I made some small tablet/phone stands as Christmas gifts for family. Though they’re relatively simple, making a dozen of the exact same piece required thinking ahead.
Stamped Stand
Tablet Stand
My initial prototype stand from back in September
I used a 7′ (-ish) section of 1x4 poplar from the Home Depot. This was S4S lumber, so it was a good piece to start with. I didn’t have to do any milling (which is good, because I don’t have any real milling tools). I initially cut a few short sections on the miter saw to make a few prototypes. I did a few different slot angles and widths, finally landing on a 3/8″ at 10°. The through hole is mainly to help access the home button (or swipe up gesture) when the tablet is upright.
For batching out the remaining dozen of stands, I needed to think through the process to set up repeatable actions for each step. While the miter saw is perfectly capable of making repeatable length cross cuts, I ended up just using the table saw in order to reduce my cleanup time (the dust collection on my table saw is much better and I was already going to use it for the slots).
Cutting Down to Length
I then glued up a couple of pieces of scrap to make a jig for drilling out the through hole. This didn’t work out as well as I hoped and I ended up having to just manually align the holes. Cutting them with a forstner bit was at least fast, though. I’ll definitely re-visit that drill press jig if I make more.
Next came cutting the angled slot, which is the only really tricky part of this project. I set my table saw blade at 10°. Now, it doesn’t matter what table saw blade I use, because no blade can cut a flat bottom when angled like that. So I have to cut about 5–6 passes and then have some ridges along the bottom of the slot.
Cutting 10° Slot
To set the bounds for the edges of the slots, I added a couple of quick clamps on to my table saw fence gage to act as stops. Then I just needed to move the fence over just shy of an 1/8th of an inch for each pass until I hit the far stop. I also used my MicroJig Gripper to help hold the pieces. As you can see, the length of the piece between the blade and the fence is more than the width of the piece parallel to the fence. This is generally not a safe cut, but with such a small piece, it not being a through cut, and using the Gripper, I felt completely comfortable making these cuts. After making the cuts, I could use a 1/4″ chisel to clean up the uneven bottom of the slots.
Sanding Through Grits
Next came sanding. I sanded each piece through 120, 220, and 400 grit sandpaper. As these are very small pieces, I had to hold the piece in one hand and “air” sand it using the random orbital sander. To say the least, this was exhausting trying to hold vibrating pieces together! I then used my old nemesis, the disc sander, to sand a chamfer onto each edge. I set the table at 45° and made a quick pass along each edge. Keep in mind, each of thee blocks has 12 edges and there were a dozen blocks. That’s a long of sanding. At least I got through listening to a majority of my audiobook doing all this receptive cutting and sanding.
Chamfering Edges Using the Disc Sander
It’s during these sort of repetitive actions that it’s very easy to get complacent, which can lead to injury with power tools. Having my minor injury at the end of 2019 and then seeing very competent YouTubers get hurt, I was very aware of this fact. Even Adam Savage has talked about the risk of injury during these sort of repetitive actions. So I did my best to keep my wits about me and pay attention to every cut and every pass with the sander.
I finished each of these with a couple of coats of spar urethane (after stamping the bottom of each). I then gave each a quick knock-down sanding with a sheet of 400 grit sand paper. The finish is glass-like and should hold up to kitchens, bathroom counters, coffee mugs, etc.
After painting most of the rooms in the house over the past 6 months, we finally decided to tackle painting the halls and stairwell.
The finished product — something we can be proud of
Like a lot of people around the world, we spent most of 2020 at home. We had planned on a fairly big vacation back in May, but that all got cancelled. We were fortunate to not lose a lot out on that. So, we instead started doing a lot of projects around the house. We updated the bathrooms, tiled a backsplash in the kitchen, worked in the yard, and more. We also had new carpet installed upstairs, switching to a light gray color (from very worn out beige).
