How to Open an Ikea Box

Ever tried to open an Ikea box and got so frustrated you just started ripping the cardboard hoping to somehow get that damn box open? Dont worry, we have all been there. Ikea boxes are strong and sturdy but glued shut encased in a little Swedish tomb that you think you’ll never be able to open. Well my friends, we have figured out how to open most Ikea boxes simply and easily (I say most cause some boxes are so well glued nothing will open them. In those cases I resort to tearing and swearing.)

So what you ask is our trick?

Take screwdriver of your choice, and weedle it into one end of the box.

Pull up on the screwdriver.

Then slide the screwdriver along the box, opening the end in its wake.

*one word of caution, watch where your screw driver is going, and don’t let it come flying off the box and make a divot in the hardwood in the dining room, or else your wife will screech at you “watch the floors dumbass!”

I know. Its so simple you’re surprised you never thought of it. Instead you broke countless fingernails and scratched your new cabinet when you tried to open the package with a box cutter. Now you love me and will forever be grateful for saving your marriage. I wonder what the divorce rate as a direct result of Ikea arguments is? Oh come on, you know you’ve had an Ikea argument. “If you like the Kivik sofa with the Dansbro red slip cover so much you can sleep on it indefinitely!” Shopping at Ikea is a domestic situation in the making. Don’t believe me? Check out this post from Apartment Therapy.

Now go forward and open your ikea boxes!

Coffee Bar – Stage 1

On our list of 2013 DIY Goals we noted one big project being the coffee bar. The coffee bar will be placed in our open concept kitchen/dining room. It will be on the opposite wall from our U shaped kitchen, and will be placed half way between the kitchen and dining room.

Before

We decided to build a coffee bar there for several reasons. A.) We wanted more counterspace to house our prolific array of coffee paraphania. B.) We needed more storage for kitchen dishes and barware, and C.) we wanted more space to lay dishes during parties. We decided instead of getting a freestanding buffet, we would build in the coffee bar using cabinets that match our kitchen. I set to planning the coffee bar about a year ago, but it hasn’t been on the top of our DIY priority list, and to be honest its also a bit of a big ticket item. We decided to do it in stages to alleviate the financial burden. Thanks to some Ikea gift cards for my last birthday and Christmas, we were able to use our time off between Christmas and New Years to get started!

The first stage was buying and installing the cabinet bases, then making a temporary countertop. Stage two will be wiring in new electrical outlets, pouring a DIY concrete countertop, adding some reclaimed wood open shelving and getting a few doors for the bottom cabinets. The last stage will be adding glass doors to the uppers, and a three drawer unit to the middle base cabinet.

So here’s part 1 (aka the manual labour):

We headed to Ikea with plans in hand and had the friendly kitchen department write us up a purchase order for the cabinet bases. We went with two 12″ deep, 30″ wide lower cabinets as as well as a 12″ deep 24″ wide lower (which will have a drawer unit in it). For the uppers we went with two extra tall 12″ deep 30″ wide cabinets which will eventually have glass doors. We also purchased some feet and the hanging rail for the upper cabinets. What we forgot to purchase were any shelves for said cabinets. Oops, looks like another trip to Ikea is in our future! After our purchase order was made up, we headed down to the checkout to pay and then off to full serve pickup to get our order. It was fast and easy and we were outta there in no time.

Ikea Full Serve Pick-Up

We got home and set to assembling and installing. We had previously assembled and hung an Ikea kitchen for a friends reno, and having assembled our fair share of Ikea we were fairly proficient in our assembly.

Cabinet Parts

We averaged about 12-15 minutes per cabinet, and with the help of a brad nailer to nail on the back panels, we were ready to install!

Brad nailer = best friend

We started with the lower cabinets which we attached together by clamping them, drilling out the hole and attaching with the accompanying screws.

Drilling out hole to attach cabinets together (protect your cabinets from the clamps!)

We then attached the stainless steel feet we had purchased. We decided to go with the feet so that it looked more like a piece of furniture, rather than the rest of our kitchen which has a toe kick panel. It also made the unit look a little less domineering from the hallway.

