The Library Gets a Loveseat, or: Perspective Rears its Ugly Head Again

It's been nearly a year since we bought a bunch of Billy shelves for the library. We're still very happy with the shelves, but the armchair in there was always just a placeholder until we could get something nicer. We picked up the chair for $40 on Craigslist, and I think we've gotten $40 worth of use out of it. By "we" I mostly mean the dogs. They love that chair. You can tell from looking at/smelling it.

Here's what the library looked like until last weekend:

There's a beagle wearing a sweater in that chair.

So the chair was fine. Very basic. A little more traditional than I wanted. It wasn't in terrific shape even before our dogs slept in it for a year. My plans for replacing it changed over time. There was a period where I really, really wanted a Strandmon chair from Ikea for example. But one of the nice things about sticking a cheap placeholder chair in your library for awhile is that it gives you time to figure out what you really want. And it became clear over time that one thing we wanted was a bit more seating in that room. It's a lovely room; we all like being in there, but there was only room for three people to sit down before. I thought a full size sofa would be too much for the space, but a small loveseat might be perfect.

I started casually eyeing Craigslist awhile back. And then, sometime last week, I spotted the one we finally wound up with. When I first saw it, it was priced at $150. I wasn't in a rush, and I wasn't totally sold, so I didn't make a move for a few more days. By the time I did get around to showing it to Dave and then e-mailing the seller, it had been sitting on Craigslist for...maybe a week? And she was eager to sell. "Make me an offer; it needs to go!" she told me. So I offered her $100, and she said yes.

Here it is:

As you can see, foster beagle Bella already loves the new seating. When I'm not taking pictures, there's a sheet on it, though. Spot the baby! (hint: he really loves electrical cords)

It's a pretty basic, dark gray, velvet-ish loveseat. I'm really liking it in front of the shelves. I thought it was going to go in front of the windows, but no. It definitely wants to live in front of the shelves.

But here is my problem.

It is so...petite that it makes the green chairs and chess table look ENORMOUS. Like a giant might sit in them, while chatting with the elves who hang out on the loveseat.

Let me show you:

It actually doesn't look quite as ridiculous in the picture as I expected. But still not what I want. (The chess table I had to just shove in another room entirely. I think it's going on Craigslist itself very soon).

So that's the story of how my $100 Craigslist loveseat means I have to buy new chairs. And a coffee table. Maybe also a rug. I kind of love it with just the loveseat. So dramatic! Shelves pop! But the whole point of the loveseat was more seating. So.

I have some ideas for that, but it's late and I need to go watch TV, so I'll save them for another post. Let's just say that I think I need to ask for Ikea gift cards for Christmas.

What do you guys think? What else would you put in this room with the world's most miniature loveseat? Besides more beagles?

DIY Farmhouse Table Tutorial

Dave is here to tell us how he made the farmhouse table. He has a lot to say and show about it. My finger hurts from editing all the pictures. Not even kidding. If you want to make a farmhouse table, you won't find a tutorial more thorough than this one! 

OK.  Dave here for another installment of how to make passably decent stuff out of wood.  I've been planning on making this table for the kitchen since before Thanksgiving.  I finally did it over summer break.  As Gretchen mentioned in the other table post, we spent a long time looking at other plans for tables.  My problem, it seems, is that I keep getting distracted by our hectic lives and/or discouraged about the lack of a particular power tool and/or unable to bookmark the perfect plan when I come across it, so I ended up essentially making this up as I went along.  And, as I mentioned, I came out with a passably decent table.

First off, the dimensions.  Our old kitchen table was too short to put two chairs on the long side comfortably.  With a household of 6, we needed a longer table.  But the eat-in area of the kitchen isn't big enough for a crazy long table.  So after much debate, measuring, and researching, we decided that the perfect length would be 60 inches - long enough for two chairs per long side and short enough so that we can actually fit the chairs at the table without banging into the walls.  Only eight inches longer than the old table, but it was enough.  So here's how I built a 60"x29"x30" farmhouse table.