We also (finally) got around to painting almost every room in the house. Some of which, like our bedroom, hadn’t been painted since we moved in. But no where in the house needed painting worse than our halls and stair well. Needless to say, with all our bedrooms upstairs, it’s a high traffic spot. We actually did have it painted about 9 years ago by a professional painting company. But between us, two kids going from toddlers to middle-schoolers, and three dogs, it just got beat up over time.
Ideally, I would have gotten to painting all this before the new carpet. Painting the bedrooms before then was great, because we didn’t care at all about the occasional drip of paint on the old carpet, knowing it was about to be discarded. But I certainly used a couple of drop-cloths upstairs. Honestly, I’d just been putting off painting these halls because I wasn’t at all sure how I’d paint the high walls in the stairwell. At its highest point, the ceiling is about 16′ high over the lower stairs. But I invested in a this 18′ multi-position ladder which tackled most of the issue of height. However, positioning it on the stairs is the trick. I saw a couple of YouTube videos in which painters had built their own stair-step platform for positioning ladders. After struggling I realized that I absolutely needed to build something like that.
This style of ladder easily adapts to stairs
So I grabbed some scrap plywood and 2x4s and measured the needed cuts right on the steps. That is, I literally never wrote down a single number; just got the top level and made a mark on one of the 2x4s. I pre-drilled the plywood pieces just to keep the screws straight. I screwed the plywood to the 2x4s using some 2″ deck screws — 2 screws for each end of a 2x4. I was worried that it might be a bit wobbly with only those screws in end grain, but 32 screws apparently was sufficient because it was rock solid. I added block of scrap 2x4 to space the top over the baseboard trim and to provide a place for the ladder foot to brace. I can’t say this is the finest piece of woodworking craftsman ship I’ve ever done, my mom recently told me that her father had been a house painter in his first career. So, I decided in that case, this was worthy of putting his name on my build after all.
My stair ladder platform made from scrap plywood and 2x4s
Ladders and platforms, oh my!
Stamped my make-shift ladder platform with my logo — named after my woodworking granddad who apparently also used to paint for a living
I was able to place this step platform on the top step, paint the top trim and high wall. I then moved it down a couple of steps to get to the next section. After that, I could reach everything else from just standing on an 20″ painters platform, which is another investment we made for painting rooms in the house. I had used something similar painting houses with Habitat for Humanity and they’re just tall enough to easily paint ceiling trim work. A couple of other handy painting tools that we use:
Sure-Line Extendable Pole — we purchased one of these about 17 years ago and still use it to this day. It’s the single most useful painting supply we’ve ever purchased. With the painting platform and this medium (up to 5′) pole, I could get to my top edge with a roller no problem on a 14′ ceiling at our stair landing.
Wooster Shortcut - this is the best brush for detailed edge work. It’s got nice bristles and the comfortable, short handle is great for fine control. When you’re 14–16′ feet up on a ladder, you want to make sure you don’t have to come back to clean up a bad edge, trust me.
Sure-Line Edger — this is mostly useful for around door or window casing. You do need to be careful in not getting a paint bead on the outer edge (we went back over that with a small 4″ roller immediately to avoid it). The wheels are too far away from the paint pad to help much with ceiling or floor molding, though. This has threads for a pole attachment, but I found it to be useless when I wasn’t holding it.
My painting supervisor inspecting the carpet quality.
Me painting the ceiling trim while Angela watches (she did lend a hand)
Lastly, it’s worth noting that we bought good quality rollers, both 12″ and 4″. More importantly, though, is that we bought high quality paint. The paint is Behr Marquee (from. Home Depot) and I honestly cannot recommend this stuff enough. It’s got amazing coverage even with 1 coat in most of our applications (if over an older flat finish, it required two coats with a roller). It dries to the touch in about 30 minutes but keeps a good wet edge just long enough to prevent lines. We like the satin finish for most of our rooms, but did go with an eggshell for the bathrooms, I think. At $45 a gallon, it’s far from cheap but is money well spent. For reference, we just painted two hallways and the stairs using only a single gallon, with some leftover for touch-ups down the road.
