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Unexpected home improvement projects
Feb. 9th, 2014 12:08 amThe weekend's home improvement projects got off to an early start late Thursday evening, when I went to put away a clean pie plate and was, once again, annoyed, at having to carefully lift down the two nice, non-stick, spring form pans that lived on top of the stack of nicely nested pie plates so that they wouldn't slide off the pile and fall to the floor, denting themselves in the process, before I tried to slide out the stack to add the clean one to the bottom of the pile (since it is bigger than the others). This time I was hit with an inspiration--why not add one more shelf to that cabinet?
Therefore, rather than getting ready for bed we went down stairs to look and see if we had anything suitable for making a shelf. After considering and rejecting several options we decided on a a chunk of particle board which used to be part of a set of shelves we got free, and which we had taken apart because we simply don't have room to have that set assembled anywhere. The cost being right we sawed it to fit, grabbed a set of shelf supports from the useful drawer we have labeled "misc. IKEA parts", and put the new shelf in the cabinet. Success! Now those cake plates can sit on their very own shelf, and I needn't worry about damaging them when I want a pie plate.
Friday I had class all morning. It should have only been a couple of hours, but Tuesday's lecture was canceled (which was great because that freed me up to take the placement exam for the Swedish for Immigrants course, which had conflicted with the lecture--I did well enough on that exam that they have placed me in the Stage 3, course D, which is the last course in the series). Then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lord_kjar had the afternoon off of work, so we ran some errands.
The first stop was the "tip shop" as they say in Australia (store at the dump where they sell things that otherwise would have been thrown away), where we found a fair bit of loot. We brought home a large bean bag chair in excellent condition, two cookie tins, a marble cheese board, an old fashioned hand-crank grater, a tiny wooden shelf, a hand miter saw, a large hand-planer, a knife, and a leather tool belt. For all of that we paid 435 SEK ($67 USD, or $75 AU, or €49 at today's exchange rate).
Then we went to a different second hand store and piked up a nice rolling pin, three shirts, and a silk dress for 215 SEK ($33 USD, $37 AU, or €24).
I rather like buying used stuff--the price is much more to my taste. We also bought a few new items on that loop--a heat gun, for nearly as much as we paid at the tip shop, and a small stack of boards, for about what we paid at the second stop.
However, buying used stuff does mean a bit more work--one of those shirts I intend to tailor to fit me a bit better, we had to do some minor repair on the hand miter saw to get the upright aligning posts to actually point upright and not wobble, but that took less than 30 minutes, and it now works beautifully. Then we needed a place to put it, so we cut a chunk of plywood scrap to fit on the supports under the band saw, and now the hand miter saw has a shelf of its own to live on.
But the big winner in terms of creating extra work was that hand-crank food grater--this inspired to me to do something I have long wanted to do, just not in the way I have always thought about doing it. Prior to this purchase I have owned two kitchen toys that have clamps to attach them to some surface in order to use them--the old fashioned meat grinder I stole from my mother when I left home, and a pasta machine. Both are very useful tools that I don't bother to use very often because it has been so annoying to try to get them clamped to something in order to use them.
The kitchen counter tops in this house were too thick for the meat grinder's clamp and didn't stick out far enough from the underlying cabinets to make it possible to clamp the pasta machine (nor, had the counter top been a little thinner would it have been possible to clamp the meat grinder to it due to not sticking out far enough. The kitchen table is thin enough, but the one time I tried using it the clamp dented the surface of the table, and I was NOT happy about that.
I have long thought that it would make sense to have a place to have these sorts of tools permanently clamped to on a board that sits a bit above the normal counter top, so that large bowls could be placed under the grinder to catch food. But the set up I had envisioned isn't possible in this kitchen--the position of the cabinets in relation to the counter tops and walls simply don't work with that idea.
But when we brought home the little hand-crank grater, which grating holes just exactly the size we prefer for things like grated carrot, we thought it would be nice if it could be set up all the time and ready to go--it would be much simpler than setting up the food processor every time we want grated carrot, and faster and easier to use than the other sort of manual grater. After much discussion we realized that the big problem--the fact that the counters don't sick out far enough for the clamps, could be solved by adding a small extension to the counter right next to the door that leads to the music room.
Therefore Friday evening was spent on that project--first we had to find some suitable wood to make the extension of. After considering and rejecting lots of options we decided on one of the large boards of ash that he had--with bark still attached to one side. Step one was to use the large electric planing machine we are storing for his dad to turn the rough board into nice, smooth surfaces on each side. This left us with a board that is still a good centimeter and a half thicker than the counter top we want to extend. This is good, because we want to attach it in such a way that putting pressure on the handle of whatever is clamped to it won't cause it to break off.
