Bar Built-in: Day 9 (more poly)

Woke up and the poly is not completely cured, but is much more durable. I tested this in an area that won't be seen by people (inside the wine slots). I slowly rub the tip of my finger nail in an area and see if my nails left a mark. One area that had a little thicker area of poly, caused a mark, but another area didn't. I flipped the sides of all the parts and began to apply the first coat of polyurethane.

When I stain or apply polyurethane I like to have a bright work light on. This helps me to see where the coat is applied and where it hasn't. In a normally lit room it is almost impossible to see where the poly is applied, except at an extreme angle. This become labor intensive to constantly change your POV to see where the poly is. With the work light shining on the pieces I can easily see if the coat is too thick or too thin. Especially when you apply the first coat, the poly does not like to evenly coat on the tacky finish of the stain.

I'm pretty much going to wait another 5 hours and then apply the second coat. this means I will probably be able to begin assembly tomorrow morning.

Bar Built-In: Day 8 (stain and poly)

Today was staining and polyurethane day. Finished staining the remaining parts that I didn't get around to (top where I was going to cut the hole the recessed lights, and the toe kit front) and began putting poly on the remainder parts.

If I were to do this again, or recommend anything to people, I would I would have put on 1 coat of poly before nailing the wine supports to it. Applying polyurethane to each of the supports and in between them is quite tedious, plus the foam brushes kicked up some foam/bubbles with all the quick brush strokes.

I do see that applying poly to all the individual supports would have been tedious as well, but I probably would have used a spray poly for the first coat, nailed them down, then painted on the second coat of poly when it was tacked down.

I did all the main surfaces, waited 5 hours (the can said 3-4 but it didn't appear to be dry enough at the 4 hour mark) and applied the second coat. I was hoping that after another ~5 hours I could flip the pieces and do the reverse side, but I found that even though it was dry it had not cured. I wait over night to flip and apply another two coats. One of the main reasons I wanted to do the all in one polyshade. I do think this will give me better results though.

Bar Built-In Day 7: (Nailing)

Feeling even better today. Went to Lowes today to buy the cabinet lights. I purchased the same set of lights I bought for my kitchen cabinets. I've read some threads on them that people don't like them or that the controller goes bad. I've had mine on my cabinets on for almost a year and had no problems. The only thing I don't like is that the heat causes the covers to pop off. I say the cover pops off about once every 2 weeks. Of course we also leave ours on from sundown to bedtime, so an average of 5 hours in the winter. My friend Chun, who also installed them, has not experienced the problem as often as me.

The lights cost about 35 bucks and you get 6 puck lights with xenon lamps, enought wire, power block and a touch controler. Its hard to find all of that for under 35.

For my cabinets I did a surface mount on the bottom of the cabinet and was looking forward to doing a recessed mount with my bar built in. I couldn't really do this with the cabinets because that would put the lights into the cabinet where I would store my dishes. The way I planned my built-in, I can easily do it because there is nothing above the light. Awesome. Until I opened the packet and read the instructions. "Cut a 2 1/8" how for recessed lighting". Who has a 2 and 1/8" hole saw? I have a 2", I have a 2 1/2" but nothing in between. That would cost 12 bucks for a hole saw that I will only use twice. Looks like surface mount again. I will worry about that when I start assembling.

Wine Rack Assembly
Ok, yesterday I said how much I like using the pocket hole jig. My 2nd favorite is the air driven finishing nail gun. If you don't have one and plan to do any trim work, or doing small projects (i.e. spice rack, small boxes, apolstry work, picture frames or anything involving finishing nails or brads) buy a nail gun and compressor kit. I got a nice little kit for christmas last year and I absolutely love it. From the first time I pulled the trigger I was amazed how well it worked. From the feel of it, to the sound it makes, to the great job it does driving the nail in, it is great. I built a spice rack without a nail gun and it honestly took me 3 times as long. You have to line up the work, sometimes clamp it, sometimes predrill. Tap, tap, tap, tap, shit. (that's if you bend the nail) Then you have to go out of your way to carefull pull out the nail. Chances are it bent because you didn't drive it in straight, which means that the next nail will follow the same path.

Now granted, the more you do wood work, the less chance you will have this. You will become more skilled and controled, but I work in IT and Projection Services (fix film projectors). I do not see myself leaving my job make a living doing carpentry anytime soon (unfortunately). I use this as a hobby or escape from the rut of work, might as well enjoy it.