Shopping List

Qty	Item	Unit Price	Total
2	12' 2x4	5.38	10.76
2	10' 2x4	4.44	8.88
2	10' 2x8	7.57	15.14
1	8' 2x8	5.78	5.78
2	pack of 3/8" dowel plugs	1.46	2.92
1	50 ct 2 1/2" Kreg screws	5.21	5.21
1	26 mm furniture glides	2.48	2.48
			51.17

Cut List

Qty	Item	Use
2	54" 2x4s	long apron
2	25" 2x4s	short apron
2	22" 2x4s	supports between long aprons
2	29" 2x8s	bread boards
4	45.5" 2x8s	top boards
8	28.5" 2x4s	legs

There's a diagram of the table top from beneath.  Those ovals represent evenly spaced pocket holes attached with a Kreg jig.  As shown, each of the four 45.5" boards have two pocket screws attached to its neighbor.  Given the length and weight of these boards, it might have been safer to use more.  Now that it's attached to the aprons it's fine, but I was worried the screws might get ripped out before I finished.  I also used wood glue to strengthen each seam.

We started out by aligning the four boards in such a way as to minimize the gaps between them.

We glued and screwed the four top boards, then made a nice clean cut on both sides to make the desired 45.5" length.

We then glued

and screwed some more, this time for the bread boards.

Here is a close-up of one of the pocket screws.

This table top is crazy heavy.  This was one of the times when I feared the screws wouldn't hold.  But they did!

Here's a diagram of the long and short aprons.  They are attached with two pocket screws per joint.  I planned to glue the joints, too, but forgot.  Not shown in this diagram are the extra two supports, but you'll see the real thing below.  Again, each joint is held by two screws.  I opted for 2x4s for the apron as I was trying to optimize leg room.  I think an extra two inches of a 2x6 would have made it hard to fit legs (human, not table) under the table.

Behold, the assembled apron.  You can't see them, but there are 16 pocket screws holding it together.

Of all the decisions that went into this construction, the hardest one was how to make the legs.  I thought of using 4x4 posts, but I couldn't find any that were untreated.  While the legs would be coated with polyurethane and would have probably contained the noxious fumes well enough (?), it still made me a little nervous.  Also, the treated lumber would be a different color!  I entertained the thought of simply buying pre-built table legs, but Gretchen thought that that was lame.  Also, I think they were $10 a piece, which would have significantly affected the total cost.  I finally decided on stacking two untreated 2x4s together to make the illusion of a 4x4 post.  It wasn't until I saw it and thought "Huh, that doesn't look square like a 4x4" that I remembered that the length and width of a 2x4 aren't really at a ratio of 2:1.  Not a huge deal, but it's a little bothersome.

Anyway, I didn't want the legs to be nested inside the apron.  The table was already pretty narrow and I didn't want to sacrifice any of the stability by moving the legs toward the center.  It probably would have been fine, but I decided to notch out one of the 2x4s so that the leg would join flush with apron.

Each leg consists of these two boards.  The difference in height of 3.5" matches the height of the 2x4s of the apron.  The width of the notch is (supposed to be) one half the width of the board, or 1.75".  More on that in a bit.

The notches were cut out first by circular saw, then by jig saw.  The less-than-flush cut made by the jigsaw made the seam between the leg and apron ... less-than-flush.  We might cover those up with fancy industrial-looking brackets in the future.

I got to pull out my Father's Day gift of countersinking drill bits here.  Four countersunk 2.5" deck screws per leg, a healthy amount of glue, and the wood plugs and the legs were done.

A post-stain picture.

The distressing was pretty fun.  We used both sides of some hammers, the sides of a screw being wacked by a hammer, and this metal right angle frame for drywalling that is for some reason in the basement to get just the right amount of destruction.

Milo and Gus got the idea.

Ari doesn't like loud noises, though.

We thought it'd be easier to sand and stain before assembling the legs, apron frame, and top.  But sanding is so boring.

Unless you're Gus.  Then you get into it.

Since the table was clearly going to be very heavy, I decided to assemble the pieces in the kitchen.  So after Gretchen stained all the parts, I brought them to the kitchen.

There were many right angles to verify.  Once the leg was positioned I used three countersunk 2.5" deck screws to attach each leg to the apron - one screw into the long apron and two into the short, sunk into two sides of the leg notch.

Rotate and repeat.

While it may be hard to see in this picture, this is when I realized an aesthetic problem.

Here's a close up of one of the legs and how I didn't do so well cutting that notch at exactly 1.75".  Close, but no cigar.