Taking down the tools while the last of the paint dries
I’ll leave you with this one final thought. As we close the final hours on what has been, at best, an interesting (and at worst, a dismal) year, it’s fitting that I’m writing about wrapping up a project I had dreaded for so long. When I mentioned to my dad a couple of days ago I was taking some time off work this week to do this, he suggested this be my next blog post. I wasn’t sure there’d me much to talk about for just painting walls, but I realized I’d learned a lot about painting this year and have gotten pretty good at it. Further, I realized putting off this project was more than my typical procrastination. I was naturally concerned about safety but also just about getting it done right. We tackled a lot of projects while home this year and I managed to turn that into some real know-how and confidence to do more and more, with finally being ready to paint that billboard-sized wall in our stairs! Knowing that there’s no interior paint job I can’t tackle is a great feeling and a nice way for me to close out another year of DIY projects.
Happy New Year and may 2021 bring us all some joy and many more new, great projects!
Angela & I updating our bathroom with new lights, sinks, faucets, and custom mirrors.
Our finished bathroom update
After having completed some updates to the other two bathrooms in our house, I have to confess I was somewhat disappointed every time I stepped into our “owner’s” bath, as it was the same old builder-grade stuff. We didn’t want to break the bank in updating it, so we set out with a budget-friendly set of updates we could accomplish ourselves.
You’ll notice that a lot of the images here are out of order, as the work isn’t really done one trade at a time. But I broke this up into the sections of work to better highlight the parts of each.
Lighting
The overall lighting level in the bathroom wasn’t terrible, but I really didn’t care for the look of the single light above the large mirror. I really wanted to put in some wall sconces. In order to do so, we first had to take out the old light. This was mostly a straight-forward process. I wouldn’t be using the existing location (like I did in the other two bathrooms, more-or-less), so I cut out the wall box and then patched over the opening. I ended up having to cut the wiring, as it was (correctly, per code) sealed into the top plate with some fireproofing foam.
Digging through blown insulation to drill in the wiring wasn’t too fun.
As a result, I had to install a junction box in our attic. I would have to drill laterally through too many studs to use the approach I used to add a second light over the kids’ vanity, so I instead drilled two additional holes in the top plate (I re-used the old, center hole once I freed the cut wiring). I then ran “U” shaped sections of wire to set up the three lights in series from the junction box, which connected back to the wall switch. I put in the old-work boxes and had the lights up in no time. Lastly, I used some expanding fire-proofing foam on the holes in the top plate (no one is ever gonna check, but we’ll know it would pass a code inspection!).
Old-work boxes and wiring for lights.
I had ordered some nice-looking wall sconces from Home Depot and used some “Edison” style LED bulbs that I already had. They put out a very “warm” light, but as they’re just above eye level, anything brighter would be too much.
These LED Edison style bulbs are surprisingly warm in color.
Plumbing
The good news was that since this was already a double vanity, there was no changes needed to the water or drain lines. The bad news was that since this was a double vanity, getting a new top with square bowls was the single most expensive item (by far) of the entire project. Even though it raised the final counter height a bit, we really wanted a slightly thicker top. We found a pretty good deal on an acrylic VersaStone top with integrated sink bowls at Home Depot (it’s out of stock at the time I’m writing this, but Amazon carries a smaller size). Other than the sheer weight of pulling off the old top and then putting the new top in place, this was probably the easiest part of the whole project. The cabinet is a “standard” size, so it fit perfectly.
The vanity top installed and prepping for tiling.
I had to move an outlet 2″ so it didn’t overlap the tile.
Vanity and backsplash installation.
We also managed to get Moen Genta faucets on sale at the Home Depot, too. They were very straight-forward to install except that I had to cut-down the rod connecting the sink stopper to the pull lever, as it jammed in the drain! I did also have to get some water line extensions (why do plumbers install the water lines so low!). So that was a considerable amount of money (nearly $50) for 2″ of line. But the faucets look great with the lines of the vanity top.
Our faucets installed and working!
