Jim writes: At what width do you go from 2 stringers to 3 stringers in a wooden staircase?

In my stair case articles, I neglected to write about when it is necessary to add a third stringer to support the stair case. I would go to a third stringer when the stair case width exceeds twenty four inches. I like a solid feeling staircase. Walking up and down the staircase I shouldn’t feel the staircase bounce or flex. I have seen track home builders locally who have built 36″ wide stair cases using only two stringers and these are stairs that run straight from the first floor to the second floor. With just one set of jacks supporting the stringers roughly in the middle of the run, if that. Boy, did those stairs have some flex in them! (more…)

Rita writes, “Does anyone have some free plans for a wheel barrel planter?”

I have not built on yet, my yard is a little too small especially with three young, growing kids running around in it. This will be a nice weekend project to build. I found a couple of sites offering free wheelbarrow planter plans that look really nice and are easy to build.

Runner Duck Wheelbarrow

Build easy Wheelbarrow

Viki’s Wheelbarrow

When you have completed it, send me a couple of pictures of your completed project and a commentary on how your building experience went making this project. Will gladly show them off here on the site.

While designing the platform bed with the storage drawers, I wanted full extension drawer guides. The three quarter drawer guides are ok, but not for this project. The drawers are to be used as a dresser. It frustrates me when I have to try to get to the last garment at the back of the drawer that is still inside of the bed frame.

I settled on a pair of 100 pound full extension drawer guides are more than strong enough to hold the weight of the cloths and just about anything else a person would put into the drawer.

Now, if one of my kids decides to store their life’s collection of rocks in the drawer… well that is going to be a problem. I will cross that bridge when I get to it, hopefully never. (more…)

Over the past year and half I have been working on building a set of beds with storage underneath for my children. So far I have completed the first one for my eldest daughter, who enjoys her ‘tall’ bed. I have completed construction of the second bed for my middle daughter. The bed is now ready for stain and varnish.

The goal is to get it finished and moved into her room by early October. I like to give the varnish about three to four weeks to cure and harden before putting the furniture to use.

Design / Style of the bed

The platform bed is designed so that a standard sized twin mattress will fit comfortable on top of it. I designed a 1 1/2 inch deep recess for the mattress to sit in. This prevents the mattress from being able to slide off of the platform. That would make for a bad night’s rest. (more…)

Now you are ready to cut out the steps. Remember to cut on the waste side of the line. The waste side is the triangle that you are cutting out. When you get to the corner of the step the circular saw blade will leave a bit of material. Use your hand saw to trim of the material and cut out the step triangle. (more…)

In this article we will discuss and determine how to calculate the rise and run for each step in your stair case. The ideal rise is seven inches and the ideal run is ten inches. (more…)

Grab your framing square it is time to layout the stringers. You never knew that a framing square could be used to layout steps of a stair case? Follow along and find out how. (more…)

In building a set of wooden stairs it is important to understand the terminology of stair case building. Here is a quick over view of the common terms used in stair case building and plans. (more…)

My home was built in 1980 and the floor plan called for the air conditioning air return next to the bathroom on the base of the wall.  It makes it easy to change the filter.

 The air conditioner unit is up in the attic over the bathroom and thus inside the wall a box of 30” by 16” running from floor to ceiling.

The bathroom is next to the kid’s bedrooms and it does not contain a linen closet!  I don’t know about you, but I like to keep clean towels in bathroom.  The more I looked at the air return I realized that if I moved the air return into the ceiling I could convert the air return shaft into a small but functional linen closet for the bathroom.

In the attic the challenge is that moving the air return into the ceiling, would put the air return duct work directly in the path that I use in the attic to get to the bulk of my storage space. So part of the challenge in moving the air return is to build a duct work that is strong enough to support my weight.  After some quick calculations it turns out that the air return duct needed to be 7” above the top of the joist.  I framed out a wooden box whose top was finished with two 1/2” sheets of plywood on it.

When my air conditioning guy was servicing my A/C he asked about the air return.  He was surprised that it did not whistle when A/C was running.  I kindly told him that I can do basic calculations to determine the cross section needed.

I removed the sheet rock on the common wall between the bathroom and the future closet.  Then sheet rocked the closet, floated and painted.

I decided to build fixed shelves within the closet.  You could easily have adjustable, but for me fixed shelving met my needs.  The door and face to the closet is a 3/4 sheet of plywood.  The plywood front over laps the opening by 2”.   I cut out of the plywood face two doors, keeping the door frame intact. 

To cut the doors, I set up the table saw’s rip fence for the desire door frame width.  On the plywood door I marked all four corners of the door with light pencil lines.  On the rip fence I drew reference lines perpendicular to the saw table.  Start up the table saw and position the plywood so that the table saw blade will cut through the wood and come up just next to the beginning of the door cut.  What this requires is that you hold the plywood at an angle with one side resting against the table and the fence.  Then slowly lower the plywood down to the table and allow the table saw blade cut through. 

