Summer has officially arrived here in Escondido, California, but summer has DEFINITELY arrived in Paso Robles, California. For my in-laws, it was high time to get some more shade in their backyard and after 15 years of NOT having enough shade they said “ENOUGH!!!” The only problem is, they didn’t know what style they wanted their backyard shade structure to be. He knows what he wants, but drawing up the design or coming up with a plan isn’t really his strong suit (sorry Pop, it’s true, haha!) So when I asked how he wanted to build it, he drew up something and handed it to me, and this is the code I had to crack….
I only had a few days off from work, so I was going to need to figure out how to turn their dream backyard shade structure into a reality pretty quickly.
If you want to skip all the text and just watch the video, here it is!
I joke about them not knowing what they want, but something they were certain about wanting to incorporate was some of the “Outdoor Accents” products from Simpson Strong-Tie. If you aren’t familiar with these products they’re pretty nice and beefy and look great with several styles of homes. We used 6×6 posts for this backyard pergola, so we needed to get the correct Outdoor Accent post bases and also some Simpson “Titen” concrete anchor screws (links down at the bottom!). As an additional accent, we also used some of the matching T-straps, L-straps and inside 90-degree corner brackets. Since all these decorative elements are attached with screws, Simpson has a particular type of screw to use with their hex-head washers. The hex-head washers act kind of like your typical washers BUT they’re super fat, thick and pretty heavy for their size, and they’re shaped so they look like a bolt head. Pretty slick design.
The end result turned out pretty nice and you could tell right away it was making a difference in the. Now with all that shade their lives and happier and stress-free, lol! The final size of this shade structure is about 30 feet long, about 9 feet tall and almost 10 feet out and we managed to get it built in about 5 days. I’m sure this patio cover could be built in less time, but “some” people aren’t very early risers, haha, and I was taking some extra time to shoot video footage for my YouTube channel (shooting video always makes a project take longer). I’m glad I took the time to do the video stuff though, the edit came out so good and I hope you’ll give it a watch.
If you’re interested in building something like this for yourself, you can get the lumber at just about any lumber supplier. All the Simpson products can usually be found at Home Depot or Lowes if that’s what you have nearby. My father-in-law picked up all his at a local place in Templeton, CA called Weyrick Lumber Company. He bought his parts individually and you can buy it online individually, or you can buy multi-packs (maybe that saves you a little money?)
Links to some products I use in this build/video are listed below. They’re Amazon links, so I may earn a small commission from any purchases made as a result of you using these links…I appreciate all your clicks and purchases!!
When it comes to woodworking there’s always some sort of technique I want to try, or a detail I want to incorporate into a project. With hardwood lumber pricing being what it is these days, I can’t always afford to risk wasting that nice material if the thing I want to try doesn’t work out.
To take less of a financial risk while still being able to try the thing, I tend to use “affordable” plywood to practice with. Sometimes I try it on a small scrap of plywood just to see how it goes, and sometimes i’ll try it on larger pieces of plywood if I need to see more scale. Sometimes it actually turns into a whole piece of furniture for the shop, which is what happened here.
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A few years ago I built a single drawer box out of baltic birch plywood to set my Ridgid oscillating sander on:
I built that so I could practice cove cutting on the table saw which was a technique I had just learned at the Jory Brigham workshop in Paso Robles, CA (if you’re getting into furniture making I highly recommend doing a weekend course…over the last few years I’ve done 2 of the ones he offers and have learned SO much). Fast forward to now and I could really use some more storage in the shop, and I wanted to try some narrow flutes using my router table and a large core box router bit. I decided to make a new 5-drawer unit.
After building the cabinet box and edge banding the front edges with scrap walnut, i built my drawer boxes and installed some basic full-extension drawer slides. Not the most elegant or glamorous drawer boxes or drawer slides but they’re fine for shop furniture (if this was a “real” piece of furniture I’d be making the drawer boxes out of hardwood and using soft close undermount drawer slides like I did on this built-in window bench with storage). I cut a piece of plywood to the width I wanted my drawer faces to be, and this measurement included a 1/8-inch gap on the left and right. The height measurement wasn’t critical at this point since I’d eventually be making crosscuts anyway. After doing a little math and making some marks 1-inch apart, I set the router bit to the height I wanted and set my table saw fence where I wanted the first flute to be.