Angela also put in a short backsplash with some marble tiles. We ended up having to cut just a few, and I was able to use a grindstone to bevel the edge of a half-piece so it fit in the end. I think Angela has definitely decided that tiling is her DIY job of choice!
Detail of marble tiling, including the beveled edge I ground on a cut piece.
Mirror
If you’ve never lived in a spec-built home, let me explain something to you: the mirrors are glued to the wall with construction adhesive or mastic. It’s fast and easy to do them this way, but it is a huge pain to remove them. We lucked out in getting the smaller ones off the walls years ago. But the mirror in our bathroom was 6 feet by 3–1/2 feet. We knew it had to go, but we were more-or-less terrified about splitting it into a million pieces all over our bathroom. I watched a number of YouTube videos about the process and it seemed that prying it off all along the top by driving in wooden shims was considered the best approach. So, I got a very large pack of 14″ shims and then proceeded to tape up the mirror. You may think this was overkill for the tape, but I seriously considered just covering the entire thing! Angela was there for support, both figuratively and literally (do not try something like this on your own!). We went through the entire pack of shims, even going so far as to re-using some that fell down and we could reach. In the end, we had them stacked about four thick. But with a final, satisfying pop, the mirror came free in one piece. It weighed 70 lbs (I did the math), which isn’t a lot for the two of us to carry, but when it’s that large and fragile, it’s pretty scary.
You’re gonna need a lot of shims. No, more than this.
The guy on the left didn’t do as good a job gluing as the other guy.
Prying off the mirror using wood shims tapped behind the top.
We had to patch up the walls where the adhesive pulled off the outer layer of drywall paper. I’ve learned the hard way that this stuff is nearly impossible to patch right, even with drywall compound because the inner, brown paper isn’t water proof. It just sucks up the moisture and then bubbles up when painted. Using a repair primer first seals off that paper. We used Zinsser Gardz, because it’s available in a quart (however, I understand Roman Rx-35 Pro-999 is just as good; it just only comes in a gallon and this stuff goes a long way). Just make sure you cut back to sound outer paper and paint it on with a foam brush (it’s like milk). Then you can patch up the drywall with compound, sand, and paint.
Zinsser Gardz works great for re-sealing drywall paper.
Lots of drywall repair here. Fortunately, we’re getting better at that!
Patching up the drywall mess that the glued mirror left behind.
I used some mineral spirits to soften up the adhesive on the back of the mirror once I got it out to the garage floor on some cardboard. A rubber headed hammer and a wide putty knife made short work of scraping it off. I then used a cheap‑o glass cutter and a drywall square to score the front surface along the first cut. I was planning to lower it back over a broom handle as a pivot, but it ended up just splitting as I lowered it! One quick change over underpants later, I repeated to split the smaller side into two final sections.
Mineral spirits and elbow grease are the key to removing construction adhesive.
It’s good luck when the mirror breaks right where you wanted it to.
Cleaning and cutting the huge mirror to recycle it into new, custom mirrors.
I ordered a couple of 6′ long, maple 1x4’s to mill up into some frames. I wanted a narrow, yet deep frame for each. So they were essentially cut into 1x2’s, framed in the “skinny” direction. The boards were pretty rough, with lots of chatter marks and sniping. I don’t have a planar, but I was able to smooth them down with my belt sander. Ripping the pieces into narrow boards certainly relieved a lot of strain, to the point I was concerned I wouldn’t have enough straight sections to make decent frames! But the hockey stick end aside, I was able to measure and miter each board to fit the mirrors. I cut the dados on the table saw. The glue-up for the frames was pretty easy, though having only one band clamp and limited work space meant I had to make one at a time.
Bad chatter and snipe on these boards, but they were gorgeous maple!
How do you spell relief? W‑A-R‑P! Seriously, look at that hockey stick I had to shove through the table saw!
Milling down the 1x6 boards into some usable 1x2’s for the frames.