Fortunately, the trusty Ridgid multitool could fix my sloppiness.

After much wood shavings and sand paper, all four legs were more flush to the apron than before.

Much better!  Good thing we had leftover stain.

Next, to attach the top.  Careful measuring to make sure the countersunk screws didn't miss the apron ... there was a 2 inch overhang and the narrow side of a 2x4 to hit the middle of.  So 2 inches plus half of 1.5 inches gives you 2.75 inches.

Three countersunk screws evenly spaced on each of the four sides of the table

a few more wood plugs, and a bit more stain and you've got yourself a table.

Slap on the polyurethane, attach some threaded furniture glides to the legs, and sit down to eat!

Update:  The table turned out a bit wobbly, which makes me sad.  I think my notched leg construction was not the best idea.  I thought of adding a diagonal brace inside each apron corner - you know, like real tables - but decided to try reinforcing with a few extra screws going from the legs up into the bottom of the table top.  Here's a few of the underside - two screws per leg.  That has made a significant difference for now.  Hopefully forever.

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Monday Funday

Farmhouse Table: Easy, One Month Long Project

That's a joke up there. It shouldn't really take you a month to make a farmhouse table. And, if you are not us, it probably won't!

It's kitchen week here at Boxy Colonial. Or maybe kitchen fortnight. We've got a good bit going on in the kitchen, and I'm going to tell you all about it. Slowly. I'm going to get two whole posts out of this little table. This only makes sense after how long it took us to finish it, right?

This is the general table show off post, with a bit of background information, lots of pictures, and also the stuff about the stain and finish on it. Then Dave will write up the post about the actual table construction with a cut list and all that.

We moved our old kitchen table out to the sunroom awhile back. This was awesome for the sunroom, but left us tableless in the kitchen, which meant that not only was there nowhere to sit or eat in the kitchen, but people kept hitting their heads on the light fixture in there, what with no table to keep them from walking under it. And the light fixture happens to be very pointy.

So Dave decided to make a table (really, we knew for months that Dave was going to make a table. It didn't take getting stabbed in the head by the light fixture to remind us that we needed a kitchen table. I just told the story that way for dramatic effect).

We looked at maybe....783?....blog posts about other people's farmhouse tables, mostly riffs on Ana White plans, and then Dave came up with his version, scaled down for our kitchen. Eventually, I told him to stop trying to get me to help him decide about all the little details involving tools and wood and such, and that he should just surprise me.

And then the table looked like complete crap when he finished.

JUST KIDDING! It looks great! I love it! Dave is such a good decider!

He's going to tell you about all of that later....how we (he) decided on the size and what wood to use and how it went together. I will show you the table. And then I will tell you about the stain. Because that was my part.

My original plan, way back a long time ago, was to just ignore all the light wood in the kitchen and stain the table dark walnut. I didn't want to give it a light stain like the cabinets or the floor; I didn't want to let the cabinets and floor bully me into a finish I didn't like. But then it occurred to me that a grayish finish would work well with all the gray in our granite countertops. And I LIKE gray!

I didn't want straight up gray like we used on our foyer bench, though. I did a lot of reading and found many complicated sounding plans for homemade stain involving rusty nails and tea and eye of newt and hair from a unicorn's tail and all that sort of thing.

And then! Right before I left to hunt unicorns, Katja at Shift Ctrl Art posted about how she made a lovely barnwood colored stain by.....mixing two different colors of stain together! Brilliant! Easy! My kind of custom stain:

Custom Barnwood Stain at Shift Ctrl Art

See how I snuck in the shot that not only shows off the color, but also the lovely table setting?

My stain is not the same color because I decided to just work with the stains I already had on hand. 

I had a big thing of Cabot gray semi-transparent deck stain that my friend Kristi gave me, and I had my beloved dark walnut. All I did was pour a bunch of the gray stain into a yogurt container then slowly mix in the dark walnut, just a little bit at a time, testing it out on some scrap wood after every addition, until I got it how I wanted it. 

Then I brushed it on to the table (I did the stain back before the table was assembled, to make it a little easier), let it soak in for 20 minutes or so, and wiped it off with a rag. 

