That title's a science joke. You know what makes it hard to work on DIY projects? Being at the hospital all day. Jay's been working quite a bit too, so unfortunately progress is not as rapid as one might hope. Such are Margo and Jay's projects. We have been beating the vanity table into submission slowly but surely. Turns out using an old table for parts is not as straightforward as we expected. Our $45 table snag was a deal, but it isn't exactly the most well put together piece of furniture. The legs in particular are a bit crooked and being difficult to extend. Neither here nor there, we shall start with nice simple things like the drawer. Onward!
I want to take you down to where the magic happens. Our janky little half garage half carport mosquito-ridden palace of rentovations! Behold!!
I want to take you down to where the magic happens. Our janky little half garage half carport mosquito-ridden palace of rentovations! Behold!!
You guys are sort of getting the less exciting version of this, because a few months ago there was a homeless man who was actually living down here. Helpfully our downstairs neighbor discovered him before I did and asked him to move along (the man responded that he would leave as soon as he found his pants, and later Jay discovered mystery boxers), you can't say living in H Town isn't an adventure. We make lots of noise with power tools down in ye ol' garage which I'm sure is less than pleasant for the girl who lives in the apartment above, but she's a bit of a design junkie so she tolerates us. Hooray.
Step one of this project was to cut all of the table legs to the same length so we would have a nice clean straight edge to work with. Jay got to use his fun new miter saw.
Step one of this project was to cut all of the table legs to the same length so we would have a nice clean straight edge to work with. Jay got to use his fun new miter saw.
Miter saws actually come with a laser guide to help you put your cut in the right place. The downside to this is they aren't calibrated and refuse to calibrate so all that really happens when you use them is you mess up a bunch of cuts and then get frustrated. Forget about the laser guide and just use your eye and some measurements to line everything up, your life will be easier.
Step two was to sand the edges where we popped some of the decorative curves off nice and smooth. Here's me putting the electric sander guy to work. If I look uncomfortable it's not because I don't like power tools, its because its 100 million degrees this time of year in Houston and our lovely garage is full of wasps. Now you're uncomfortable too.
Step two was to sand the edges where we popped some of the decorative curves off nice and smooth. Here's me putting the electric sander guy to work. If I look uncomfortable it's not because I don't like power tools, its because its 100 million degrees this time of year in Houston and our lovely garage is full of wasps. Now you're uncomfortable too.
Since the leg extension is being obnoxious I will save that for the next post.
We decided the path of least resistance would be to build the drawer first because it's made from all new pieces of wood and its only a box. Easy peasy.
The first thing we did was decide what we wanted the inner dimensions to be. I like the makeup dividers you can get at the Container Store so I knew my drawer needed to be at least 15 inches wide inside to fit them. To fit the bottles of cosmetic goodness we determined it must be 4 inches tall. The table top itself determined our final dimension since we are reusing the original one from the occasional table, so the drawer could be 16 inches deep. Remember this is all on the inside of the drawer, so the actual pieces of wood are a bit bigger than this to accommodate.
All we did next was cut the pieces of wood to length and width using our table saw. I would upload the picture of Jay's planning diagram but it appears to be written in hieroglyphics. I shall summarize instead.
Back: 15 in x 4 in
Sides: 16.5 in x 4 in
Front: 18 in x 5 in (this is taller so the drawer face rests on the front of the table itself)
The great thing about starting with this was that it didn't have to be pretty since it will always be hidden, so we just squared up the pieces and screwed them together.
For the bottom we picked up a nice thin wood panel at Lowes and cut it to 16.5 by 16.5. Here's a picture of Jay attaching the bottom to the sides.
We decided the path of least resistance would be to build the drawer first because it's made from all new pieces of wood and its only a box. Easy peasy.
The first thing we did was decide what we wanted the inner dimensions to be. I like the makeup dividers you can get at the Container Store so I knew my drawer needed to be at least 15 inches wide inside to fit them. To fit the bottles of cosmetic goodness we determined it must be 4 inches tall. The table top itself determined our final dimension since we are reusing the original one from the occasional table, so the drawer could be 16 inches deep. Remember this is all on the inside of the drawer, so the actual pieces of wood are a bit bigger than this to accommodate.
All we did next was cut the pieces of wood to length and width using our table saw. I would upload the picture of Jay's planning diagram but it appears to be written in hieroglyphics. I shall summarize instead.
Back: 15 in x 4 in
Sides: 16.5 in x 4 in
Front: 18 in x 5 in (this is taller so the drawer face rests on the front of the table itself)
The great thing about starting with this was that it didn't have to be pretty since it will always be hidden, so we just squared up the pieces and screwed them together.
For the bottom we picked up a nice thin wood panel at Lowes and cut it to 16.5 by 16.5. Here's a picture of Jay attaching the bottom to the sides.
And here's the finished thing flipped over! So much storage!
The front piece is not attached yet because we want to do that after everything else is put together to make sure it will fit properly.
The front piece is not attached yet because we want to do that after everything else is put together to make sure it will fit properly.
Here's just a little demo showing the drawer without the face inside of the front piece of the vanity. It fits very nicely inside and should work out great. To attach it we bought simple drawer hardware at Rockler and will attach it to some support pieces inside the finished product. I'm thinking of painting the inside of this drawer a fun bright color that's different from the rest of the vanity. What do you think? Teal? Chartreuse? Orange? PINK?!
So currently we have all of the pieces cut out, the drawer put together and two of the legs extended. More on how to do that next time! Hope you guys enjoyed seeing our glimmer of progress. Oh and check out our "Our House" tab at the top, the bf cleaned our house one day (OMFG) and so I took advantage and snapped some pics of the abode.
Hope this gives you an idea of what's been going on. I know you're not impressed, but the best is yet to come.
Hope this gives you an idea of what's been going on. I know you're not impressed, but the best is yet to come.