Amateur DIY woodworking in India

'rack'ing up the numbers !! I needed a rack for my bathroom to store towels and other sundry items. Thought of buying one, but then realized I already had one in the room in form of a galvanized steel rack, which holds variety of car care tools/consumables. Only had to build a wooden one to keep in the room so as free up the steel one for the bathroom. Measured the steel rack and ripped / crosscut some 19mm plywood to match the specs Put in pocket holes on each shelf - 4 on each side Then used pocket screws (got some original Kreg screws carried in by a friend coming in from USA) and glue to quickly build the carcass The screw holes are hidden from view as they fall under each shelf I had some leftover hardboard (masonite) from a project long back. Decided to utilize the same for the backing piece. Only issue was that the hardboard was in 2 pieces, so could not get a single piece to act as the back - had to put in 2 pieces. The back does n...

... well - by dropping the hydraulic and revolving features ! I had a couple of chairs in my study room with hydraulic lifts (not that I needed this feature - the chairs were always set at their highest) and 5 revolving casters at the base. Both of them had their hydraulic struts at the end of their life, which means they frequently sank without notice ! Couple of weeks back in a lazy afternoon weekend, I got a little too comfortable on one of them when one of the legs gave away, and I crashed to the floor, face up, and in the process hurt my right shoulder (enough to keep me out of tennis for couple of weeks). The broken base : The chair was now unusable and dangerous , so I planned on decommissioning it and getting a new one (now I DID NOT need a new one with hydraulic lift and revolving features). But at second thoughts, other than the broken leg, and the unusable gas strut, everything else was fine with the chair. So I took it up ...

... a convenience caddy for the bedroom The itch started when I noticed the awkwardly placed and unwieldy plastic table that holds the condiments in a corner of our dining room. It was eating up a lot of space which was not fully utilized, and the lower rack is exclusively used by the cats as a bunk bed. Planned to build something with a smaller footprint and on casters, so that the usability and mobility factor increases. Once I got my Metabo table saw, I dismantled the home built saw/router table and reclaimed some 19mm plywood and Sal wood battens from it. Also I had some 12mm plywood scrap pieces from previous projects . And I have some laminates lying around too. I determined the above would be enough to complete this project. Got the 12mm  19mm plywood and the Sal battens sized up, planed and squared. Cut the corners of the bottom and middle racks to accommodate the posts. Put pocket holes, 2 in each corner. And then glued and screwed the posts...

Refinishing the writing table So once upon a time, I had this small & narrow computer table which would fit in a corner of  my bedroom. I grew out of that quite a few years back, and my dad was using it as a writing desk since then. He has this tray full of sundry items (mostly papers and old diaries) that he used to stack on the table top, along-with his watch, phone and laptop. The bottom shelf was not used much as it was open and cats could easily access anything there. The paint was faded, the laminate on top was brittle and the plywood in the lower rack was peeling in places. So I decided to give the table a makeover and extend it's usable life. Here's the table as it was being used by my dad Started by scraping off the old laminate with a chisel and done Next, got rid of the old trim The new plan is to have the table covered on 3 sides using 6 mm ply, and have a shelf in the middle. Cut a few pieces...