Happy New Year Acrettes!

Part of the problem with “living” at a half-built house is the food.  Until last week, we were limited to what Tina could cook in a cheap microwave oven and a camp stove or barging in on our good friend Eve to use her kitchen.  But now that we have the Big Green Egg at M.T Acres, we can pretty much do anything.

And let me tell you, until you have had dinner rolls baked over mesquite charcoal, you have not lived!

Tina got the vanity for the master bathroom completely finished and it came out looking GREAT!

The photo does not show it very well, but the varnish on the quarter-sawn oak really makes the grain stand out.

Since the top is solid wood as well, Tina decided to do 6 coats of varnish on it to make sure it is well protected from the moisture.  She still has one coat to go, but it is looking outstanding too.  The picture of the top shows the grain a little better than the photo of the front of the cabinet.

For my part, I built the vanity for the guest bathroom.  We wanted it to look like an old farmhouse table rather than traditional cabinetry.  So we chose to build it from black walnut.  Since it really is more furniture than cabinetry, I used mortise and tenon joinery for the whole thing.

We were also really lucky to get ahold of some really nicely figured walnut for just under $5 per board foot.  Unfortunately, walnut is a wood that does not photograph well until it has a couple coats of varnish on it, so please take my word for it, the grain on this is really something special.

I started by cutting the legs as well as the stretchers.  I built a wide stretcher around the top so we have room to mount a toilet paper holder.  The narrower ones around the bottom will hold a shelf.

I stupidly cut the tenons on the stretchers before cutting the mortises in the legs.  More on that in a few minutes.

Then, I cut the tapers on the legs as well as cut the mortises and dry fit all of the parts to make sure everything fit perfectly.

So far, so good…

Tina bought 2 cloth boxes on Amazon to put towels, etc. under the vanity.  So we needed to build a shelf to hold the cloth boxes.  In keeping with the farmhouse style, I decided to make the shelf with slats.  So I planed down some stock to 1/2 inch thick and made 11 slats and carefully cut the mortises and tenons.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I like mortise and tenon joinery a LOT and I am pretty good at it.  And these were some of the best joints I have ever cut in my life.  They fit nice and tight. They were perfectly square.  The shoulders were nice and tight against the mortise.  So I rounded over all of the corners and glued it up.

I do not think I had ever glued 22 mortises in one glue session before, but we planned it well and worked fast and got it done.  Once the glue dried and I measured it out, everything was absolutely perfectly square and the correct dimensions.

Fortunately, before we did the last 2 glue ups, I decided to try one last dry fit of the legs and stretchers with the shelf.  We put everything together (without glue) and I quickly discovered the mortises on the legs were 1/8 inch too far apart!

When I build things in my woodshop, I do not work from a blueprint, but I do keep copious notes on every part I make.  I do all of my math on paper and I ALWAYS check it at least once.  So went back to my notes and checked the length of the slats against the length of the stretchers and the width of the legs.  I checked my math 3 different ways and it ALWAYS came out correct.

So, I started measuring parts.  The slats were correct.  The tenons on the front and back stretchers were correct.  The mortises on the legs were correct.  Then I discovered I had gone full-blown retard and cut the side stretchers 1/8 inch too long, even though I had written down the correct length on my cut list!

The problem was solved easy enough; trim away an 1/8 inch on the stretchers and recut the tenons, but sheesh what an idiot I was!

After getting a good dry fit on the whole thing, I glued up the two ends.

Then the rest of the body.

Lastly, I glued up the top.

Then, sanded and sanded and sanded.

I even had to “test” it with the sink.

The grain on this baby is so amazing that I believe once Tina gets done working her magic on it, it will look like you can put your hand right through it.

The moulding for all of the doors also came in this week.

The narrow ones will be the vertical pieces and the wide ones will go across the top.  Rather than doing a traditional miter on the corners, we are going to with more of a southwest style.

Tina got a good start sanding that down for finishing.

I have to say that I am not real happy with the mouldings.  I had to special order them so I could not pick out the individual pieces I wanted, rather I had to accept what they shipped.  In looking through the pile, several of them have knots (which might look kind of cool) and a lot of tool marks (which NEVER look cool).  Also, when I placed the order, I specifically told the salesman, I wanted 8 foot pieces.  When we picked them up, there were several that were 16 foot pieces (which I made them cut down) and several that were 9 or 10 feet.  If they measured by linear feet, rather than total pieces, I am going to end up short.

Fortunately, the profile of the moulding is simple enough I can make a few extra pieces if we need them.  But I sure do not like this idea of “take what we give you”.

This coming week, I am going to step back from the woodworking for a while to get the wall tile up in the bathrooms.  That and a few minor clean up things (making doors for the furnace closet, etc.) are the last that we need to do to get ready for the final “move-in” inspection.

The plumber and electrician still have quite a bit to do, but they needed me to be done building cabinets to do their part.  So we are cocked, locked and ready to rock on that front now!

We picked up the wall tiles and trim for the guest bathroom on the same day we got the mouldings.  So I will start those tomorrow.  We are still arguing out the details of what we want in the master bathroom, so we have not yet purchased those.

Finally, we took a walk around our land a few days ago and discovered that we have a true Arizona Christmas tree!

It is a mesquite.  And the wild gourds, which are growing everywhere, grow up the trunk and out the branches.  The gourds hang down like Christmas ornaments.

There are even a couple that are hanging down 2-3 feet!

From Tina and I to all of you, have a Happy and Blessed 2018!