This is a perfect example of why I love having my router table mounted on this wing of the table saw. Using the table saw fence is much easier to make accurate adjustments and I can adjust the table saw fence much further away than if I was using the router table fence.
I make my first pass over the router bit…voila! I rotated the plywood 180 degrees and made the same pass on that side…voila! Adjust the fence an inch…next pass….rotate…next pass…adjust…next pass…rotate…next pass…adjust. I think you see where this is going!
Using the plywood, i knew these cuts would expose the multiple layers of the plywood. Since this wasn’t the nice fancy (and expensive) baltic birch plywood, I wasn’t sure of the quality of those middle layers and how that would affect the look of the exposed layers. As it turns out, they looked pretty dang interesting! Making these cuts at the router table exposed colors and textures that i wasn’t expecting but I loved how they looked in the valleys of the flutes!
I also wanted to try making some walnut drawer pulls so I milled some more scrap walnut to a size I liked. On these pulls, i wanted to use a smaller core box router bit on the underside to create a rounded groove that your fingertips catch as you pull the drawer forward. So I calculated where those needed to be and made quick work over at the router table.
After making the finger grooves I shaped the pulls to have a subtle arch, and then rounded over the top edge. After I crosscut the plywood to the heights needed for each drawer face, I glued the new drawer pulls to the top edge of each face. The glue alone would be strong enough to hold the pulls in place but I wanted to try one more thing.
To add a little extra bit of strength I wanted to use brass pins inserted through the top of the pulls that extend down into the drawer face. A regular brass pin would be fine for this but I decided to try using a thin-wall brass TUBE and I thinned down some walnut dowels to fit snugly INSIDE the tube. Then I could drill my pin holes and insert the walnut-filled brass tube, secure it with glue, trim it, flush it up. Boom.
I’m so happy with this piece of shop furniture and it’s always exciting seeing ideas come to life, and mounting the Rockler Dust Right hookup to the side will make it easier to attach my JET dust collector so I don’t have to reach around the back of the tool to connect the hose anymore. Now that the practice piece is out of the way, who’s ready for some walnut custom furniture?? Walnut not your thing? Let’s do white oak!! Maybe you’re more of an ash with black stain kind of person….let’s do it! I’m all about CUSTOM.
If you’re looking for a piece of furniture for your home, I look forward to hearing from you! Send me an inquiry through my contact page and let’s get something in the works. Thanks for looking!
A while back I met an awesome family while building one of the playhouses for Mini Playhomes. The playhouse build went great, the kids loved it and the parents were happy. All good! Fast forward a few months and the Mom reaches out to me through an Instagram DM about wanting a built-in bench to fit in their bay window in the living room.
I drew up a rendering which is helpful for the client to get a visual of how the piece could look, and it also helps me to be able to figure out material costs. Doing a rendering can also help me see where I may run into challenges with weird angles or other miscellaneous details. (Don’t worry…the fabric pattern in the rendering was just a generic option in Sketchup for the sake of the rendering, lol). But with the design approved I made myself a color-coded cut sheet I got to work.
I’m not going to lie. There were some challenging parts of this build, but with every challenge comes an opportunity for learning…and learning I did do, haha! In fact, once i got the whole thing installed, I personally wasn’t happy with how the cushion sat on top of the bench. There were a couple gaps at the front corners I didn’t like so I did what every perfectionist would do…I built and upholstered an entirely new cushion top. This time around, I did what I should’ve done the first time and made a template for the exact shape of the walls using some foam-core board (never ever ever assume that a house has straight walls or that a 45-degree angle in the house is ACTUALLY a 45-degree angle). Using a simple template is very similar to how countertop guys do custom countertops. This worked great and the new cushion fit much much better.
The carcass of the bench was built using plywood and then the front face was clad in poplar. I made the drawer boxes from maple and used box joints as my joinery of choice. I also used soft-close undermount drawer slides and it’s so nice to be able to push those shut and watch as they slow down and close on their own. So. High. Class.
