Amy's Little Surprise!

I WILL BE POSTING FINAL PICTURES WHEN IT IS COMPLETE. I'VE HAD SOME SCHEDULING CONFLICTS LATELY, BUT IT WILL BE FINISHED SOON!!

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I recognize that placing this on my blog kind of blows the surprise, but the surprise isn't that she doesn't know that I'm building it, but more in HOW I'm building it (and probably to her, that I can build it!) So, here are some pictures of the box portions being biult. I'm going to build the drawers next. In a shameless plug, and to give ample credit where it is due, my friend Trinity helped me by using the facilities at his job, Stellar Millworks, Inc. They are a fine company company who produce a great product... if any of you are in the market for custom wood works.

Here's crunching the numbers and making the cut sheet

We started out with 1 inch thick knotty alder boards 8 and 10 feet long to manufacture the required 3/4 inch thick planks.

The individual boards were glued together to make 4 boards 14 inches wide. Then they were squared up (I thought I took pictures of those two steps, but I didn't...) Then they were put through a band saw to, as shown below, to bring them to a thickness of 15/16. A bulk of the material is taken off with the band saw to decrease the amount the sander has to take off.

The planks were run through the wide belt sander to bring them to the final 3/4 inch thickness and for the desired finish texture

The planks have been laminated (glued), squared up and sanded. They finaly needed to be cut to the 14 inch width before the box sections could be cut. The saw we used for this step is called a Sawstop. It senses when a material besides wood hits the blade and stops it within 2 to 5 teeth. This stoping speed would result in just a nick on the part of the body that touched the saw. It's really quite amazing! After the planks were ripped to the appropriate width they were run through the belt sander to finish the edges.

The planks were finaly ready to be cut into the necessary pieces for the boxes.

Now the boxes could be built.

Plugs were made to cover the screw and fill in the hole made from counter sinking the screws.

Here is one of the three boxes. Two of the box sets have 3 bays, while the bottom box set has 2 bays for storing items that are larger and that we'll have more of. Now all that they need is the crown molding, paint and the distressing. I didn't put them all in the picture because I don't want to give too much away right now!

AMY, YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE THIS!