Home Improvement Today?

outstanding!
curious how do you do your face frames?

 

Are you pulling a permit? If so ask your building inspector what he would like to see. Are through bolts an option?

 

Yea I'm going to ask the township what to do, but figured I'd ask in here too.

 

Beautiful work macgyver. Have you ever used MDF for a raised panel? If so, do you have any tricks you would be willing to share for spraying the MDF after it has been run through the shaper?

 

Oz might have an answer for you because he does alot of concrete work, but i don't know if they use CMUs up there. I have never done a ledger like that, but if you build it free standing to carry the load you might be able to use something as simple as redheads to fasten the ledger to the house

 

So I'm building this. I made a rookie mistake and cut my shelves and end panels out of plywood with the wood grain in the wrong direction... I was too wrapped up in optimizing my sheet to have enough left over for a later project that I totally forgot about grain direction. My drop has enough left over to make a few more panels correctly, but not all. Will it look as stupid as I think if I continue as is? Should I try and re-cut some of the more visible panels? I know a new sheet of ply is the right answer, but that's not an option at this time.

 

I've never seen a block foundation for a house where I live

 

...are you talking about some kind of aesthetic look you are going for?... from a structural point, plywood, by nature, has layers of alternating grain direction (where it get's strength and seasonal dimensional stability from)...

 

Better looking with the grain all in the same direction

 

Right, but the exposed layer is what is in question. It will be stained. I know it's not an issue structurally. The grain will be running short way (perpendicular to it's length) on the board instead of long ways like I think it should.

Yeah I just hate to have it all the 'wrong' way. You live you learn I guess.

 

...it's a cube storage type piece, no?... it's not a conventional bookcase, ...it may not look as bad as you think??? in the end, it comes down to this: will it endlessly bug you in the current form?.. in my experience, if the answer is yes, may as well change it now...

 

Never used it for raised panels, only flat. Raised panel doors aren't really my cup of tea so I haven't done any of them yet. For my vanity, I used a shellac based primer (zinser BIN123) and it dries fast and really hard. It's sandable within 15 minutes. It worked well to seal the edges of the MDF. I think I ended up doing 3 coats on the edges. I'd imagine it would also work well for raised panels if you sand the fuzz between coats. The key with mdf is to not use a water based primer bc it will raise the fuzz.

 

3 coats isn't bad at all. I will have to try that paint next time, thanks.

 

Yes. Maybe it won' be as bad. Guess I'll see. If anything I can paint instead of stain if it's that bad.

 

Nice work macgyver!

 

For the doors? The vanity is a frameless full overlay style door so no "face frame" technically. The doors are done with a stile and rail (aka cope and stick) router bit set. I used Rockler's shaker stile and rail set for these doors. The frames are soft maple and the panel inserts are 1/4" mdf.

I did do a face frame for the built-in though. It's just poplar (ran out of maple) pocket screwed together.

 

How finicky is setting up the router so that the rail and stile bits line up ? I usually do mine on a tablesaw with a dado head , Norm Abrams style

 

You can use any type of paint on top of the shellac based primer. My finish coat was Sherwin williams pro-classic latex gloss. The pro-classic is a waterborne acrylic so it's called a latex paint bc it's waterborne but it's not really your typical latex. It has a really hard finish. Plus easy cleanup bc it's water based.

 

It's not bad, I use a few scrap pieces to set the stile bit like I want it, batch out all of those, then set the rail bit (for the end grain) with the cut stiles. I'm thinking about buying some of those phenloic bit setting jigs that rockler sells to make setup even faster.

 

Thanks for the advice. We did a bunch of built ins with a catalyzed industrial paint and they came out beautiful, but that was a high budget job. Since then i have sprayed a few times and have been looking for a cheaper way to get a really nice finish but have struggled with MDF. Damn fuzzy's!