Al hamdulil'Allah, I have taken some time opportunity this Ramadhan to stay away from internet, look after my house and get some furniture made.
My father is a Carpenter, when I was young and teenager, father used to bring me to his carpentry shop during school holidays to teach me "the work". At that time, I just didn't particularly like it, I just wanted to be like my friends and go to the beach and enjoy myself. But father always insisted that I learn a job, as "one can never know".
Today, 30 years later, all the techniques he taught me came to hand. I found myself able to make use of my hands and be able to build my own furniture. Having a skill in hands is definitely such a great blessing. At the end of my work, I did call my father to let him know that all that he taught me when I was young, was still in my mind, nothing was lost. He was very happy and he said that a skill is like riding a bicycle, once you know it, you won't forget it.
May Allah Bless my parents, I realize that I often gave them hard times, due to ignorance and stubbornness. When I look back today, I wish I would have learnt more from them, I wish I would have been a much better son to them.
Anyway, such is life, we cannot change the past, all we can do, is teach our own children the best that we were taught, hoping that they would learn from our mistakes.
This being said, here is the main topic of this entry. Below are few pictures of the furniture made:
Cabinet with shelves and Children desk:
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| Shelves Cabinet with doors & Children desk 1. Kids sharing the chair while watching their favorite movie. |
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| Shelves Cabinet with doors & Children desk 2. Kids watching their Scooby doo |
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| Shelves Cabinet with doors & Children desk 3
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Once finished, the children desk was hijacked by their mom, as she is now using it as her sewing area. The kids would have to share this place with their mom!.
Building the shelves cabinet was relatively easy, except for the door parts where getting them aligned was a bit tricky.
The desk was the simplest item to make. I wanted to add some drawers for the desk, this is still being debated. The main issue is that both boys want to sit close to one another, adding drawers would eat up the space underneath.
Custom made Bookshelf:
Next item to be done requested by my second wife, was a bookshelf. We have several folders that required proper height, along all the other items we had in our computer room. The original idea of this furniture was to be a shoe cabinet, but half way through the work, my wife said that it was too nice to be a shoe rack, I then transformed it into a bookshelf.
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| Bookshelf 1 - At last, we have more space than required. |
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| Bookshelf 2. The painting on top was made by my 3 years old little boy. |
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| Bookshelf 3. All items in place fitting perfectly. |
Making the bookshelf was not much difficult, but the finishing took a lot of time.
Table:
My last item was a table for the kitchen. This was another requirement by my wife. She only asked for a small 1m x 1m working table in the kitchen, I gave her a full 6 people dining table.
The making of the table was the most complicated one because I wanted to use Aluminum legs. Combining Aluminium with wood was not very easy and this is where I had to apply my Mechanical Engineering skills along my Carpentry skills to make sure all would be sound and stable.
The most difficult part was to get the 4 legs cut at right angles and having the same lengths. I used an electric hack saw to cut the legs out of a long Aluminum profile. The cut was not easy or regular, especially at the end of the cut when the weight of the falling part was adding to the difficulty of having a neat and sharp cut. Bear in mind that I do not have a full shop, all I have is the small workshop that is going to be shown below in this entry. I had to work in the back of the house, by some stairs, using stools to level the items I intended to cut.
To adjust the legs, I had to use a grinder and it just great to have a nice tool to take care of the cutting flaws.
The table top is a series of 3 different large shelves that I assembled together to make the working area. All the parts were assembled using assorted wood screws and glued in place for additional stability.
The legs were fit onto the table top by using L-shaped supports. There are 4 L-shape supports for each leg. The supports are fixed using rivets on the aluminum part, and assorted screws on the wood parts.
Once this step done, there was a need of spreaders to stabilize the structure, as this was not enough to prevent the table from wobbling right and left. The wood spreaders gave the structure its final strength. Et voila...
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| Kitchen Table with Aluminum legs -1 |
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| Kitchen Table with Aluminum legs -2 |
Safety note:
I have used several power tools to be able to make all the above furniture. Among them were a circular saw, an electric hack saw and electric planner. Caution must be exercised for individuals who do not have the proper training or expertise to manipulate such tools. Very often, people think that these power tools are easy to use when they see them in the hands of other people (Arabic proverb: "how easy is the axe in the hands of the people"), but you must know the dangers associated with power tools and protect your hands and eyes from any harm. My brother in law lost a finger a few years ago by just using a grinder, his finger was injured in a split second. My father always taught me the dangers of the tools and how to handle them with care to avoid getting an accident. He always said that whether you are going to cut one piece or 1,000 pieces, take the same precautions because it will only take one piece to harm you, and you do not know if it is the number 1, or number 1,000, so just take the same precautions always.
DO NOT operate tools which you have no training on.
Workshop:
This is my upgraded workshop that I will call version 3. I keep improving and improving along the months, it is small but at the end of the day, it is functional and it allowed to build the furniture shown above.
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| Home workshop |
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| Home workshop - Power tools stored on the lower shelves in their safety boxes. |
What's next?
My main clients remain my boys. They are asking me to fix their alphabet stand. But the main work waiting on me, is that I promised my boys to make a parking toy for their cars. They have been very patient with me so far, as I have not yet started this task, but insha Allah, it will be done in the next few weeks. Up to then, let us be thankful to Allah for any skill that He Gave us, for it is Allah Who Distribute the skills among people.