The drawer faces were done in a shaker style using poplar and everything was sprayed white using my Graco Magnum X5 airless sprayer (which i’m still getting the hang of). You’ll notice 4 drawer faces but only 2 are actually functioning drawers. Because of the corner/triangle shape of the ends, I chose not to use drawers there but instead, I made those drawer faces attach with neodymium magnets. This way they can still pull those off and store stuff inside and then they can just snap those drawer faces back in place. Clever, eh?
It’s fun to build, it’s fun to learn, and it’s fun to apply what you learn to use in the next project. If you’re looking for a custom furniture build for your space, whether it’s your home, office or small business, reach out to me with some details of what you’re looking for and we’ll go from there. Thanks for looking!
After wrapping up the past year having built a TON of playhouses for MiniPlayhomes, as well as some client and personal builds, my wife Desiree and I decided it was finally time to take a vacation. We had some friends move to Texas this past year so after a little planning we hitched up the travel trailer and hit the road!
We had a great time visiting our friends and checking out some of the touristy Texas stuff, which included the massive Round Top Antique Show (which happened to take place on my birthday) and of course, the Magnolia Silos.
Unfortunately, the Round Top Antique experience was pretty disappointing. We live in California where everything is already so so so expensive and the antique stores all have the same old stuff, so we were excited to check out this big antique show with multiple locations up and down Highway 237 and hopefully score some cool finds at reasonable prices. Well, the main location, The Big Red Barn, did have some very interesting stuff. A lot of seemingly rare items in surprisingly good condition, but then you look at the price tags and oooooooh doggie! I mean, I understand the pricing on some of the items but wow, we might as well have been shopping in the Bay Area, CA at those prices! And don’t get me started on the price of food at the food trucks, lol!
We did come home with a few small items that I’m sure we could’ve survived without, but what we were hoping would be a treasure trove of awesomeness in Texas turned out to be a lot overpriced rusty junk (literally) and a lot of mass produced imported junk. There was also a lot of high-end (aka insanely expensive) interior decorating stores with things like an $11k rustic wood door that was falling apart. I dunno…not really our cup of tea. MOVING ON!
Even though there are a couple nice neighborhoods in Waco , it’s pretty much still a pit, but we were excited to get to the Magnolia Silos. I think most people have seen an episode or twenty of Fixer Upper by now, and doing a quick search online you can find maps/addresses of some of the homes featured on episodes of Fixer Upper. One of which is Clint Harp’s home and his shop/store is right next door. Since he’s a woodworker and I’m a woodworker, we thought it would be fun to check it out. We roll up and we can’t tell if the shop is open. According to the internet, it should have been open but it kinda looked like it was vacant. I get out of the truck and walk up to the door to see if I can find any info and oddly, it DOES look empty. There was some cardboard boxes and a roll of packaging tape laying around…lights off…and what in the what?!? There’s somebody in there! What in the what?!? It’s Clint Harp! The weird part is he looked miserable and was sitting on the floor leaning against his wall looking at his phone. Another visitor had pulled up right next to the front door near me and there was no way our motion would not have caught the attention of somebody inside, but Clint didn’t even look up. So, something had his head preoccupied and another quick search told us he just sold his property and one of the articles we read gave us the impression that he’s “over it”. So whatever, haha!
Anyway, back to the good stuff. Chip & Joanna Gaines are definitely loved by people all over the place. I think they’re great and really fun to watch and even though I don’t put much stock in what celebrities do or say, I have to admit from the moment we pulled up to the Silos I started getting a feeling of inspiration. Almost like creative butterflies in my stomach. I can’t super duper explain it but just walking into Magnolia Press and seeing the attention to detail in the design and style of the whole shop got me excited. As we walked the grounds of the Silos, it was really fun to see this little world in person after only seeing it on TV for so long.
While we were in Waco we had lunch at Magnolia Table (be sure to make those reservations ahead of time!) and this is no exaggeration…hands down the best meal we ate during our 10 day trip! Not even kidding. Chip…Joanna…if you’re reading this…you guys have an excellent team preparing the food at Magnolia Table. So so so so good. Just like at Magnolia Press, the attention to design detail at this restaurant was top notch. To finish off the day, of course we had to treat ourselves to some goodies from the Silos Baking Co. and once again…a home run…nay…a bases loaded bottom of the ninth grand slam.