Attaching the foot bases to the cabinets. When you’ve got two cabinets right beside eachother you dont want a foot on each cabinet (would look silly) so you place the foot right in the middle of both cabinets. It saves you buying more feet, and it looks better.

8 feet later and we had ourselves a fully assembled base unit.

All the feet attached, ready to be flipped and installed

We flipped it over, decided on the position on the wall, we leveled it using the level-able feet (thank you Ikea, you are awesome for owners of an old crooked house!).

El Granto looking super impressed while leveling the cabinets

Once everything was correctly positioned we attached it to the wall. Our biggest issue was that we were attaching to a firewall which has 1 1/2″ thick drywall and our stud finder was having a hell of a time finding anything! After a few curse words and a couple heavy duty EZ Ancors we were in business.

Lower cabinets installed

After the lowers were done, we set to hanging the uppers. They were to be placed one cabinet on either end with a stretch of  open wall 24″ wide in the middle. We want to put some reclaimed wood open shelving in there, so we left the space open for now.

Hanging the uppers was also super simple, as Ikea’s system is amazeballs. You hang a track on the wall all level and nice, screw it into the studs, then your uppers float on the track!

Ikea cabinet rail attached to the studs and showing the movable anchor where you attach the cabinet

It’s super simple for a long row of cabinets, and makes it so that you don’t have to worry about finding studs to attached each cabinet to. We only needed to hang two smaller individual cabinets. So we cut the rail into two pieces slightly smaller than the cabinets, and following Ikea’s instructions installed them in short order. All in all it took the two of us one evening and one morning to have everything hung.

Upper cabinets half hung, art project sneak peek on the ground and general mayhem and mess
Cabinets Installed
Cabinets Installed

 

The next steps  to stage 1 will be getting the shelves we forgot at Ikea, adding a temporary countertop and some filler panels. This should all be complete by the end of January 2013.

Stage 2 will involve a DIY concrete countertop, some electrical outlets, open shelving between the two upper cabinets and hopefully a few doors and hardware. (ETA Summer 2013)

Stage 3 will complete the coffee bar with all the cabinet doors, drawers, and hardware. (ETA Fall/Winter 2013)

 

DIY Custom Door Mat

We needed a new door mat for the front door. We started hunting around for something useful but nice. What I found was a lot of ugly door mats, or ones that were hugely expensive. ARG. The problem is, when I get frustrated with not being able to find what I want for the price I want, I take matters into my own hands. So I refuse your overpriced or ugly door mats, and I will make my own thank you very much. So I stubbornly lugged my ass on the bus to Ikea and picked up some large coir rubber backed mats.

Ikea Trampa Door Mat

Coir is a natural coconut fiber and is very durable. If your mat gets dirty, shake it out, and you can even sweep it. Note to self, large coir mats are pretty heavy. After lugging them back on the bus I sure had sore arms the next day!

Okay, so now I had a plain mat. It would be fine as is, however I am never one to leave well enough alone. I decided to add some simple painted type or a design to the mat. I made a few layouts, but ended up loving a simple design of a small lowercase “hello” on the bottom right corner of the mat. I could have easily embellished the mat further with a border etc, but I liked the negative space the “hello” left on the mat. To save time, I broke out my Silhouette SD (yes I do use it for everything!) and cut out the hello from some cardstock. I popped out the letters, and used the cardstock as a stencil. I taped it onto my mat, and then used some sewing pins to get the paper to stay put.

Stencil taped & pinned to mat

The rough surface of the coir mat made it hard for spray adhesive or tape to adhere, so I found the pins the best course of action to get my stencil stay in place. I covered the other areas of the mat to make sure I didn’t get any overspray on the mat.

