Handymania: Woodworking

My previous narrative post began with me maniacally painting my way to insanity and ended with me sleeping it off–and then with me hinting at a relapse.  And so we continue…

After a good night’s rest, I awoke to the rest of our boxes to unpack.  Mainly, these boxes were filled with books, which didn’t have bookshelves yet, so I couldn’t unpack those.  I then eyed two boxes of CD’s: Perfect! All of the CD’s are in racks–all I need to do is find a place to put them.  But there was no place to put them.  No place to put them.  What am I to do?  On-and-off throughout the day I tried to answer this question.  My handymania began to kick in again as I was lying in bed awake: I dreamed up some imaginary blueprints and decided to make a trip to Home Depot the next day.  Before I knew it, this was my situation:

(My verbal ambiguity should give you a clue as to my working knowledge of woodworking.)  Using only primitive tools (i.e. hand tools), a power drill, sloppy geometry, and my intuition, my manic dream began to materialize:

“What am I even doing…” was a thought I had on repeat.

Shoot. I accidentally made a fence.

*Test Run*
Good: It works.
Bad: It’s massive–must revise.
(FYI, because I was using a miter box [used to accurately saw angles manually] without the capability to saw certain angles, I only sawed 45 & 90 degree angles, which resulted in the beast pictured, jutting out 4 feet from the wall.  Since neither Chelsea nor I were happy with its size, I revised by attempting to cut a few different angles myself using some old-school techniques; this resulted in some pretty janky [but workable] results that reduced the size of the structure.)

Not equipped with proper clamps or bench, I had to improvise.

Surprisingly, this placeholder stood strong (until I bumped my head on it).

Eight 2×4’s, five 1×3’s, dozens of screws, one broken drill bit, a sawdust-ridden bedroom floor, and a few marathon sessions of woodworking later, my CD case was complete.  Minus a few sloppy angle measurements and the overall unsoundness of the structure, I feel pretty good about the result–I think it could have turned out much worse if I had less luck.  Without further ado, I present to you the culmination of my mania:

“CD Case” by Chad Ryan

It can hold 500+ CD’s.

The craziest thing about all of this is that I still buy CD’s.

Now, for the dramatic finish to my mania: it took ahold of my subconscious.  Evidently, I accidentally built a doorstop (which we were in need of) while I was building the CD case:

Oddly, this remnant of my mania fulfills its function better than the CD case fulfills its.

It was actually just a piece of scrap wood.

I hope none of you reach the end of this mini-saga believing that I am actually manic–I just got really excited about trying these new handyman activities, and I thought that portraying myself in a downward spiral of insanity would somehow make my furniture-painting and CD-case-making an exciting thing to read about.  In reality, I really enjoyed painting & woodworking.  I had never really done either of these things, and so diving into them has given me the confidence that I actually am capable of doing handy things around the home.  Except for plumbing–I’m gonna leave that one to the plumbers.

shoes & blues,
Chad