I'm now going to space out the wine rack supports and nail them to the dividers.

The supports are 3 1/4" apart and 4 inches off the bottom of the divider. On the main cabinet sides I need to start 4 3/4" from the bottom to compensate for the thickness of the bottom. To space them out evenly I toock a 2x4 and cut a piece 3 1/4" long. With this spacer I can put it up against the tacked down support and then put the next one down in place for nailing.


3 1/4" spacer in place.










Laying them out and tacking them down.

Bar Built-in: Day 6 (more staining and pocket holes)

Feel better today, but still a little stuffy and tired.

Stained the other side of the bar towers and stained the first side to the wine rack dividers and am letting those dry. I'm hoping it will be dry enough to flip tonight before bed to stain the other side of the wine rack dividers. Once it has dried I can start nailing the wine rack holders to the boards. One step closer to final assembly.

Once I stained the sides I went to work on the toe kick. I was going to build it entirely out of 2x4s but I decided I will use some of my left over 3/4" MDF for the front and make the sides of 2x4s.

I went out to the garage to cut the 2x4 into 9" pieces and I quickly learned that the miter saw, if left in the cold, will cause the trigger to stick. This will leave it in the on position until the strength of the switch can force itself in the on position. The saw is thawing in the kitchen.

Pocket Holes
While the saw is thawing I decided to drill the pocket holes into the top and bottom parts of the towers.

I love pocket holes. I will go out of my way to use pocket holes and even make building decisions to accomodate pocket holes. They are strong, versatile, durable and I paid 40 bucks for a jig.

Their are 2 large makers of the pocket hole jig, Kreg and Wolfcraft. Kreg is one of th leaders in pocket hole jig and carpentry tools. With that leadership comes a price. Wolfcraft also makes the pocket hole jig. I purchased the Wolfcraft jig after doing some lengthy research. My results were that Wolfcraft makes a quality product and also sells their jig in a kit that included: jig, special drill bit, stopper, driver bit and a handful of screws and plugs. The whole kit cost 40 bucks. The cheapest Kreg kit was 60. That included everything except the screws but included a clamp. I could also buy everything ala carte for Kreg for the same price, but Wolfcraft comes with a case to hold everything. Mendards carries both and Lowes carries Kreg in their stores. You can buy all of Kreg stuff from the Lowes website. I'm starting to see them show up at Home Depot now too. On another side note. I was at Menards the other day getting the veneer banding and stopped by the pocket jig ailse, Kreg now has a kit including everything the Wolfcraft kit. Infact, it is in an identical case, just with the Kreg blue instead of the Wolfcraft green.

The jig and bit lets you drill an hole on an angle allowing the screw to have a tight grip on the opposing board, but remain hidden. I applied 1 in each corner of the top and bottom board. These pocket holes will be facing the very top and the very bottom of the cabinet so that you won't be able to see it.

Bar Built-in: Day 5 (final cuts, edging and oh yes....staining)

So, I'm still sick, but I will get this done. I had to finish up some cuts in the garage before I could work inside today. I've found that having a cold and working in 10 degree weather tends to cloud the head. I had to measure and remeasure more then usual, but everything seemed to go okay.

Now earlier I complained about how the cordless saw was borderline useless. I found the battery drained way too quickly and the saw couldn't keep up. Now I took one of the batteries and charged it all day yesterday and used it this morning. It worked great, I was able to complete all my cuts with absolutely no problem. I'm using the cheap charger that came with the saw that has no indicator on it, so its hard to tell if the battery is full charged. I think the batterys need to be trained.

After finishing all the cross cuts I took all the boards into the warm confines of the basement. Laying them out on the saw horses, I relabeled the boards on the very ends so that after I stained them I would still be able to identify the pieces. I lightly sanded the sides of the boards and got them read for applying wood veneer edging.

Veneer Edging
When I first did my book case I was very skeptical about wood veneer edging. I didn't think it would look too good, and more importantly, I didn't think the glue would hold it. I figured I would have to apply wood glue, clamp it awkwardly, have to clean up glue residue and all in all just really hate the process that would end in poor results.

When applying the veneer you will need the veneer a sharp utility knife, a J roller and an old iron you never attend to use on cloths again (we would also except "a new iron that you never attended to use on cloths in the future"). For the most part the whole process won't ruin the iron but it will tend to get scratches, glue reside and a few burn marks on the base. None of which will look good transferred to the your clothes.

