super-structure

No, not the site. It’s not been updat­ed but just because I’ve been extra busy (and/or lazy). Rather, our fam­i­ly is mov­ing to a new home.

As part of the effort, I decid­ed I should just bite the bul­let and pur­chase a small trail­er. We need to put a lot of items into stor­age for this move, but there was no way we could do it all in a day (thus, mak­ing trail­er rentals extra pricey). So I pur­chased a 4’x8’ fold­ing trail­er, which col­laps­es down (up?) to so it can be stored off to the side of a garage. Prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar trail­er in the “small fold­ing” cat­e­go­ry is the one at Har­bor Freight. Well, there at least out of stock any­where with­in 100s of miles of me (so I assume very pop­u­lar). So I pur­chased the very sim­i­lar but slight­ly more expen­sive mod­el from North­ern Tool, brand­ed as an Iron­ton trail­er. I’m pret­ty sure it’s most­ly the same as the Har­bor Freight, but I did note a few struc­tur­al dif­fer­ences in the two. Oth­er­wise, this is the black one where the one from HF is red.

The trail­er comes in three box­es, each of which weights in at around 75 lbs. Suf­fice it say, despite being a “light duty” trail­er, this thing is assured­ly made of sol­id steel. The frame is about 1/4″ mate­r­i­al, most­ly chan­nel shapes. It required some larg­er met­ric sock­ets than I had, so I be pre­pared for that as well (It’s a prod­uct made in Chi­na, which should sur­prise no one at this price, so of course it’s all met­ric). I broke down the box­es to give myself a work sur­face for assem­bly. The frame assem­bly itself is rel­a­tive­ly straight-for­ward. The instruc­tions, while not great, are rel­a­tive­ly well writ­ten and illus­trat­ed. I did­n’t find myself putting any parts in back­wards or any­thing as a result.

I had to pur­chase a sheet of 3/4 ply­wood for the deck­ing sur­face, along with the asso­ci­at­ed hard­ware. I’ll be garage stor­ing this trail­er (and by the nature of it being open, only using it in gen­er­al­ly good weath­er, too!). So I just bought some stan­dard pine ply­wood and zinc hard­ware. Still, with the cur­rent price of lum­ber, that set me back about $100. I did have the big-box store cut the ply­wood into two 4’x4’ squares. This is to facil­i­tate the fold­ing action, but also makes it eas­i­er to get home if, well, you don’t have a trail­er. I mea­sured out the holes for the deck­ing as accu­rate­ly as pos­si­ble and then just start­ed bolt­ing the car­riage bolts into place. I want­ed the bolt heads to have a low pro­file; but did­n’t real­ly have any of my tools handy to coun­ter­sink large bolt heads. So car­riage bolts worked well. Hon­est­ly, they’re usu­al­ly my pref­er­ence for bolt­ing lum­ber, any­way. For holes I did­n’t get quite aligned, I just used the frame holes as sort of a drill guide and slot­ted the holes out a bit. The steel is much hard­er than the wood, of course, so this works to eas­i­ly get the mis-aligned holes corrected.

The wiring was pret­ty sim­ple, though I was a bit dis­ap­point­ed that the trail­er kit did­n’t include a con­nec­tion har­ness. It’s a $5 part, at most, and pret­ty stan­dard I think. The last bit of assem­bly I did was to drill for and bolt on four D‑ring style anchor points on the sides of the trail­er. Prob­a­bly anoth­er $20 for the anchors and hard­ware, but pret­ty essen­tial for my planned usage of the trail­er. Anoth­er issue was the cast­ers; or rather attach­ing them. Most of the bolts are nylon lock­ing which is fine in most cas­es. But I could­n’t think of a way to attach the cast­ers with this nut type. So I just bought some more met­ric nuts with split/lock wash­ers. These I were able to tight­en up with the impact dri­ver with­out the cast­er bear­ing just spin­ning in place.

And with that, the trail­er was ready to roll! My broth­ers came over to help me with the first real use of load­ing it up. We took some fur­ni­ture off to the stor­age unit. The real test came next: mov­ing my wife’s upright piano! We all had our own guess­es on how much this thing weighs, but I think we sort of set­tled on around 400 lbs. Now, there is no ramp on this trail­er. So even I backed it up to the curb edge, we still had to lift that piano over a foot off of the dol­ly and on to the deck. We had to call over our friend Adam to lend a hand! But the five of us (Angela was­n’t going to let us move her piano with­out her direct super­vi­sion and assis­tance), we man­aged to do so. We did rough up some of the fin­ish on a low­er pan­el when get­ting it off the trail­er, but it still played great. Stayed in tune, even! And I’d say with a 400 lb piano and five adults on the deck, we were def­i­nite­ly putting the load capac­i­ty of the trail­er to the test.