Close-Up Of Pins

Using a can of spray paint, I carefully painted my letters trying to spray completely parallel with the mat, to try to limit how much paint sneaks under the stencil. You will have some, but this careful paint technique should limit the paint’s sneaky sneak under the stencil. Give the stencil a few passes with the spray can, then let it dry for 5 minutes or so. When you go back you will notice that its lighted up quite a bit as the paint soaked in, so give it another couple passes with the spray paint, then let it dry. I got a bit impatient and removed the stencil about 10 minutes after I painted. Just make sure that you’re careful and don’t get paint on anything (including your hands, spray paint is hard to get off your cuticles!)

Detail shot of mat after spray painting

We let the paint dry for at a day or two, and the placed it at our front door.

The Mat

What do you think?

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:

Ikea Trampa Door Mat – Ikea
Spray Paint – Left Over Rust-oleum Universal in Black

Tools Used:

Silhouette SD
Sewing Pins

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

Two out of five

Total Cost: $16

2013 DIY Goals

I am not a new years resolution kinda person. I know I will never stick to a diet, or exercise more. I will most likely fail on any person goals in about the first month. However, the house goals are much more attainable. Why is that? Perhaps cause improving the house is fun, whereas jogging is not. So in 2013 will I be giving up sugar? Not bloody likely, but we will hopefully check off a few of these projects this year. So here’s the list!

2013 DIY Goals

The Coffee Bar – Installing a set of 12″ deep cabinets & some open storage onto the big wall in the dining room. It will be used as a coffee bar/buffet and hold a lot of our less used dinnerware and serving dishes as well as all our coffee related paraphernalia. (i.e. the espresso machine, milk frother, drip coffee maker, grinder, kettle, bodum etc. ) And yes, each of those items gets used SEVERAL times a week. We like our coffee, mmkay.

This is where the new coffee bar will go. Our poor liquor bar (on the right) was ousted from his living place when we made the new dining table. He’ll be relegated to the office and our new 7′ long coffee bar will dominate this blank canvas of a wall.

DIY’n new countertops for the kitchen & (hopefully completed) coffee bar – This one hinges on us getting a new sink first, then taking on this big project. I will be ever so happy to cross this one off the list, especially after my laminate countertops started de-laminating when I used the self clean cycle on my oven…eep.

Hopefully this kitchen will be more functional and look better with new concrete countertops!

Reno the laundry room –  This is a big project, that will cost us a bit of $. Hopefully we can fit it into the budget this year, as it would be sooo nice not to do laundry in such a damp dreary space. The bonus is that I will have a nice workshop in there as well! We have to lay down a dricore subfloor, flooring, walls, storage and a ton of other things. Wish me luck on this one…

Finishing the upstairs hallway – This one seems fairly straight forward, so hopefully we can check it off our list soon!

The hallway still needs some paint, art, plants for the nook and maybe a carpet runner.

Building a patio for the backyard & some landscaping – Its a small space, but this project will require a load of muscles. Anyone wanna come shovel? I pay in beer and pizza…

We hope to build a reclaimed brick patio and new walkway, as well as a flower bed near the fence. We also hope to build a modular sectional sofa to reside on the new patio.

Re-configuring our living space, and finally purchasing/building some grown up furniture for the livingroom –  A smaller project, but it will involve some carpentry, some techy things, and hopefully a new sofa purchase.

So what are your house goals for 2013? Got any big DIY or BIY (Buy it yourself) projects on the go?

 

 

Chalkboard Wall

Our entryway, dining room and kitchen are all one great big open concept room. As soon as you walk in the front door you can see straight to the back of my kitchen. Its nice because the storefront window allows in a lot of natural light, and the open concept high ceiling space makes everything look a lot bigger than it actually is. Since moving into the house we have done very little to the main floor. The main reason being that anything we did would either cost a lot, or impact the whole main floor (i.e. we have one 60 foot long wall that runs from the front door to the back door, going through every room on the main floor except the powder room. So you cant just paint the kitchen or the dining room, you literally are painting the whole first floor.)

We have big plans for the space, we want to create a coffee bar in the dining room, replace the sink, faucet and countertop in the kitchen (and backsplash if I get my way). We just made a new dining table and bench. I have some art projects in the design stage, and a lot of projects for the livingroom.