Be careful!  You are working without your blade guard and it is fairly easy for the saw blade to kick the stock out and cause injury.

Nail the plywood door frame against the wall.  I trimmed out the plywood door frame with 3/4” quarter round molding.  The plywood doors I finished out with lap molding.

In a previous post about picture frames I mentioned that I had built a set of picture frames for my wife’s birthday with a close up picture of each of our children.  Fast forward a year later and I am looking at the pictures and want to give her an updated set of pictures of the kids.  The problem is the original set of picture frames where constructed from purple heart and it will not be easy to replaced the pictures.

I could continue to make picture frames, but eventually I will run out of wall space in our bedroom!  So what to do?

I recently purchased raised panel door router bit set.  The grove where the raised panel fits in is 1/4” wide, just the right width for the glass, mat, picture and backer.  Using mahogany I routed a set of rails and stiles for each frame.  I glued and nailed two stiles and the top rail together.  The bottom rail I fastened with flat bar strip of metal that I picked up at the local home improvement store.

Anytime I want to replace the pictures all I need to do is remove four screws add slide out the bottom rail!

And by the way, my wife loves the second set of pictures of the kids.  With both sets of the pictures next to each other it is neat to see how the kids have changed over the past year.

Our master bathroom has 9’ ceilings, which gives a nice lofty feeling to a small space.  The changing area is about 7’ by 8’ with a 7’ vanity on one side and doors to the closets and bath tub / toilet on the other two walls.  It has a nice 42” inch tall mirror that runs the length of the vanity and a Hollywood style light fixture over the mirror, after that nothing but open space to the ceiling.

To give us more storage space I built a set of two cabinets that run the length of the wall over the vanity.  The cabinets are 18” deep and 20” tall and two doors per cabinet.  The cabinets are anchored to the wall with 2 1/2” #10 screws.  I drove screws into the top plate and the studs.

I removed the light fixture and put a set of six cabinet mounted halogen lights on the underside of the cabinet.  These lights run on 110V and are fully dimmable.  The lights are mounted on the bottom of the cabinet facing down toward the counter.  I used six lights for our 7’ wide vanity.  The counter is beautifully illuminated.  The biggest down side is that the lights do not illuminate the face as well.  This is something that you should consider when considering the lighting for your bathroom.

Something else to pay attention to is the clearance between the ceiling fan and the cabinet.  When the ceiling fan was off there was just enough space to open the door when the fan blade was positioned just so.  Well, that lasted all of about a week before accidentally one of the cabinet doors was opened while the fan was running.  As you can imagine, there was a rather loud noise and the fan blade was bent.  40 dollars later and a shorter down rod fixed this problem.  Now the ceiling fan’s blades are about four inches above the top of the cabinet’s doors.

Making a picture frame is a nice small scale project that allows you to showcase your talents while framing a beautiful picture.

There are a variety of different techniques to build a picture frame, from using off the shelf molding to milling your own molding.  The first picture frames that I built I used off the shelf lip molding.  It works, but the choices of wood types are pretty limited.  At my local home improvement store carries molding made from white pine and red oak.

Building picture frames out of scrape wood helps me reduce the scrape wood pile.  I only have so much space in my work shop! 

A little over a year ago I built a collection of three simple picture frames for my wife’s birthday.  I took a picture of each of our children’s face.  The picture is just the face of each child.  I saw that on Extreme Makeover the Home Edition show.  For one family, Ty hung in the master bedroom a set of close up face pictures one for each of their children.

The picture frame is a simple design.  It is 2” wide with a rabbit grove 1/4” by 1/4”.  A 1/4” depth allows me enough space for the glass, matting, picture, and backer board.  Depending on the species of wood I typically use glazer points to secure everything into the frame.  This technique works well for softer woods and once you put the picture in you are not planning on changing it.

The first set of frames that I made for my wife’s birthday, I build them out of reclaimed purple heart.  It was the first time that I worked with this wood.  My Delta bench top planner chewed through it fairly easily.  Granted I was taking of 1/64” per pass!  However, cutting the rabbit with my stacked dado head cutter…. That was a challenge.  It took several passes to mill out the rabbit.  My dado head cutter is not the greatest, more on that in a future post.

My joinery for the frame itself is still on the low end of the skill set.  My main method is to nail the joint with 18 gauge brads.  I have contemplated using biscuits in the joint.

Most of my picture frames are variations of 2” to 3” by 3/4” thick. 

Some other variations of the frame that I have done are:

• Rounded over the outer edge of the frame
• Chucked a ‘V’ bit into the router and run a series of groves parallel to the long side
• Put a roman ogie edge on the outside of the picture frame and also on the inside.
• Shadow box

Take a look at the tools and router bits in your shop and use your imagination.  I think you will be very pleased with the neat new ideas that you can come up with for picture frames!

Oh, by the way, my wife loved the pictures.