Jeep-in-a-Box

I've wanted a second car for some time now, and my Brother wanted (sort of) to sell his old jeep. 

My Dad helped me get it out to the coast, in a motorcycle trailer.  Sure beat flat-towing it!

 It was a tight squeeze into the trailer. 

Storage

 Here's a better photo of the fabric and thread storage.  

The cabinets are made from Douglas Fir of course!  

 You can't have a studio without a bulletin board! 

 I chose Douglas Fir for the case goods, so that they would blend in with the floor, and keep the room nice and warm. 

 The reference section. 

A design wall, 7'x7'.  The board works like a felt board, where fabrics can be placed for colour choice without pins.

A bit old fashioned, but pegboard works so well for storing tools. 

Above is a shot of the Douglas Fir floor, now that it's finished. Eventually, the Fir will darken to a warm amber as it ages. 

On the back wall cabinets, are the fabrics and threads sorted by colour.  

Sewing Cabinet

You can't have a great sewing room, without a great sewing cabinet!

Sew, (haha) here is the one I designed and built for the room. 

 I put a machine lift in the cabinet, which I think is really a necessity, not a luxury.  

The machine is in "storage" position here. 

The three lower drawers are a separate stand alone unit. 

 When in the second position, an acrylic insert fills the gap,and the cabinet top is level with the machine. The lift will also bring the machine above the desktop, for operating in open arm or changing bobbins. 

 Inside the top drawer, is a 4' long folding ironing board.  

 The stand alone drawers all feature full extension ball bearing slides. 

 The cabinet also has an enormous drop leaf.  With the leaf up, the cabinet top is a full 4'x6'. 

You can also see here, there is also an extension that fits over the ironing board mechanism.  

A thousand Nails

Right now, I'm building a sewing room for  a fabric artist. I had some Old Growth Douglas Fir made into some beautiful flooring.  

Here's the flooring right after I picked it up.  It was pouring, so I took shelter in my carport before delivering it to the job-site.  

A few spots of rain.   

The subfloor was nice and level, and after rolling out the wax paper, I started nailing the Fir down.  

Laying the floor.   

 The floor is now ready for sanding.  

The dust you see here, is just saw dust.   

A House Divided.

Recently, I was asked to build some kind of room divider for a house.  I figured the best plan would be to build a suite of top hung sliding doors. So that's just what I did.  There are four separate tracks in the top jamb, and each door is able to slide past it's neighbour.  I used 1/4" tempered glass, in a pattern called "rain".  The doors are Douglas Fir, and are still quite blonde.  Over the next few months, they'll oxidize to a warm amber hue.

Presto-Chango!

This new rail brought a completely new look to the house.  

The above are the before shots.  The lag screws were not actually engaged into the stringer, so the whole rail was actually held on by just four nails....

 I decided to build raised panels into the newel posts.  They look nice, and show that the panels aren't plywood.  

 Certainly a big change from what was there. 

 It's always nice to have a free hand when building.  

The Case of the Flying Stairs

Because I didn't want terribly steep stairs, I made them L-shaped.  Underneath the landing also makes a convenient place to store things.  I'm not sure what I'll put under there, but I know it'll fill up.

 Here, I've set the short stairs in place, so I could get up onto the landing in style.

 I just stuck a big eye lag into a conveniently placed rafter and hooked on the good old power-pull.

 After the stairs were up on the landing, I just hooked up another come-along up in the mezzanine, and while keeping the bottom one taught, I lifted up the other end of the stairs.

 Once the stairs were high enough, I pulled them back onto the ledger I had shot on earlier, and then shot them in place.

 Ahhhhhhh, now that's safer than a ladder, that's for sure

From underneath, you can see the construction.