Chapter 24
Jeffee the Woodworker
I am not what you call a carpenter. In fact in my entire life of 63 years so far, I have built two wood creations but I do enjoy working with wood. I wish once again I had somebody to teach me when I was a lot younger but that didn't happen so I'm not a woodworker. The first wooden creation I built maybe 35 years and 10 ago was a poker table. I was still working in the City of Tucson Elections Bureau when I got the great idea to build my own circular poker table because back in those days at least I had a few people I could play poker with once in a while and I didn't have a good table and so I got the brilliant idea to build one.
So here's what I did: I got a 4 x 8 sheet of half inch plywood and then got another sheet of 4 x 8 plywood that I cut in half so I had two pieces that were 2 X 8. I'd then laid the pair of 4 x 8s on top of two saw horses. I lay the 2 X 8 next to the 4 x 8. So that gave me roughly a 6 x 8 piece of plywood. So again I wanted a circular poker table so what did I do with my limited knowledge of woodworking was brilliant if I do say so myself and I do say so myself.. I measured carefully and found the dead center of that 6 x 8 piece of plywood. That I figured a round 5 foot poker table would be a good size for six or seven people. So then I put a pencil on a piece of string that was exactly 2 1/2 feet long and I put a nail right in the center of the 6 X 8 pieces of plywood.
Then I took the piece of string with a pencil on it and I attached the string to the nail in the center of the 4 x 8 and the 2 X 8. I'd then held the pencil at the very end and completely drew a circle that was 2 1/2 feet in diameter. This was one of the few uses I've ever had for mathematics in my life; knowing that a radius is half their circumference of a circle.
So then the circle was on my wood. Then I took my jigsaw and started sawing away the part of the plywood I wanted to keep so I would leave a circular piece that was 5 feet in diameter. I had my 5 foot circle that consisted of two separate pieces of the plywood, part of the 4 x 8 and part of the 2 X 8. But I had that covered too. I had lots of extra wood left over from the plywood I had just cut. I cut that left over plywood into little strips and I cross nailed little pieces into that opening between the two sections of the 5 foot circle of plywood. I put lots of wood strips will on my poker table. I put them crosswise so they completely covered over the piece that was separate from the other piece, the little piece that made up the rest of the circle. I covered it from one end to the other with the extra plywood and it was like a rock you could jump up and down on; it was really solid.
But that wasn't all, my brain was working overtime. Naturally I needed some kind of the stand for the table on and I get this brilliant idea from work. We had this ratty rectangular table at work that had folding legs under it. The legs underneath let you fold the legs anchored underneath with a little round thing a round metal thing on the back of the table. The legs have a hinge in the middle. The legs folded up and then you can stack them without taking up a lot of room.
I ”borrowed" a pair of legs from a table that was broken and those legs became the legs for my poker table. It was very easy to attach the little metal things to the underneath of the poker table with screws. Where I had the bracing underneath the poker table was thick 1 inch plywood. So there's plenty of room to screw in those table legs into the back of the poker table. I wasn’t able to fold one leg completely underneath the poker table but the other leg folded perfectly. The other leg didn't fall completely because there was less room under the 5 foot circular poker's table then there was underneath the rectangular eight-foot foot long table that the legs originally came from. The poker table did not have as much room underneath as the rectangular table. But it was still very convenient to use that poker table and fold up the legs as best I can to put the poker table into a small space when I wasn't using it.
Of course I needed a nice top for the table and once again I came up with a brilliant idea. Naturally the perfect top for a poker table is green felt. So went over to one of those little fabric places and bought in a long enough piece of felt that I could cover the table and then I got another brilliant idea: gee brilliant ideas are contagious! All I had to do was get the piece of felt big enough so I could wrap that baby completely over the 5 foot poker table and have 5 inches of felt underneath the table so I could staple the underneath part of the felt to the back of the poker table. Then I stretch the felt all the way across the table and stapled it all around so was nice tight fit. Now my poker table not only looked good and functioned good; it had a beautiful nice soft felt top. And it was soft because I put some padding underneath the felt so it just worked out perfectly for me with my limited knowledge.
Maybe some expert carpenter could build a perfect poker table with indents to put your chips and drinks and stuff but I was I was just happy to have a nice round circular 5 foot poker table. My friends and I played on it and enjoyed it for many, many years. And here's another good idea I had. When the felt would get dirty or get a little tear it was no big deal. All I would do is go down and buy another piece of green felt and recover the old felt with a new piece of felt. Then my poker table would look like a brand-new table I thought that was pretty brilliant thinking. For somebody who knows nothing about carpentry I think I made a hell of a good useful poker table that I enjoyed for many years.