After that, we did a gazillion coats of polyurethane. Well. We did two coats on the legs and apron and four or five on the top. We went with the semi-gloss, but now I'm kind of wishing we'd gone with satin. But maybe the gloss will simmer down over time. And, anyway, water beads right up on that thing now! 

So maybe you noticed that there is a motley collection of random chairs around the table right now. Those are not staying. I am slowly collecting the permanent chairs now, and then I will do something FUN with them. And colorful. Because my kitchen is looking pretty monochromatic these days. That one brown windsor chair, with the funny part in the middle? That's the first one I've found for the table. It took about 5 thrift store trips to find the one, and I need six. Sigh.

I have TWO MORE exciting kitchen projects to share soon. And a smaller sunroom post. Also my last Disney post. SO MUCH POSTING!

Linking with:
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The Sunroom has STUFF in it Now!

We've been hanging out in the sunroom nonstop since a few days ago when we finally got it all set up with furniture. I think we would have made it a priority sooner had we realized what a lovely room it was going to be.

The thing that bothers me most about our floor plan is how closed off the den is from the kitchen and the rest of the house. It feels like a big, lonely expedition to go hang out in there, so I never really do unless it's specifically to watch TV. But the sunroom connects to both the kitchen and the den. And it has a doorway and an open window into the kitchen, so the spaces feel very connected. So now it's like the open to the kitchen family room we never had!

Here's what's going on in there (in HERE, because I'm in the sunroom right now!)

Here's another shot, with a cozy family moment involving a jigsaw puzzle:

The leather couch is from my mom. She was replacing this one and offered to us awhile back. It sat in our garage for a long time, then we finally brought it in here, where it sat some more, sort of lonely and unused because it was pretty much the only thing in the room.

I knew I wanted wicker chairs in here and I sort of half-heartedly looked around for some for awhile. Ikea and Target had some for around $100 each that were....okay. Not quite as substantial as I wanted, really, but they would have been okay. And I could usually find some on Craigslist that I would need to spray paint. And spray painting wicker is not much fun.

Saturday I was doing one of my casual "let's see what they have on Craigslist RIGHT NOW!" things and came across the chairs you see up there. The guy said he had won the set with the chairs, loveseat, and coffee table, and was selling the chairs and coffee table (still new in the boxes) because he didn't have room for them. And they were pretty much exactly what I wanted, so here they are! We paid $150 for the two chairs and the table. I don't want the table, so I'm selling it to my mom for $25. The chairs are $200 each on Target's website, so I'm pretty pleased with our post table selling price of $62.50 each. They're much nicer than the $100 ones I was considering.

They were kind of a pain to put together:

But once we did, they looked great and are pretty comfy. And they came with nice neutral cushions that I can fancify with some colorful throw pillows:

The trunk that we're using for a coffee table used to be in our den. But I want a big ottoman with storage for in there, so this came in here.

And, lastly, we went ahead and moved the kitchen table in here, even though we don't have anything to replace it with yet. The sunroom's only a few steps from the kitchen, so it doesn't really matter. Once we have a kitchen table again, I want this one mostly to be for non-eating activities.

There is, of course, much left to do in here. We just bought the paint today and are hoping to start on that tomorrow. And we need to hem all the drop cloth curtains and buy blackout fabric to line them with. It's been fairly cool and/or cloudy so far this summer, but this room is pretty much unbearable for much of the day once we start getting 90 degree sunny days. I'm hoping curtains the block the morning light will fix that (and then we can open them back up in the afternoon when the sun's on the other side of the house).

And that overhead light/fan still doesn't work. So I'm sitting in the dark right now.  So those things are next on the list.

Craigslist Dresser and Calling the Foyer Finished

Foyers are kind of weird. Our old house didn't have one; you just walked right on into the living room. I've talked before about how one of my qualms with colonials is that they tend not to use space as efficiently as they might, what with their hallways and such (we have a super wide hallway upstairs, which I intend to eventually get around to making pull its weight somehow or another). Our foyer is as big as a decent sized kid bedroom, so it's important to me that it not be just dead space. One redeeming feature is that the big arches make it feel very open to the library and the dining room on either side...visually at least it's kind of like one big long room.