I'm applying veneer to the wine rack area of the built in. This area has the sides of the boards exposed. The other areas of the built in will have moldings, but I want to make it easier to take out and insert bottles.


The sides are 3/4" MDF and the insides are 1/2" MDF. I had 3/4" veneer left over from the bookcase project. I applied that to the sides of the 3/4" MDF and then hauled my sick ass all the way to the hardware store. When I got there, I found that they did not have any 1/2" red oak veneer. Infact, it looked like they didn't even make the stuff. So I bought a roll of 3/4".

Applying the veneer is pretty easy. You first want to heat up the iron to a fairly low setting (cotton is best). While it is warming up, roll out your veneer and measure 1" longer the the length you need. You then work from one diretion to the other. I use my left hand to to center the veneer while my right had follows with the iron. I apply light preasure as I work across the edge. You don't want to keep the iron in one place so as to not burn the veneer or cause the adhesive to bleed through.

Once you make it all the way across, use a utility knife to cut off the excess on each side. You then want to use your J-roller to apply preasure to the edging to seal the glue with the edging. Once its applied, use a fine grit sand paper (180) to clean up the edging. You then have the lovely faux appearance of a solid oak board, at MDF/Plywood prices.

Now for my case with the 1/2" board and a 3/4" venner you want to do the same steps, but then take a fresh razor blade and carefully shave off the sides. Now they do make a special cutter that will do it, but that little uni-tasker costs 18 bucks, so I kick it old skool. Now you have to be carefull with shaving the veneer by hand because the grain will split easily. If you do by chance split it, you can easily iron it back in place. However if you take a chunk out, say a few spirtual curse words and start over.

To remove the botched venner you basically do the application in reverse. Right hand applying iron moving backwards while left hand lefts scolding, gooey veneer. I find muttering to myself eases the pain.

Staining
With the edging applied, I started staining. Like I said earlier, I'm only doing one coat of stain and two coats of polyurethane. I put a coat on the pieces and will let them dry over night before I flip them and apply the single coat to the second side.



Day 5: finished cutting the boards, applied veneer edging and began staining.
cost: 2.41 for more veneer edging

Bar Built-in Day 4: (sick)

So the sickness won today, on my birthday. I had my furnace, that was installed last month, inspected today. Took less then five minutes with no problems. I then had to go into work for a meeting and then after lunch the illness took over. Felt very fatiqued and took a nap. For my birthday I went to see The Wrestler at the Ridge (I'll blog about my opinion on it later) and then went to Elsa's for wings (another blog entry about my future wing marathon is for another day).

So day 4 was a bust.

Bar Built-in: Day 3 (ripping, routing and cross cutting)

My dad and I went to buy the wood for the built-in. I bought a 8' x 4' - 3/4" MDF with red oak veneer (main part and shelves) and two 4' x 2' - 1/2" MDF with red oak veneer (wine rack partitions). I learned a few things today in getting the board with my dad's van. It is easier to strap the board to the roof of a mini van then trying to wedge it inside. When it's 10 degrees outside, driving at 35 mph make it equivalent to -40 when you use your hand to hold the board in place.



I took the 8'x4' and cut off the main height of 68 1/2". I then took that piece and rip it down to four 11" pieces.



I used my new Ryobi cordless saw that I got for christmas and learned 1 1/2 cuts into the project that cordless saws are borderline useless. Maybe the battery is not to its full potential, but it doesn't seem to cut it. I still have my dad's 20 year old Craftsman saw and finished ripping the side. I am charging the battery over night to see if I can get another kick out of the saw. I bought a special blade for that saw that was made for plywood and MDF. The only blade I have for my dad's saw is a ripping blade, so if I crosscut with it, it will chip the edge of the veneer. I did this all in the garage because MDF kicks up a lot of dust.


I went through the 4 boards and picked how I wanted the four pieces to go. I inspected the sides to see what were the good sides and what bad sides I did not want seen. Once the orientation was chosen, I put a 1/2" x 1/2" rabbeting bit and set it to a 1/2" depth on my router. I then ran it across the sides to put a grove into the back of the sides to set the plywood backer in.