Anyway, like I mentioned, I can’t quite put my finger on it but something about visiting the Silos started getting me motivated. Maybe it was the attention to detail. Maybe it was the styling of the little boutique shops within the grounds. Maybe it was all the love that has been obviously poured into this whole Magnolia project. They definitely have a great story. Do I have a story? Me? I dunno….I’m just a regular guy who:
Worked at Michael’s Arts & Crafts in high school but wanted more so I:
Cold-called a local video production company to see if I could come check out their studio which led to:
Me getting an unpaid internship by the end of the first day which led to:
A paid part time position the following day which turned into:
A full time position a couple months later that went great for over 3 years until:
I was offered a new position that would’ve given me more responsibility and more pay so I:
Quit that job to start doing my own video production stuff and married Dez and I ended up making double what I was offered before I quit. Then:
My wife and I started Zelo Photography (shooting 25 weddings per year) which, oddly enough is also what started to really get me interested in woodworking and making stuff but after 15 years our wedding bookings started slowing down so I:
Backtracked and got a part time janitor job at my church and while I didn’t realize it at the time, the Lord’s timing with this was of course, perfect because:
C0v!d hits and all our weddings basically canceled or postponed but I was still able to work my shifts at church and then:
I was blessed with the amazing opportunity to build the new cross that would hang front and center in the remodeled worship center which confirmed to me that:
Building…making…creating….is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.
So I ask again….do I have a story? Me? Well, as our visit to the Silos is coming to a close and we’re racing around trying to get a few last-minute photos before they kick us out and lock up the gates, I turn and look up and see the following mural:
I saw that huge text mural and that was it for me. I knew that I needed to really start getting serious and figuring out how I want to use all the skills I’ve learned and various tools I’ve accumulated over the years. I have photo/video skills and I have photo/video tools. I have builder/maker skills and I have builder/maker tools. How I choose to combine all this to make more of a living with it (and finally part ways with janitorial work) will take some hard work and some creative thinking but that’s the kind of challenge I feel I’m ready to tackle.
With a new burst of inspiration and motivation, I got right to work when we got home from Texas. A lot has been getting done around here. Dez and I love working on our personal home projects like pouring concrete sidewalks and walkways and cutting down trees and building a new fence, which are projects that have been on our minds for quite some time. Now they’re finished. And since we had so much concrete on hand, I did some concrete form experiments with rigid foam insulation which I cut out on my cnc. Some failures, and then some success.
Speaking of cnc projects, I finally upgraded my Carbide Create software to the Pro version and started trying out some 3D carving projects and getting more familiar with my cnc in general. The cnc is definitely one tool I cannot see myself NOT having now. I’m finding so many ways to use it not only for fun projects made entirely on the cnc, but it’s also great to make custom parts or jigs to use in regular non-cnc projects. Additionally, if you haven’t seen the awesome feature wall I did in our home office, I encourage you to check out that video here.
One cnc project I’m really excited about is my own brass logo badges. They’re only 1-inch diameter and once the brass has been machined I paint over it all with Testor’s black enamel and once that has dried I sand the surface and all the high spots of the brass are revealed while the black enamel stays untouched in the low pockets. I can now create a shallow pocket somewhere on my furniture pieces and embed this badge! I do have a branding iron with my logo, but I feel it has a tendency to look a bit clunky and a little too big. This badge is classy and in my opinion puts the finishing touch on a piece of furniture. And since we’re talking about furniture now, I’m excited to be 2 steps away from finishing my first floating tv stand/entertainment unit. This thing is a pretty sweet mix of simple casework and creative cnc details. Stay tuned for more details and photos in an upcoming blog post.
Since returning from Texas I also re-activated my Zelo Side Tables in my Etsy shop and have already received a couple new orders. While the orders have been for walnut versions of the Zelo Side Table, I’m also finishing some other versions that I’m very excited to share with the world. If you follow me on Instagram you may have already seen a sneak peek of them in progress but that’s nothing compared to how they’re looking in real life.