So anyway, one of the ways the foyer is making itself useful these days is by housing its new bench and coat rack. Here is it all beautiful and posed for pictures:

....and this is how it looks now:

Not so bad, I've got to say. Of course, come winter it will fill up a lot more with coats again, but it's a HUGE improvement over before.

Okay, so then I drew squirrels on the wall opposite the door.

And my plan for after that was to take a dresser that was sitting unused up in the guest room and paint it with chalkboard paint. Because I've never painted anything with chalkboard paint, and I feel left out. Also, I thought it would be fun to be able to write on the drawers. Like a welcome message for visitors. Or labels telling the kids what to put in each drawer (nerf guns here! hats and gloves up here!). Or for the kids to draw on.

We bought the chalkboard paint and started carrying the drawers from the dresser downstairs.

And then Dave called me over to show me that....the hardware doesn't come off! I was horrified. Why would someone do such a thing? There are no screws or nails coming out on the inside of the drawers. I'm still not exactly sure what the deal is....I'm guessing it's somehow INSIDE the front panel? I've never liked this dresser. It LOOKS pretty, but it's really poorly made, and the drawers don't open and close easily. So, my plan thwarted, I gave it back to my mom (who gave it to us when we first moved back down here for Ari's room) to sell at her shop to someone who wants a red dresser.

I suppose we could have tried a little harder to either get the hardware off somehow or carefully paint around it. But I was mad at the dresser and didn't want to.

Okay! Plan B!

I know that the way you're supposed to get good deals on Craigslist is to stalk it faithfully for weeks or months until you find just what you're looking for. But what I usually do is say, "hey! we need a new dresser!" and then go check it right then and there. This actually works pretty well if you want something very pedestrian like a dresser, because there are gazillians on there at any given time. I found one I liked the looks of about 20 minutes away for $65, and Dave called to get the address and went to get it right then.

I love my little impulse buy dresser. It has a curvy top drawer and fun mid-century-ish legs and original hardware. In the Craigslist picture, it looked like it also had a really nice, shiny, lacquered finish. But it doesn't. The guy selling it refinishes lots of furniture, I guess. He appears to have done a nice job repairing it, but his paint job consisted of spraying it with flat white paint and....that's it. No kind of protective coating at all, and up close it looks less than perfect. So I don't know if I'll leave it that way forever. I don't want to chalkboard paint it, though. Anyway, it's good enough for now.

Those pictures up there are Joan Walsh Anglund prints I picked up at a thrift store awhile back (and spray painted the frames). Not sure about them here. I'm thinking maybe just one big print centered would be better--something more modern. Or a mirror. Or nothing! The squirrels could speak for themselves. I am taking votes: please tell me what to do!

I don't know yet what's going in all those drawers, but I'm thinking the aforementioned nerf guns (which wind up all over my house) and hats and gloves for starters.

So there you go--a functional foyer! Earning its keep! Here's the whole thing at once:

Do you notice anything still a little...unfinished about our foyer?

Yeah....that line between the blue and yellow was our brilliant solution when we realized there was no way we could paint the stairwell ourselves. That's when we started to understand why that yellow paint was EVERYWHERE when we moved in: once you start painting one color, it's pretty hard to stop.

And here's how it typically looks: count the living creatures sneaking into the picture!

Oh, you can also see our foyer light fixture for the first time ever in that one. I kind of like it. I should clean it sometime. All those little prisms...sigh.

Things have been kind of slow going lately with house stuff. The school year's wrapping up for Dave, so he's crazy busy. And Abe has taken a liking to a 3 or 4 fifteen minute naps a day schedule. But Dave will be home for the summer in a couple of weeks (or not. Things are a little up in the air there. For reasons I cannot yet divulge, but if anything interesting comes of them, I will).

Dave Tells Us How to Build a Bench with Shoe Storage

Dave's on a roll with this whole writing posts thing! I'm pretty sure this post has the distinction of the most pictures of any post EVER! Pictures are helpful when you're trying to build stuff.

This project was pretty fun.  Since we have plans to build a farmhouse table for the kitchen some time (sooner rather than later, hopefully), this was a good warm-up project.  While I've built things out of wood before (fence, stairs, baby gate), this bench was the first piece of furniture I've ever done.  I really wanted this to look nice, even under close inspection, and I think I succeeded from certain specific angles. "We can just make sure that's the back" was something Gretchen told me maybe five times throughout the process.  I finally had to remind her that only one of the sides can be in the back ...