I took the other half of the 8' x 4' board and ripped out two 10 1/2" x 11 1/2" (middle shelves) and four 11" x 11 1/2" for the top and bottom of the cabinet.

It was a short day, but the weather and my oncoming cold are slowing me down. My goal for tomorrow is to finish cutting the boards, drill my pocket screw holes, and put down a coat of stain on all the large pieces. While its drying I will begins construction of my toe kicks.

Day 3: ripped down sides, top and bottom and routed backing
Cost Today: $67.21

Bar Built-in: Day 2 (staining wine rack)

I started staining the wine rack pieces. I'm using Minwax Red Mahogany oil stain. I used this stain on our kitchen cabinets. I'm thinking of only using one coat though after seeing the first results.

I first applied Minwax Prestain, on each piece with a foam brush. The prestain opens up the wood and allows the stain to evenly coat softer woods. Even though I am building a majority of the cabinet out of oak veneer, the wine rack is constucted from premolded pine moulding.

The prestain takes 15 minutes, then you have to wipe off any excess. You then have to apply the stain within 2 hours. I started applying the prestain and only got through just over half of the 84 pieces before the 15 minutes were up. I decided to start wiping off the excess and begin staining.

Prestain (15 min, wipe) + First coat stain (15 min, wipe) + 6 hours + Second coat stain (15 min, wipe) + 24 hours + First coat of Polyurethane + 4 hours + Second coat of Poyurethane.


Staining is not an exact science, I say this because an exact science has expected results. If you are starting to do staining there are a few things you should know.

1. The color of the stain represented on the can, has no representation of the stain you will put on your wood the first coat.
2. The longer you let it stay on the wood, the darker it will be.
3. The more coats you put on, the darker it will be.
   

For my kitchen cabinets I did 3 coats. First coat sat for 45 minutes, then I wiped off the excess. The Second coat was put on for 45 minutes, then I wiped off the excess. And the Third coat was put on for 60 hours. After 60 hours the stain cures and 2 coats of polyurethane was applied.

I think I'm going to do 1 coat for 15 minutes with 2 coats of polyurethane. Maybe 2 coats. I don't want it as dark as my cabinets so it will blend more with the faded wood paneling in the basement. My kitchen cabinets were made from yellow pine so the grain is less prominant. This built in is oak, so I want to really accent the knotty grain.

Bar Built-in: Day 1 (prep work)

So today I started building. Next week I start the real work of the built in, but I want to get some prep work out of the way.

Day 1 of the project (14 days until I want to complete the project)

I bought the wood for the wine rack. In the moulding section they had pine stopper molding that measures 1/2 x 3/4 - 8'. These sticks will hold the wine bottles (7" pieces) and the glass shelves (10 1/2" pieces) in place. I will need 84 7" pieces and I want to stain them ahead of time. I bought 8 sticks and took them to my parents house to use their electric miter saw. I cut them to size in no time.

Dawn and I then went through the 84 pieces and sanded them. Seeing that I didn't have any latex gloves (thought I had some leftover from the kitchen project, but I don't) we decided to prestain and stain tomorrow. We probably won't get to it until Tuesday because I'm helping my dad prep the bathroom floor for our tile project. We laid them all out so that we could get to prestaining right away.


With the added time, I wanted to start to remove the baseboard inside the bar. I'm going to build the toe kick out of 2x4s. Seeing that it is a basement the floor is pitched to the center. I'm going to have to angle my toe kick so it fits the contour of the basement. The baseboards are made out of 1x4s and I quickly learned that they are in there really good.

Using my small crow bar and hammer I was only able to pull off one section, that was starting to rot anyway (again, basement floor), and pull off the quarter round corner trim. I'm going to borrow a larger crow bar. These 1x4s are nailed with some large penny nails right into the sole plate of the wall.

Day 1: cut the wine rack parts and sanded them
Cost Today: $25.01

Bar Built In: Design

The Begining:
Our house has a classic Wisconsin 50s wood paneled basement. A small bar is in the corner and fits our needs. My wife and I have a healthy love of alcohol and the art of mixology. Since I was 21 (give or take a couple years) I have collected, tasted, and enjoyed the art of mixology. Years ago, when I was in a small studio apartment, a friend saw my alcohol collection and said he hadn't seen such a collection in a private residence since he years in his fraternity. I paused to think I might have a problem, but then accepted it as a complement. Its not like all the bottles were empty (I hid all of those under the couch). I wanted to build a built in, behind the bar, that would not only display many of our fine liquers and distills but to show off many of our unique drinking vessels and tools (all comes with the admiring of mixology).

