We've Come a Long Way baby

Well we finally made it.  The bookshelf project has reached the stage of occupancy.  Just look how far we've come.

From this...

To this...

To this.

Yes.  The tv is still missing but my wife and I have to save our pennies for that one.

Here is the mantle in place.  See blog "Road Trip!" for more details.

A great view of what seems like a brand new living room.  Amazing what built-in cabinetry can do.  Strangely enough, the space actually feels bigger, despite the addition of quite a large piece.

A parting shot really shows off the custom-made crown moulding to match the rest of the room.

Note the whitewash still visible on the bottom of that mantle.  I couldn't resist...
















Thanks for tuning in everyone!  See you on the next project!

Custom Crown Moulding

One of the dilemmas I have with my bookshelf project is how to match the existing crown moulding with bookshelves that go from floor to ceiling.

To start we must make a working drawing of the profile to match.  Once this is established, the work can begin.

In order to achieve this profile, I need to start with a piece of wood that is 2 1/2" thick by 7 1/2" wide.  So I trundled down to the local building centre and picked up some simple spruce 2x3's.

And now we must laminate...

Many times.  One of the pieces is 12' long, so I achieved such length with an eight-footer and a four-footer.  The joints are staggered.

Eventually, we end up with these two beautiful planks.

Time to run them through the thickness planer so that we get two parallel faces.

As you can see, there is considerable material to remove in order to get down to the desired profile.

Luckily, many saw-cuts will remove the material faster then other methods.

The bulk of the material is broken out.

And we have this...

And now for the difficult part.  We grind the radius out of the profile with the table saw.  This did take some trial and error, but with a temporary fence set at certain angle, and by finding the appropriate depth of cut, the radius was achieved.

This took several passes.  The blade was only raised by approximately 1/16" at a time, as it will not cut very aggressively at this kind of angle.

We are left with this.  The face of the profile is roughed in.

Ah, sanding.  Lots of it.  Although I don't like sanding across the grain, it is a necessary evil in this case.  The nose of the belt sander tucks right in there and we can remove all the saw-marks.

The rest of the sanding was done by hand.

Now to remove the rest of the material...

A couple of well placed saw-cuts...

One this way...

One that way...

And voila!  After considerable removal of material, we are left with the finished profile.  This is the back...

And this is the front.  We are ready for paint and install.

That's it for now.  Stay tuned for the big reveal, where we finally see how the bookshelves turn out.

Is this thing on?

Hello all!

Well, that was exciting.  Sunday, 27 February 2011 my wife gave birth to a baby girl!

Sofia Vittoria Margaret Jacobson.

I am delirious.

Updates on projects to follow.  I am going to clean  up some poop...