Gretchen got Ana White's book for Christmas: The Handbuilt Home: 34 Simple Stylish and Budget-Friendly Woodworking Projects for Every Room ...and we used the farmhouse bench (project #11) as a guide.  I had to modify the plans a bit to fit our needs, though.  Firstly, the bench in the book is 59.5" wide and the foyer wall is only 53.5" wide.  Secondly, the shelf under the bench in the book is narrower than the bench top.  This allows for a few inches of overhang on either side of the bench legs and room for some creativity in the trim.  Since our bench needed to be wide enough to hold four shoe baskets, I opted to eliminate the overhang, push the legs out to the full length of the bench top, and maximize shelf space.  Finally, I wasn't wild about the curly shape that was cut out at the bottom of the legs, so I changed it to be a simple triangle shape.  Added bonus, straight lines are easier to cut!

After reading through the plans in the book, I came up with the following diagram.  It's pretty rough and on a piece of old envelope (as is most everything else that I write), but it helped me come up with my cut list.  It is, obviously, not drawn to scale.  I didn't have enough envelope to make it long enough.  So before you ask, no, my bench is not 6 feet tall.

Cut List

1x12 pieces:
One 53.5 inch (bench top)
One 52 inch (shelf)
Two 17.25 inch (side legs)

1x3 pieces:
Two 53.5 inch (top trim)

1x2 pieces:
Two 50.5 inch (shelf trim)
Four 15.5 inch (side trim)

This translated into the following shopping list:
Two 6-foot 1x12s
Two 6-foot 1x3s
Three 6-foot 1x2s

Other materials used:
Molding & Trim Nails (size 8D, whatever that means) that are 2" long
Wood glue
Sandpaper

Tools used:
carpenter square
tape measure
circular saw
jigsaw
pocket hole jig (I have a Kreg jig)
clamps (Kreg 2-3/4-in face clamp and Kreg right angle clamp)
power sander
hammer
power drill

To the workbench!  Ari, my eldest son, was my helper on this project and took most of the pictures.  Here's me carrying the 1x12s to the basement.

You've heard the saying "Measure twice, cut once"?  I'm more of a measure four times, cut once kind of guy.

This project has taught me that it is nigh impossible to cut a straight line with a handheld saw.  A neighbor loaned me his miter saw when I was building the fence and I was really missing it here.  Eventually, I figured out a way to cut nice straight lines with a guide, but this poor bench got maybe two of these guided cuts.  Most of them are a little wobbly upon close inspection.  Learning experience!

(I just googled "cutting a straight line with a circular saw" and found that I'm not the first to discover the trick.  This video explains it pretty well.)

Here I am inspecting a wobbly cut.  I am displeased.

Another job Ari assigned himself during this project was to label each piece of wood I cut.  While it was a little silly, it was not entirely pointless.  I wasn't going to get these few pieces mixed up (only four 1x12 pieces on the first stage), but I can see this being a useful technique with more complicated projects.

After the bench top, shelf, and two legs were cut, I measured and cut the (simplified) design at the bottom of the legs.  The distance from the corner of the wood to the base angles of the triangle are 3/4 inch.  The height of the triangle is 4 inches.  You can see a small mark at the bottom where I measured the midpoint.  I then used the carpenter square to find the apex point of the triangle.

After cutting some wobbly lines with the circular saw, you'll see that the triangle is not detached yet.

If I cut farther, the top of the cut would go into the leg.  Ugly!  Structurally unsound!  This is when the jigsaw comes in handy.  Apparently, Ari was off labeling pieces of wood when I was using the jigsaw, so you'll have to use your imagination.  Incidentally, I learned this technique when building the deck stairs last fall.  This guy talks about it at 7:55 if you want to see it done.

After the 1x12s were cut, we broke out the Kreg jig to get the pocket holes ready for some fine wood joinery.  Joinery is my new favorite word.  I had used my jig once before to build the very simple garden bed a few weeks back, just to get a feel for how it works, so we were ready to tackle the pocket holes on the bench. We made three holes spaced 4 inches apart per joint.  We used 1 1/4 inch screws, as suggested by Ana White.  (I actually tested a pocket hole joint with 1 1/2 inch screws on some scrap 1x4s and, sure enough, the tips of the screws poked out.  1 1/4 inch is the way to go when joining 1 by's at right angles with the Kreg jig.