I have friends who know how much I enjoy doing this stuff, and recently a couple of them have suggested I submit something to the Design In Wood exhibit at the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar this year. I’ve never given much thought to that because I don’t even go to the fair when it rolls around and since I don’t usually go, I always forget that they even have this exhibit. But now I’m excited and since I have these “special edition” Zelo Side Tables nearly complete, and the entry deadline is coming up quickly, I decided I WILL submit my Zelo Side Tables for consideration. I’ve also heard interesting things about what an accepted entry could lead to. Prizes…purchased pieces…custom orders…who knows. So we’ll see what happens and I’ll let you all know if I get in!
I’m very excited about my overall progress in the shop lately and I’m just as excited to see what will come out of the shop as the year progresses. If you’re not already following me on other platforms you can do that using the following links:
Thank you all for letting me share my thoughts and updates. See you again soon!
This was one of those projects that made me think to myself “why didn’t I do this sooner??” But I guess I could answer that question by saying “because my carpet was super ugly and it wouldn’t look right!” So let’s jump into this project!
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When my wife and I bought this house several years ago, the room we were planning to use for the office had QUITE the wallpaper. It was something I’d never seen before…chrome and baby blue florals. To say it was sight to behold would be an understatement. The baby blue paint didn’t help either…nor did the orange/rust colored carpet:
We got the wallpaper and paint taken care of pretty quickly when we moved in but we couldn’t afford new carpet right away. So we stuck with the light gray color we painted the walls and of course the orange carpet.
Fast forward 11 years and we’re finally getting rid of that old carpet and getting new carpet which, by the way, if you’re in the north country San Diego area (Carlsbad, Vista, San Marcos, Escondido, etc) I can highly recommend Tri-City Carpet in Vista. Gary is who we worked with and he really knows his stuff. We’re very happy with our new carpet (we’ve done 3 bedrooms, living room and family room with Gary). Definitely check with Tri-City Carpet if you’re looking to pull out the old and put in the new!
Anyway, we also updated our paint color and installed new, larger baseboards. Now the office was looking much much better, but it still needed something. Something to make it pop….some sort of cool factor. How about a feature wall?? Yes! That’s what we’ll do! But what do we want it to look like? We thought about doing a geometric line pattern, but I did one quick search and pretty much every DIY mom-blogger does that since it’s just 1×2’s and a miter saw. We actually did something like that for our wedding photography trade show booth a hundred years ago so for us, that look has been played out for quite a while:
But I’m not a mom-blogger so I had to come up with something better.
After looking through countless images and inspiration pics that weren’t all that inspirational we finally landed on something we liked that wouldn’t be overly complicated. Circles! Actually it’s half circles, and it’s a pattern inspired from a midcentury modern art poster of some sort. I knew this was a design I could cut out on my Shapeoko CNC and once I took some measurements and drew up the design in Carbide Create, I was off to the races!
The design is simple. It’s basically the letter “D” and by flipping and/or rotating the “D” I came up with a few different styles I would use. Within Carbide Create I also varied the pocketing toolpaths to remove or leave more or less material, which is what would give these 12×12 tiles their three-dimensional quality. I chose to use good ole’ MDF (1/2″ thick from Home Depot) for this project because of price and how easy the cnc can cut it. I would need 96 tiles in all (plus a couple spares just in case anything happened) so I powered up the Shapeoko, opened Carbide Motion and launched the gcode file. Now we wait, haha!
While the cnc was cutting mdf tiles, I needed to do a little wall prep in the office for the new sconce lights I would be adding. Since we have no existing electrical in the spots where the new lights would go and I’m not comfortable running brand new electrical, I came up with an easy way to wire the new lights. Since this blog post is all about the wall, I’ll go into more detail on the lighting portion in my next blog entry.
Unfortunately I needed to do a little sanding on each tile after the cnc was done cutting. I believe that has something to do with my stepover settings, not the cnc machine or the router bit. So who do I call when I need a hand? My wife of course!
