Artisan Me

You may recall my description of how I go about planning construction-type projects over many months combining research with multiple sketches, measurements, and calculations. One of these detailed plans has finally come to fruition in the form of a large, moveable coffee table.

It all started when we moved, and I discovered that a large cabinet for architectural plans Salt had stuck in the basement next to his overflow office contained artwork. Some of the artwork is his, some was done by his mother, and some of it was done by his sons as they were growing up.

Technical drawings.

I am an advocate of framing and displaying personal art and can’t stand to see it stored where it can not be enjoyed.  Unfortunately, in a family of artists there is much more art than there is space on the walls, so I had the idea of redeeming the cabinet from the basement to use as a coffee table. By placing it in the center of the living room, it is possible to show people the artwork we are storing. This is much better than leaving it to the mice. Unfortunately the cabinet weighs over 100 pounds. Wherever it sits, it is going to be right there forever. . . unless we could attach wheels. Hmmm. . .

The difficulty in attaching wheels was that the cabinet sits on a meager frame made of 7/8-inch thick wood. It has no center supports to which wheels could be attached nor was it designed to stand up to the torque of 125 pounds in motion. I have drawn dozens of plans for how to attach wheels to this coffee table cabinet over the past five months, so I was ultimately certain I had something that would work.

Look, Salt! No hands!

I was even excited when I proposed my alterations to Salt, who had an unusually difficult time hiding his consternation as he interrogated me. At one point he seemed to think I was planning to attack his cabinet with a jig saw, but that was just a misunderstanding. Nonetheless, he wasn’t wrong to be concerned. I’ll admit that jigsaw alterations are not beyond my imagination, plus I only recently began operating the swing arm circular saw with my eyes open. (The sound makes me cringe.)

Despite his better judgment, he ultimately approved the plan, but it was probably no coincidence that he decided to clean the garage as I started my project. He kept looking over his shoulder at me as I measured and remeasured. Lined up the saw and realigned it numerous times until I got just the right cut.

My plan was to make an internal skeleton for the base of the cabinet. The skeleton would reinforce the base, provide a platform for the wheels and transfer force between the cabinet and the wheels, all of which is important for reasons I lack the vocabulary to explain now, but recall vaguely from college Physics.

The original base.

Part of the design involved cutting out pieces of the skeleton to fit around some corner supports on the cabinet base. This, Salt insisted on doing himself, explaining that the table saw we needed to use for this required some repairs in order to be safe for a novice such as myself. Since I am of the mind that none of these shop tools is safe in my hands, I wasn’t about to advocate my ability to handle a saw with compromised safety features.

View from the bottom.

Once Salt had cut those pieces to fit, I was able to measure and cut the platforms to the correct size. As soon as Salt saw these last two pieces in place, he understood my vision and became enthusiastic. (I'm not sure why my technical drawings weren't sufficiently clear.)  He began cutting shims to make it all fit correctly. Then he was on the floor with the drill putting it all together. I sorted through his coffee can of screws looking for the correct sizes and watched him for a while. He was half-way done in the same time it would have taken me to put in two screws, so I went inside to read the newspaper. By the time I was finished with the paper, he was coming back from the hardware store with the proper screws for the wheels. It looked cold out there. I decided to make cornbread.  I was just putting the cornbread in the oven when he hauled the completed base into the house.

And there it was, a moving masterpiece of design. I didn’t exactly build it all by myself. Honestly I wouldn’t have done it as well as Salt with his shims and I wouldn’t have done it as quickly either. Salt is giving me full credit for my design. It was kind of clever. . . well. . . for me.

#farmdiva