In defense of having tools

From J:

I am an impassioned believer in having tools. The more tools you have, the greater the chance that you'll have the right tool for the job. And when you have the right tool, projects just seem to happen, and they are wonderful. Case in point: Groland.

Groland: $199 at Ikea (appliances not included).

Groland ($199 at Ikea, now discontinued) is a solid birch sideboard. Unlike most Ikea pieces, there is no MDF, plywood, or melamine foil present in its construction. Being solid birch, it is also very resistant to dings and damage that the lighter pine pieces suffer. We like Groland. He's lived under our pot rack since we got him. I'd always planned to put some finish on him one day, but had never gotten around to it. In this case, procrastination was a very good thing.

A and I were talking about how we wanted to upgrade the house this year and a big point was to increase our pantry storage in the kitchen. We rejected the idea of adding cabinets (they would never match the existing ones) and decided that we should get two new storage pieces of furniture, a taller pantry and a sideboard. But what to do with Groland? He's too big to fit very well into my workshop at the moment, he wouldn't fit very well in another room, and we didn't want to get rid of him. I mean, solid.birch.construction. A floated the idea of enclosing him to get the storage space we wanted. Enter: tools. I had them, and I had the right ones. The conversation went something like this:

A: "What if we enclosed Groland?"
J: "That would work pretty well."
A: "Can you do that?"
J: (thinks for a minute) "Yep, no problem."
A: (looks very happy) "Really?!?!?!"

Here's what I came up with: Groland is mostly square construction, which makes things easy. Replace the lattice work bottom with solid birch plywood: easy, just notch out the corners on a sheet and set into place (I'll hang the lattice on a wall somewhere and add hooks for mugs or potholders or something and Pinterest will go crazy for it). Cut birch plywood pieces to size to fit the sides and back and mount them into place with pocket screws. Build two new doors for the front out of solid birch and birch plywood, then mount with fancy soft-close cabinet hinges.

I had enough 3/4 birch plywood on hand to make the side pieces. In about an hour, I had them cut to fit and mounted into place. At this point, A was impressed. Took a trip to Lowe's to get another sheet and had the back and bottom into place after another couple of hours. This involved cutting off the stainless steel rails, which was surprisingly difficult. One destroyed hacksaw blade later, they're gone. I ended up using my slightly terrifying Dremel to finish the job. The holes got plugged with a 1/2" maple dowel that I cut flush to the leg.

As with most Ikea pieces, things aren't perfectly square, but they're close enough for my purposes.

Pocket holes.

The next day I went to my lumber guys and bought some flame birch (on sale!) and some 1/2" birch plywood for the doors. The flame birch was already milled, saving me lots of time and effort. I was also able to buy a loose half sheet of plywood instead of a full sheet. I'll use the rest of it eventually. I spent that evening making the shaker doors. They glued overnight.  

Clamps? Clamps. I had enough.

A picked up the hinges that I needed after work the next day, and I spent another evening getting the doors mounted. This was a little tricky, as the hinges extend rather far into the interior and it was almost at the edge of the post I was mounting them onto. There's a bit of fine adjustment you get with this style of hinge, but the mounting still has to be precise between the two sides so that things line up. Luckily, it worked this time. At this point, A was really impressed.

Pictured: glorious, beautiful tools sitting on a custom sideboard.

Cereal boxes go here.

I tried a new finishing technique for this project. Sand everything to 220 grit. My first coat was shellac, which tends to 1) absorb very evenly into wood and 2) make figured grain pop. It's supposed to highlight the flame birch doors and prevent blotching. It did its job. Sand the shellac with 320 grit. Further coats were Arm-R-Seal satin poly varnish, my go-to, sanding lightly with 400 grit between coats. For a piece of Ikea furniture, there's some surprisingly pretty wood. At this point, A was extremely impressed! And so was I, this turned out better than I had expected.

Introducing: Groland v2.0.

List of tools used, and why I got them:

• Table saw: I wanted to build furniture.
• Tape measurer: everybody needs one of these.
• Combination square: essential for making furniture. I actually have two that I use (one is little and one is big), but I could have easily gotten by with just the bigger one. But the little one is very handy. I bought these as factory-direct cosmetic defect items off of Amazon for about 1/3 the price of retail ones.
• Cordless drill: everybody also needs a drill if you ever intend to do anything around the house.
• Impact driver: got this when I was replacing the struts on our old Honda. It's awesome, I use it to drive in screws almost exclusively now. It's also great for all kinds of jobs involving cars.
• Kreg pocket hole jig: got this so I could build furniture without having to always to mortise and tenon joinery. I had planned to use it for a desk, but as we ended up buying one instead this is officially the first project for it. I like it, very easy to use.
• Kreg pocket hole clamp: I got this after trying out some test pieces when I first got the jig, it holds everything square when you drive in the pocket screws. Pretty clutch accessory if you want things to turn out square in the end.
• Parallel clamps: picked these up on sale during Black Friday. I love them, they are much easier to use than my old ones for this sort of thing.
• Random orbit sander: got a refurbished unit back when I started woodworking.
• Drill press: got it on sale during Black Friday. It cost $40. I used a coupon.
• Hacksaw: got this back when we first got the house, I think so that I could cut some PVC when I installed our garbage disposal. It needs a new blade after (trying to) cut that stainless steel, though.
• Pipe cutting wheel: picked it up for the plumbing work on the master shower renovation. It was not up to the task of cutting stainless steel.
• Dremel: used it to polish my Bent back in undergrad when I joined Tau Beta Pi. It's an off-brand that cost about $30 at the time. I've since had to repair the collet and get some new bits for it but it's still working, most of the time. I finished cutting the stainless with this guy.
• Handheld screwdrivers: another household essential. I think I got some of these when I went to college. 
• Cabinet hinge installation kit: includes a 35mm Forstner bit and a layout tool. Bought it when I was installing the hinges for the bathroom vanity project.
• Block plane: another woodworking staple, though it's also surprisingly useful for trimming doors that stick. This was a cheap Stanley one off of Amazon.
• Chisels: yet another woodworking standard tool. I have a set of beater chisels I got for $1 at an estate sale and a set of "nice" chisels I got at Home Depot.
• Flush-cut saw: picked it up to trim off dowels back when I did the bathroom vanity cabinet. It's seen heavy use since then. 
• Gyokucho hand saw: it was on sale at Woodcraft, got it last year so that I had a good, sharp hand saw.

Looking at the tool list, a couple of things jump out at me: while it's a long list, I've had some of these tools for over a decade. Second, I didn't have to buy anything new to make this project happen. I had everything I needed on hand, with no extra cost or justification required. That's a huge enabling feature! It lets me get into the mindset of "how can I best build this project?" rather than "how can I best build this project without buying something else?" Perhaps a subtle difference to some, but it makes a world of difference to me! I love having the capability to make a vision into reality without unnecessary frustration or compromising the quality.

Total cost: Including Groland, about $300. Excluding Groland, $100. A steal! (disclaimer: no items were stolen in the making of this project)
Thoughts: I loved this project. Every bit of it. Very satisfying to take a piece that was going to be orphaned, rescue it, and turn it into something beautiful and functional.

Up next: the companion kitchen piece, a new pantry/cupboard. Solid maple, it will be very classy.