So we used the router and carved away a step on one side, so that it can nestle up against and underneath the counter and also rest against the side of the cabinet under the counter. Then we took a scrap of stainless steel and polished it up and then set it into the top of the board, so that when we clamp stuff to the board the clamp won't dent the surface.
That much of the project took us to Midnight Friday night (starting around 17:00), so after mixing the epoxy to glue in the steel plate, applying the glue, and clamping it into place, we went to bed to let the glue set overnight.
We slept in enough this morning to still get 8 hours of sleep, and after breakfast returned to the project in progress. First we cleaned up and sanded away the bit of glue that managed to squeeze itself out from under the metal plate after clamping, then we did the routing away of part of the underside of the board under that plate so that the clamp will be able to fit around the board. Then we needed to go shopping for screws of an appropriate size and type to attach the extender to the counter top, but we opted to have lunch first.
One thing led to another, and we didn't return to the project again till after dinner, around 17:00. Between then and 19:00 we managed to drill the holes through the board (which isn't easy, since the drill bit isn't actually as long as the board width we needed to go through, so we had to measure well enough to come in from both sides, which we did successfully, but only because we planned to do wide holes on the outside so that we could then fill them with wooden plugs so that the screws don't show), mark the spots where the screws come out of the board and touch the counter top, drill the holes into the counter top, add glue to the board and then screw it into place, fill the holes outside of the screws with wooden plugs and sand them flush with the board, and finally oil the board.
Then we had to do maintenance on the grater to make it possible to use. The ring wasn't quite round anymore, so we had to tweak that, and the threads on the base of the clamp that the bolt goes through had completely stripped out, so it wasn't actually possible to clamp it to something. Sadly, the little screw at the end of the bolt to hold the little plate that sits on the underside of the counter (when the clamp part is working) had been damaged at some point in the past, so it was necessary to use an angle grinder to remove it.
Once it was off I managed to find a nut in the box of miscellaneous nails, screws, nuts, and bolts that happens to fit the bolt, so we now had a way to make the bolt stay on the clamp, but how to reattach the little plate to the top of it? It turns out thatlord_kjar owns a tap and die set, so all we needed to do was find a tiny bolt in the drawer full of nuts and bolts that was small enough, drill out the end of the original bolt and set new threads into it with the same spacing as the tiny bolt and it worked.
I am very happy with the result:
Therefore, rather than getting ready for bed we went down stairs to look and see if we had anything suitable for making a shelf. After considering and rejecting several options we decided on a a chunk of particle board which used to be part of a set of shelves we got free, and which we had taken apart because we simply don't have room to have that set assembled anywhere. The cost being right we sawed it to fit, grabbed a set of shelf supports from the useful drawer we have labeled "misc. IKEA parts", and put the new shelf in the cabinet. Success! Now those cake plates can sit on their very own shelf, and I needn't worry about damaging them when I want a pie plate.
Friday I had class all morning. It should have only been a couple of hours, but Tuesday's lecture was canceled (which was great because that freed me up to take the placement exam for the Swedish for Immigrants course, which had conflicted with the lecture--I did well enough on that exam that they have placed me in the Stage 3, course D, which is the last course in the series). Then
lord_kjar had the afternoon off of work, so we ran some errands.The first stop was the "tip shop" as they say in Australia (store at the dump where they sell things that otherwise would have been thrown away), where we found a fair bit of loot. We brought home a large bean bag chair in excellent condition, two cookie tins, a marble cheese board, an old fashioned hand-crank grater, a tiny wooden shelf, a hand miter saw, a large hand-planer, a knife, and a leather tool belt. For all of that we paid 435 SEK ($67 USD, or $75 AU, or €49 at today's exchange rate).
Then we went to a different second hand store and piked up a nice rolling pin, three shirts, and a silk dress for 215 SEK ($33 USD, $37 AU, or €24).
I rather like buying used stuff--the price is much more to my taste. We also bought a few new items on that loop--a heat gun, for nearly as much as we paid at the tip shop, and a small stack of boards, for about what we paid at the second stop.
However, buying used stuff does mean a bit more work--one of those shirts I intend to tailor to fit me a bit better, we had to do some minor repair on the hand miter saw to get the upright aligning posts to actually point upright and not wobble, but that took less than 30 minutes, and it now works beautifully. Then we needed a place to put it, so we cut a chunk of plywood scrap to fit on the supports under the band saw, and now the hand miter saw has a shelf of its own to live on.
