After a leisure-filled December, I started again in earnest on house stuff on New Year’s Day.  These are two shelves for the corner cabinets in the kitchen, and the strips in the middle are cedar edging that will be installed in the master bath.

These are the pieces for 2 drawers and 2 drawers already assembled.  The have Baltic birch bottoms, and maple sides.  The sides all have dadoes to receive the bottom, and the long sides are rabbeted to receive the front and back sides.  They are glued and stapled.  I am making 8 drawers at the same time as the master bathroom has two banks of 4 drawers of the same size.

Gluing on the cedar edging.  As taught by Cam, I glue the two long ones, let them dry 30 minutes or so, and then fit and glue the short ones between the long ones.  These are all pieces ripped from some boards my Brother in Law gave me when he replaced their 50 year old cedar deck.  The edging is a bit oversize and will have the ends trimmed and the long edges scraped and sanded before it is ready for finishing.  The scraping and sanding is a bit tedious and time consuming but makes for a nice finish.  These Bessey clamps are great.  These are all now finished with 3 coats of tung oil on the edging, and 3 coats of water-based satin polyurethane for the insides and the outside sides (had to use a brush as I won’t be able to spray until it warms up).  I am just waiting for a shipment of drawer slides from Lee Valley Tools (who are opening a new store in Kelowna in the spring) so I can install them.  The first UPS shipment went astray.

Boxes of books, files, curios and art.  All awaiting the design and construction of shelving units and cabinets. Good to have them finally out of the basement and in the room they will eventually live.

I made up some baseboards out of the leftover fir flooring and then oiled and varathaned them. However, I did not much like the finished product. I am now thinking of using a dark stain, as on the left, for the baseboards. Any views?

We are off to Cuba for a week so there won’t be any updates for about 10 days or so.  In the interim, here is a photo of the framers at the almost-lock-up party one year ago.

And here is a photo of the house one year ago and three months after we started the footings – roof is on and shingled, windows are in but doors were delayed.