An update/spending spree

So I’m stuck in Santa Barbara again. If you don’t know why, then we’re probably not terribly close and it won’t really matter. But that’s why I haven’t been updating much at all. I’m still working on stuff for my apartment, though I just don’t have any time to write about the last few projects I’ve been doing. I will eventually, just not right now.

I just a bunch of random stuff off ebay and amazon. Some might say useless, though I definitely had something in mind for the use of each thing.

This is the 5th cube I’ve purchased. The others have either worn out or I’ve given them away to people. I miss cubing.

I bought these old slides that someone took in Amsterdam in the 1970′s. Yeah, weird. I think they’re neat looking.

These slides are from a bunch of random shit taken in 1973. See the way it looks when light passes through, with all the colors and little details? The 3 boxes of slides I just purchased should be more than enough to make a really interesting lampshade. Or something to hang in the window. Or if I make a light box/light box table.

Oh yeah, I also bought a bunch of books. I’ve read 4 of the 5 purchased, but they were lent to me and it might be silly, but I’d like to have copies of my own to reference, re-read, or lend out to anyone interested.

That’s all for now. I’ll have more about my other projects as I have the time to go into detail. I don’t want to half-ass a post on something important the way I’ve half-assed this post.

Quick update, 2nd versions.

I haven’t been in the best mood the last couple weeks/months, so I haven’t really been motivated to do large projects for my new place. I have a really great TV stand planned and some book shelves, but can’t really get off my ass to go buy materials or drive the 5 miles to my dad’s garage where I do woodwork. I’ve also been spending more time playing music and writing. I did just finish a couple woodworking projects though. My sis just got into a graduate program at USC (boo USC, congrats Jen) and needs some awesome new apartment stuff. So I made a clock and a side table. They are depicted here:

You have to imagine the side table with the protective film off and not in kitchen lighting. It’s a darker purple, almost a plum. The side table is version 2 of the inner-lit side table I made last December. This version adds a lower shelf and a lower cost of materials. I also made it cleaner and faster since I invested $150 in a sliding compound power miter saw.

The clock is number 4 in the series of Shit Box Clocks. The only difference is a slight reduction in size (these things are made of scrap plywood and I used what I had left). I also added stitching around the border for texture using some twine I had left over from my flexi popsicle stick lamp. I totally stole the idea from Monica of Paper Cut Industries. She’s great at mixing media in her papergoods, so I had to rip that idea off. Both the Clock and the table are dark violet top coat on a satin black base coat. They’re a lot darker in mellow light and very violet in direct light.

So yeah, that’s what I got right now. I need to find more inspiration and work on some projects instead of sitting around watching all 5 seasons of The Office over and over again. Ta ta for now bitches.

What to do with $5 and a lot of sleepless nights

I’ve been having a harder time falling asleep at night lately. Though, oddly enough, I keep dozing off around 7pm, napping for 20 minutes, and then staying up for the rest of the night. So with my many hours between last call and dawn I watch a lot of downloaded movies, and I work on whatever small project I happen to be on at the moment.

I saw a really interesting lamp at Urban Outfitters the other day, but I couldn’t find it on their website. In the store it wasn’t even for sale, it was just some odd display piece. What was interesting about it was that it was made out popsicle sticks. The sticks were alternately overlapping, and bound with elastic so that the whole thing could flex and bend into different shapes. The lamp itself was a 6-sided hexagon and because of the wood and spacing of the wood, it looked like it would really add some texture and shadows to a room.

So, a box of popsicle sticks costs about $3 and a football field’s length of twine (I chose to use twine instead of elastic) ran about $3 as well. I ended up using almost all 300 popsicle sticks and about 10 feet of the twine. I chose twine because the elastic seemed to have too much rebound. You could bend the lamp, but the elastic seemed to hold it too tightly together and it’s melt back into place. The twine also gives a nice crappiness to the lamp. I just hope the whole thing doesn’t burst into flames. Here’s what I came up with:

This thing took about a ridiculous amount of time to make. Each of the sticks had to be drilled on both ends (and they crack in half often), and they had to be threaded and woven into each other with the twine. I think it probably took 10-20 hours of labor to make this stupid thing. But hey, it looks neat and I can change it up when I’m bored.

It’s quite possibly the most tedious thing I’ve ever done. I think it might be time to break out the sleeping pills again.

