DIY Pipe & Wood Table Pt 1

****UPDATE**** Check out our revised version of the Pipe & Wood Table

We are hosting my family’s Christmas at our house this year. We currently have a 4 person dining table. No way could we all perch around that table no matter how many chairs we pushed against it. We needed to scrap the kids table, and nut up and get a grown up table.

INSPIRATION:

Restoration Hardware’s Flatiron Dining Table

We put pen to paper and designed a simple tabletop with industrial black pipe legs. I had taken inspiration from this Restoration Hardware Flatiron table. Except we went with a basic “H” leg construction with a cross beam near the bottom of the legs.

We had originally wanted a nice thick reclaimed wood top, and had sourced a supplier, however that fell through and everything else we could lay our hands on was “city priced”  (you know when you go to an antique store in the city and a simple item is priced 10 times higher that you ‘d find it at a flea market in the country? That’s “City Priced”.) So the cheap ass me wasn’t gonna pay city price for wood, so I nixed that idea and instead we decided to use 2×12″ construction lumber. We don’t have much invested in the tabletop, so if we get our hands on some nice reclaimed wood in the future, it won’t hurt our pocketbooks to swap it out. The legs are hardware store “black pipe” gas line pipe and fittings. These can be sourced at any large hardware store (orange & blue) and as they can cut and thread the pipe for you at the store, its super easy to work with.

We made a 72″ x 34.5″ table that is 30″ high. This is a standard 6 person table, but 8 can easily be squeezed around it.

Shopping List
1 – 3/4″x10′ black pipe $18.99
1 – 3/4″x6′ black pipe $13.80
4 – 3/4″x6″ nipple (heehee) $1.64/each
8 – 3/4″ Floor Flange $3.99/each
6 – 3/4″ Tee $1.64/each
1pkg 3″ felt furniture pads $4
2 – 2x12x12 spruce $17.50/each
Wood finishing materials (to be discussed in pt. 2)

Wood Cut list
3 – 2x12x6′
(Cut 2x12x12’s in half to make 4 – 6′ long pieces, and you can use the left over piece to make a bench.)

Pipe Cut list
The hardware store will cut and thread your pipe for you. There is a (substantial) fee for this. At our home depot it was $1 per cut and $2 per thread. We ended up having about $40 in cutting fees, which was actually more expensive that the pipe itself, but a necessary evil.)
1 – 3/4″ pipe 51″ long
4 – 3/4″ pipe 20″ long
4 – 3/4″ pipe 10″ long

The crazy machine that cuts and threads your pipe!

We got our pipe and wood cut, gathered all the rest of our supplies and like a strange hardware store parade, headed to the checkout. A word to the wise, the pipe is greasy and dirty and yucky. Make sure you put your nice wood on a separate cart, and bring a tarp to protect your car. Also have some dish soap and goo gone ready at home to thoroughly clean and de-sticker your pipe when you get it back. Be prepared to get little metal splinters that will hurt. A lot.

Pipe, and flanges, and wood stain oh my!

We decided to use the Kreg Jig for attaching our boards together to make the tabletop. This is quick and oh so very easy, and all the screws are under the table where no one other than the dog or a crawling child will ever see them. We laid out our three best boards on saw horses in the garage.

best three boards laid upside down ready to be Kreg jigged together

We decided on placement making sure to alternate the crown of the wood (the crown is the way the grain curves, look at the end of a piece of lumber and you’ll see the grain pattern). Once we were happy with how our board would be arranged, we flipped them over and aligned them, making sure they were square. Our saw guy at the local hardware store didn’t fare so well with making all the boards the same length, so we lined up one end, and let the other end overhang knowing we’d trim it down later. Then we marked our kreg jig screw placements.

We put two screws in 8″ from the edge of the boards, and about every foot for the rest of the table. We alternated which side the screws came from so that we would get a more stable and solid tabletop.

The Kreg Jig is super easy to use. We set the jig and drill bit to 1.5″ thick wood, clamped out the jig (with protection on the “good side” so the clamp wouldn’t mar the table top) and drilled. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezey.