I tried using some plain spar urethane at first on a sample piece to try to match the cabinetry, which while also maple is now over 12 years old. It wasn’t nearly a dark enough match, but my son helped me pick out a close color of get stain at Woodcraft to match one of the false drawer fronts. So, American Oak color wiped on very thin and then finished with spar urethane spray does a very good job of matching older maple, if you ever find yourself needing to do such a thing. Just be sure to do a better job cleaning up your glue and wood filler than I did first.
The frames were built around the mirror, which I then lifted out and set aside.
This combo gave me a nicely aged maple color that perfectly matched the cabinetry.
Building and finishing the mirror frames
I used an 18gage nailer to reinforce the miter joints from the bottom and top, none of which are visible when hanging. I used some thin foam sheets to pad the mirror and then covered the back with a 1/4″ sheet of plywood. I used a couple of simple metal clips to hold it in place. The narrow frame means that the hanging hooks are visible from the side, but otherwise it’s a very clean and minimal look.
It’s not all smoke and mirrors.
So that’s our final bathroom update! And making those mirrors was a really great experience.
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.
Wall cabinet in place and bath hardware mounted
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.
Beginning demo — the closest thing to a “before” picture
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.
Removing old tile around cabinetry
Wyatt helps attach the new subfloor
Last piece of new tile being glued down
Removing old cut tiles, installing underlayment on the sub-floor, and new tiling
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.
Drilling through a stud for lighting (into a live cable!)
Electric done and wall patched
Lighting and paint completed
New lighting and an easier to access outlet
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.
Ainsley and Angela painting trim
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.
Building the sink drains
Drains and sink lines complete
Tight fit behind the drawers in this IKEA vanity
The IKEA vanity, sink top, and faucets also include the drain lines and sink supply lines
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.
Cabinetry being mounted using three lag screws
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 somea 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!
Setting up for some cross cuts using the miter gage
Drilling new joint holes for screws and dowels using the cut-off as a drill guide
Cut-off clamped in place
Cut off the ends of the cabinet panels and then use those cut-offs as drill guides
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.
New toilet installed and old toilet ready for the dump (pun intended)
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.
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.
Our updated hallway bathroom
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.
The old sink pulled out and donated to our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore
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.
Cabinet in place
Tight plumbing
Working sink
Cabinet plumbing
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.
A hole saw allowed me to center the light bracket
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!
Cutting the frame
Glue up
Building the painting frame
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!
After a couple of years of using a portable table saw, which actually belongs to my older brother (thanks, Steve!), I decided to purchase an upgraded table saw for my woodworking projects. I’ll describe a bit of why I decided on this model and what I think of it in this post.
Cutting angled dados
The Old Saw
First, about the old table saw. It’s a Ryobi and it really did serve me well on quite a few projects. I certainly pushed the limit of what this saw is capable of. And for probably 90% of the projects, it was up to the task. Seriously, for a lot of DIY’ers, this is a perfectly good saw. I put a quality blade (a 50 tooth Freud Diablo), which dramatically improves the cut of any saw. I built a cross-cut sled that made a lot of cuts feasible.
The ‘lil 15-amp champ that I’ve used for about 3 years.
But the saw is very lightweight, and sometimes pushing the sled into the blade would actually start to tip the entire saw! Also, the fence while actually pretty accurate, isn’t great. So, if you’re just ripping medium size pieces or making small cross-cuts, this saw can manage it. I actually even managed to rip down bed rails from a full size 4’x8’ sheet of 3/4″ maple plywood on this little thing! One place where this kind of saw just completely fails, though, is in dust collection. That is, there is none other than gravity generally making a giant pile beneath the saw.
New Saws Out There
I did quite a lot of research on table saws. I did consider a “job site” saw and putting it on a mobile base (or even re-building my mobile workbench). These are some pretty great saws in the $250-$600 price range. The next jump up in price range is a “hybrid” table saw, which is nominally portable (if “portable” only means having casters and weighing under 250 lbs). These have the larger table of a cabinet saw and typically better fence systems. These tend to be in the $700-$1,200 price range. Of course, there are cabinet saws for professionals which cost far more, typically require 220v power, and are far more saw than I could ever justify. And there are Saw Stop saws in all these categories and while their flesh-sensing system is amazing, I also can’t justify the cost for those. Really, Saw Stop sort of sit in a class of their own, in my opinion.
