Working on the house this week was a lot of odds and ends.

I continued building the shelf for behind the wood stove in the living room.

I decided to glue up the shelf top first then glue the back pieces to it.  My primary reason for glueing it in that order is because the mitre joint on the top is the weakest joint in the assembly and it is the one that must be glued perfectly or the defects will show.  So I decided to use a biscuit to strengthen it some.

The biscuit will not make it super-strong, but it should provide enough rigidity to be able to turn it over a few times as Tina finishes it.  Once it is hung on the wall, physics will take over and the strength of the mitre joint will not matter.

Glueing the top of the shelf together ended up being a lot easier than I expected.  a clothespin clamp on the corner made sure the tops were aligned properly and a plywood gusset allowed me to clamp it perfectly square.

Next up was glueing the back pieces on.  They required a lot of clamps, but were really not too bad to get the miters to line up and keep them square.

I wanted to let it dry overnight before I unclamped it but could not resist test fitting it after about 4 hours.

It came out exactly as I wanted and seems pretty strong.  The next day, after it had a full 24 hours to cure, I lifted myself up on it and it did not even creak or groan.

The next day, I made the moldings for the edges of the tile and Tina finished them.  They are just a simple “L” shape molding with a round over on the corners showing.

I had to glue them in place with construction adhesive because neither one was anywhere close to a stud.  One side, I had to hold in place with blue tape, the other I was least to rig up a couple clamps to hold it while the adhesive dried.

The final product came out looking pretty dang good I think!

With that, the true woodworking on the house is done – kind of a bitter-sweet moment for me.

I spent the rest of last weekend finishing up the molding.  First on the pocket door in the master bedroom…

Then the rest of the baseboard in the rest of the house.

I finished the baseboard about noon last Saturday.  As soon as it was done I got a cup of coffee and went out on the back porch and sat down and realized M. T. Acres is done.  We do still have the tile backsplash to do in the kitchen, which we are doing this coming weekend, plus a bunch of other stuff.  But for all intents and purposes, our home is as complete as it needs to be to support us comfortably.

For about the first 5 minutes I was sitting there, I was basking in the glow of a job well done.  Then, all at once, every ache and pain that I have been ignoring for the last 14 months came upon me (with interest).  My entire body hurt like hell but I was still grinnin’ like an idiot.  We did it.  We built a home.

Epilogue 

I will continue to make posts to the M. T. Acres blog as we continue our transition to a MUCH better life in rural AZ.  But the frequency will be less.  I will post the pictures of next weekend’s tile job of course.  But then I am taking the monsoon season off, so you may not see much for a month or so.

After that, Tina has more than a few project planned for me:

And those are just for the house.  She did not include the “outbuildings” which include an “Art Shack” for Tina to do her sewing, drawing, painting etc. (that is the next one), a “Cook Shack” for us to smoke and grill meat, make sausage, and entertain friends and ourselves and a chicken coop.

So stay tuned, there is a lot more detailed woodworking and construction coming up, plus a bit of commentary.

But thanks for following us through this adventure.  It has been my dream and Tina’s nightmare.

Tina spent the weekend back in Minnesota this week so she could attend our younger daughter, Katie’s, baby shower.  Katie and her husband Mark will be giving us twin grandsons on September 28th.  Needless to say, the whole family is very excited.

The glass people got the glass cut and installed on all of the top kitchen cabinet doors.  However, when I picked them up, I noticed one that I was not happy with.  The stile on one side of the door had warped a bit before Tina got a chance to varnish it.  So rather than clamping it flat before they glued the glass in, the glass people just fit as best they could and filled the gap with silicon.  Needless to say, it looked like crap.

So before we did anything, I cut the glass out and redid it.

They are just glued in with clear silicon so I was not too worried about the warped stile cracking the glass.  I let it dry overnight to make sure the silicon was good and dry, then I unclamped it.  It worked perfectly.  The glass held the warped stile almost perfectly straight and once I got the hinges screwed to the cabinet, the hinges pulled it the rest of the way straight.

Before Tina left she got the base cabinet doors finished.  So I was able to get all of the cabinet doors hung.

I think they came out looking pretty dang good.

The last thing to do to complete the kitchen cabinets was to make moldings for the toe-kick.  Those were real easy to make, but time consuming to finish.  I started by planing some stock down to 3/8 inch thick.

Then I just cut them to size and finished them.

Finally, I installed them and the kitchen cabinets are done!

While I was waiting for the finish to dry on the cabinet moldings, I decided to put up some more base moldings.  That also turned out to be a slow and time consuming process because the living room is now filled with furniture.  So for every stick of molding I put up, I had to move several pieces of furniture.  But it came out looking good.

I still have quite a bit more base molding to do, but before I go much further in the living room, I need to make some custom moldings for around the tile behind the wood stove.

The moldings for the sides will be easy to make, but on the top, Tina wants a shelf.  I guess she thinks we just do not have enough flat surfaces to collect dust in the desert.

I had an idea for how to do the shelf, but am not sure how well it is going to work.  I started off by making some cleats that I could screw solidly to the wall.

Then I planed the back part of the shelf to 1/2 inch thick and glued a cleat to the top of it.

The top of the shelf will be rabbited and glued to the top of the back.

I do not know how solid the shelf will be once the top is on.  But worst case, I can run some decorative screws to hold it up if need be.  Although I really do not want screws to be showing if I can avoid it.

I test fit the back pieces and they seem solid enough.  They do not seem to have a tendency to “roll forward”.  I will let you all know how it turns out in next week’s installment.

Living the bachelor life for the weekend, I have also had to cook my meals and such.  For me, that means BBQ since that is about the only cooking I am good at.  But I was very proud of myself, I was even able to load up and run Tina’s fancy new dishwasher without incident!

I was not even tempted to eat the Tide Pod even though it looks like candy!