ago. Although it doesn't look like the one in the Pottery Barn catalogue (shown in a previous post), it does the trick.

Mr Winch Redux

You could be forgiven for having thought that Mr Winch was a Single Purpose winch (viz. for raising and lowering the clothes drying rack). Not so.

This week's project was to use the boards I had so carefully learnt to glue together in previous weeks to create, complete and install a linen cupboard/shelves. As projects go, this one made greater use of tools than any project I've undertaken so far, setting me that much further apart from lower life forms.

Once I had my cupboard, though, I had to find some way of perching it twenty feet above a flight of stairs, in a corner opposite the drying rack. And to make the challenge that little bit more challenging, I had to do this on my own. And because the walls are plaster and masonry, I would need to install wall plugs to make it work.

So this is what I did:

(1) I designed a way of attaching the cupboard to a series of cords which would not foul the positioning of the cupboard against two walls (after all, I had to be able to remove the cables once the cupboard was in place). I also designed a cup-holder-like-thing on the base of the cupboard so that I could get a purchase on the cupboard from underneath with a bundle of timber I had to hand.

(2) I harnessed the cupboard to the pulley system and Mr Winch, and I lifted the cupboard into the air.

(3) I tied a cable from the harness to a door jamb on the other side of the stairwell from the pulley system, giving me lateral maneuverability.

(4) I pulled this slightly towards the door jamb and then propped it against the wall with the help of a bundle of timber and a strut.

(5) I then tightened the winch, repeating step 4, until I had the cupboard up in the corner.

(6) I then made this fast by screwing the support timber into place and using a G-clamp to affix the edge of the cupboard to the wall to the left hand of the cupboard.

(7) I drilled pilot holes into the wall through the cupboard's lateral supports. This involved climbing onto the staircase banister and hovering, with one hand for support, over the 20 foot drop....

(8) I then slowly worked the cupboard back down the wall and out of the way, so that I could drill holes in the wall and insert wall plugs.

(9) Finally, I worked the cupboard back into position, secured it, screwed it in, removed the cup-holder, removed the harness and, voila! All done.

(10) Oh yeah, and I hoovered for an hour to get up all the sawdust and plaster dust.

Finished product:

Meet Mr Winch!

Meet Mr Winch. It's been some months since I put up our clothes drying frame. From the beginning, it had occurred to me that this contraption could be dangerous if mishandled. When the rack is full, it's actually quite heavy, and a slip of the rope could bring the whole thing crashing down. So I was on the lookout for a winch, anyway.

Then, while I was in Columbus this past month, Susie simply did not use the rack, because it was too heavy for her to manage fully loaded. So I went online and ordered a winch (apparently designed to be mounted on a pickup truck for use hauling boats onto boat trailers).

There were lots of nuts and gear ends and things which needed to be nestled into the wooden frame I designed for mounting the winch on the wall. But it's now in place and, voila! It works!

We're also working on building a linen cupboard at the top of the stairs. I'm using this opportunity to practice gluing boards together so that when the time comes to make book shelves, I'll be all practised-up! So in the last week or so, I've also bought a lot of sash clamps and such. Fun! The good news is that there's plenty of room for improvement.