Within the hybrid saw class, most of the saws are really around $1,000 and up. There are some great saws in that price range. The big box stores have a couple of “entry” level models, though: the Ridgid and a Delta (why Lowes hasn’t label-slapped this as a Kobalt, I don’t really know). Between the two of those, the Delta seemed to typically get better reviews and was a bit cheaper at $600 at the time I purchased it (July 2020). Further, the Delta just got a newer version released with some decent improvements. Home Depot actually does also carry the Delta, but at $300 more.
Same saw at two very different prices at the big box stores.
The Delta 36–725T2
So what kind of table saw do you get for $600? First of all, a Biesemeyer fence system, which can cost over $400 separately. The center of the table is cast iron and the wings are steel. I found that the top may have a slight dip to the middle (that is, I could see a slight bit of light beneath a straight edge laid across it), but is more than flat enough for anything I’ll ever want to make. The wings aren’t stamped sheet metal, but actually steel plate, similar in thickness to the angle rails and square tube used for the front fence. Even the blade that is included is pretty decent. I ripped two 4′ lengths of 3/4″ plywood to make some French cleats and it was a clean cut on both. And while the dust collection isn’t perfect, it’s actually quite good. Also, the mitre included has a nice steel bar and heavy plastic body.
Dust after ripping 8′ of 1/2″ birch plywood
The entire saw took me about 2–1/2 hours to assemble, and that includes having to take apart almost the entire thing to swap the side the swivel caster was on. Also, I should have paid closer attention to the hole patterns on the wings, as I had to turn those around and re-level them. If I’d paid closer attention, I could have easily been done in under two hours without rushing. My wife did need to help me get the box out of the back of our SUV by lowering one end down to the floor. Otherwise, I was able to put the saw together by myself, including tipping it up (I used an extra scrap 2x to help tip it easy so I could get my hands under the cast iron top and just squat lift).
The scale on the rail was nearly spot-on out of the box. Similarly, the saw was very close to parallel to the mitre slots. How close? Well, I couldn’t actually measure the difference with a quality sliding square, but I could hear a tooth rubbing the end more at one end than the other. So yeah, pretty close. The fence is pretty spot on and super easy to adjust. I saw a few reviewers commenting that the angle gauge was off, but mine was within 1–2 tenths of a degree. It’s also easy to adjust (and, honestly, I have a digital angle gauge so I’m more likely to rely on that anyway). I haven’t run into anything about the saw so far that I couldn’t quickly tweak.
Angle between blade and top at just past the 45° mark
The saw is a bit bigger than I’d hoped, though (hold on, I’ll explain). I had planned on just rolling it beneath my fixed work bench. Since I couldn’t, I ended up having to re-arrange a lot in my garage. This was my biggest worry, but it ended up just fine and frankly, having to clean up the garage wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Fortunately, the casters are pretty good and the saw rolls & turns very easily despite weighing 220 lbs. I’ve moved it in and out of the “parked” spot several times for use now and it’s not been a bother.
Using the Saw
So I’ve used the saw for several different cuts now. As I mentioned earlier, I did several long-ish rips of plywood to make some French cleats. I also ended up having to cut down sides and back panels of an IKEA wall vanity (pine and hardboard). I used the mitre gage to make the cross cuts on the side panels as I haven’t made a new sled for this table saw yet. However, the mitre gage worked great for this purpose. I cut about half-way through the side piece, flipped it over and repeated. This reduced tear-out on both faces (and by reduced, I mean there was zero). But of course, to do this you have to have the blade dead parallel to the mitre gage and it was (again, right out of the box!).
