Merry Christmas to me

First of all, Merry Christmas to you all!  Is it wrong to post about house stuff on Christmas?  I hope not, because I'm going to.  A couple weeks ago, I got myself the best Christmas present.  I hired my talented cousin Randy Reblin to finish the baseboard and crown molding on our long-awaited built-in bookcase.  Before he worked his magic, it looked like this:

We didn't have the proper tools to continue our crown and base trim and have them look nice.  For one thing, we couldn't find the same molding profile anywhere.  My cousin has a carpentery business and he is AMAZING with trim. On one happy Wednesday, this is what I came home from work to see!

Check this out!

Randy and his helper matched it up perfectly.

I was so excited that I immediately started getting my BIN primer mixed up.

And here it is all painted!

The last thing we needed to do is finish the rough edge of the 'countertop' piece.  It had been cut down, and the cut end was not very pretty.  

We just used these 3/4 inch square pieces for the finishing edge. 

Here is is all attached.  I like that it is both finished-looking, and adds a little extra shelf space. 

Everything is primed, painted, and set up.  Next week I will finally show the finished 'woman cave'!  I hope you have a wonderful weekend and holiday!

Still plugging away

Is it normal to have wine or beer every week night?  Because that's what I've been doing. I'm sorry to be so slow with the updates on our built-in, but I've been buzzed for the last couple weeks.  Happily, we now have cleats, shelves, and two coats of paint done.  The cleats took an entire Saturday of mitering, gluing, leveling, nailing, prying off and starting over, screaming (mostly me) and throwing things (me again), but they are done. 

We also ended up recutting a bunch of shelves that were not done correctly by Shaun's buddy, a huge bummer at $20 a board.  We had enough, but I was hoping to return the extras.  Worse, I had primed and painted all the old ones.  La-di-frickin-da. 

We spent a lot of time with the hand sander getting the edges cleaned up and making sure the shelves would have room to come in and out of the shelf supports.  Did I mention how much I hate sanding?  ps - I wore my painting shirt two days in a row because you all liked it so much.  And it was already dirty.  And I didn't want to look for another painting shirt.

We knew that all the edges of the unit had to be finished with something, because of unsightly things like this:

We decided to use plain pine 1 x 2's on all the vertical supports because they were the perfect width to cover these double boards, and we really didn't want anything froufy, frilly or otherwise decorative. 

The most dramatic improvement was the areas against the walls, where we had to shim everything to make sure it was level.  Before:

And after!

We used Loctite construction adhesive and our Porter Cable nail gun (1.5" nails) to attach all the cleats and the 1 x 2's.  We each logged many hours on that step stool with the gun, and it's a good thing it has to be pressed against something before firing, or we probably would've shot eachother across the room.  DIY or die, baby!

And this is what it looked like at the end of the day on Saturday:

Since then, all the shelves came down and received lots of paint lovin.  I've also caulked and filled more cracks than I care to remember.  But it LOOKS LIKE A BOOKCASE!!!  Next up is more paint for the cabinet portion, some finishing trim on the 'cabinet top' pieces, and figuring out what the heck to do about the crown and baseboard that cannot be matched with anything local because it's so old.  Of course.  

** To everyone who voted for me in the One Project Closer contest - I am so warm and gushy inside that so many people would do that for me.  THANK YOU! **

More bookcase progress

We spent a lot of time sanding the plywood and caulking all the seams on our bookcase framing.  Observe:

We also used wood filler on the holes in the plywood and 'counter top' because it is sandable and caulk is NOT.  Have you ever used caulk and later tried to remove the extra crap you left behind?  FAIL.  Use wood filler, or even simple wall spackle works!  We also primed.  

And here is proof that I am the muscle behind all these projects.  I was at it for at least an hour longer than Shaun, who was lounging in the living room before he meandered in here to snap my photo.  Pshhhhht!

Booty booty booty!  I may have been dancing to 80s music during this shot.  Anyway, we got the entire thing primed with two coats of BIN and it looks NICE! 

Why do I insist on using BIN?  Because this stuff sands like nothing else.  Yes indeedy.  When it's time to paint, you sand everything with 320 sandpaper.  It gets so smooth, it's like Nicole Kidman's forehead.  I'm not kidding!  We used it on the shelves as well.  The lawn guy came to spray while I was out here and promptly left, muttering he would come back later.  Ha!

Like Jenny, I decided to use Ace Cabinet and Trim paint on everything.  I used semi-gloss white, and I am very happy with the way the shelves turned out.

Most of the brush strokes level out while drying, and I think the glossy factory-like finish will be fabulous on the bookcases.  It's a little stinky and runny, but man the result is nice!  We will be cutting and attaching the shelf cleats this weekend, and hopefully will get a coat of paint on everything as well.  Has anyone else used this paint?

Bookcase progress

When deciding on materials for the shelving portion of our bookcases, we had quite a selection to choose from at our local Menards store.  Sorry, I couldn't resist this hysterical pic of Ray the 'Menards guy!'

For shelving, there's MDF, laminate, oak, hardwood plywoods like birch, specialty boards like ash or maple, and pine.  We didn't want to use laminate because all the other built-ins in our house are wood.  We couldn't use oak or specialty wood because it would've set us back a ton.  Despite them being excellent products for this application, we decided against 3/4 inch plywood or MDF because it would've been a royal pain to cut to size.  Menards does not do cuts for customers, so we would've had to bring the 4x8 sheets elsewhere.  That was not going to happen, since we don't even own a truck.  We ended up with 1x10in 'select' pine boards.  They were gorgeous and knot-free!

They did cost lots of monies - almost $20 a board for 8ft lengths.  But they were already the width we wanted, and the portions we cut off after creating the shelf support frames could be used for shelves.  Some people think that pine doesn't make good shelving because it's too soft, but with the proper prep and finish, pine can be just as durable as oak.  We created the support frames using 52 inch pieces of the pine boards with a 1/4 inch plywood backing. 

Hager chose to stagger the plywood backing among the frames, which was not something I wanted.  I didn't want to see seams in the plywood on the backs of the bookcases, but he was trying to avoid us needing another piece.  So, we will make the best of it with wood filler. 

Here is the last frame awaiting installation.

And it was put in place that evening. 

The vertical shelf supports line up with the cabinets, for the most part.  The two cabinets on the ends are 12 inches wide, while the middle four cabinets are two-door 30 inch wide cabinets.  We chose this combination because the wall was 12ft 1.5in long, so 144 inches of cabinets would be almost perfect.  We did have to add a filler piece to the right side, as they were a little short. 

The next steps are priming and putting up the shelf cleats.  Lucius approves of the project so far, which is good since I'm sure he will ultimately be sitting up there when it's completed.   

Can you see it coming together?  We are so excited!  PS - Hager did not help us just because he is an amazing person.  He helped us because we paid him.  Just wanted to clear that up for all you (unnecessarily) jealous people!