Just a Giant Game of Blocks

Marching season is over, Halloween candy is out (well, most of it, anyways), and the skeletons are back entombed in their cardboard boxes for another year. It’s time to work on the bedroom again! Yay!

Seriously. It’s been so long that I had to just READ MY BLOG to see where I left off in telling you what’s happening.

We made boxes. That’s where we were. So, now the plan is to take those boxes and stack them on top of each other like building blocks. And of course, secure them mightily to the wall, because these things are not messing around. This is going to be a rather imposing wardrobe. And that’s okay.

We built bases for the wardrobes. To make the wardobes “built-in”, the plan is to wrap the bases with identical base moulding that matches the rest of the room. The current base moulding will be safely snug behind the built-ins – so if anyone in the future wants to remove the storage, they can, and all the original woodwork will be untouched. But WHO WOULD REMOVE STORAGE FROM A HOUSE?

Here are the bases. Doug built these from 2×10 boards, and used pocket hole joinery to make it both strong, and seamless for the addition of baseboard later on.

If you haven’t used a pocket hole jig before, it’s pretty nifty. Here’s Doug explaining the process :

You can see the bases on the left next to the large wardrobe boxes.

Box number one (on the right) goes up on the platform. Perfect fit!

(Are we surprised? Doug did the measurements.)

The next step was to level and shim, which is going to be super important once we add doors. If it’s not level, the doors might not close all the way, which is probably a bad thing. This is also a pretty good picture to show you how we built the bases JUST smaller than the top wardrobe pieces, to allow the wardrobe box to sit flush with the wall, and the smaller base to snuggly hug the baseboard in order to preserve it. Preservation, people.

Next up, the small boxes went on top. I say small, but they were seriously heavy. I kept waiting for someone to be crushed by this project.

Marina for Scale.

Both wardrobe sides are up!

See the strips of wood at the top of each box? Those were used to add strength as we secured the wardrobes to the wall. The screws went right through those strips, into the wall and studs behind the wall.

These still look a bit behemoth to me, but I know the end product will be okay. Right? If not, they’re large enough that I can climb in and cry myself to sleep over my poor design choices. I’d say you’ll never find me, but something probably won’t be level so the doors won’t close, anyway.

(Sidenote : I am counting the SECONDS until that ceiling fan is GONE.)

Next up : Face Frames! This will make everything pretty, and make a great surface for the doors to attach to. Here is Doug, dryfitting some ideas.

Doug did all of the building of the face frames. I think I was Halloween decorating, if I remember right. We don’t always follow stereotypical gender roles, but we did here.

Pocket holes and screws were once again used for the joinery.

A few times along the way, Doug would test fit it to make sure that everything was going to work out okay.

One with a face frame, one to go.

Since I excel at glueing, I came in to be an extra set of hands. This room is super dark at night, so the pictures aren’t the greatest. (“Maybe if you wouldn’t paint the walls black?”)

Doug excels at clamping. It’s true.

Nailed them in, and they are set!

Next Up : We’re going to build the bridge to connect these two pieces! AND, we’re going to get moulding made to replicate what we have in the house. I am SUPER excited about that. I’m also very happy for the time to get back into the swing of things. We’ve both really missed it.