Kreg Jig Clamped

After all the holes were drilled, we re-aligned everything, and got to screwin!

Screwing together boards using Kreg pocket hole system

After the tabletop was screwed together we trimmed off the scraggily cut edges using a circular saw. Then we gave the table a good sand with the palm sander. We wanted to leave a few of the rough wood’s imperfections, but ensure everything was nice and smooth.

After it had been sanded, we took it inside and got working on the legs.  We thoroughly cleaned the pipes using a combination of citrus grease cutting cleaner, dish soap and goo gone. There was a lot of errant stickers and tape on the pipes along with the grease, so all these tools were needed. Be careful for any sharp metal or burrs, definitely wear protective gloves and eye protection.

To start out, attach each the 6″ pieces of pipe to flange. Next up attach a T to each of the 6″ pipes.

Flange + 6″ Nipple + T

Screw a 10″ pipe into the side of each T. Attach another T to 2 of the 10″ pipes. Attach two legs together by the middle T, then do the same to the other set.

Attach two feet together by 10″ pipes and a T

Now attach the 20″ pipe to the top of the T’s and another flange while the dog enjoys a peanut butter filled bone.

Forgot to take a good pic of this step! Oops, but you get the point.

Make sure all your legs are exactly the same height. You may need to tighten or loosen a few joints to get everything equal.

Here’s the tricky part. Grab a friend and attach the long 51″ piece to the two open T’s. One of you will have to spin a set of legs around to get this done. You will look like an absolute fool doing this, but its the only way to get it done. Once everything is screwed together, you’re ready to attach your legs to the table.

Legs Assembled
Legs + Tabletop

Flip your tabletop over, and set the legs on top. Make sure everything is square, straight and level, and screw in your flanges using 1″ screws.

Apply your felt furniture pads to the bottom of the feet flanges, and flip your table back over. Now you’re ready for finishing! (we will be finishing the table inside due to the cold cold cold temperatures of our unheated garage.)

So here it with its legs attached and waiting for its finish work. Whatcha think?

Ta Da! Table
table table table

One great thing we quickly found about this table is that if you have an uneven floor like we do you can unscrew certain parts to even the table out so it won’t wobble!

Promise, we’ll be back soon with how we finished the table, and a cost breakdown.

**UPDATE** Check out how we finished the table.

****SUPER UPDATE**** Check out our revised version of the Pipe & Wood Table

Gift Ideas for the Handy Woman

The themed latte’s at Starbucks, and the Christmas music at the mall may have given you an indication that the Holidays are soon upon us. I am a bit of a procrastinator, so I try to start early in my holiday to do’s and my gift shopping. So to get myself started, and to give you all a hand, I will be DIY’ing and shopping for you in the next coming weeks. Hopefully I can give you a few ideas on how to make your holidays extra amazeballs.

So first up, do you have a DIYing Handy Woman in your life? Need some holiday gift ideas. Here are a few of my best bets this holiday season.

