This is the whole thing open, when it is finished, there will be two wings that open, the one on the right at a right angle and the one on the left will be parallel with the table top, the doors will hold them in position.

This is the lift I installed.

This is the sewing machine in the “sewing position”

This is a view of the hole with the lift. You are supposed to attach the sewing machine to it but I want to be able to take my machine out sometimes so I didn’t, it is perfectly stable without and you can lean into the lift to lower and raise it.

And finally….this is what it will look like when I’m not using it.

When I preview this the right side of all photos are cropped out, hoping that won’t be the case when I post it, sorry if it is.

This is the doors and one of the tops-the door on the right is very dusty…

This is one of the tops

I started on the doors last weekend too, but discovered I had a problem with my jointer so it took me the rest of last weekend and part of this weekend working on that before I could get going on the doors. I have the door frames cut, jointed and planed, so now I can start on the rest. Unfortunately, it may not be real soon, I have some weekend plans coming up so might have to delay.

This seems to be taking me an awfully long time….seems wrong!

Thanks for reading.

The first major boo boo was when I was cutting the dadoes in one of the sides for a shelf and cut it too deep. I think I may have mentioned this in one of my other blogs. To fix this I cut a strip of wood the width of the dado 1/4” thick and glued it in. When it is all done you will never see it, but it still pissed me off.

The next one was a big one. I had put all the rails inside the cabinet for the drawers (it calls for wooden rails and you cut dados in the sides of the drawers which slide over them) After I put them in I was playing around with the drawer fronts and noticed the rails were to long and the drawers were not going to close all the way. So I VERY carefully marked each one, got out my dremel and cut off about 1/2” off each one. Guess what….I hadn’t cut the 1/2” rabbits on my drawer fronts yet and they were that long because they were supposed to stop the drawer once the sides were attached to the drawer face. I fixed this by gluing pieces of wood in the back of the drawer so when you close it, that wood stops it. You can’t see it but I know it and that pissed me off too.

When I glued the sides to the top and bottom of the two pedastals I tried really hard to get everything square. I went so far as to make a couple of jigs to help me, but when I went to install the drawers, I realized I was not square…I didn’t do anything to fix that, but I am worried about the top, if it will be noticable when I get to that.

This weekend I tried to be really careful with the drawers, I dry fit all the pieces as I went, they all slid nicely and looked good. I had to do a little sanding or scraping here and there because I wanted the drawers to be nice and smooth, not tight and not loose. I thought I had it, I thought I was so good, I was so happy. I glued them all up last night and figured today was going to be so productive, throw the backs on the drawers and on to the next thing…..well…...the one item I did NOT dry fit properly was putting the drawers in with the sides, front and bottom all together. Because my pedastals are not perfectly square, the get hung up towards the back of the drawer….I spent ALL day playing around with those things. I sanded, scraped, scraped and scraped. Oh, did I mention I sanded???? I also put some “drawer slide” on them which helped but one of them is still hanging up a little. And of course these STUPID drawers are made with 1/2” plywood on the sides so I sanded thru the veneer…but you know what…..I don’t even care. I was so mad by the time I was done I am really thinking I might just throw this damn thing out the window. Not really….I won’t, my fall back is always…ah, if I hate it, I’ll give it to one of my kids…they love to take my junk.

The last and certainly not final (I haven’t finished it yet…more mistakes to come…) mistake happened when I cut everything out. I didn’t pay very much attention to the grain on the fronts of the drawers. They are not consistant and don’t match each other very well and that is such a beginners mistake!!

So…aren’t you happy you read this really positive, gung ho blog? I certainly feel better! Okay, so off to another week of work and looking forward (NOT) to getting back to this next weekend.

First I attached the drawer slides…

Then I glued the pedestals together

The plans called for all the parts to be cut out first but I learned a long time ago not to do that, so once the pedestals were put together I cut out all the drawer fronts, sizing them as I went. I then cut the sides for the drawers and did the rabbits on the drawer fronts. Here is a picture of the pedestals, the drawer parts and the back, none of this is attached yet.

