Carpentress

I wonder if its a genetic thing, working with tools and building stuff.  My dad and brother are engineers, my uncle is a contractor, my other uncle has his own furniture business in Europe and both my grandfathers were/are skilled growers.


The women in my family are kind of scattered career wise. Most of my family still lives overseas, and while the men do a lot of manual labor, the women tend to gravitate towards being homemakers. Which is totally cool.  They raise incredibly smart, talented and driven children, are amazing cooks and are filled with an immense amount of good advice.  I would never expect them to ever regret their decision to not pursue business-like careers.

My 'American' side of my family is a lot smaller and very diverse. There are a few of us who work government jobs in education and social work, there are a handful of accountants and assistants, even a few management directors and assistants.  I could even go so far as to say we have a few artistic family members who work in multimedia.  And a very skilled bartender too.

INSPIRED. WANT.

In conclusion, the Chalhoub clan is filled with innovative go-getters who do everything they can to build a prosperous world around them.  I'm kinda pumped to be in the club.

And even more pumped that I got a few of the skills from both genders.  I'm a decent cook, I've got a good sense of how to raise a kid from working in many hands-on classroom environments for over 10 years, and I'm now adding carpenter to the list.

Sorry...Carpentress.


I was pretty happy with my first build project of the raised garden beds.  They are holding up well, and they look nice too. This time I was very inspired to create a display bookshelf after seeing this on pinterest.


Here's what I ended up with in the design process:

DESIGNED!

It took me a few doodles to get it right (as you can see in the background) but I'm kind of pumped to build this.

I really liked the weathered and discolored look from the shelf on pinterest so I did some research on how to get that 'old' look without going to an antique store and demolishing a bunch of other furniture.

Apparently, white wood is very malleable and with some force you can get that distressed look pretty easily.

BEATING THINGS UP

So math was done, measurements were taken, wood was cut, and I got to take out of my frustrations on the individual pieces with a few household items.

I used a board with nails drilled into it, a metal trowel, the edge of a staple gun, a flat head screwdriver, a big eyelet screw paired with a hammer and those horrible paver stones that the previous owner left behind.

All in all, the wood got some dents and cuts in it.  Nothing too crazy, just enough to make it look like someone had left it out in a junkyard.

SANDING MACHINE

Next thing I did was sand down the edges, corners, and flat sides to add to the 'weathered' look, and to reduce the amount of future splinter accidents.  Much thanks to my boss, Dean Deb, for letting me borrow her sander over the weekend.



I had originally planned on staining and poly-ing the wood before assembling the bookshelves but the second my dad took a look at the design and the tools I had, he immediately went into 'dad mode' and redesigned/built the entire shelf with a few extra hands provided by me and my siblings.

Johnny and Dad

My brother helped a few times, then made fun of my design so I yelled at him.  He's good at pressing buttons but ultimately he does know a lot about designing, building and engineering.  Frustrations are frustrating.  Sorry for yelling at you Johnny, you're still my favorite (only) brother.


Leah also helped a lot and I got in on the action too.

Measure 12 times, drill once, maybe twice

In the end, we had to redesign the cubby sizes and get a little creative with staggering the drilling.  Also, some of the wood got a little warped (because I left it outside thinking it would get more 'weathered').  But it came out pretty awesome in my opinion.

Finished build...maybe?

A part of me wants to add more shelves to the top and make it even taller but dad said it would be too heavy and whatever.  I may get overzealous and take the leftover pieces back to Lowes and cut them to make one or two more shelves, depending on what I've got.

Spent an evening staining the wood.  I ended up having a few different types of stain but they all ended up looking pretty similar when they dried.  I think I'll try getting a little artistic and adding a second coat to a few parts and see what that does.

Pretty much, this is all one big experiment.

First coat of stain

Finished up the shelf with some polyurethane to seal in the rich browns and keep it looking shiny and new.

SHINY

I was going to add some levels to the top of it but the drill I was using plus my physical strength was not really enough to add on the extra shelving parts.  Sooooo, later.


But yea, I'm happy with it.  It's displaying a few of my photography trinkets and hopefully soon some other trinkets too.