Charlie's Wood Working

This is a wall unit I built for the living room. The curve at the bottom was accomplished by bending 1/8" hardwood around a frame. I accomplished the arch of the bar with a router equipped with a straight cutting bit attached to a 9' pivot board. There's a knockout in the wall that houses the sound system for the room. This backs up into the under-stair closet. The shelves are built with with slats so that the light can shine through.
This is a space shuttle bed I built for Chip. Nick got the cargo bed below handed down to him. This is mostly made of MDF with 1/8" hardboard wrapped around a frame to form the nose piece. The wheels are made from 3 layers of MDF. The outer layer has a whole cut in the middle which is then rounded over to create the wheel shape. I paint each layer before assembling which gives great results. The bed includes a dashboard with several light switches and a 5" black and white radio combination (I picked it up for $20 at the grocery store of all places). Controls include front and rear cabin lights (rope lights) landing lights (front and under each wing) and thrusters (red rope light at the back which casts a powerful glow).

This is truck TV stand, organizer, toybox, window seat I built for the boys playroom. Again, it's mostly made of MDF. No more than $50 in materials but quite a bit of work. It's modeled after a toy truck of Chip's. I determined how wide the cab could be to fit between the wall and the edge of the window and then grew all the other deminsions to scale. Of course, all the doors are hinged so it can be made to look tidy.

Here's an extension on the truck idea. This firetruck has a bookcase in the back instead of the toy chest. The ladder fit's neatly over the shelf and adds strength to the long shelf run. The two panels on either side of the rear wheel are hinged for additional storage. The front door is taller than on the original truck allowing access to a bottom storage area, the VCR shelf and a 19" TV.

This is a dresser I built for Chips room. I modeled it after the Cargo style furniture to match the bed that follows. This only involved about $50 worth of pine but I put a little more than usual into the drawer slides. Total cost was about $130.
This twin bed, also styled after the Cargo furniture line, is built as a lower bunk. There is only about $75 worth of pine involved a 8 lag bolts to tie the head and foot boards to the rails.

This is a mega-desk I made for a friend at the office. He is a skilled finisher so he's taking care of that part of the project. This is constructed of oak veneered plywood with 1x2 banding around the perimeter. The return is a completely separate unit that can be positioned on either side of the main desk. The top can be easily removed and the legs and cross bridge disassembled for easy transport. I'm working on a matching file drawer assembly now.
Here's a contemporary dresser I created for a friend at the office. The frame is constructed of 1 3/4" square poplar stock and the top and drawer fronts are red oak. The finished unit stands 50" tall and is tapered from top to bottom at 10 degrees.I've even stepped up to dovetail work now. Actually, with the profits from this project, I was able to add a dovetail jig to my arsenal of tools. Now I'm ready to tackle some additional built-ins in the house. The angels made this a challenging project but it was still a lot of fun. Start to finish it took me 13 days of spare time (that's after my full-time job) to complete.

The Shop
I have now moved to a house with a basement so now I have some room to expand. In my last home, all of my work took place in a 10' X 10' workshop off the garage. The radial arm saw is still my center piece. I also have a planner, band saw, drill press, and lots of hand tools. You can click on any of the pictures on this page to see a larger image -- many of which are already loaded so they'll come up fast.

Changing Table
I recently built this changing table for my son Chip. I got the basic measurements by examining store samples and then added about 4" to the height to make it a little more comfortable to use. The frame is constructed of fir 2X2's with 1/4" hardboard used for the shelf bottoms. The dowel holes had to be drilled by hand because, at the time, I didn't have a drill press. The overall cost of the materials was only about $22.

Kids' Dresser
I built this dresser using a construction method similar to that used in the changing table above. The frame is constructed on fir 2X2's with 1/4" hard board for the sides. The back is 1/8" hardboard. The top is a prefabricated 1 1/4" thick glued up piece of pine. I simply routed the edges to eliminate any dangerous corners. The drawer fronts are made from pine shelving with 1/2" rounded over edges. The most expensive part of this piece was the drawer slides (about $8 bucks each).

Built-ins
One of my more adventurous undertakings were these illuminated built-in cabinets and shelves. This room has three large windows down the right side and I really wanted the TV positioned so that I could look out the windows rather than having my back to them. I bought the largest TV I thought I could fit into the corner (there is only 16" of wall before the first window) and then build the cabinet specifically for it. To keep the cost reasonable, I built the cabinets using plywood tops and bottoms with popular face framing. The doors are made from glued-up pine that I then ran through my radial arm saw with a molding cutter attachment. The book cases above have 15 watt lights run down the center channel. I wanted the shelves to be movable so I dadoed the inside of the center piece to allow enough room for the bulbs to sit without interfering with the shelves. The lights provide excellent indirect lighting and a night hasn't passed without us turning them on. I have sense installed crown molding that conceals the speaker wires that run to the back of the room for surround sound. The power line for the lights is concealed this way as well and this allowed me to simply add another switch to the existing wall plate. Of course, the stereo and VCR sit nicely in the angled cabinet below the TV. The cabinets and drawers provide a lot of additional storage space and the whole system only cost me about $250 to build.

Powder Room Cabinet
This corner cabinet provides a nice source of soft lighting in the bathroom while allowing for storage of essential toiletries. On the other side of the bath there is a pedestal sink that of course allows for no storage at all. The cabinet door and shelve tops are made from popular. The cabinet is made from plywood. The curved pieces hiding the lights were constructed by cutting kerfs partially through the plywood with the radial arm saw. This allowed them to be easily bent and glued to the bottom of each shelf. There is a simple pull chain switch under the top shelf to turn the lights on and off. Power is supplied via a door bell electrical box in the wall to the cabinets left.

Bedroom Cabinet
This cabinet employs a similar construction technique to the cabinet above. Notice the motion-sensing/timer switch on the lower left. This allows the lights (down each set of shelves) to come on when there is movement in the room. It creates the perfect atmosphere as we get into bed at night and the timer switches the lights off after a few minutes of in-activity. It's also great for lighting the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The hanging side of the piece has a micro switch on the left door that turns on lights inside the cabinet. This keeps me from wearing my dark suit pants with my slightly darker suit coat. My wife uses the drawers below the hanging closet and she is able to use the lights above to illuminate her drawers so that she doesn't have to turn on the overhead light at 5 in the morning when I'm still asleep. Behind each set of shelves are two cabinets that run the height of the piece. These make for perfect storage of shoes, hats, and pocketbooks.