In the interim I wanted to get the dining room ready for my holiday guests and for Christmas dinner. There is a chimney wall that juts out in the kitchen (see it behind the table in this shot).

See the small wall that juts out right behind the middle of the table?

I decided to give it a bit of a focal point, and paint it with black chalkboard paint. That way I can feature a menu board for dinner parties etc.

To start out I sanded down the wall to remove any imperfections and to make it as smooth as possible. Then I coated in one coat of primer.

Priming
Wall Primed

I sanded the primer than applied one coat of chalkboard paint. I started to get a bit worried at this point as it didn’t cover well at all…

One coat of Paint
Detail shot of one coat of the chalkboard paint

After a second coat it was started to look much better, but it still needed at least one more coat. I sanded at this point to try to make it as smooth as possible (chalkboards work best when they super smooth!)

So after sanding and a third coat of chalkboard paint I was starting to get the result I was looking for.

Several coats of chalkboard paint

After this I gave it one more sand and what I thought would be the final (4th) coat. However after it dried it was even rougher than before. Eep!  So once again I sanded and sanded and sanded some more then I painted a coat sideways instead of up and down. After that, I sanded and painted two more coats. Yes that’s right, if you’ve been counting you’ll know that we’re up to seven coats of paint. At this point I still wasn’t convinced it was smooth enough, but gave up because I had had enough of this project…and i deemed it “good enough”. Having never worked with chalkboard paint before I am not sure if I was just being anal retentive, or if you can actually get a perfectly smooth effect on a wall.

Once it had dried for three days, we covered the whole wall in a coat of chalk (rub the side of a piece of chalk over the whole wall.) Consider this like seasoning a cast iron pan. Then rub off with a dry cloth, and you can use your chalkboard wall. Just don’t wipe it with a wet cloth for at least a week.

Chalk Rubbed on Wall
Detail of Chalk
Chalkboard Done!

Check back tomorrow to see how I designed my Holiday Chalkboard Menu!

***UPDATE*** Here’s the Menu

Chalkboard Menu Done

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:

Rust-oleum Chalkboard Paint in Black – Canadian Tire
CIL Primer – Home Depot

Tools Used:

Paint brush, tray & roller

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

Two out of five

Total Cost: $20

DIY Holiday – Chrismas Carol Art

I have taken to decorating the little shelf over our front hall coat rack as a would-be mantle. It got decorated for Halloween, Thanksgiving and now its getting a little Christmas cheer. My local dollar store sells 12×16 stretched artist canvases for the low price of $2. They also sell $1 acrylic paint. I figured this was an excellent excuse to make some inexpensive holiday art.

The Coat Rack Mantle without any decoration

While singing Christmas carols at my desk one day (yep I’m one of those holiday spirit kinda people)  I decided that my art project should revolve around Christmas carols. I promptly went home and laid down some type in Illustrator of  the lyrics “Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more”.  Hopefully our visiting friends and family will feel welcome this holiday season!

Type laid out in Adobe Illustrator

After I was happy with my type layout and font selection, I cut out the type using my Silhouette SD onto adhesive vinyl. If you don’t have a silhouette, you can pick up alphabet stickers from craft stores, or you can cut your own out of adhesive material. After my stickers were cut, I removed the excess vinyl (called weeding) and transferred my stickers using transfer paper (it’s sticky paper which pulls off the vinyl from their backing, then you place it where you want your stickers and apply using a credit card.)

Half the words adhered to the canvas

After my stickers were adhered I took a look and loved it just the way it was! I know, lazy me! If you want to do it right,  paint around the edges of the stickers with some white acrylic paint. You do this so that if any of the paint bleeds under the stickers, its white like the canvas so it wont be visible. After it dries,  coat the whole canvas in 2 coats of black, red or green paint.

After the paint dries, remove your stickers, and reveal the white canvas below. Or be lazy like me and just put stickers on canvas, then go drink some rum laced eggnog instead.