Ulti­mate­ly, this trail­er is going to get used to move sheet goods and lum­ber home from the hard­ware or big box store for projects in our new house. It takes me about 10 min­utes to get it out, bolt­ed secure in the “trail­er” mode, and hitched up. And that’s a lot faster than try­ing to get sheet goods cut down & then loaded into my SUV (even when that is pos­si­ble). So, I’d plan on anoth­er $150 or so in wood, hard­ware, and wiring on top of the price of this trail­er (and that does­n’t include any pick­et rails, which I may make lat­er) if you’re con­sid­er­ing this or the Har­bor Freight option. Oth­er­wise, it’s a great invest­ment and a sol­id trailer.

As our kids have got­ten old­er, they have out­grown their shared hall­way bath­room. So we decid­ed to give them two sinks and some more stor­age space.

In all fair­ness, “ren­o­va­tion” is prob­a­bly not the best word for this project. We did­n’t exact­ly tear down the room to bare studs or any­thing. How­ev­er, it did touch on just about every DIY skillset I have! And we agreed that if we were going to do this project our­selves and not hire any­one, we were still going to make sure every aspect was done right. 

We used a sim­i­lar IKEA cab­i­net with draw­ers to the one we installed in our down­stairs bath update. This is the IKEA Hemnes van­i­ty and wall cab­i­net, along with the match Odensvik sink. We also used a pair of the Ensen faucets from IKEA. These cab­i­nets are great for stor­age but be pre­pared to do some mod­i­fi­ca­tions to your plumb­ing lines as they almost cer­tain­ly will have to be cut shorter!

How­ev­er, where that had a pedestal sink, this bath­room had a full cab­i­net with a closed base. The new cab­i­net was short­er in depth and also had an open cab­i­net. Upon pulling out the old cab­i­net, we imme­di­ate­ly real­ized that the tile was place after the cab­i­net and there­fore did­n’t con­tin­ue beneath it. Angela was able to locate some match­ing tile used in the bath­room. We had to remove some of the tiles that had been cut around the cab­i­net foot­print. A grout removal blade on a cord­less oscil­lat­ing mul­ti­tool made this an easy job (I start­ed off try­ing to remove the grout by hand and it was near­ly impos­si­ble with the epoxy grout). My son helped out plac­ing some under­lay­ment. The com­pos­ite vinyl tile used floor adhe­sive and sil­i­con grout (which is hon­est­ly way worse to place than nor­mal tile grout). We were able to most­ly match up the grout, though.

For light­ing, I added a sec­ond light mount in series with the orig­i­nal. The builders of this home used pos­si­bly the worst light mount box­es, so I end­ed up replac­ing the orig­i­nal with an old work box. I drilled through a cou­ple of studs to run the wire, which was dif­fi­cult at best1. The oth­er elec­tric work con­sist­ed of mov­ing an out­let a few inch­es out of the cor­ner so that it would­n’t be blocked by the wall cab­i­net. I used my mul­ti­tool again here to quick­ly cut out the old box and then cut in a space for an old work box about 5″ to the left. Seems like a lot of effort for not much dis­tance, but it makes the out­let much eas­i­er to get to.

With the elec­tri­cal out of the way, it was time to patch up the walls. I’ve learned a bit about dry­wall repair and I can say from expe­ri­ence that dry­wall com­pound is far bet­ter to work with than spack­le for any­thing larg­er than a nail hole. For cov­er­ing larg­er open­ings, also use a met­al mesh patch. The one down­side to dry­wall com­pound is that it’s a ton of sand­ing and there­fore a huge, dusty mess. But the results are worth it. My wife and daugh­ter paint­ed the room a blue-gray once all the sand­ing was complete.

Next, it was time for plumb­ing. Unlike our down­stairs bath, the sup­ply lines and drains in the wall stuck out too far for the IKEA cab­i­nets. In order to cut back sup­ply lines, we had to shut off the main water sup­ply to the house. We had for­tu­nate­ly nev­er had to do that before so locat­ing it was a headache. In our defense, it’s upstairs in a hall clos­et where our water heater tank is locat­ed and does­n’t look like any oth­er water shut-off valve I could find on the inter­net! Once we got the water shut off and the pipe pres­sure relieved by open­ing a tub faucet down­stairs, I could cut the lines. Actu­al­ly, Angela end­ed up cut­ting the sec­ond and putting a new shut-off valve on since I had to run to the store to get some more com­pres­sion rings (the old ones weren’t com­ing off and I only had one for some rea­son). The drain was easy to cut back using the mul­ti­tool again (it’s a great demo tool!). I installed the line split­ters and fit up all the drain lines for the two sinks after that.