Now would be a good time to mention that I held off on sanding the cut pieces of wood until the bench was assembled.  I say this now, because sanding at this stage would have been appropriate.  After the wood is joined, there are tough angles to reach with a sander.  So I wouldn't spend a ton of time getting everything super smooth before assembling, but a quick sanding the rougher parts would have made future sanding more efficient.

Unfortunately, Ari did the drilling.  This meant that he was not available for the documenting.  I fell down on the job and we have no pictures of Ari making the pocket holes.  But he did this thing where he mimicked the sound of the power drill while he was drilling.  I appreciate Ari's sense of humor.  Fortunately, if you're really itching to see one of my sons drilling pocket holes, you can see Gus doing so on the garden bed tutorial.

The garden bed didn't require super flush joinery, but as I mentioned, I wanted the bench to hold up to fairly severe scrutiny.  This required some sort of tool to help keep everything in place before the screws were doing that job.  Enter the right angle clamp!

Once two of the screws were in place, the clamp is removed and the final screw is drilled in.

I remembered to take a picture!  We used the weak old battery powered drill that holds a charge for 5 minutes for this part.  (The corded drill is not adjustable and is better suited for making holes.)  The torque was set on a medium low setting to avoid screw stripping.  I didn't remember to glue these joints, but they seem solid without it.  Fine wood joinery!

Ari hasn't seen, but would enjoy, the "I'm crushing your head" skits from Kids in the Hall.

So here's the bench thus far.

It looks like a passable bench, but when you sit on it, the top sags.  So turns out the trim isn't just for looks, it serves a stabilizing purpose.  Back to the circular saw and a few more wobbly cuts.  Before gluing and nailing the trim on, I decided to predrill the nail holes on the trim.  I figured that would make it easier to keep the trim in place when hammering.  I didn't know the best size hole to make, so with some scrap wood and some trial and error, I found a hole size I was comfortable with.

You can see that these nails have practically no head, so it was important to make the hole small enough so that the wood wouldn't just slip off.  The 3/32" hole probably would have worked fine, but I opted for the 7/64" drill bit.

I was careful to mark where the holes would go ... measure four times, drill once.  The nails were going through the trim and into the 3/4 inch side of the 1x12s.  So I used the carpenter square and tape measure to evenly(ish) space 7 nail holes in the top trim pieces, 6 nail holes in the shelf trim pieces, and 2 nail holes in the side trim pieces - each hole being 3/8 inch from the edge of the trim (half of 3/4 inch).

Then to glue and nail the trim on.

(Ari went through a period during this process where he got very concerned about copyright laws and wanted to cover up every single logo with some painter's tape.)  When nailing trim on, it is possible to bend the wood so that the wide surface of the bench top (or shelf or leg) is forced flush with the thin surface of the trim.  Holding that in place when hammering each nail will help with some fine wood joinery.  You may notice the tiny hammer I'm using.  It's the kids'.  I didn't feel like going upstairs to get the man-sized hammer.  I think I preferred the little hammer for this job, actually - it's better for accuracy and I didn't need, or even want, much power.

Once the trim was on, I wanted to neaten up the joints.  In two places, there was significant mis-measuring where the trim went past the bench by 1/8 inch or so.  Fancy pants me decided to pull out the circular saw to trim off the excess.  The first cut was a bit of a disaster, as it ate into the part of the bench I wanted to keep. I was much more careful with the second cut and things worked out better.  I was pretty depressed about that first cut, but was pleased to see how several minutes of power sanding can erase such mistakes.  I didn't get any before shots, but this is what the corrected edge looks like.

Here are a few more close-ups of fine and not so fine wood joinery.

I was extremely pleased with the efficiency of my wood purchasing.  Here is the completed bench with all of the scrap wood.  Of particular note are the itty 1x12 slices on the bottom right.  Apart from the triangles (which can't be counted as waste, I think), this was the only leftover 1x12.

So there you have it!  My first piece of furniture.

He forgot to mention the parts where he sanded it with the power sander and stained it (the color is "weathered gray"). He did all of that, and then it looked like this:

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