Where was I? Eggnog? Oops. Right. Project…

Then I placed it up on my mini mantle with a small artificial tree, candles, fresh greenery and a ceramic pear.


SOURCE LIST:

Materials:
12×16 Art Canvas
Adhesive Vinyl
White & Black Acrylic Paint
Eggnog for extra holiday cheer

Tools Used:
Silhouette SD
Paint Brush

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

One out of five

Total Cost: $2 ($4 if you paint it)

DIY Pipe & Wood Bench

BIG Milestone today kids! This is our 100th post!

So we made the dining table, then we finished the table, and now we’re making a quick and easy (and cheap) bench to go along with it.

Left over from our table offcuts, was a 2×12 piece of wood just about 6′ long. El Granto decided to surprise me and make a matching bench to go along with our table. The bench will add a lot more seating (you can squeeze a truck load of people around a bench when necessary.) It also reduces the amount of chairs we have to have, and a bench can be tucked close into the table and not take up a ton of room.

Here’s the shopping and cut list for what you need to make a 68″ long, 11 1/2″ wide and 18″ high wood & pipe bench.

Shopping List
(leftover 2x12x6′ from the table project)
2 – Premium 2×4’s
2 – 3/4″ Flanges
1 – 48″ precut piece of 3/4″ black pipe
8 – 1″ wood screws
Cast Iron Square Nails (Optional)

Wood Cut List
1 – 2x12x68″‘ spruce
4 – 2x4x16 1/2″
4 – 2x4x6 1/2″

Pipe Cut List
You don’t need any custom cut pipe. Use your 48″ precut piece as is. Woot!

Assembly
Pre-sand your pieces of 2×4 (these will be the bench legs, and once assembled are a bit more of a pain in the ass to sand.)  While you’re at it, sand the bench top as well. Start at a 60 grit or so, then work your way up to 220.

Assemble bench legs using your attachment method of choice. We decided to go with the Kreg Jig pocket hole system, but you can easily use dowels & glue. El Granto got a bit carried away in the assembly process, and forgot to take any pics until it was all done (oops!).

Here’s a shot of one set of legs, where El Granto is adding some decorative square nails. You can see how we used the pocket holes to attach the top support piece, we also used pocket holes below the bottom vertical support piece. The bottom support piece is vertical because we are going to attach our pipe cross beam there.

El Granto adding some decorative square nails to one set of bench legs
Square nails are awesome!

After the legs are assembled, attach the flange to one set of the legs, then attach the pipe and the second flange and screw the other flange to the other set of legs.

Attaching the legs to the pipe (excuse the constant garage clutter/sawdust)

Flip the bench top upside down, and place your upside down legs on top, and screw legs into bench top using 2 1/2″ screws.

Attaching bench legs (and yes that is a half naked woman posing with a motorcycle on the wall. The garage is El Granto’s domain, and wouldn’t be complete without a calendar full of bikini clad women posing with motorcycles.) And of course another photo bomb by the dog.
Bench Assembled

After the legs were attached, we took the bench inside to start the finishing process. We stained and oiled it to match the table.

The Bench
Bench leg detail
legs legs legs
Table & bench
Table & Bench

We now really need some new chairs. In the interim, I think I will give the ones I have a coat of paint. I am leaning towards turquoise or red. Eventually I would really love some Tolix chairs or some Emeco navy chairs. The dining room also desperately needs some high impact art, as does the area over my kitchen cupboards.

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:

2 – Premium 2×4’s – Home Depot
1 – 3/4″x4′ black pipe – Home Depot
2 – 3/4″ Floor Flange – Home Depot
2×12 spruce – Rona
1″ wood screws – Home Depot
Varathane stain in Chocolate – Home Depot
Varathane wood conditioner – Home Depot
Pure Tung Oil – Lee Valley
Square Nails – Lee Valley

Tools Used:

Miter Saw
Kreg Jig
Measuring Tape
Hammer (for decorative nails)
Drill

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

Three out of five

Total Cost: $16 (bench top wood, and finishing materials were left overs from the table project)

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

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