  • A small, lightweight drill. Just because we’re girls, doesn’t mean we cant use power tools! It does mean however that most tools just were not meant for our more petite hands and muscles.  So treat your lady to a drill made for her, but for Gods sake, do not, under any circumstances buy her pink tools. You heard me. NO. PINK.TOOLS. We want to be taken seriously. No one takes a woman wielding a pink hammer seriously…
  • A small hammer. Just like my comments above on drills, I cant stand El Granto’s framing hammer. It’s giant, heavy and unwieldy. Years ago when I moved out on my own, my Dad sent me off on my own with a small toolbox packed with things from his own garage. Included in that was a seemingly Kristen sized hammer. I have used it ever since. Its the right weight, fits well in my hand and I can swing it like a lumberjack.
  • A Sewing Machine – This one is a bit stereotypical, but its oh so useful. You don’t realize how many sew-able items we have in our homes. If the lady in your life knows how to sew, but lacks a machine, buy her one! If she doesn’t know how to sew, include a few lesson in her gift. (I recommend the workroom in Toronto.)
  • 2 tape measures. Yep, that’s right two. One regular framing tape measure (although again make sure its a reasonable size and weight! The last thing a girl needs is a tape measure so heavy it pulls down their jeans when they attach it to their belt!) And secondly get a tailors measuring tape for her to keep in her purse (cause we’re always out at furniture stores asking sales people for measuring tapes so we can see if it’ll fit in the car or in the living room). Bonus points if you find a retractable tailors tape. That way it will stay neat and tidy in the bottom of her purse.
  • Her own work gloves. Oh I know, you handed her an old pair of yours last time you were working together in the garage, but they were giant, and terrible, and useless. So get your lady her own work gloves. They don’t even need to be work gloves, a (non dorky) pair of gardening gloves will work. Just make sure they’re made for women’s hands.
  • A set of commonly used tools that stays in the house. Do you like your flatware? Do you want to keep it looking nice/not have to buy a new set next year? Then make sure you have a set of easily accessible tools in the house, or your wife will be using that butter knife as a screw driver.
  • A Dremel. Why? Cause you can do a ton of stuff with that mini tool. You can cut, grind, sand, buff, polish etc. Buy a good accessory pack to go along with it, and she will get a ton of use out from it.
  • A staple gun. Useful for all sorts of upholstery projects, and a generally handy tool with a small price tag.
  • A palm sander. I don’t know why but sanding, painting and finishing tasks always seem to land on my plate (and my Mom’s plate from my childhood memories.) Make this easier and get her a palm sander!

What is your gals favourite type of DIY? Is she a painter, a tiler, a wood worker? I personally am the trim/detail person. I do all the finikity work, and finish and trim work. So my ideal gift would be a sliding compound miter saw.

Good luck on your Christmas shopping, and if all else fails, buy her some diamonds!

Houseaversary – Closing Time

Last post of Houseaversary week! In case you missed it, be sure to check out our posts on how we almost missed out on even seeing the house, the offer process and the inspection. Today is all about closing day.

We used a quick closing date as a negotiating tactic in the purchase of our house. We closed in 30 days. Originally we planned to give our rental landlord two months notice, and have a month overlap to do some painting and move in at our leisure.  Our landlord however rented our loft to the first people who viewed it, and they were able to move in a month early if we wanted out. We agreed as it saved us a months rent! The only problem was that we needed to move into our house on closing day. We were only moving two blocks south of where we were living, and we were moving ourselves using borrowed truck & trailer from Mom & Dad and the vehicles and muscles of friends, so we figured we were flexable enough to roll with it whenever we closed. Our lawyer and bank got us to pre-sign all the paper work a week before the closing, and we expected no issues. We loaded up the trailer the night before with all the boxes, and sat around drinking coffee waiting for the call from our lawyer.

A pic of the boxes piled up in our loft ready to move (man have cell phone cameras improved it the last two years or what?!)

The first sign that the day was not going to go as planned was when the furniture store called saying that they had delivered our new mattress set to the storefront. (We had requested the LAST delivery of the day, not the first.) The furniture store left the mattress on the front covered porch of the house (they were in big plastic bags). So not only was our brand new mattress sitting on the door of the house we didn’t have the keys for, but no one was there, and it was raining out. We couldn’t even take the trailer there and pick up the mattress, cause brilliant me had said to load the trailer TO THE BRIM the night before. We figured closing was right around the corner, so my Mom & Dad headed down there with the truck & trailer to park out front and make sure no crack heads took off with our new pillow top dream machine. Speaking of the new mattresses, the furniture company delivered them but not the new bed frame…so a very agitated Kristen spent several minutes bitching pleading her case to get them to pick up another frame from the warehouse in Brampton and deliver it that evening so that I would have a bed to sleep on (I was not going to put my brand new mattress on the floor thank you very much!)

