clair064

It's done!  She waited through 2 birthdays, 1 anniversary, 1 Christmas, and 1 Valentine's Day... but it's finally done, and she seems to feel that it was worth the wait.  /phew! If you've followed this blog this far, I won't make you way any longer.  Here are the photos: The Butcher's Bill In which I attempt to catalog what went right, what went wrong, what

This was one of the fussiest and most difficult procedures ever.  I tried looking around online to see how other people do it.  I found one guy who sort of used this approach and it seems to provide the most consistently shaped rows, so that's what I picked. Buy yourself some green foam at the fabric store.  The stuff is super expensive.  Why?!  We had a 50% coupon, so that helped. But I

This was probably the funnest part for Carolyn.  She got to lay out all of her jewelry and decide where it was going to live.  Then I just took a few measurements and built these divider frames so everything would have a place. Each drawer that has one of these divider assemblies followed the same approach.   There is a 3/4" tall, mitered frame around the inside perimeter of the drawer.  The

I'm using a magnet catch to hold the side doors closed.  A rare-earth magnet sits in a little metal cup, which amplifies its magnetic force, and the door gets a little metal washer.  The only tricky part is locating exactly where the washer needs to be so that it mates with the magnet when the door is closed. Magnet-in-a-cup Magnet looking for Washer, must be attractive and enjoy dark

I am the king of fixing broken screws.  I do it on every project now.  I pre-drilled holes for all of these little brass hooks and of course, the very last hook snaps off.  %&#@! Take a drill bit and drill out as much metal as you can.  Put some glue on the end of a toothpick and shove it in there. Wait an hour or so for the glue to dry and then chisel it flush.  Now you can drill in

Sorry for the delay.  I've been busy completing this project.  It's done now, as of 7/8/2014, but I haven't had a chance to take decent photos of the completed chest.  Glamour shots are forthcoming, in the meantime here are the photos I managed to take over the past month. Here's my setup for planing the drawer sides down.  It's super important to be really patient here and only take one or