Organization - Daniel Kenneth

April 9, 2018

Putting shelves in the closet

Last weekend, I found my new table saw. By Friday night I finally got down to the workshop and put it together.

This closet has been a pain since we moved in. It didn’t have shelves and we always just stacked everything inside. Then all those things toppled over and we couldn’t shut the door.

Do you think anyone fixed it? Fast forward about 5 years and it still won’t close and we just keep walking past it every day.

Saturday morning I headed down to the shop and cut some wood for the shelves. Circular style saws scare me. I have used handheld for years and it has scared the bejezus out of me every time I use it. It always kicks back and I drop everything and go running while it’s soaring through the air.

My voice may have jumped a few octaves on some occasions. So far I haven’t cut anything off so I may still have some dignity left.

So I take all the wood I cut upstairs only to find out I cut everything wrong. I realized after remeasuring that I misread the little laser measuring thing. It said 2.0′ and not 20″. Everything was 4″ short. Of course, I only bought exactly how much wood I needed because I don’t make mistakes.

I threw things down and walked away for a bit. Shortly after I told my roommate how I screwed up and he pointed at his old bed he had just finished tearing apart. Glorious sideboards that were only slightly smaller than the boards I bought.

I dragged it down a few flights of stairs to the basement, removed all the metal hardware and started chopping his bed into pieces.

As you can see it all worked out in the end. Is it perfect? Nope.

Do I care? Nope. You can see some of the 4″ short pieces holding up those shelves.

I do have to go back and repaint all the replaced pieces. Only some of them got primed through the whole process. But for now, it is done. I have other shelves around the house to make and a fence to rebuild, so I’ll be back to finish painting this when I’m running around the house painting those things.

I’m just happy the vacuum and mops have a place to be now and they are not just randomly found around the house. Oh, and I’m happy the door shuts now.

January 10, 2017July 17, 2020

I am the craftmaster.

A few months ago I had ordered the Alvin CraftMaster II Deluxe Art & Drawing Glass Top Table through a local Art Store. While I am a heavy Amazon user, I do prefer to give local shops my business, especially if they are willing to match or negotiate a little bit on price. In this case they were willing to match the price if I was willing to wait a bit until they placed their next inventory request which was not a problem.

I used to have a drafting table in my room growing up and I was pretty fond of it. My previous table was just a really basic tilting wooden table that I think was picked up at a garage sale. What interested me in the Craftmaster was all the little shelves, organizing cubbies, and the fact that it was steel and glass (and wouldn’t easily be gouged).

I dragged the box up a few flight of stairs to my room and opened it up. After a long sigh, I pulled out all the pieces and got to work. I’ve put together many pieces of furniture in my time and I can say this was the easiest. Everything was labled with letters that corresponded to the instruction manual and pieces were even label front/back and left/right sides.

Even the screws were well labeled. They also gave you extra of each type.

Putting it together went almost flawlessly. I did have to find a screw driver for two of those screws they give you (two types were phillips, the rest used the allen wrench they give you) and I would add a few notes to the manual, but overall it was a really solid set of instructions.

Since I had to wait for it to arrive, I had already moved into several other projects, so this desk will have to sit for a bit before I get to have fun with it. Putting it together now was really more of a way to get it out of the way. But having this desk sit there and stare at me everyday gives me more reasons to wrap up my current projects.

August 24, 2016December 1, 2020

And we have shelves

To be honest, not much art or crafts have been done lately. Work has been taking its toll. By the time I get home most nights I’m lucky to shove something in my face before heading to bed. But, last weekend I did manage to get to Home Depot and grab a closet shelf system. Things have been piling up and this closet has been a catch-all for junk around the house that really doesn’t belong anywhere. So I took the few things out of there, hung up the shelves, and now it’s time to reorganize…. especially now with everything on the floor.

I’m slowly making my way through the pile of stuff and I am almost done. It doesn’t seem like a lot of work but I’m coming across a lot of things that were always ‘next’ on the list after I finish the current project. For instance, I had a pile of shirts I needed to cut down into reclaimed materials. Lots of stuff that I don’t want to just slap down on a shelf and forget about…. so it’s a process of actually dealing with things instead of just organizing. But soon my sewing room / temporary painting room will be ready for use again. After this, I should really move on reorganizing one of the other art rooms (yes, I have many, don’t judge) but I may need to slip in a painting or quilt first. My art has been suffering and life can’t be all cleaning.