Tina spent a lot of time and effort getting boxes unpacked and furniture sorted out in the main part of the house.  It is difficult because I am still working on many different areas in the house so space for storage is extremely limited.  But she has done a great job in minimizing the clutter as much as can be expected for the circumstance.

I do not have the shelves for the kitchen cabinets done yet, so she has had to be very innovative to find storage in the kitchen.

We have had so many of our books packed away for so long, I had forgotten how many books we actually have.  This is just Tina’s cookbook collection in the kitchen.

When we left Minnesota, we got rid of some of the cheap crappy bookcases we had bought when we were first married.  Thus, I knew I would have to be making some bookcases once we got here, but I did not realize how many.  As near as I can estimate, we have about 35 more boxes of books than we have bookcases to store!  So I think I am going to build some 7 1/2 foot tall built-in bookcases in my office.  That will slow the build down a bit, but we are past the time constraints now and it will look nice and give us some additional storage that we desperately need.

After moving everything from the rental house, my workshop was piled wall-to-wall with boxes and furniture, so the first order of business was to make enough room to start working again.  I did find a box with my wood racks, so I was able to also get those up and get some wood moved off the floor and hung up properly.

I also was on a push to get the data lines punched down so we could get real internet into the house.  (For the last several months our internet has come via the hotspot feature on our cell phones.  Although it works, it is very slow and not terribly stable.)

Since they strung Cat-6 cables throughout the house before they put up the sheetrock, I wanted those lines to be live using a hardwired router.  But I also setup a wireless router for our laptops and phones.  The end result is I actually have 2 networks in the house, the wireless network is behind 2 firewalls and running some additional security software.  The hardwired network only has the basic firewall that came with the router so it will allow me to experiment with some of my network cracking tools.

I had not punched down a network in about 20 years and I never was very good at it to begin with.  I was pleasantly surprised when I punched down the patch panel that I got everything punched down and tested and it all worked correctly the first time!

Then it was time to figure out how to mount the hardwired router to the patch panel because it did not come with any mounting holes.  I ended up taking the whole thing apart and drilling a hole in the case and just screwing it to the patch panel.

Once the case was mounted, I just reassembled it in place.

Once I got the rest of the components installed and connected to the internet, I patched it all down and I am pleased with how neat the cabling job looks.

The guys from the phone company that came to punch down the internet connection even said it was the cleanest cabling job they had ever seen.  They even took a picture of it!

We had some extra parts left over from the closet organizers Tina had bought, so I hung a couple shelves and a small hanging rod in the laundry room.

Then it was time to start the shelves for the kitchen cabinets.

Making shelves, although simple, is a very tedious process.  I will not bore you with the details of cutting the oak plywood or laminating the tops.  But I decided to make a custom moulding to cover the front edge of the shelf and also provide a lip on the top to keep things from rolling off.

I started by cutting rabbits in the moulding to fit around the shelf.

Then I sliced the moulding to width using the tablesaw.

I wanted a routed profile on all 3 corners of the moulding.  But since routing thin moulding is kind of a difficult process if it left full length, I decided to cut them to length before routing them.

A router is not a tool that is likely to cost you a finger, but will take the corners off, which hurts like hell, and more importantly, gets blood on the wood.

On a tangent, my very good friend Harold, who is at least a 3rd generation master woodworker and taught me almost everything I know about the craft, called me one night about 15 years ago.  He had caught his thumb in his tablesaw and cut it lengthwise almost down to the first knuckle.  Harold is not above using the occasional “shit”, “damn” or “hell” in a conversation to liven it up, but I had never heard him string them together in a blue steak of profanity.  That night, he called me and cussed the paint off the walls!  His big complaint was not that he hurt his thumb, it was the $%^& @#$ *&^ tablesaw sprayed blood all over his best cherry lumber, ruining it!  The sad part was, I completely understood and agreed with his assessment.

Not wanting to get blood all over my half made mouldings, I decided to make a push block to feed them through the router.  I just took a piece scrap 1/2″ plywood and drove some wire brads about halfway in, then nipped off the heads with a pair of dykes.  It worked perfectly!

Then it was on to sanding and glueing.

They came out pretty good.  I still have about 8 more left to make, but at least the mouldings for them are done.

Lastly, I needed to order a couple extra sheets of laminate to have enough to do all of the shelves.  So I also ordered another gallon of contact cement.  I did not realize there were different kinds of contact cement.

I had been using the old fashioned Weldwood solvent-based contact cement.  It is miserable stuff to work with.  It is really stinky and the fumes are explosive.  That required me to always use it with the garage door open since the water heater and furnace are in a closet in the garage.

They shipped me a new kind of contact cement from 3M.  It is water-based.  Therefore it is does not smell nearly as bad or as strong.  It is also safe around open flames.

When I started using it, I was not too sure about it because it a lot more runny than the old kind.  But once I stuck the parts together, I became an instant “true believer”.  Not only is it easier to work with than the old kind, it is stronger and because it is water-based, cleaning it up is MUCH easier!

So if you still have kids at home and have the need to stick them to the ceiling, the 3M contact cement is definitely the right product for the job!

For the 3Mers that subscribe to M. T. Acres: ‘atta boy guys!