My last apartment was well furnished. Oops, forgot some commas. My last apartment was, well, furnished. I mean, it had furniture, in fact the ratio of open floor space to furniture was probably pretty close to optimal (almost certainly a bit too much on the furniture side, but it was an awkward place). Of course when I moved into my current apartment, which is easily twice the size, I didn't have anywhere near enough furniture. The original plan was to goto Ikea, not because I have a great love for their furniture, but I really wanted to get a couple detlofs (still do I suppose).
That pretty quickly fell apart. I didn't intend to start making things when I moved in, but I did and it created a somewhat perfect storm of distracting me from my desire to have an apartment that was conducive to anything besides making things and sleeping and eating a lot of my disposable income.
Then I made a table. Somehow it hadn't occurred to me that I could just make my own furniture. I couldn't envision making chairs as I had zero desire to upholster anything, but a lot of what I wanted was tables and shelves and that was well within my abilities I felt.
So there I was, post christmas sunday night wing night. Donnyk was asking what I got for christmas. It occurred to me at that point that it's kind of hard to describe what an oscillating multi tool is. It's um, well just follow the link. It like, vibrates and shit and um, harnesses the power of vibration to uh, cut shit and uh, sand shit. Listen, it's awesome and I love it.
"What are you gonna do with that?" says Donnyk. "For that matter, what are you gonna do with the rest of those fucking tools you for some reason own?" (He didn't actually say that).
"You know, makes tables and shit"
"That's interesting, because I need a tv stand."
He had gotten a sweet deal on a tv, problem was, it had no real way of standing up on it's own, it had to be mounted. I told him if he didn't care how it looked, if random mismatched wood was fine, then I could probably make one for pretty cheap. And then it was go time.
The plan was to go as simple as possible. The stated requirements were a) mount the tv, preferably as far from the ground as possible b) have a shelf for video game systems. Given that a shelf would be easy to attach wherever, I decided to start with the mounting setup and build off of that. My idea was to get a 4" x 6" x 12' then cut it in half. If the tv was mounted at the top of those two posts, that would put it right at the ceiling of the room it would be in. I felt confident it would be strong enough to hold the tv up (it weighs about a hundred pounds). Then I figured it would need a base, which led to me thinking, why not just make a box and then that'll account for the shelf too. Slot the 4 x 6s into the top, screw it all together and BOOM. Then I had this conversation (with myself, natch).
"I dunno mike, that seems like it's gonna be a bitch to move."
"I don't actually recall asking for your opinion and furthermore.....that's actually a pretty good point."
It certainly would have been possible to move it, but it woulda been tough. When designing things I try and stay within the confines of what I can do by myself. With the 4 x 6s sticking out, there's no way I could have moved it by myself and not with any of the vehicles available to me. I decided to make a slotting system. The posts would still slide in through the top, but instead of being screwed to the frame, they would be held in place with some guides. Observe.
And zoomed in on the guides.
ISN'T THAT COOL!?! And all for like a quarter of what it woulda cost to buy one at the store.
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