Then I started to get antsy. I called and pestered our lawyer, who informed us that there was a problem with the sellers banking info. Apparently the seller wanted our bank to split up the money and send it to several different institutions. Our bank said hell no. If they needed that done, the money should have went to the lawyer in escrow and been split up by their lawyer. It wasn’t our banks job. So we waited, and waited, and waited some more… After lunch time rolled around I headed down to keep my parents company and keep watch while they stretched their legs and walked to a local coffee shop to get a cup of coffee and use the loo. Finally at about 4pm we got the call that we could pick up the keys. The problem now was that our lawyers office was smack dab downtown, and it was now RUSH HOUR. It took El Granto over an hour and a half to get down there, get the keys and get to the new house. Where it promptly started to really rain. Luckily we have amazing friends and family who lugged, and carried, and go soaked to the bone. We took a pizza break around 9pm, but didn’t make the final trip until almost midnight.

Holy Crap we have a lot of stuff

Then of course we needed a place to sleep…Exhausted and sweaty/rained on I insisted that we assemble the beds for both El Granto & I and my out of town parents who had come to help. So we allen wrenched and bolted, and eventually had beds built. At about that point in time we realized that we didnt have either a shower curtain rod not a bath tub stopper, so no one was even getting a nice hot shower that evening. We crawled into bed, and were promptly woken at the crack of dawn by the lack of curtains in the whole house.

So lessons learned kids: Dont move on the day you close. Hire movers.  Don’t get furniture delivered on closing day. Label each box with not only the room its headed to, but whats inside it. Buy copious amounts of liquor for drowning your stresses. Make sure you have window coverings, a shower curtain and remember where you packed the coffee maker. Those are the keys to a smooth move.

Houseaversary – Inspection

Day 3 of Houseaversary week! Today’s post is about the inspection.

As you may know, El Granto & I (and the Storefront of course) appeared in an episode of Mike Holmes’ TV show Holmes Inspection.

The show Holmes Inspection is all about how a home inspection failed the home owners in some way. This is absolutely the case in our story. Did we forgo an inspection? Nope. Did we hire a cheap company that we found on Craigslist? Nope, we went with one of the most reputable (and NOT cheap) companies in the city.

Then what went wrong? To be honest, we thought we’d done everything right. We hired an inspector we trusted. We had worked with him before on a house we previously put an offer on. That offer was conditional on inspection, and we walked away from the house when our inspector found termites and a toxic heating oil spill. So what went wrong this time? I think we were all fooled with how nice the house looked. We walked through the house with our inspector looking at everything with him (except the roof). We both have handy parents, and are not house stupid. We knew to look at the windows, furnace, hot water heater, support beams in the basement, electrical etc. We also asked to see the building permits, and we checked with the city that assured us they had passed all their inspections and the permits were all closed. We looked at the architectural drawings, and read the extensive report the Home Inspector gave us. It stated a few things, but here were no big issues. The house looked great, and all the renos appeared to be done very well.

We signed back our purchase agreement and removed the inspection clause, and officially bought the house. We moved in a month later.  I wish the story had ended there on that happy note. What the inspection missed was asbestos wrapped ducts, a poor hvac job, some shotty plumbing, illegal venting, a brand new dishwasher that didn’t work, a stacked washer & dryer that were not attached to each other, lead pipe in the basement, a leaky sink and a very leaky skylight, roof and window.

What would we have done differently? We would have checked each and every working item in the house ourselves. We would have looked in duct work, turned on appliances, furnaces, hot water heaters and ran every single tap in the whole house. We would have looked for wrapped pipes and ductwork in the basement and paid for an inspector who had an infrared camera and who was willing to look at every single detail of our house. The BIG thing we would have done differently was head up on the roof along with the inspector. Photos can be deceiving. In pictures our roof looked okay, in reality the skylight had its own chimney and there was probably 20 different patches of roofing material over the roof. Do I blame the inspector? He couldn’t possibly have known about all those things, but he did miss a few clues that the reno’s were not done so well. Who do I really blame? The previous homeowner who COVERED UP THE PROBLEMS and the city inspector who passed the work. There was an HVAC permit, so why did my asbestos wrapped ducts get missed? How did no one notice that my dryer vent connected to an old cast iron plumbing stack to the roof? I also blame ourselves, we got caught up in how nice the reno was as well. Next time I will go into an inspection like I am adopting a stinky dog at the pound, and want to make sure he doesn’t have fleas before I bring him home.

