Small Side Projects 2

Here's a bit of a follow-up post to the last one. I mentioned a while ago the new step that I made for my Mom's place, and here's a photo of it in place.



She absolutely loves it, and I think it turned out pretty good. It looks like it still could have been a touch higher in the back right corner, but considering that each corner is a different height, and that I had to approximate a level line using only a 2 ft level, it came out pretty good.

Another small project that I finished just this week is that I FINALLY made some shelves for the built-in upstairs. It's been years already, and I just didn't feel like doing them, but this past week they got done, varnished, and installed.

The shelves are made from matching 3/4" thick fir plywood, and the front edges are capped with about a 1" wide strip of 1/4" thick solid fir taken from an old door casing.





That's about it for now. I will be working soon on my wing chair that's currently at the shop, so it should be fun to bring that home in a week or so. This was a cheap wing chair that I found, and I've modified the frame to make it look older. I have some old plain grey upholstery fabric that I bought years ago and never used, so basically, aside from spending a lot of time on it, this chair will largely have been free.

Small Side Projects

I recently finished painting the area under the stairs on the main floor. The underside of the stairs will stay raw wood (I had put all the nicer sides facing inwards) and I trimmed-out the edges with some spare lengths of 1/4 round. As mentioned previously, the door was also trimmed-out in plain casings on the interior side (the same as the other closet interiors).

For the walls, I used the expensive "oops" paint that I had originally bought to use in the bathroom, back in 2010. It's a shade of beige, but I found it was slightly pinkish, and a bit too dark for the bathroom, so I picked a different paint colour. So here are the results. I actually think it looks pretty good. I might use the same paint for the back stairway/entrance at the back of the house on the second floor (since I only used a fraction of the can).





There was no space on the left side wall for a baseboard or any kind of trim along the bottom because the drywall ends up flush with the edge of the floor, and flush with the edge of the log beam on this side. Because of this, I left both sides without any kind of baseboard or bottom trim, and I just finished the drywall and painted right down to the floor.





The 1/4 rounds were painted the same colour as the walls. I figured that it might look weird if they were white (like the rest of the mouldings/trim) because they're so small.



This is a small job I did for my mother as her birthday gift. She needed the height of her landing (a cement stair) raised because it has sunk over the years to the point where the step to get into the house is close to a foot high. She has trouble with her joints, so this was starting to be a pain for her and she asked if I could make a step for her.

This step is CRAZY because all 4 corners are different heights (ranging from around 5" to 7 1/2") to accommodate for the uneven slant/sinking of the existing cement step. This new step was designed so that it sits over the top of the slab, creating a third (or fourth?) small step, while also ending up nice and level. It was a bit tricky because of all the odd measurements, but I got it made entirely from scrap wood (she didn't even care if it was painted or not), and I filled all the holes, primed it, and gave it 2 coats of light grey oil paint (already had this on hand). I installed it just a few hours ago, and it looks great!



I might go take a photo of the step in daylight for a better "after" photo, and so you guys can see the setup.

Other than these, I've also been working on completing the modifications of a cheapo wing chair that I'm redoing (for myself), and just today I started building an antique (repro/salvage) bookcase, using a pait of old doors out of the salvaged "firewood" (the first pair shown).