A WoodWork in Progress

My wife likes mirrors. She really likes mirrors. We have 4 mirrors on our ground floor, and that doesn't include the one in the bathroom. When our local Buy-Nothing Facebook group had a large (24x30") mirror available for free, she decided she had to have it - and I may have offered to build a frame for it. (Btw, if you are interested in getting things to upcycle, join your local Buy-Nothing group. You can get things for free that need some TLC. This post is an example of doing just that). We had purchased a large mirror with a box frame at HomeSense last year. Most things at that store aren't too expensive, but I think we paid almost $100 for the 28x38" mirror. It was a simple design, so I figured I would be able to replicate it. I still had lots of 1x3 pine (back in the summer of 2020, I had planned on making another Harmony Bench, so I bought more wood for it. I am never making another one of them, so the wood is available for other things, like the shelves and th...

My wife is a professional photographer. As a result, she really enjoys printing and framing her favourite photos of the family. Since moving into our new home, she has had a desire to fill the walls with prints, and has been making lots of holes in the walls doing so. Her tastes in which pictures need to be featured changes often, which results in more holes. One day, while I was browsing the DIY plans at Ana-White's website , I saw some picture shelves that were in a photo there. Showed it to my wife and that was that. She needed some. It would allow her to put up her pictures and change them and their positions without making new holes in the walls. I didn't use any plans from Ana White, but the design was simple enough that it wasn't needed. This wouldn't be a complicated build. It was was composed of straight boards stuck together and finished with paint or stain. That should have been simple and headache free. It was not. By the end, I wanted to toss them into my f...

After completing the edge-grain cutting board, I decided to try something more complicated. End-grain cutting boards are more difficult, because there is more room for error, and the slightest misalignment will show up very clearly, and usually only after the glue has dried. Much of the process is the same as with an edge-grain, so I thought I could do it. I had learned a lot on the previous project, so I headed back to the WoodSource store to get some nice hardwood. This wood would need to be twice as thick as the previous boards, because I had a goal of making a checkerboard pattern with squares, and a thicker board. I didn't want the squares to be small, so my wood needed to be about 2" thick. I chose Padauk and Purple Heart. I bought Brazilian Walnut also, which can be used for another project later. At this stage, my equipment was still a bit limited. I had: circular saw drill and driver sliding compound mitre saw router Cutting boards are really dependent on the wood bei...

As I flip through Facebook, the woodworking forums are very active with people making cutting boards, particularly in the months leading up to Christmas. Handmade cutting boards are a great, attractive gift that can be tailored to the wood you have available and the size of board you want to give. I had a thought to make one, and if it was successful, I would give it as a gift to my in-laws. After all, it was my father-in-law that gave me the router that I have been using. It would be my first attempt at using hardwoods and making anything attractive like that, so I needed a backup plan - if the result was ugly, I would keep it in my own kitchen and the in-laws would get a gift card or a candle! This would require a lot of everything. I needed lessons on how to make cutting boards. I needed some hardwood from the specialty wood shop. I needed a way to level-out the boards once they were glued, and a way to make a juice-groove around the board. I also needed the right kind of wood glue ...