Two Mini Projects: Pew and Whiskey Shelf

So these projects I didn't do too much with (while Rob was working on the pew I was working on other stuff), but I wanted to post them here because they are bad ass. :)

The Pew

Rob was working on a church and they let him take various pieces that they were throwing away, one of which being this pew.

Dusty old pew

Quite simply, Rob sanded off the varnish and stain:

LOL

Then he used our favorite stain (Kona!) to update the colour and then coated with varathane.

But the pew is pretty long (almost 12'), so we wanted to turn it into a banquette for board games. It took him awhile to figure out not only how to mitre it properly, but to make a leg to support the corner piece. Unfortunately he did a lot of this work while I was at soccer, so I wasn't there to see how he did it :(

I was there to see what he did with the missing piece of the corner piece (which was a natural result of mitering the pew). What he did, simply, was take a similar type of wood, cut it to fit, stain it, and use it to create a small drink shelf.

End Result!

Whiskey Shelf 

Rob loves whiskey - all types. Whether it's nasty peaty Scotch, Canadian Rye, or American single malt. So, he wanted a whiskey shelf behind the bar and we roughed one in when we built it. As the bar itself is being difficult (to say the least) we decided to spend some time on Thanksgiving weekend doing this very small, easy project.  Ok, so Rob did 80% of the work (initially I was going to build it, but I had to make a cake for Thanksgiving dinner, and again, the bar was on hold so he decided to take over).

Here's the hole:

What we did was measure the inside (it's not square, but we fixed that)  and Rob build a shelf that would fit snuggly inside it using these old pieces of wood we found in the garage. 

Meanwhile, I painted some window casing trim (while my cake was cooling).

We then double teamed staining the wood with Kona mixed with Gray (which lightens the Kona a bit and brings in a similar undertone as our basement flooring).

After this we put it in the hole and shimmed it to make it fit. The top right corner had a 1" gap that we filled with shims as well.

Shimmy Shim Shim

After using the nail gun to secure it, we applied trim around the box as we usually do (unfortunately had to rip a small part off the top of the top piece), then I used my best friend Nail Hole Filler and voila!

Looks like my Dingle Gin from Ireland snuck in there ;)