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Wood-dye
11:02 AM 5/5/2006 |
After a little delay (buying new beams, redoing a bit of work) the front and rear frames were complete and satisfactorily square. As the closet is in a little alcove in my lounge I ended up having to do some work to properly route my speaker cables (for my nice 7.1 surround sound setup - 8 Speakers!) as there would be no way to do it later. For this I used some of the cheap flexible PVC trunking, it looks pretty good.
In its natural state pine looks cheap, pale, and somewhat unfinished - but with a little bit of wood-stain/wood-dye you can really make a huge difference. I used the very dark oak stain on it here, which you can literally layer - the more you put on the darker it becomes, until it becomes almost black. It makes a massive difference, suddenly the frames start to look professional! The stain also offers some small level of protection to the wood, but in this case it would not be enough protection (imagine coolant getting on it!), so I also triple-varnished the frame. |
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Side-beams
11:19 AM 7/5/2006 |
| In total there are 6 side-beams for the closet, 3 for each side (top, middle and bottom). This time I'd learned my lesson and made very sure the beams were DEAD-STRAIGHT before I cut them.
The side-beams were each drilled with a pattern of holes, and counter-sunk. The counter-sinking bit is a simple V-shaped drill attachment, but it makes such a huge difference in the finished quality of the production. I was always used to my woodworking projects having nails and screwheads poking out of them - and for 10 bucks, this is no longer the case, with the screwheads sinking to be flush with the level of the wood.
The counter-sinking bit is also the most enjoyable tool to use - there's really something very satisfying about the way it cuts and gnarls its way into the wood. :)
Finally, I used the wood-stain on the beams, you can see a nice comparison here between how the stained, and unstained beams look. It's impressive how something so cheap can make such a huge difference, that suddenly the rather boring beams go to looking like they actually belong to a piece of furniture, rather than some hacked-up woodshop project. Just don't forget the gloves, the stain is a real pain to get off - not even bleach, swarfega, or soap will remove it.
The beams were taken outside, and then varnished. Again, I had to triple-varnish them, but I made a mistake of not quite
waiting long enough for them to dry, and painted the next layer too soon. This was unfortunate as it meant the beams remained sticky to the touch for a week. Lesson: varnish many thin layers rather than a few thick ones. The varnish I used went a groovy blue color (so you could see where you'd painted it) as it was drying, then dried clear.
Finally, you can see all the beams nicely varnished. Note how the stain has brought out all the knots in the wood, and deeply defined the grain pattern. |
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