Living in an apartment, we have to make the most of every square foot that we can when it comes to storage. After recently reevaluating our kitchen/dining organization, we decided that the best solution for our overcrowded buffet would be to find a tall narrow shelving unit to store some of Devin's coffee stuff -he's obsessed. I found a lot of options that could work, but a lot of them were either cheaply made, looked like they should be in a bathroom, or were too wide for the space that we had. One night, I had the thought... I'll just make it! I don't know what came over me, but I'm glad that it did!
I'm no professional, but I can say that I learned a lot through this project, and I hope that these beginner's tips can be helpful for someone else out there who is hoping to just take the dive into their first woodworking project. I talk about everything from cost and tools, to how I planned, to random tips I learned on YouTube. I'm definitely still learning, so feel free to send me any tips that you know or learn in your own projects!
6 Things I Learned Through My First Woodworking Project
1) Building a Plan Builds Confidence
I know I'm not alone when I say that I feel different walking into Target than I do when walking into Home Depot. In Target, I know where everything is and the whole store is my happy place. In Home Depot, I don't know where anything is, let alone know what anything is. But this time, I had a plan, and I walked through the aisles with confidence knowing exactly what I needed even if I didn't know where it was at. I used Procreate to make my designs because I like the highly editable interface, but you can easily use a piece of paper. Make sure to triple check your math, and make an itemized list breaking down how many cuts of the different sizes you need, as well as any extra tools you are hoping to get -do your research and watch training videos ahead of time for maximum confidence heading into the store!
2) Cost of Building vs. Buying
Building things on your own is only kinda cheaper -especially when you are first starting out. For instance, I spent about $140 on tools for this project. That was an investment I knew I would need to make ahead of time, but there are always unexpected things that pop up. I didn't think about the right angle clamp or the drill attachment we used to make a hole to feed wires through to an outlet (all tools linked below). Beyond that, the wood ended up being around $100. The other options that I was looking into from Lowes, Target, etc. for storage were about that much or more. While store-bought options may look nicer, this gave me the opportunity to learn and customize it to my liking -not to mention it's made from better quality materials. Now, I have more tools to use for future projects, and a little bit of wood leftover too!
3) Make Templates and Guides
After watching a few youtube videos, I learned some really cool ways to "idiot-proof" my design by using templates. Ironically, making one of the templates was exactly how I cut myself... don't worry it wasn't that bad. ANYWAYS. The first thing I made was a board that I drilled all the way through as a template for where the adjustable peg holes would go the shelves. Then, all I had to do was line the template up with the shelving walls and drill into the same holes. I haven't put a level to it or anything, but by appearance, these shelves are perfectly straight -and I'm a bit of a perfectionist. The other template I made was so that I wouldn't drill too far into my shelving to make the hole for the pegs I just mentioned. See the picture? There's a wooden block on my drill that makes it IMPOSSIBLE to drill too far. Cool, right?
4) Space Doesn't Limit Creativity
I don't have a tool shed, or a garage where I do all this stuff, we just do what we can to make it work. I spent a lot of time on our back balcony with the sander (sorry, neighbors), and then we did most of the drilling inside. Sure, sawdust got all over the floor, but that's what vacuums are for. Not only that, but not having enough space is what literally inspired this project. Sure, I'd love to be able to work in the nice shade with the garage door open and neighbor kids riding bikes out on the street, but maybe that's a blessing I'll get to enjoy later. For now, I've decided that I'm not going to let my space (or lack there of) limit my creativity, and you shouldn't either!
5) How to Measure Wood
People often refer to "2x4's" when they need to build things like infrastructure or other large building projects. Most know that this refers to the dimensions of the board, but the funny part is, the "2" that refers to the thickness of the board isn't even accurate. For my shelf, I bought what would normally be labeled "1 by whatever-width-you-want," but the wood is actually only 3/4" thick. Thankfully, I learned that before making my plans to build, otherwise, that could have really messed up my plans! If you're building something, DEFINITELY bring a measuring tape with you to the store when you're going to pick out wood so you can get the exact measurements of what you are purchasing and avoid underbuying.
6) You Can Get Pre-Cut Wood
You can get your wood pre-cut at Home Depot -just come confidently with your measurements. At the particular location that I went to, they said they wouldn't cut anything down smaller than a foot long, my first two cuts were free, and beyond that each cut would be 50 cents. All in all, I spent $6 getting my wood precut which is a LOT cheaper than buying my own saw. You will, however, need to sand down the edges of your wood before you start using it -at least I did! The cuts that the nice man at Home Depot helped me with ended up being quite splintered on the ends.
Here are the tools that I used for this project!
If you end up deciding to start a project and need any of these tools, I would so appreciate it if you would come back and shop through these links -they are linked to my Amazon Associate account, and I get a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about them, let me know. For what it's worth, my dad swears by the Bosch Power Drill -we love it too!
A few things I'm still trying to figure out...
How to join right angles so the wood is flush together and don't separate when you put a screw through to the second piece.
How NOT to split the wood through a pocket hole.
What is the best way to evenly sand down the ends and avoid rounded edges?
What color should I paint/stain my brand new shelf??
Comentarios