The open cab­i­net meant that I need­ed to place floor trim all along the wall where the old cab­i­net pre­vi­ous­ly was. I was able to pur­chase some match­ing MDF floor mold­ing and shoe mold­ing. I cut it to size, sneak­ing up so it would make a nice, tight miter in the cor­ner. Of course, the walls were not real­ly straight at all. The one new tool major tool I pur­chased for this project was a bat­tery pow­ered trim nail­er and it made installing the mold­ing a breeze. With that in place, we could hang the cab­i­net and set the van­i­ty top.

The last thing to do was to hang the wall cab­i­net with the mir­rors. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, both Angela and I had­n’t real­ly thought through all the dis­tances. There was enough space for the full cab­i­net between the top of the faucets and the bot­tom of the light fix­tures, but just bare­ly. That is, you would­n’t actu­al­ly be able to put your hand on the faucet and turn it on! We even tried turn­ing the lights to point up (keen eyes may have not­ed that in the first pho­to), but it still was­n’t going to be enough space for the wall cabinet.

I had a plan, though. I took the wall cab­i­net apart and did some a lot of mea­sur­ing. I then took the sides and back pan­els out to the garage work­shop. I was going to sim­ply remove the bot­tom shelf and there­by short­en the cab­i­net 6–1/2″. The sides were actu­al stained pine, so I did­n’t have to wor­ry about a veneer tear­ing too much. I made the cuts to length using the miter gage. I then cut about the final inch off of those off-cuts. This would give me a drill tem­plate for the dow­el and screw holes in the “new” bot­toms. I then cut the back pan­els down by the same amount. The cab­i­net went back togeth­er per­fect­ly. There was even a con­sis­tent gap all around the mir­ror doors!

The last major piece to install was a new toi­let. The old toi­let was a short height, round bowl (i.e., a “kid­dy” size toi­let — this pho­to does not do the size dif­fer­ence jus­tice). We opt­ed for a rea­son­ably priced Delta toi­let. I was a bit ner­vous about the removal and instal­la­tion, but it went pret­ty eas­i­ly and was far less unpleas­ant than I expect­ed. That being said, the Delta toi­let is pret­ty lousy and I would­n’t rec­om­mend it to anyone. 

We hung up some match­ing hand tow­el and robe hooks for the kids to fin­ish off the room. So there you have it: demo, tiling, elec­tri­cal, plumb­ing, dry­wall, paint­ing, and car­pen­try all in one small bath­room ren­o­va­tion! But it real­ly has inspired our con­fi­dence to tack­le even more projects. I’m pleased with how every­thing turned out and that I know every­thing’s done cor­rect­ly, too. 

1. In fact, I near­ly drilled right into a live 110v line to an out­let using a spade bit. For­tu­nate­ly, I was going fair­ly slow­ly. How­ev­er, that could have eas­i­ly gone very bad­ly for me. [↩]

We’ve been work­ing for the past cou­ple of months to update the bath­rooms in our house. We start­ed with the sim­plest update: replac­ing a pedestal sink with a small IKEA cab­i­net. We also repaint­ed, updat­ed the light­ing, and hung new art & a mirror.

First of all: we’re real­ly bad at tak­ing “before” pho­tos for some rea­son and it’s not like we had a lot of ran­dom pho­tos of our bath­rooms, any­way. So there’s not much to show for that. This bath­room nev­er had any stor­age and our pre­vi­ous clunky attempts at adding some nev­er real­ly solved that issue. So, the main update was to remove the builder-grade pedestal sink and to replace this with a cabinet. 

We got a small cab­i­net with two draw­ers along with sink & faucet from IKEA. Their Hemnes cab­i­nets have full-depth draw­ers. This is accom­plished by a very shal­low sink and a drain that has a cou­ple of hard 90° bends to go behind the draw­ers. Also, this requires that the shut-off val­ues and drain con­nec­tion extend less than 4″ from the wall. For­tu­nate­ly, we did­n’t have to make any changes to the plumb­ing con­nec­tions for this to fit. We did shift the cen­ter of the sink away from the wall, so as to not crowd the cab­i­net into the cor­ner. This gives it more of a “fur­ni­ture” look, which was the aes­thet­ic we were shoot­ing for (with the Euro-style open base and all). One piece of advice if you choose to do this: give your­self a few inch­es to paint the wall beside the cab­i­net. Oth­er­wise, you’ll have to call on your skin­ny-armed child to come do that and they might not be the best paint­ing labor.

