Peter's Project

I (Peter) have been working on another woodworking project. This one is larger than any I have previously completed. I'm working on a 6-section built-in for our master bedroom. It will combine 13 drawers, an entertainment center section and lots of bookshelves. The design is my own. That is both god and bad. The good part is that as I go along and make mistakes, I can often change to plan to accommodate those mistakes. The bad part is that I fear getting towards end of the project and finally dealing with all of those little measuring errors and the faults I find in my plan. As always, I learn a lot when I work on projects. By the time I am done with a particular project, I have almost all of the knowledge and skill that I should have had at the beginning of the project.

This is a picture of me spraying a piece of wood that will become the side of a filing cabinet. I am using a HVLP spray gun with a 1.5mm tip. The paint is an oil-based paint (using alkyd as the resin), thinned with mineral spirits so that it will run through a Ford #4 viscosity cup in 45 seconds. I also added some Penetrol for optimal leveling and a smooth texture. After I have the right viscosity, I let it pass through a 125 micron strainer to keep my gun from clogging. I run a 2 quart remote pressure pot set at 3 psi. The remote pressure pot and 12' hoses allow me to keep my pot over by my air compressor as opposed to on top of my spray gun. I can also spray at any angle and get the same paint flow and atomization. Yes, I like to get nerdy with my projects. It took me several attempts to get everything dialed in just right. As a note, I typically spray with a half-face respirator for safety purposes - and because my nose hairs turn white and get sticky if I don't wear the mask.

This picture shows a little bit more of my work. In the upper-right corner of the picture is the bottom and middle portion of the cabinet. This will house 8 drawers, sized to fit DVD and VHS cases. In front of the big cabinet in this picture are the sides, tops and bottoms of the two cases that will be installed on either side of the central cabinet. One of these will be a 2-drawer filing cabinet and one will have 3 drawers to store whatever will fit in them. As you can tell, I think drawers are a good storage solution. They are also one of the biggest pains to build and install well. The cream-colored item in the back of this picture is Anna's dresser. I bought it a while ago and just got around to painting it.