Hey everyone. I hope your year is off to a great start.  Well, this was a big build. I started this wall-to-wall library with a wine rack and barn doors in November. I finished it at the end of December. It took me another month to sit down and write about it. I did blow my back out somewhere in there, too, so we can blame it on that.

As it turns out, it took me 10 times longer to build than I had originally thought. Imagine that. I do know that I hate painting. There were a ton of nooks and crannies in these shelves and it was a serious pain in my webbed toe (I dropped the paint can on it). I also got side tracked and my daughter and I built a club house (totally worth it, see last post), and then I went back to it. I tend to do that. For example, I am building a bed at the moment and last Saturday morning, the sun was just waking up, Everly was having her tea and cheerios, I was having my coffee and we were chatting about life. She was laughing about a monster in her tea and then came up with a great idea that she would like to paint. One thing lead to another and shortly after, we were at the paint store and were about to start renovating our basement. She wanted to paint the wall and build a TV unit. So that’s what we did/are doing. I’ll do a post later on that. It looks super killer..

Anyway, where was I.. oh right. So yeah, the library. I’m not sure what you want to call it but some people may call it ADHD. I do finish things I start (sometimes)… just don’t ask my wife about the 19 things around the house that I started and have yet to finish. Man, shes patient.

Lets just jump into my amazing photography and I’ll show you how I did it.

 

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I was late to the party with my camera and I already had one built. I am just ripping down all my pieces here.
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This groove fits the back panel.
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Serious about wood working.
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I clamped most pieces together so I knew they were the exact same size before I cut them.
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And then I cut.
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I used a spacer block to make sure the shelves were equally spaced.

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The back is in two pieces. I used a flush cut bit on my router to trim out any mistakes. It was difficult to slide the back panel in by myself.
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I face-framed the shelf fronts so you wouldn’t see the plywood edges.
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Then I softened all the edges with my router. If you are wondering what kind of camera I use it’s a Cannon Rebel with a tripod. I don’t have a professional photographer snapping pictures of me woodworking, but that’s not a bad idea!

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Next, I started to paint. I bough a fairly good paint gun to help me with this. It was a learning curve getting the hang of it.
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My little bud loves coming out to the shop with me.
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I glued and brad-nailed the face-frame on.
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Then I had to hammer in a million nail holes.

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I forgot to remove one of the stickers before I painted it. Son of a whore.
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Oh, hey there, tripod. I didn’t see you there.

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I started to work on the wine rack.

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Oh, somewhere in the middle, Everly and I built a balance beam.
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I think I also built another bookshelf, too.

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Wine rack together.

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Once I had mostly everything done I started on the doors.

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One door down.
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My buddy, Colin, has a CNC machine so he cut these out for me and I finished them for my class. Cute, right?! I also did this somewhere in the middle of the build. No wonder it took so long.
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Again, another project stuck in the middle somewhere.
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When I was building the second door, I forgot to switch out the nails I was using and they were obviously a little too long…
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Break time. Oh, I also built a rink in there somewhere.

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Back to painting.

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These were once my running shoes. Never ran once.

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Hey Dad. Hat’s a little small.
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Doors are hung.
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Library installed.
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Okay, there you have it. A custom built library. I am pretty happy with how they turned out. The installation of the doors could have gone a little better but we are always learning and that’s really important to me. The delivery of the bookshelves could have been a movie. One of the book shelves fell off my trailer when we were bringing the first one in. The back got all smashed up. Lucky it wasn’t a hard fix but it wasn’t overly smart.  I was really lucky to build these for two awesome new neighbours. I hope they like them as much as we like them.

So right now I’ve got a couple things on the go. I’ll post more about them later but I’m just really digging the adventure my hobby has taken me on. My goal is to become a master craftsman and the only way to achieve any goal is to work hard at it and don’t give up. That’s what I’ll do.

Thanks for tuning in.

Brett

 

 

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