But the big winner in terms of creating extra work was that hand-crank food grater--this inspired to me to do something I have long wanted to do, just not in the way I have always thought about doing it. Prior to this purchase I have owned two kitchen toys that have clamps to attach them to some surface in order to use them--the old fashioned meat grinder I stole from my mother when I left home, and a pasta machine. Both are very useful tools that I don't bother to use very often because it has been so annoying to try to get them clamped to something in order to use them.
The kitchen counter tops in this house were too thick for the meat grinder's clamp and didn't stick out far enough from the underlying cabinets to make it possible to clamp the pasta machine (nor, had the counter top been a little thinner would it have been possible to clamp the meat grinder to it due to not sticking out far enough. The kitchen table is thin enough, but the one time I tried using it the clamp dented the surface of the table, and I was NOT happy about that.
I have long thought that it would make sense to have a place to have these sorts of tools permanently clamped to on a board that sits a bit above the normal counter top, so that large bowls could be placed under the grinder to catch food. But the set up I had envisioned isn't possible in this kitchen--the position of the cabinets in relation to the counter tops and walls simply don't work with that idea.
But when we brought home the little hand-crank grater, which grating holes just exactly the size we prefer for things like grated carrot, we thought it would be nice if it could be set up all the time and ready to go--it would be much simpler than setting up the food processor every time we want grated carrot, and faster and easier to use than the other sort of manual grater. After much discussion we realized that the big problem--the fact that the counters don't sick out far enough for the clamps, could be solved by adding a small extension to the counter right next to the door that leads to the music room.
Therefore Friday evening was spent on that project--first we had to find some suitable wood to make the extension of. After considering and rejecting lots of options we decided on one of the large boards of ash that he had--with bark still attached to one side. Step one was to use the large electric planing machine we are storing for his dad to turn the rough board into nice, smooth surfaces on each side. This left us with a board that is still a good centimeter and a half thicker than the counter top we want to extend. This is good, because we want to attach it in such a way that putting pressure on the handle of whatever is clamped to it won't cause it to break off.
So we used the router and carved away a step on one side, so that it can nestle up against and underneath the counter and also rest against the side of the cabinet under the counter. Then we took a scrap of stainless steel and polished it up and then set it into the top of the board, so that when we clamp stuff to the board the clamp won't dent the surface.
That much of the project took us to Midnight Friday night (starting around 17:00), so after mixing the epoxy to glue in the steel plate, applying the glue, and clamping it into place, we went to bed to let the glue set overnight.
We slept in enough this morning to still get 8 hours of sleep, and after breakfast returned to the project in progress. First we cleaned up and sanded away the bit of glue that managed to squeeze itself out from under the metal plate after clamping, then we did the routing away of part of the underside of the board under that plate so that the clamp will be able to fit around the board. Then we needed to go shopping for screws of an appropriate size and type to attach the extender to the counter top, but we opted to have lunch first.
One thing led to another, and we didn't return to the project again till after dinner, around 17:00. Between then and 19:00 we managed to drill the holes through the board (which isn't easy, since the drill bit isn't actually as long as the board width we needed to go through, so we had to measure well enough to come in from both sides, which we did successfully, but only because we planned to do wide holes on the outside so that we could then fill them with wooden plugs so that the screws don't show), mark the spots where the screws come out of the board and touch the counter top, drill the holes into the counter top, add glue to the board and then screw it into place, fill the holes outside of the screws with wooden plugs and sand them flush with the board, and finally oil the board.
Then we had to do maintenance on the grater to make it possible to use. The ring wasn't quite round anymore, so we had to tweak that, and the threads on the base of the clamp that the bolt goes through had completely stripped out, so it wasn't actually possible to clamp it to something. Sadly, the little screw at the end of the bolt to hold the little plate that sits on the underside of the counter (when the clamp part is working) had been damaged at some point in the past, so it was necessary to use an angle grinder to remove it.
Once it was off I managed to find a nut in the box of miscellaneous nails, screws, nuts, and bolts that happens to fit the bolt, so we now had a way to make the bolt stay on the clamp, but how to reattach the little plate to the top of it? It turns out that
lord_kjar owns a tap and die set, so all we needed to do was find a tiny bolt in the drawer full of nuts and bolts that was small enough, drill out the end of the original bolt and set new threads into it with the same spacing as the tiny bolt and it worked.I am very happy with the result: