Norm would be proud

*****Warning: Family Update Post – of limited appeal*****

This week has been like an episode of New Yankee Workshop at the Rantmeister hacienda as we’re building a host of bookcases so we can actually put many of our books in the room we call the Library. Norm Abrams would be so proud! So far, we’ve built a couple floor-to-ceiling cases with fixed shelves and another couple cases with one drawer at the bottom and adjustable shelves through the rest of the seven-foot tall cases.

On tap for tomorrow are the final cases…a couple lateral file drawers at the bottom with more shelves in a step-back arrangement at the top. Crown molding, baseboards and face frames will finish it off. See what happens when there’s no pressing theater or farm task to keep our hands busy?

We’re building the cases from birch plywood and the faces, crown molding and baseboards will be made from cherry cut on my father’s farm about 25 years ago. This is not a new pursuit for me…I built quite a few full sets of kitchen cabinets for Doc-wife’s parents, who own a lot of rental property in South Carolina. During my wife’s medical school years, I also rebuilt and salvaged a lot of antique furniture we purchased for pennies at auction or picked up from the trash. We’d then take those items to the antique shows over the weekend…it was a rare weekend that we didn’t pick up at least a couple hundred bucks worth of after-expenses spending money through selling our restorations. Our house is still furnished with some of those curbside finds.

Still, it was nice to get the sawdust flying again…though my current workshop facilities are somewhat less than optimal. My tools are located in the hay barn, and I’m constantly fighting with resident birds and high humidity to keep my machinery usable.

We’ve also got a full store of projects located with my tools in the barn…they include a nice oak pier mirror, several stack bookcases, a nice set of oak chairs and a primitive cabinet we brought along from our West Virginia house.
Later this summer or fall, we plan to build a concrete-floored pole barn to store our farm equipment. We’re planning a 40-by-80 foot building with a 12 foot wall height. We would also section off (and heat) a portion of the building as workshop space – a place where my cabinet saw, bandsaws, shaper, 12-foot wood lathe, planer, drill press and other assorted guy toys could be used and kept in relative luxury. This will be a new experience for us as we haven’t actually hired anyone to build a structure for us at any of the houses we’ve owned…we figured if we couldn’t build it ourselves, we didn’t really need it.

Stay tuned for construction updates.