So, it’s finally starting to look like something. I’m pretty excited. I won’t be able to get back to it for a couple of weeks though because I am going to go see another project that has been brewing for about 9 months….

My grandson Jordan and his new baby brother Jayce…..See you all in a couple weeks

I had to make the drawer slides which entailed cutting them from 3/4 oak and planing them down to 1/4. I have a band saw but it is a cheap one and is really only good for rough cutting, I didn’t want to rip the 3/4 inch wood on it so decided to use my table saw, probably not the safest thing to do but my board was about 6 inches wide so it was ok. I just shaved off a few strips a little wider than 1/4 inch and then planed them. I then drilled the recessed holes for the screws.

Next was the trim around the outside edges to cover the plywood. I used 3/4 inch oak for this too. My plywood is 3/4 inch, but apparenly not the same 3/4 inch that solid oak is. One thing that always makes me wonder…if it’s called 3/4 inch, shouldn’t it all be the same? So after I cut those out I had to plane them down so they were the same as the plywood…3/4 inch, the other….3/4 inch….whatever!

I then had to make splines and cut grooves in everything to attach the trim. Oh, almost forgot, I also had to cut dado’s at the tops and bottoms of all the sides. I had to cut a dado for a shelf too, which I screwed up. I cut the dados (not sure if I am using the right term here) at the top and bottom 1/2” deep but was supposed to cut the one for the shelf only 1/4” deep. I forgot and did it 1/2”. I was really mad at myself for that one. Then I spent about a 1/2 hour trying to find a spare piece big enough to re-do either the side or to make the shelf wider, neither of which was in the cards for me. Then I had a brilliant idea that I had some extra wood from the drawer slides, which just happened to be 3/4×1/4, slid that little baby right in the bottom of the dado, glued it in and as soon as I put the shelf in, no one will be the wiser….except all of you.

Did a little light sanding on everything before I glued it all up. Those splines were tight, but looks pretty good. Sorry the pictures are a little boring, almost look just like last week. Hopefully next weekend it will start looking like a piece of furniture.

This is the framing for the two shelving units on the sides and the back piece.

These are the drawer slides

I hope this isn’t too detailed, I’m not sure if it will continue to be that way, but I decided to do it for now because the reason I do some of the things I do is because I have had a problem in the past. You’ll kinda get the idea as I go along I think.

The first thing I did right after I bought the wood is cut the sheets of plywood down to managable pieces. I live alone and don’t have anyone to help me wrestle the sheets onto my table saw so I cut the wood up as much as possible with my skill saw. I always put blue tape on the areas I am sawing, it seems to help the wood not splinter. My plans actually had a cutting layout so it made it easy for me to do this. I always cut the pieces large and make sure I have a factory edge on at least one side when I am cutting it down. That will be the edge that will go against the table saw fence.

Today I pulled out the sheets for the pieces I wanted to cut to correct size. As you can see in the next picture, I put blue tape over all my cuts on my table saw too. I have had a problem with tearout in the past, so now I religiously do this. I’m not even sure I really need to anymore, but it’s a habit I can’t bring myself to break.

You can see my new fence and extension table I made in this pic too! And my workbench/cabinet in the background I made a couple years ago.

Another thing I do is label all the pieces with what piece they are (A,B,C etc) and I write the measurements and which direction the measurement is supposed to go. For instance, this is piece B, I need two of them and it has to be 8 1/4 inches in the direction of the arrow.

So, after I measure and label everything I cut all the same measurements at once. For instance, I had several pieces with a 15 1/8” measurement, but the other side of the piece varied. So I cut all the 15 1/8” side first, all of these would match exactly that way and then I moved the fence for each of the other measurements. Here is a pic of all the pieces I cut today, I cut everything for the two sides with the drawers and the back of the table.

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