Now that the tiles are all finished I can go ahead and start installing and attaching them to the wall. I’ll just be using an 18-gauge nailer for this. I’m also using a piece of 1/2-inch mdf as a spacer against the ceiling and side walls. This is because I’m going to use a long strip of 1/2 inch mdf as a border, or trim. There’s a little more explanation as to why I do this in the video. But once that’s all in place I can get setup for paint.
I’m going to use an airless paint sprayer for this wall because I don’t want to deal with a brush in all the corners and tighter spots. I’m hoping spraying will be the right choice. It’s not my first time using an airless sprayer however, it’s my first time “in a while”, haha! My father in law recently bought the Graco Magnum X7 to help a family member paint their house, and I could’ve easily borrowed that from him. The only thing is that it’s a 5 hour drive to his house (one way) so with gas prices being what they are (let’s go Brandon!) It was actually a better use of my money for me to buy the Graco Magnum X5 model on Amazon, which is a little smaller and perfect for this project. Now I have my own sprayer!
The instructions to use the Graco Magnum X5 are really simple and straightforward. I don’t have a ton of projects lined up where I’ll need to use the sprayer so I imagine I’ll have to reference the included Quick Start Guide every time. That’s okay though, I don’t mind. As is recommended, I shot some paint at a piece of cardboard first so that I could get my spray pattern dialed in. I should also mention that in addition to the sprayer I purchased the Graco TrueAirless 315 spray tip as well. This gives a narrower spray pattern that I thought would be better suited for this project. With the spray tips, the first digit represents half the width of the spray pattern, while the last two digits represent the hole size. So with the 315 tip, 3 is half of 6, so there’s a 6-inch fan, and the 15 means the hole is .015″ diameter. The Magnum X5 includes a 515 tip so that would be a 10-inch spray pattern with a .015″ diameter hole. Another example would be a 410 tip and that would give you an 8-inch pattern with a .010″ diameter hole. Capiche🤌🏻? I also picked up a Graco 15-inch extension wand to try out. If you’re looking for a LOT of info on painting and sprayers and tips and accessories and all that, I recommend you check out The Idaho Painter on YouTube. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he invented painting….period.
Moving on! My first coat went on pretty smoothly just as I had hoped and when I stood back and looked at it I was so impressed. Since the MDF tiles had some of the surface cut away to create the design, that exposed more of the core of the MDF which is more fibrous. The moisture of the paint “raised the grain” so to speak in these areas and I was left with a slightly “rough” texture there. From a distance it actually looked cool but what I didn’t like was the spots where I had use filler to cover the nail holes was smoother. That was a visual distraction to me, so I proceeded to get a little piece of 220 sandpaper and go after all the fuzzies. After that I hit it with a second coat with the Graco sprayer. Much better! I will admit, I got a run in the paint but it was in a spot that would be behind the tv when I’d mount it on the wall, I’ll never see it in the finished product so it’s all good! It will always be in the back of my head as a reminder though, and in future projects I may need to decrease the sprayer pressure, or move the sprayer a little quicker, or a combination of both. Bottom line is, I’m learning and getting practice and hopefully the next time I spray something it will be even better than this.
With the wall tile installation complete, that meant I could finally move on to the sconce light installation. As I mentioned earlier I’ll have a separate blog entry on the sconce light hack and how I dealt with having no electrical in the spots where I planned to install the lights. But the finished feature wall/accent wall (whatever you prefer to call it) looks amazing and we’re really happy with how everything turned out. It’s a very rewarding feeling to complete a project that you’ve seen come together (and done yourself) from start to finish.
Pretty much everything I do is a learning experience and that’s a big part of the fun for me. If I ever do another project like this, I know I’ve learned a couple things on this one that will help to improve the next one, even if it’s just a little bit. I like to learn by doing What about you? I hope you thought this was a cool project. Be sure to check out the full video on my YouTube channel and when you watch the video, I’d love for you to give it a “like”👍🏻 and also leave a comment if you don’t mind! That really helps to get my videos in front of more viewers…..crazy algorithms, am I right? 🙂 Thank you for stopping by!
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Stuff Seth Makes specializes in woodworking and is known for creating unique handmade home decor items as well as custom rustic and modern style furniture. Based in Escondido, California but available for nationwide commissions.