Like most projects, it spun out of control. I went behind the bar and measured the area behind the bar to put in some shelves. Then I thought, what if we lit it, and what if we put some glass shelves, and what if we made room for my German beer boot, or my martinin glasses, and who can forget shaker, or some of Dawn's painted wine glasses. Sure there was plenty of room under the bar, but what is the point of having cool drinking accessories if you can't show them off. So I set out, restricting myself to under 100 dollars (very early in the planning I up'd it up to 150).

The Designing:
Couple years ago I found out about a program called SketchUp from one of my "do-it-yourself" websites. Its a simple 3D program that lets you generate 3D structures in a simplistic way. Over the years, I used it more and more and now use it for all of my projects to plan out and design my ideas. It gives me time to work out new ideas and think about my projects when I'm not ready to build or don't have money to build.

I've made several different versions of the bar built in, changing things here and there. My goals in the design were simple:

1. Make 2 shelves to hold a majority of my bottles. Making sure Belvedere (favorite vodka, that is also the tallest) sat comfortably on the main shelf.
2. Hold those 2 shelves up with 2 lit towers, with glass shelves to display accessories. Making sure that my German beer boot is properly displayed.
3. Build it so my wife's and my wine fridge can fit under it (awsome wedding gift from a group of dawns friends).
4. Build it out of no more then a single 4'x8' 3/4" mdf with oak veneer.
5. Keep it under 150 dollars.
6. Have it fit the decor. Not too modern, not too classic bar look (I love the look of intricate wood bars. The dark carved wood setting the backdrop a rich oak bar below a tin ceiling. That will not be possible in this cave of paneling).

This is my final design:


It fits almost all my requirements. I wanted to better utilize the space below near the fridge, but to make it easier and fit 1 board, then this is what I had to do. I'm not huge into wine, but Dawn is, so I figured if she needs more then 48 spaces and a fridge then I can build her a seperate wine rack like what Boye did (co worker who built a really nice wine rack for his healthy addiction). I actually used his style of wine rack then an clumsier one I designed in an earlier version.

The Finishing:
I want to stain it as I go along because I think it will be easier to stain the larger pieces and the smaller intricate pieces a head of time instead of finishing all at the end. The basement is a maple/pine paneling. I want a bit of a cherry look and Dawn wants a darker look. So we will be doing a darker stain. I did several tests with different Minwax products and I was extermely suprised and how nice the Polystains looked. However, the color wasn't what I wanted. I decided to go with the Mahogany stain that is left over from my kitchen project. I however won't do as thick of a staining as I did with the kitchen project.

The Final Planning:
So we have the plans, I have the stain selected, and I took the week off to work on it (January 26th, my birthday, to the 30th). I think I can complete it in under a week. I will also be helping my dad tile my parents bathroom floor. We've never tiled before, so this should an exciting week.

Bar Built in: The Begining

So I decided to build bar a built in to my classic 50's wood paneled bar. My carpentry skills are little, if none. Everything I've learned has been from watching my dad, tech-ed classes, and Tom Silva from This Old House. My last project was actually book case that Tom Silva built in an episode of Ask this Old House. That project went surprisingly well, and I learned a lot from it (by the way, I'll be finishing that project during this project because it has never been stained. My love of staining will probably come up later in this project. I probably should write a blog entitled Staining: Fuck it, just paint it. The story of a man, painted kitchen cabinets, and his hatred of them).

I really enjoy building stuff from scratch. I get a feeling of self accomplishment and I get to design something to fit my exact needs. Whenever I tell people of my ideas, they almost always say, "can't you just buy that" or "seems like a waste of time". Anything that keeps me busy and constructive and involves me stepping away from my job, its worth it. Even when I started my bookcase my brother pointed out that I could by an relatively equal sized book case from Ikea or Target for a considerable less price. He missed the point. The point was to make something to fit my needs instead of buying a piece of mass produced laminated furniture.

The book case didn't end up perfect (I can point out almost a half dozen f-ups on it), but the one major thing I regret is that I didn't document the building of it. Sure it wasn't some stupendous project, but it would have been fun to document and see the project evolve. That is why I want to document this project in this series of blog articles.