Of course all good things must come to an end. I basically lost all my poker playing friends so my poker table sat in my garage in our house in San Antonio for about the last 17 years without ever seeing a playing card. Naturally after 17 years of sitting out in the garage which was pretty hot and humid most of the time, the felt showed a little bit of deterioration.
I finally got tired of having a lot of stuff in my house that I wasn't using and so I decided to give away my poker table. It was my pride and joy because it was my only piece of woodworking that stood the test of time. It still looked pretty decent and actually accomplished what it was supposed to do. I advertised on the Internet Free San Antonio Web site where you can offer items that you don't want any more to people or you can ask for items you want.
One very nice lady came over but unfortunately she only had a van and even though the table is circular which makes it very easy to roll, that’s the beauty of building a circular table. I used to just roll it. We rolled down my driveway but unfortunately it wouldn't fit inside her van. Someone really needed a pickup truck or something big that could hold the big poker table 5 feet in diameter. I rolled it back into my garage and posted again on the free giveaway site and hoped another person would come and pick up my poker table.
We had a day when the Salvation Army came to my house to pick up a lot of I wanted to get rid of. I showed one of the Salvation Army employees the poker table and he was more than happy to take it. The guy said he wanted for himself and he would just ask the Salvation Army if he could pay them something and take it for himself.
I said I hope you do you can do that because I feel bad that the poker table hasn't had anybody to sit around it and offer company. Think about it: a poker table probably has the best memories of any table ever made. The poker table gets to hear a lot of guys, maybe a few gals sitting around it having a good time sometimes winning, sometimes losing but enjoying themselves in a friendly game of poker which is about the best way I can think of you can spend some time. I hope whoever did get it really enjoys it. I miss the fact that I don't have a group of people to sit around and play poker with anymore but that's the facts of life so I'll live with it.
Today I don't feel so bad because I just built the second piece of woodworking furniture in my life. I used to keep the few DVDs I own near my TV underneath where my Time Warner cable box was. But once you have a little 19-month-old granddaughter living with you guess what?
You can't keep movies and DVDs near the floor of your TV because they will vanish and disappear. So finally I got fed up with her spilling and knocking them over and I just stacked them in one huge pile on top of this cabinet which was very impractical and made it very hard to find what I wanted. It didn't look nice and I decided it was time for change. I'm working on steadily improving my life and I found a great way to do it.
I decided what I needed was a DVD cabinet to store all my movies in. At first I thought I would try that free San Antonio site where you can offer stuff and ask for stuff that you want. So I ran an ad on the free site saying I wanted DVD cabinet. The cabinet did not to be in the best shape; I just wanted something that was useful to put DVDs’ on.
Once again I struck out like I've struck out so far trying to give away my desk on this free site so I brilliantly came up with a great Plan B. I said why don't I build my own little DVD cabinet? And again I figured out how to do it and keep it very simple. All I needed was two boards on the side roughly 1 x 6 x 8' tall and then I decided I would put 2-foot shelves inside the frame I build for the cabinet. I put the two long boards on the floor of my sunroom and then I nailed 8 foot sides of 1 x 6 at the top and bottom using 2-foot wide pieces of 1 x 6. And then I figured out that I needed 9 inches between shelves so I could stack DVDs. I made all of the shelves on the inside 2-foot wide and I even got a break that I didn't expect.
I decided to go down to Home Depot and get a bunch of one by sixes to build my cabinet with. As I was getting into my car, I noticed I had two pieces of 1 x 6 about eight feet high. They had been sitting in my garage since 1994 and were perfect to be the sides of my cabinet. Now I buy less wood to make the rest of my DVD cabinet.
So I headed off to Home Depot to get my wood to build my cabinet. Just like the wonderful Thursday I described elsewhere in this book; I had one of those perfect times shopping that I do not believe has occurred before in my life. Everything went perfect.
First I headed to the shelving section because I thought maybe I'd find something that was exactly 2-foot wide because I had this terrible vision that I would have to buy 6 foot long 1 x 6 boards that I would have to cut with a jigsaw into 2-foot pieces.
I looked in the shelving department and I didn't see find anything I really liked so I decided to head down to the lumber section. I get the best of news when I headed down to the lumber department. I found out that Home Depot would cut the wood for me so I could go home with exactly the size I wanted – I said perfect. So I looked among the lumber and I figured out roughly I needed seven boards 6 foot long and that those seven boards could be cut into 21 2-foot long pieces 1 x 6. I had to wait a few minutes by the saw because the Home Depot workers were helping some other people.
I met one of the great people I've ever experienced in that store and his name was Doug and he worked in the lumber department. I told him well Doug what I'd like is for all of these six-foot long boards to be cut into 2-foot sections. He said Home Depot had just started charging $.50 for each cut made on the saw.
I said okay so cut my boards into 21 2-foot long pieces. And then Doug was so nice; he said hey you know what, since you had to wait here for a while, I'm cutting these boards for free. What a great guy! My compliments go to Doug who works at the Home Depot on Heimer Road between Heimer Road and 281 and Bitters. Doug is a great guy and the world should know.
So now I've got my cut wood which is everything I need. I've got the two long sideboards at home and I'm thinking myself I want this thing to look a little classy so I headed over to the paint section where I got a small pint of wood stain. I figured the dark stain would make the wood look a lot better. And then of course I needed some nails to nail the sides of the shelves. I'm thinking of myself that I should check the width of the boards and I find that a box of nails that are 1 1/4 inch long would be perfect for me to nail my cabinet.
So now I've got my nails, my paint, no not my paint but my wood stain from the paint section and the nails so I head to the checkout. Home Depot like a lot of places has gone high-tech on checkouts and now they have this wonderful plan where one can check yourself out. I'm too old and too set in my ways. I like to deal with a human being and it was very smart on my part today to deal with one human being at the cash register at the Home Depot.
When I got up with my sales slip I just show her the one little piece of 2-foot wood and told her I basically started off with seven boards and Doug cut them into 21 little pieces. And she says that’s fine I see the label so all I have to do is scan it. Then she said how would I like to save $25 today?
That got my attention and I said, “Well, how do I save $25 today?” She said all I had to do was sign-up for a Home Depot credit card. I would never have to use the credit card, and then she can take $25 off my purchase.
I could put my purchase on another credit card or pay cash whatever I wanted to do. She said it just take takes a couple of minutes. I said sign me up for your new credit card. I gave her a bunch of information, no big deal. I noticed the credit card had some that outrageous interest rate like 22%. Of course I would never use it, as I can get a lot better rate on many other credit cards and I told her that; she said I agree with you. She said I still get a discount even if I never used the card again; so I said great.
So then she recomputed my total which originally was $48 and I paid $21 for 21 2-foot pieces of one by six, an expensive paint brush, and the nails. I bought a little paintbrush for $8 or $9 dollars. The stain was like $9 or $9 dollars. So basically I got the wood for free. So everything I bought the nails, the paint, and the brush cost me about a grand total of $21 to build a DVD cabinet. I viewed that as a pretty good bargain.
I brought everything home and the first thing I had to do was stain the wood which was very light-colored. I wanted to make the wood dark-colored.
Now I am in my pool area. I have this little tiny table. I put lots of newspapers on this little tiny table for sitting around the pool and I proceed to paint all 21 of the 2-foot boards and the 2 7-foot long boards. I'm thinking to myself that I really don't need to paint both sides of the boards because one of the sides will be hidden and not in view so that was my original idea. I painted one side on all 21 boards. I left them standing outside of my swimming pool to dry and then I painted the two big 7–foot one x sixes that were going to be the sides of my cabinet and left them out overnight so the paint would dry. That was on Saturday, yesterday.
Sunday comes along and now it's time to build my DVD cabinet. Like I said, I'm pretty much a beginner when it comes to woodworking but I was going to try my best. Again I knew I would not build the perfect carpenter- type cabinet but I was going to build one that was sturdy, adequate, and would be the right size to put my DVDs on. So work started on my cabinet. As is usual in my life I'm doing this all by myself without any help. Can't tell you how many times I wish I would've had help in my life trying to do something but that's not the way it is so I've learned to cope and do things by myself since that is the only way I can do things.
So the first thing I did was to nail a 2-foot board at the top of the cabinet to the two long side pieces. Now I had the two long side pieces nailed together. What I did was I put the 2-foot board on the inside of the two long pieces so if you think about it I'm putting a two foot board on top and then the two sides of the cabinet are on the outside of that 2-foot board which immediately means that the width of the cabinet is a little bigger than 2 feet. My idea was this: I would put all the shelves in roughly 9 inches apart and as many as I could fit and then I would take the remaining 2-foot boards I cut and put them behind on the back of the cabinet to be the back of the cabinet.
I forgot about the fact that by putting the top and the bottom of the cabinet two foot boards on the inside it made the width of the cabinet a little bigger but then I came up with another idea. My other idea was instead of putting the 2-foot sections the way I originally was going to do which was on the outside of the two sides of the cabinet I could squeeze the boards flush with the inside of the sideboards and nail them that way.
Of course things never work out exactly the way you plan. What I found out was that some of the boards wouldn't quite fit inside like the first board did they were just a tiny bit long. While I was able to force some boards that were off by fractions of an inch, by doing that some of the top and bottom boards expanded a little bit away from the 7 foot boards that were the sides of the cabinet.. I had like a little gap between the sides of the cabinet and the top of the cabinet. The one and a quarter inch nails were too small once the top expanded so I decided I needed to get bigger nails. In that way I'd be able to overcome the gaps that would form and I didn't really care about the gaps because so what if a few nails are showing and it is not perfect wood on wood. Once I put the DVDs in the cabinet I would never see the nails anyway so I didn't care about that.
