Want to know what it’s like to have a finished carpenter do the simplest of DIY projects? A couple weeks ago my Dad, who is a fantastic finish carpenter, came to help us out with a few woodworking projects while I was recovering and Sarah was gone, and here’s how it went.
So yeah, our utensil drawer is a bit of a trainwreck. And my wife found a video online where they cut out some strips of wood, and glued them together with some CA glue to make a really simple drawer organizer.
And like I said, I had a finish carpenter helping me that week, my Dad. So of course he wanted to build something really nice, but I reminded him that we’re trying to keep things simple, so he got to work ripping some ¼ ply into 2 ½” strips.
Now to guide us, we had already laid out the utensils where my wife wanted them, and used some strips of painters tape to mark off the locations for dividers. My Dad pointed out right away that the screws holding on the drawer front would be in the way, so we unscrewed it, held the first divider wall along the front, and marked it off so we could drill the appropriate holes.
Then it was time to glue up our first dividers, again, this is not how my Dad wanted to do this, and you can see that in his face.
But he loves me, and he was there to help while I was recovering from surgery, so he soldiered on. We used 2P10 adhesive, and simply held the pieces together for 10 seconds, and that did it.
After he got the outer walls together, he carefully dropped it into place.
At this point, we’d be gluing additional pieces right in the drawer, and we didn’t want to get any of the glue on the actual drawer bottom, so we used postit notes at each joint, that we simply removed after the glue dried. With that plan it place, my Dad just started cutting all of his pieces on the miter saw, and gluing them in place, one by one.
And with that, we were done! So we brought it up stairs, and slid it back in place,
Then it was my turn to snap all the utensils into place, like this. And there you go. This turned out to be so easy to do. I mean building it, not sitting back and watching my Dad do the work, although that WAS pretty easy.
