Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The Craft Room: Part 4

Remember the next steps I had left?  WELL, I got moving on them :)

Since Hurricane Sandy was dashing all my hopes of having the island put back outside for it's final spray paint, I had GW help me carry it downstairs for the next few steps.  I'm sure I'll get a chance (someday) to take it back outside, but until then... why waste these rainy days where indoor chores are the easiest.

How far did we get?

Pretty far actually... it's ready for it's new worktop!!

$5 entertainment unit.  Original height
(guess I took this photo w/ the 16:9 still on.  Sorry!)
The height for it as a workstation.
It's the same as kitchen countertops/our kitchen island


Sure, it looks like it was a simple adjustment, but really, it was two days of ARGH.


The first step was to put the legs on.  Because our basement can sometimes be a whee bit leaky, I knew we had to put feet on it.  I didn't want the next flood to rot out the bottom of the island.

So I had it flipped over, and put on the four leg post holders, with ease.  Yay!  Screwed in the legs, with ease.  Yay!  And then I flipped it over, and marvelled at how one of the legs must be shorter than the rest, because it was wobbling like nobody's business.

Luckily, I'm familiar with projects gone awry, so I flipped it back and jerry-rigged a solution.  YAY!  It stands still now.

Shouldn't be too hard
And we have feet!
Look at that jerry-riggin!










Second step - cutting it to height.  I went to measure the kitchen island and the countertops to figure out how high they were.  I wanted to create a height that I could stand and do work at, or sit on a raised stool in case my back was sore, or the floor was cold :)

To cut it, I had to take it apart.  This was pretty easy, until I had to find an allen key.  I'd like to thank IKEA for providing me with no less than 6 of them over my years of faithful service... but FOUR didn't fit!  This must be some kind of conspiracy to create different sized holes which thus increases the need for production of many various sized keys.

Anyways, I did get it into it's pieces, measured up from the ground to the height I wanted it, and then I used my new jigsaw (wheee!) to cut off the excess.  Glenn was helping me in various ways, and had the tedious job of sanding down the middle piece there to make sure it wasn't too tall.  We have a power sander, but still, it took a long time, and I don't think it's right (yet).  We won't know if there's too significant of a hump until we get the worktop.

Uh oh... it already looks like I have to tidy in there :)
BUT, the only things left are painting (thanks Ma Nature, stop the rain any time now), putting on the worktop (c'mon Wade), and getting a stool or two for spending time down there.



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