Work Bench, Table, 90 Degrees, Part 1.

So couple of weekends ago I had a highly productive weekend. Multiple projects lined up and it was finally time to accomplish that. First, for a long time we wanted to patch the hole in the bedroom floor (Updated: added a photo post staining) caused by an oddly placed electrical outlet. Secondly, I wanted to build a conference room table for my office. Finally, I needed a workbench and a place to store tools. This project was multistage and involved a bit of pre-planning…

Step one: Make way
Though I have no photos of it, there was already a work bench from a previous owner in the basement. I had to remove this workbench so that I could get underneath the area of the floor where there was the outlet. And while there was a work bench already there, the problem with this workbench is the work surface area was about as high as my armpit making it completely unusable. In addition, it was very wobbly and as I began to take it apart a lot of the supports had been notched in a way that made them structurally unsound. Someone clearly spent a whole lot of time putting this together in a really crappy way.

Step two: Building supplies
I already had the plans drawn up for the work bench and the office table. There were a few things I knew I would absolutely need from the hardware store, but I also knew that I had a supply of scrap wood, I just needed to get to it.

(Background Aside)
When we moved into this house, over a year ago, the plan for moving day was to pickup from Carrie’s storage unit, Carrie’s apartment, my parents garage (where all my stuff was because I was homeless), and finally my grandparent’s attic to clear out all the things I had stashed there since college. When I was having to leave things in my parent’s garage because the truck was full, we decided to bail on clearing the attic.

My family has a knack for hoarding things my grandparents attic and I been making a conscious effort to make sure that I’m not following suit. Over the past few weeks I’ve been taking out everything that’s up there that I can lift on my own that will fit into the back of the Prius. Most of it was just told boxes of books and a suitcase filled with suitcases and some old lamps that I left on the curb. The last of the things of mine left in my grandmothers attic were a couple of bed lofts I used freshman year while living in the dorm.

So the day started bright and early by borrowing a friends truck and a trip to my grandparents house. These lofts were highly over engineered. Which, I guess is a good thing considering I was sleeping on it for eight-hour clips. I knew that it would be more than enough lumber for me to do everything I needed to get done. I don’t have any photos of the lofts assembled, but I had 4 of these 60″ x 38″ ladders:

Plus two 38″ x 72″ frames. By the time I had taken them all apart, I have half filled a 5 gallon bucket with screws. Once I knew how much wood I had, I took a trip to the hardware store to get the additional wood and supplies I needed. I managed to get home without a couple of the boards I had loaded in the truck. After backtracking my route I found them with only a couple tire tracks.