You see, selling real estate is a business that leaves no tangible product even after you've finished your profession perfectly, but I was deeply impressed by the tangible quality of the gorgeous work the carpenter left when his job was over. You could run your hands over and look at it, and you could respect its elegance and functionality. You could get pleasure from his work as an artist.
This was the moment I not only became interested, but decided I would begin to create products out of wood too. My granddaddy had been the mill manager of our local lumber yard and he introduced me to woodworking with the items he had built for my grandmother. My favorite was a bookcase cabinet with glass doors. Knowing something that involved would come later on, I settled for creating some wall shelves and a work table for my outside utility room at home.
My first woodworking lesson came when my shelf plans instructed me I would have to have particular tools, which we had on hand. Furthermore, the shelf plans also taught me about the use of jigs for sawing exactly to make two things I would have to have... simple sawhorses. Those came out rather well, and I was hooked on working with wood.
The shelf plans were straightforward and pretty soon I had two basic shelves up, and then decided I desired a table or work area of some type for the very little utility room. I took another shelf making lesson from my office carpenter who had created one in a identical area in my office. He produced a bench for our microfiche machine (remember those?), so I borrowed the strategy for my narrow utility room.
The room was about 6 feet wide, so I acquired a plain, ordinary 6 foot inside door at the lumber yard. I used a dark stain on it and voila, it became a 30 inch table. The underpinnings for my top were made as follows working with 2 by 4 pieces of lumber just as my office finish carpenter had done.
I bought 3, eight foot long 2 X 4's. The supports were a couple of, eight foot long 2 X 4's each cut into two, 3 foot lengths with two feet left over. The third board provided me two more two foot lengths and left me with a 4 foot scrap piece which I chose to use to allow my counter have even more support in the rear by the wall.
The main underpinnings were these rectangles I built with the 2 foot lengths forming the base and the top as headers and footers for a lot more weight bearing ability. The 3 foot lengths were the front and back vertical members in between. Both of these finished parts were shoved back to the wall and secured to it for basic safety. These rectangles formed the foundation or the "legs" of the bench.
For further stability, I placed my door counter top on its new supports, then got on the floor and used a pencil to mark the wall horizontally where the bottom of the table top struck the back wall. I put screw holes in my wood, held my wood up to the line where the table top would rest and utilized my drill to mark the wall in two places about 12 inches from each end of my four foot long 2 X 4 scrap piece.
This project was finished by preparing the wall to receive my screws, then attaching the scrap board to the wall. Once the bench top was set back into place, it was absolutely strong and I felt like the queen of my home. Yes, I'm a girl who just loves woodworking. It's really just like sewing to me There are just similar, but different patterns, tools, and materials. We haven't lived in that house for twenty-one years, but I'd bet the work table is still there.
Author Resource:
The author is a native Floridian and writes for Shelf Plans. In addition to finding the post, "Do I Really Need Shelf Plans?" on this web site, you will also find information on all types of shelf plans and how you can easily make them yourself.
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