This was definitely a spur of the moment project. It all started on a sunny Saturday morning. I had gone out to the shed planning to build a shoji screen for my office. I needed something to hide the treadmill that sits in the corner of the room. I had thought about the size of the screen I would need and set forth to build it. After lugging all the wood from the shed to the driveway I realized I didn’t have enough lumber. The gears inside my head were spinning furiously because I wanted to use the lumber before winter. I knew that leaving the lumber in the shed all winter may cause it to warp and perhaps render it  useless. I had a bunch of one by twos and a couple of one by threes.

 I stood in the driveway for a while staring at the pile of sticks. Then I thought to myself, ”What else do I need that would require less lumber?”. A few minutes past and I began thinking about how I’ve always wanted something to hold my wine glasses. They had been sitting on the counter for quite some time. They’re very pretty glasses that I always wanted to have on display. I often thought about putting up a glass rack below the kitchen cabinets, but there are lights under the cabinets and they would be in the way. I’m not sure exactly how I went from thinking about the glass rack to a wine bottle holder but suddenly I found myself cutting up pieces of wood and nailing them together. It was like doing  a jigsaw puzzle. I never really planned it or drew a sketch. To my amazement the wine bottle holder looked really cool. It was then that I added some one by two uprights to the four corners of the bottle holder. A couple of short one by twos nailed in place gave the evolving cabinet some stability. Then came the really fun part, making the top of the cabinet, which would hold the wine glasses. So I ran upstairs grabbed one of my glasses, took a few measurements, and the building continued. After I completed the top piece I nailed it in place. Now it was officially a wine cabinet. I have to admit I admired my handiwork but I knew something was missing. I didn’t like the open sides and open back. I decided I needed some veneer to finish it off. Later that day Tim arrived. He couldn’t believe what I had accomplished in one morning. I told him about my idea for the veneer. So off to Home Depot we went. While browsing the lumber aisle I decided some molding would really finish off the job. I purchased a nice piece of molding for the top edge of the shelf and the opening edges of the cabinet

 The next day the veneer was nailed in place and it was time to attempt cutting the corners of the molding. Several initial attempts to get the angles cut correctly led me to the internet to do some research. I suppose if I had known that I wasn’t using a crown molding, and addressed the project as just cutting some regular old corners I would have been all set. But as we all know things always go wrong during projects. $11.48 later I had a bunch of small scrap pieces of molding that were cut at the wrong angle. I was just taking the wrong approach. Now I didn’t have enough molding to do what I wanted. I opted for some very inexpensive beaded molding to complete the project.

 The stain I planned to use was a red mahogany. I had picked it up at the Wal-Mart store. Who knows how long that stuff had been sitting on the shelf. I shook the can vigorously and thought I stirred it well with the paint stick. But when I started to apply it, it was more of a dark brown than red mahogany. I was just happy that this thing was under way and I couldn’t wait to get up into the kitchen so I let the color issue go. It wasn’t until I was building the second cabinet and I decided to pre-stain the lumber that I realized all of the red content was stuck to the bottom of the can. You see, the can of stain, which was sitting on top of a tarp, protecting the driveway, got blown over by a huge gust of wind. This was devastating to me, because I am such a fanatic about the driveway! I stared at the pool of stain as it slowly rolled across the driveway. I was in such a state of shock I had no idea how to contain the stain. I grabbed some newspaper to absorb it and opted for an old towel I found in the laundry room. When I recovered from the spill and picked up the near empty can of stain I noticed that what remained in the can was a deep red mahogany color. It was at this point I decided to buy my finishing products at a store that specializes in this type of product. Let’s just call this a lesson learned.

 The following week the dark brown, not mahogany, Cabinet was completed. This was when I decided it would be easier to pre-stain the lumber before staining it. Even with its setbacks, distractions, driveway damage, and the loss of $11.48 in molding, this was an extremely fun project.