I don’t wanna work

When I’m not pretending to be a carpenter, I take on other hobbies. I love playing guitar (I also sort of hate playing the guitar. It’s a strange relationship). I try to sing. Something I don’t get to do very often is play the drums. I started playing the guitar in 6th or 7th grade and most people know I’ve been doing it for a long time. But I also love to play the drums. Here’s a picture of me looking cool in some dark garage:

The drums were never really portable or accessible. Even though you can cram a full set into a car the size of a Civic, it’s still hard to find a place where you can play without getting yelled at. And I’ve been yelled at a lot. I started playing in 8th grade when I found that all my other friends played guitar too and none of us played the drums. After I moved out of my dad’s house I couldn’t really play the drums because doing so would’ve gotten me evicted from my apartments. I miss it though and will eventually get an electric kit. There’s just something so fun and beautiful about beating the crap out of something with sticks. Along with lugging a guitar around with me from city to city, I also always have a drum practice pad with me everywhere I go. My apologies to my coworkers.

Crap to treasures, volume 2

On my sleepless nights I used to read wiki pages until I passed out. These days I check out sites like Uncrate, Supermarket, Etsy, and Ebay. Sometimes you find things like old cameras or old keys or old pocket watches. I think they’re neat. Displaying them in some sort of interesting fashion and not ending up as some crazy collector packrat is the challenge. So, we go back to my old standby: making cheap frames. And lots of them.

[Vintage keys mounted to transparent paper and a handwritten page]

I really like old stuff like this because I know it used to be some mundane part of someones life. It’s not mundane to me because you don’t see everyday stuff this ornate anymore. Stuff these days is so cookie cutter and boring.

[Zippo lighter and old pocket knife]

On an interesting note on why I framed the lighter and knife. The lighter was given to me by my dad when I was 17 right before a trip to the grand canyon. I needed something to start my campfires and instead of getting me a Bic lighter or something, he got me this mini Zippo. For some reason I consider it to be one of my most prized possessions. If the house were on fire and I could only keep what I could carry, I’d try to get that out. It just seemed to mark a point where my dad finally trusted his kid (who destroys stuff all the time) with fire. And the pocket knife belonged to my grandparents I think. I just needed something more than a lighter in the box. The box is pine, the light colored wood is more 3/4 inch pine left unpainted. The lighter and knife are hot glued to a backerboard covered in some spare velvet that I had laying around.

There’s still more to add to the wall, but here it is so far:

There’s a pocket watch in a plywood frame. I’ll post a close-up sometime. The camera is an old Kodak camera. I have 3 of those, 3 Kodak Pony cameras, and 3 Polaroid Land Cameras.

I hope you start putting up your stuff or finding someone else’s old junk and putting it on display in your place.

Sh!t Box Clocks!

When I first moved into my new place and was considering what to put on the walls I immediately thought it might be fun to have a whole bunch of clocks all clustered together. Why? I don’t know. I think they’re neat. Clocks I mean. I think it’s because they’re so ubiquitous in life yet companies put so much into making them stand out. There’s such a variety when it comes to clocks and watches and yet they all serve the same basic function: to tell you if you’re late for happy hour.

The idea to have a huge variety of clocks was modified after I saw a series of clocks made out of salvaged materials. They were all just boxes made out of old salvaged lumber, all identical shape, but they had a ton of character. So with some spare plywood I had leftover I decided to make 3 clocks.

Simple frame made of cut plywood with a single overlap on the joints. The faces are just a piece of plywood. The inner works were pulled from some crappy $4 clocks I bought from Target. The cheaper the clock, the easier it is to take apart, too. You drill a hole to thread the clock through and glue the works to the box with a hot glue gun.

And from the side view you can see how simple the construction is and the way the joints overlap. You can also see how much care was taken in the painting of the clocks.

Each clock was painted a bit differently and distressed to give the wood some texture and character.

[Painted brown, and scraped down with the back of a claw hammer and pliers]


[Sprayed white and brushed with water to raise the wood grain]


[Underpainted black, then brushed with light tan paint]

Placed together, the three clocks have a uniformity in their lines, but a certain uniqueness in their finish. I like seeing things in multiples especially when it’s near the point of absurdity. Having 3 clocks is unnecessary, sure, but it’s an interesting look. I’ve also purchased 3 of the same camera for decoration because its excess catches the eye.

Here are the clocks together:

So yeah, that’s me in a nutshell. Sure, it looks like they were made by a person in a mental institution, but to me they add some flair and texture to an otherwise mundane space. They were cheap and easy, too. The clock that inspired this project was going for $150.

Frame your own crap.

Up late a few nights ago I got bored and decided to draw a thing. It’s actually a copy of a thing I saw and really liked. It’s black and white, pen and ink and I did it while I watched a movie.