The light­ing also need­ed to move over to be cen­tered on the new­ly placed sink. The wall box for the light­ing was attached to a stud which was right where I need to place the light. So we opt­ed for a light with a larg­er wall cov­er­ing. I sim­ply cut a new hole in the mount­ing plate and wired through that. 

The mir­ror was one we had pre­vi­ous­ly used in anoth­er bath­room but would match the white on gray col­or scheme here. My daugh­ter paint­ed a scene from the movie Spir­it­ed Away and I decid­ed to make a frame for it. I got some poplar 1x2 from the big box hard­ware store. Poplar is a fair­ly fast grow­ing and there­fore cheap hard­wood and would be a lost cost, low risk way to prac­tice mak­ing a frame. I used a “float­ing” frame tech­nique by cut­ting a rab­bet along the inside, which gives the paint­ing the appear­ance of float­ing (well, a bit of a shad­ow line any­way). I also got a frame band clamp to help keep the frame togeth­er. I had to build in an inter­nal frame of scrap ply­wood pieces, as the pain­ing was­n’t on a can­vas but rather a board. I use what­ev­er white rat­tle can spray paints I had to cov­er the frame, which did­n’t turn out so well. But the frame was most­ly square with tight miter joints!

We paint­ing the bath­room a nice gray (which we’ve now used in all our bath­rooms). The whole room feels much larg­er, even with the cab­i­net as there is no longer a tow­er of cub­bies for awk­ward stor­age next to the toi­let. And those draw­ers hold even more! 

I made a small, wood­en box using fin­ger joints to store my resis­tors used for elec­tron­ics projects.

I’ve been hop­ing to prac­tice using box joints for quite a while. My sand­ing acci­dent back at the end of 2019 was in try­ing to make a box joint jig for the table saw sled. When I final­ly did make that, the results weren’t great. So I decid­ed to pur­chase a com­mer­cial box joint jig for a router table from Rock­ler. After a quick test, I also pur­chased some longer, straight cut bits. 

The first step was to use my (new!) table saw to cut the 1/2” ply­wood pieces. I also cut the slot in each side to accom­mo­date the 1/4” ply­wood bot­tom. I’m not sure this last step wasn’t a mis­take in my order of oper­a­tions, though. I end­ed up get­ting some real­ly bad treat out from the router on that lit­tle strip of wood on two of the sides. I do think now that a spi­ral down-cut bit may also help with this. 

So, this box joint jig is intend­ed for a router table. A router table, in brief is used to mount a router upside down below. This then allows you to bring the work­piece to the tool, rather than tak­ing the router to the piece. This is essen­tial in small­er pieces and for many jigs. Now, my router “table” is just a piece of 3/4” MDF scrap I clamp to my work­bench. I can then clamp the jig to that. I used a few more scrap pieces to clamp the shop vac hose as dust extrac­tion. I did sev­er­al test cuts on some scrap to “dial in” the fin­ger width to get a good fit. 

After the pieces were cut, I had some repair to do. While ply­wood is a great mate­r­i­al, it’s not the best choice for this par­tic­u­lar method of cut­ting box joints. There was a lot of tear-out. I was able to use some glue & saw­dust to fix some of these before fly­ing up the box. Glue up for box joints isn’t hard, but I could see if being dif­fi­cult on a large piece with all those fin­gers. But it’s at least easy to keep things square. 

Once the glue cured, it was time to sand down the fin­gers flush to the box faces. Here again, ply­wood isn’t very for­giv­ing. The thin face veneer sands away quick­ly on the disc sander. Next it was time for wood filler. Those slots left 1/4” holes in each cor­ner. And the ply­wood tear out had numer­ous gaps. So I went a lit­tle crazy with the wood filler. This then left me with anoth­er round of sand­ing. By this point, the birch veneer was com­plete­ly gone in some spots around the fingers. 

Last­ly, I used the Cri­cut to cre­ate some vinyl sten­cils for the large omega (the sym­bol used in elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing for resis­tance). The sten­cil worked great, but the adhe­sive back end­ed up pulling off some small veneer fibers. So yet anoth­er draw­back of ply­wood here. The final step was to use some wipe-on gel polyurethane fin­ish. I think maybe doing the sten­cil between two lay­ers of fin­ish would have helped pre­vent the fibers lifting. 

One of the rea­sons to make this is that it’s not a show piece. This is just some­thing to replace the card­board box I had used for a cou­ple of years to store resis­tors. That way I can learn and prac­tice with no pres­sure. I def­i­nite­ly did learn a lot and I’m not even dis­ap­point­ed in the final result, despite the flaws.