A view in to our home during the renovations (from next door) to fix all the problems with our house

So my best advice? Have a home inspector you trust long before you put in an offer. Do your research, and take a good hard look at the house. I mean all of it. Take out the drains and look into the pipes. Stick your head in cold air returns, bring a tissue to test the force of the furnace in every room. Follow your gut and your nose. Does anything smell moldy or musty? And look at everything in that basement. Does the plumbing look like it was done by a pro? Or does it have terribly messy joints? Does the electrical look like a rats nest or is it all neat and tidy? I have learned that the contractors that do things right usually care to make it look nice as well. They are proud of their work.

Good luck on your inspection, and I really hope you don’t end up like us!

Houseaversary – Almost Didnt Happen

This week marks the anniversary of closing on our house. This week I will share with you with some of our house buying ups and downs. Today’s topic is about how we almost didn’t go see the house at all.

The Storefront you see was on the walking path to El Granto’s work. Every day he walked past the house and he knew exactly which one it was when I sent him the listing. He said. “NO, that place is a dump, we’re not going to see it”. I said “What?! Look how nice the photos look!” And he told me to look it up on google streetview.

The house we were looking at was the one on the left with the brown front

Eeek. That DID look pretty bad. Then El Granto dropped the bomb that for the last year or so it had been boarded up, and was covered in errant graffitti. Double Eeek.

But…this was the pic on the listing:

See…it didn’t look anything like a graffiti covered boarded up shack…

El Granto still insisted it was a dump, and we had been through a lot of dumps lately. This was just weeks after we had viewed a hoarder’s house and a moth ball laced home that we couldn’t even breathe in…

But I persisted. The house was right by the subway and we had to meet our agent at the subway anyways. Why not just schedule it as our first viewing and we would quickly pop in? El Granto grumbled about it being a waste of time, it only being 12.5′ wide, and on a main street etc. To get me off his back he gave in, and we had our agent schedule a viewing.

I got to the viewing late and I walked up to the front of the house to find it looking just as pretty as the listing pic. No graffiti, no boarded windows, no hobos.  I opened the front door to find a BEAMING El Granto. He looked like a cat who swallowed a canary. I quickly did a tour of the house to discover that holy crap, it was great! A brilliant use of space, the rooms were laid out just how we would have done it, and it had a nice new kitchen and bath. A garage, a yard for future dog, and a big basement for storage. It also didn’t appear to have any squatters, dead bodies nor did it appear to be hiding Jimmy Hoffa. This was the best house we’d seen in…months. BUT it was over budget. It was 5k over our max cap. Our recently (but reluctantly) raised cap. AND it was beautiful, so we figured it would go for over asking. So we didn’t get our hopes up, and moved off to our other scheduled listings that night (which were mostly hell holes BTW).

That night all we did was rave about the house, and debated putting in an offer, but the more we raved the more we worried that we’d hyped the house up too much, and that our memories were failing us, and it wasn’t as great as we thought it was. So first thing the next morning we emailed our agent and got her to schedule us another viewing that night.

We hustled to the showing right after work, and damned if the house wasn’t BETTER than we remembered it! We started freaking out, and decided right then and there that we needed the house…

Stay tuned! Later this week I will post about the buying process, inspection, closing & moving.

Under the Weather

Hey Kids! Just a quick note today to say that posting and projects may be a bit light around here for the next little while. I have been suffering some health issues that are really taking it out of me. My energy levels are non existant, and while I really want to be writing and project doing, my body has alas told me that aint gonna happen. I also will be heading in for a gaggle of tests at the end of this week, and will be even more under the weather. Please have patience with me, I will be back again soon I promise. I have a load of house buying info coming up next week in celebration of the anniversary of closing on our house, as well I have been working on some gift buying and DIY holiday projects. I shall be back in full force soon, until then I am going go get some much needed love and snuggles from my puppy & hubby. xox – Kristen Continue reading “Under the Weather”