Then, another night when I couldn’t sleep I decided to try to make my own frame. The frame actually worked out well, too. So now I’m going to make all my own frames. The materials (wood, plexiglass, mat board, and backer board) was well under $10 for a 14×11 frame. The benefits are that you can make your own custom sizes and often use scraps laying around. A note though, when cutting plexiglass, if you buy the cheaper stuff you’ll be sorry. Plexi and lexan come in 3 grades/thicknesses/prices. The cheapest plexi has a tendency to crack and sheer in places you don’t want to when you’re cutting it. When you cut plexi you basically score it with a plastic cutter and break it off. The middle grade stuff is a little bit thicker and breaks cleanly. Or maybe I was doing it wrong.

Here’s the framed product:

The frame is just mitered 1×2 with thin mitered molding glued to the inside edge to hold everything in. The other option would be to use a router table to cut a rabbet (an L-shaped groove) on the back side. I was lazy though.

Rhys Coffee Table ripoff

Every living room needs a coffee table and for me, I think it acts as a center piece for the room. You tend to congregate around that table when you’re in the living room. I also think it says a lot about your personality and style. I almost wish I could have more coffee tables in one room, but unfortunately there just isn’t enough space. I’ve built a couple of other coffee tables before from plans that I got from ReadyMade. It’s a do-it-yourself craft website/magazine. I built the lite brite coffee table and side table seen here:

The side table was of the same construction but using modified dimensions.

I didn’t want something so flashy for my living room. Since this is my first real place alone I wanted something that wasn’t as much as a novelty. However, I might build something like that for my balcony later cause it’s awesome. When looking for inspiration I started looking at different coffee tables on websites and in magazines. When it comes to this sort of thing, I figure I’ll know it when I see it. And on Pottery Barn’s website of all places, I saw “it.”

This is the Rhys Coffee Table, and it retails for $699. I really liked the simplicity and functionality of the table, the layout of the hardware, the pulls and label holders. So instead of finding inspiration I decided to just do my best to rip this table off for much much cheaper. And, not including labor, my finished product ended up costing around $160 in materials not including tools and paint I had laying around.

So here’s the process:

First, I needed to figure out dimensions. The website lists the table as 48″ wide x 24″ deep x 18″ high. So to roughly find the rest of the dimensions I used a simple but effective process using adobe photoshop to figure out my measurements using proportions. It looks something like this:

The lines represent all the dimensional edges. If you know the overall dimensions of this table then you can use the ruler markings on the edges of the picture to create a scale. For example, the edges of the table in the picture might be 8 inches, and if you know that the real table is 48 inches, then something on the picture that’s 2 inches is in reality a foot long. From all of that I ended up with a working sketch:

The rest is all just cutting and gluing. The joints are reinforced with an old technique of drilling holes at the joints and connecting them with glue and dowels. The drawers were constructed with glue and a groove cut into all the sides to hold the drawer bottom which simply “floats” in that groove.

Something important for me was the hardware. That was something I really liked in the original and wanted to do my best to replicate in my version. The label holders were found easily on ebay from Cherry Street design.

The pulls were the hard part, for several reasons. Finding them was the first obstacle. They’re not something readily available from your local Home Depot. In fact, they’re actually made to be used on sailboats where you don’t have much space and would need pulls that are flush-mounted. On some specialty websites specializing in cabinet hardware I found these pulls but they were $10 EACH. And if you wanted them in an antiqued look they were as much as $15 each. I needed 6 of these things and really didn’t want to pay 60 dollars just on the pulls even though they’re such an integral part of the table’s style. I managed to find a website specializing in sailboat hardware called Hamilton Marine Supply. The pulls came out to $5 each and shipping was reasonable. However, the pulls only came in one finish: polished brass. They looked like this when I received them:

With a little online research I found that you can “antique” these things with a fairly simple process. You first strip off the varnish using acetone or nail polish remover. Then you boil the metal in water which will turn any remaining varnish an opaque white which you can see and remove. Then, once you’re down to bare metal, you brush white vinegar, of all things onto the metal and leave it to air dry before re-applying. Note: this only works for brass and copper or any other copper based metal. I found that leaving the metal in the sun outside worked really well, while soaking the metal in a cup of vinegar didn’t work. The reaction and oxidation had to do with the vinegar evaporating and reacting with the air around it. What I was going for was a patina. Patina:copper :: rust:iron. The difference is that rust is red while a patina ranges from turquoise blue-green to dark bronze. After several treatments and 24 hours, halfway through the process the pulls looked like this:

This weathered looks is fairly easy to accomplish, and adds to the value of a piece like this. Aesthetically, I love this distressed look because it adds a ton of character to the metal and whatever it’s attached to. It really makes the table look complete and like it’s much older than it is. The actual process of mounting the hardware was also a challenge. Because the pull is flush mounted, it means that big hole, called a mortise needed to be cut into the wood in the exact shape of the contour of the back of the pull while still leaving enough material to screw the pulls into the drawer face. This is what a test run of the hole looked like:

I had to do six such holes and it got easier and more efficient with every run. The bulk of the material was removed with various drill bits while the finer work was done with a Dremel tool which is invaluable for craft projects. I used a depth gauge to get the right cut. The finished product?

I “carefully” distressed the wood on the table before and after painting. The wood was painted with satin black spraypaint, then coated with a layer of the same red paint I used on the walls. The drawer faces, shelf piece and side panels were painted using the same tan paint used on the other walls. To distress the wood I scraped down the tan painted panels with the edge of a metal tool. Rather than scrape paint off, it actually rubbed metal from the edge of the tool onto the paint which brought out the grain. The wood all over the table is gouged and checked and scraped and dented the way any piece of furniture would be after years and years in a living room. Red paint was applied so that the black would show through creating almost a wood grain effect. The idea was to make it look as though the table had been painted several times over the years with some of the old layers showing through. That is also why some of the distressing is done before painting and some done after painting. Also, all the edges were scraped with a tool to show additional wear as those parts would see the most abuse over the years. Same with the lower parts of the table where a vacuum cleaner would have bumped the table week after week. As of right now the table top, made out of birch ply wood is unfinished. I think I’ll put a coat of satin laquer on it to protect it. I’m not sure if the unpainted wood grain is a good or bad look, but I’ll always have the option to paint it later if I see fit.

So yeah, the hardware was fairly expensive, running about $55 after shipping costs for the pulls and label holders as well as time for the antiquing process. Though in my opinion it makes the table special. All in all the table took me about a week of nights to build. There were days where I had other things to do, or I had to wait for glue to dry, or I couldn’t much done because it was late and I couldn’t use a power saw. So instead of paying $100 for something uninspired and mundane or $700 for something stylishly over priced I built my own table and have something that I know is functional and personal. I do have some criticisms of the finished product. I think the shelf space should be smaller to more closely match the size of the drawer faces. That would also in essence require that the drawer faces be bigger. Part of this though was as a result of the limited sizes of lumber available. I don’t have a table saw so I couldn’t really take wider lumber for the drawer faces and rip it down to size. Still, I built something I’m proud of and that’s what matters to me. So what’s on the label holders and in the drawers? That’s none of your business.

Late night project

So, here’s my train of thought: I start with a problem. In this case, how to store my guitars. Why store something beautiful in a case when you can display it on a wall? The idea that popped into my head was to hang a guitar on a wall and frame it as if it were art. I start with a sketch:

Then I go into logistics and finish. The frame is made out of cheap molding mitered at the corners. I added a subframe made out of 1×3′s in order to give the frame some depth and weight. Also, because the guitar stands off of the wall, I needed to thicken the frame to make it more like a shadow box. As far as finish, the frame is painted satin black, with the same red as on the walls brushed on thin and dry. I wanted the frame to hint at the red on the adjacent wall. On top of that is gold paint, applied conservatively in order to show the black and red notes. I chose gold because I wanted the red to play off the guitar and wall and the gold to accent the knobs on the guitar. In person the gold looks much darker, almost like a brushed bronze and has the effect of looking different from different angles. The idea was to create a weathered look almost akin to worn wood grain. Here’s the finished product:

The field of the frame is stretched velvet. It provides a background for the guitar as well as soft velvety protection against scratches on the back. All and all this project cost under $30 not including the guitar mount that I already had.

Paint. What color, what mood?

What color would you want your living room? For some reason dark red was the first thing that came to mind. The debate when painting a room is whether to paint one accent wall or to paint all the walls. With a color like red I didn’t want something overwhelming. So I’ve painted the wall that will be behind my couch. I didn’t want to have to stare at a red wall when watching TV.

And after painting that wall it just seemed so harsh relative to the white walls so I had to paint the other walls a contrasting color. As odd as it sounds, a creme or tan color warms up the room and eases the harness of the dark red. Here’s the color I chose. You can see the difference as opposed to the white in this picture of the edge stage.

I went with a color called Practical Tan (thanks Manda). It really warms up the room and eases the harshness of the red.