Once again I ran off to Home Depot when I bought 2-inch nails and they were just perfect. I put in some 2-inch nails where previously I just that had the one and a quarter inch nails and 2- inch nails compensated nicely. The main thing I wanted was for the pieces to stay together even if there was a little gap in the 2-inch nails. They were long enough that they would stay nailed to the outside of the sides of the cabinet. I got him will the sucker nailed together pretty good. I was able to put six shelves in the cabinet. I put all the shelves in the front in first and then I turned the cabinet over to put the back pieces on the cabinet.
One thing I should have thought about was this: because the shelves came out flush, there was no way I could have a continuous back without having a little gap so I compromised. I thought here's what I'll do. I took the boards I had right behind the shelves so it covered up 6 of the 9 inches between the shallow zone at about a 3 inch gap but actually looked pretty. I put in as much backing as I could right below each one of the shelves. It looked very nice and then of course it reinforces the cabinet by having the backing makes it much more solid than just having the shelves in there. I was very satisfied; I think the DVD cabinet looked very good.
Of course being an un-expert woodworker, I screwed up on some of the shelves and I saw some of the exposed wood that I had to stain were showing loud and clear but again I said no big deal. It was just a few pieces so I go back to my garage and I get the stain that I put in the garage. I pick up the paintbrush again. I open the can of stain and proceed to stain the pieces that weren't stained that I needed to be stained. It was perfect as again as a whole bunch of backing pieces didn't need to be stained because they sat against the wall at the back of the cabinet and are never seen. I was able to stain everything that was visible so the cabinet looks very very nice when you look at it from a distance. It is nicely stained it looks like an antique.
Then my wife had a good idea because the cabinet stands up 7-foot tall and again it's only 6 inches wide at the bottom. When I stood up the 7-foot cabinet with a 6 inch base it didn't fall over. My wife took a look at it and said that's very dangerous because what happens if Malia, our little granddaughter, pulls on it or something. The cabinet could come down on top of her – my wife was right, the cabinet was dangerous the way I had built it.
Again I had another brilliant idea especially for somebody who is not really an experienced woodworker. I still had three pieces 2-foot wide of my 1 x 6 left over after I had put in the shelves and put in the back backing on the cabinet. I thought here's what I'll do: I’ll nail those 3 2-foot sections at the bottom of the cabinet so that when I stand up the cabinet those three pieces will stick out about a foot and a half beyond the cabinet so that way they can possibly tip over because you get that added support at the bottom that's 2-foot long and I’ve nailed the three pieces at the bottom and it absolutely was a perfect fit and anchored the cabinet beautifully.
Originally I was going to nail the cabinet to the wall. My wife said that's a bad idea, it would damage the plaster board. I said you're absolutely right so by putting in those three extra pieces at the bottom I gave a great stability and it looked very nice too.
So then I got my wife to help me carry in the cabinet. We carried it the way you carry in a coffin. I got on the end that had the three pieces of wood sticking out 2-foot from the bottom of the cabinet and we had a move it carefully. It wasn't that heavy; it was bulky being in 7-foot long and 2-foot wide but two people could easily carry it.
Then we carried it through my living room and got it over the recliner and over the sofa as I found the perfect place for it in the hall where there wasn't anything in the way; no outlets would be covered up and it's still very close to the TV and the DVD player. It was an ideal location because there really wasn't any room in the living room to put it.
Then I get to do something I've wanted to do for months and months. I finally was able to pick up all my DVDs laying in about a 2-foot high pile on the top of a shelf that had a bunch of other crap and I put them in the cabinet on the top shelves. I put everything on the top shelves so little Malia who has hands that like everything; will not be able to get at those DVDs. I do have some lower shelves but they will be the last ones I ever fill. The Malia will probably still be living here but should be old enough to know better than to grab my DVDs.
So this weekend I felt I really accomplished something that I wanted to do for a long time. First of all, I cleaned the hell out of my sunroom and got all sorts of crap out of there. I packed up some stuff in the boxes I brought home from work and I moved a bunch of stuff to the outdoor storage shed which finally has a door.
The door's original door had rotted off and we just left the storage shed. Opened and I didn't really like putting anything in there.
Probably I was just too depressed and it didn't seem to have any ability to want to change my life for the better. I think some of my medicines are helping me to change that and I'm making a lot of good improvements in my life and my life is getting better. I'm sure I'll enjoy the DVD for the four for the rest of my life. It has more than enough space for all the DVDs I have. Now I will be able to find them, look at them when I want, and not find little Malia's hands all over them and find them scattered all over the house. So I'm very very happy with what I accomplished today.