Guest Room Art Project

We needed some art to flank the bed in the guest room. I wanted something fun and lighthearted, and to bring a bit of colour to our now grey and white guest room. I rummaged through my box-o-frames and found a couple black gallery frames that had seen better days. They were a bit bashed and mangled and were not looking their best. I decided to give them a bit of a facelift. I painted them a shade of pinky coral (although in hindsight I wish they were a bit more red). Then I set out to find some prints. As you may know we have a crazy Vizsla named Odin who I love to bits and have tons of photos of, but I didn’t want the guestroom to be a creepy shrine to my dog. Instead I set to look for Vizsla themed prints, that were not shots of  Odin. I found a great print of a vintage stamp from Hungary (where Vizsla’s are from) as well as a fun “Obey the Vizsla” propaganda style poster. I cut new mats for the frames with my mat cutter (a handy tool if you frame a lot!)

Here they are in the space. I like how they add a bit of colour to the space.

The guest room still needs a few more things. Accent pillows, some sort of art above the bed, a chair for reading or putting on your shoes, bedside lamps, a new light fixture, and some closet organization.

Adding a Transom Window

As you may remember I went buck wild a few weeks ago and cut a hole above our guest room door to make a transom window. I really need to get out more if thats I what I called buck wild…eep.

So I cut a hole in the wall, and then 4 days later my in-laws were set be rolling into my house for Thanksgiving. I know…who starts a project days before company is due to arrive and sleep IN the room where the project is happening… Dont worry, it wasnt such an epic fail. I may not have finished the transom in time, but it was presentable. Now after a few more days work, and some custom cut glass, I am pleased to reveal our new transom.

How how’d we do it?

  • We used a stud finder to generally figure out what was behind the wall above the door. We found studs on either side of the door, and one right in the middle above it.
  • We did our research, and found that building code in our area has doors framed with King Studs and Jack Studs and a Header, and that the cripple stud above the door was nothing structural. (which means we can take it out without having to reinforce anything else)
  • Using the markings of our stud finder, we drew straight lines on the insides of the studs to use as a guide for cutting.
  • We cut our hole using a drywall hand saw (or should I say I cut 1/4 of it, then wussed out and El Granto cut the rest…there are you happy you got your due Mr. Granto?)

  •  We removed the cripple stud with a combination of a reciprocating saw and a hammer.

  • We cleaned up our drywall ensuring there wasn’t any in our way for when we put casing on the transom hole.

  • We cased the window using 5/8″ mdf that we had laying around the house. It also happened to be the same thickness as our current door trim. We measured the depth of our transom hole and ripped some mdf with our circular saw to fit. We then brad nailed it in place.

  • We trimmed the transom frame with more of our 5/8″ mdf.
  • We made a little frame inside the casings to hold the window. Filled, caulked and sanded.

  • We painted two coats of our trim paint.
  • We measured our hole and got a piece of glass cut at an awesome local glass shop Snap Services.
  • We installed the glass with some silicone caulking and a couple glazing points. Now if you’re home owner with an old home you’re probably asking why we didn’t use glazing compound? Well it’s an interior window, and it wont be subject to direct sunlight or weather of any kind. SO, silicone will hold it in just fine (and keep it from moving rattling around when a truck drives by.) The glazing points combined with the mini frame we built for it will ensure the glass never moves.
Transom Painted
See how much light it brings to the hallway?!
Ta Da Transom!

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:
5/8″ MDF – Home Depot (scraps from our bedside table project)
CIL Trim Paint – Home Depot
Caulking
Custom Cut Glass – Snap Services

Tools Used:
Circular Saw
Mitre Saw
Brad Nailer
Caulking Gun
Paint Brush & Tray

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

Two out of five

Total Cost: $10

Exterior of the Storefront

You’ve seen pics of the first floor of the storefront’s exterior, but what you haven’t seen is what the second story of our house looks like. That’s for one very good reason; its pretty ugly. Nah, I’m being mean to my poor house, its not THAT bad, but its not how we’d like it to look.  Continue reading “Exterior of the Storefront”