Setting up for some cross cuts using the miter gage
The fence has a small rail that folds out on the right-hand side to make cuts on thin stock, such as the hard board back panels. This works perfect and prevents the material from sliding under the fence (which sits about 1/8″ above the table top). I also used the table saw to cut an angled dado into a poplar board, which was used to make a tablet/phone stand. I also used the saw to cut down some 1/4″ underlayment boards for a tiling project. So, not a ton of use, but a pretty good variety of types of cuts and everyone has had me even more happy with the purchase.
I do wish I’d cleaned and waxed the cast iron top as soon as I got it put together, though. It took only about 2–3 days for the Tennessee summer humidity to charm some rust out of the cast iron. I’ve since sanded, cleaned, and waxed it, but now there are some stains in the cast iron. They don’t in any way affect the saw, but good tools are worth taking good care of.
Lastly, one feature I didn’t know that I’d like so much is just how quiet this saw is. The magnetic start button is great and the saw is so much quieter than my shop vac, I can barely hear it!
Misc
A couple of things I had been curios about before getting it, so I’ll answer those here just in case anyone else is interested:
The box is 30″ x 24″ x 19″ and includes everything, including the rails (I think the larger top version has a separate box).
A Lowes employee helped me load the box onto a flat cart and a couple of others loaded it into my vehicle for me, but my wife and I were able to slide it out and down out of the back of the SUV. Beats paying a $60–70 delivery fee!
The length of the rear rail is 54 3/8″ and the distance from the spreader bar to the end of rear rail is 2 1/2″. The front rail is 62″. I think I was able to look up all the other dimensions online.
The tubular frame is crazy strong (like, I’m a structural engineer and I’ve seen buildings with smaller tube members); though it is rectangular. That is to say, you can rotate the lower half so the swivel lift caster is on the left or right, but not the front or back.
The three caster wheel occasionally “tips” a bit, but the corner of the frame prevents it from tipping more than just a few inches. So, the saw isn’t going to fall over on you; just occasionally catch if you make some aggressive maneuvers while moving it.
I made a small, wooden box using finger joints to store my resistors used for electronics projects.
A small plywood box using box joints
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.
Yes, I even make plans for a small box.
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.
This is why you cut the slot after the finger joints.
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.
My router table is a 3/4” scrap of MDF clamped to my workbench
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.
This was the easiest part.
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.
I used a 1/4” round over on all the edges and sanded it to a 220 finish.
Lots and lots of wood filler.
One downside of all that wood filler is that you get to do about twice the sanding.
Sanding, filler, and more sanding
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.
Last year, I added a towing hitch to our Honda Pilot in order to haul bikes. However, it only made sense to go ahead and add the necessary wiring for pulling a trailer (brake lights, turn signals, etc.). So I ordered the OEM kit from HondaPartsGuys.com (great site for Honda and Acura owners!). Again, it warns that this is not a DIY kind of job in the instructions, but it really is very easy to do. The worst part was that I had to remove the hitch, bolt on the wiring socket, and then re-install the hitch. Otherwise, it went off without a hitch (no, wait, that’s not right).
I got a 7‑pin to 4‑pin adapter (most U‑Haul or other small trailers use the 4‑pin as they don’t have brakes and reverse lights). It also has a handy-dandy light tester in it, so I could verify the brakes and turn signals both work. A lot of tight spaces to work in, but kudos to Honda for designing a very easy to install system here.
Our Honda Pilot towing a trailer for the first time… to IKEA!
Update 2020-07-18: We rented a trailer for our trip to IKEA to get some bathroom cabinets & counters.
I built the “Basic Mobile Workbench” following Steve Ramsey’s design about two years ago. Having a workbench on wheels ‑along with the a roll-up extension cord in the middle of the garage- really changed the entire way I make anything in the garage shop. But I put some pretty tiny little casters on it, and though it rolled ok, I’d always wanted to improve it. However, since I built it at the height of the table saw, there was not way I could raise. Well, with a new table saw (more to come on that soon), I decided now was a good time to put on some bigger rollers.
I cut off the legs below the cross members using my late father-in-law’s old reciprocating saw. That old Craftsman is crazy powerful and made short work of it. I also cut some support bases out of 3/4″ construction plywood to level out those cuts and give the lag screws something meaty to attach to. The overall effect was to raise the top surface about an inch and it rolls better than ever.
I built an out-board roller support for my dust collection for use with my shop vac. For a cheap project made from scraps, I’m very happy with the results.
My roller board attached to the shop vac
I’ve used the same Ridgid shop vac for dust collection for about 16 years. It continues to serve me well, but last year I purchased a Dustopper from Home Depot to use with a 5 gallon bucket in order to collect saw dust and other debris. This saves on the filter, as most of the dust gets deposited in the bucket before it actually gets to the shop vac. This also makes emptying out the waste a lot easier.
Well, in theory, anyway. First of all, there are other cyclonic dust collectors that are for use with shop vacs that no doubt work a bitbetter. This was a cheap (around $25) option and it was lower profile (more on that further down). But it was a huge pain to drag the entire setup around the garage! The hoses kept coming undone. The bucket handle at one point pulled off the bucket. I tried zip ties and ratchet straps, but it just wobbled around and tipped over on me.
A couple of weeks ago I sketched out a rough idea of supporting the bucket dust collection with another caster. A lot of other DIY’ers solve this problem by making a vertically stacking cart, with the dust collection on top. However, I store my shop vac under my work bench and I needed a low profile solution. Also, I felt like I could build a minimal system here and only need to purchase a caster. I also purchased one of those “cut to your own size” shop vac power tool attachments, but it ended up not being nearly rigid enough to make a solid connection.
I used some scrap 3/4″ pine plywood (like construction grade stuff). I measured out the curve of the shop vac body as well as the bucket and cut that to fit the profile.
I used a jig saw to cut out the plywood
I propped it up on some other scraps to check the fit, trimming a bit more to fit the curve of the body. I also measured the height from the floor to the bottom of the plywood (about 4 1/4″).
Sizing up the fit and height
I cut out some scrap MDF pieces to make a riser for the caster. The caster measures 2 1/4″ tall, so I needed about 2″ total. This was two 3/4″ and one 1/2″ thick pieces of MDF, cut down to about 3″ by 3 1/2″. I glued them up and then sanded the edges to clean everything up a bit. I also sanded all the edges of the plywood platform, thinking that will reduce shin splinters in the future.
Riser pieces cut to size on the band saw
Sanded riser with caster attached
I then attached the riser to the plywood using 1–5/8″ decking screws. I counter-sunk the screw heads on top, just to keep the surface flat for the bucket.
A set of counter-sink bits is a good purchase
As I mentioned, I used one of those rubber, cut-to-fit hose attachments. The idea here was that I would nest this into the shop vac attachment storage slot on one of its casters. Then I could screw the attachment to the plywood. I really shouldn’t have bothered. The soft rubber just didn’t give me any confidence that the connection was solid. And the whole platform could wobble too much side to side. So, I grabbed a couple of galvanized metal building clips (basically, a small angle with some pre-drilled holes). I mounted those on the underside of the plywood and screwed a 5/8″ screw on each side into the shop vac body. This may result in some lost suction, but I can always go back and seal off those screw holes with some silicon if so. So far, though, I can’t tell any difference.
Platform attachment to shop vac
Lastly, I took a second bucket and just screwed it down to the plywood. The dust collection bucket can then nest inside this one. It makes for a very solid connection that I can pull on, but also allows the dust collection bucket to swivel. And, the final test: the entire thing easily rolls up under my work bench.
Shop vac with attached dust collection fits under my work bench
Of course, I promptly pulled the vacuum back out to clean up the garage! It works great. And all for the cost of a 2″ swivel caster. I did blow about $10 dollars on that vacuum connection piece. I may get a more rigid flange connection to replace it, though (Woodcraft has one for about $5). I’m considering also painting the wood pieces gray and black to match the shop vac, which would be an excuse to take it apart and make that connection better.