Day 336: The Kreg Jig

Is silence a virtue? Probably not in the art of keeping family and friends up to date. But with a weekend trip to Ottawa from which we both returned with whatever cold bug has been floating around and my nose to the keyboard working in earnest to finish my research paper, there hasn't been a ton going on around here to talk about. A few little projects winterizing and rearranging projects here and there, but no real progress on the bathroom since we finished hanging the drywall. There have been a few recent acquisitions in the tool department that we're pretty stoked about.

The first of these is our new (well, new to us) Kreg Jig. Ever since discovering Ana White and learning about the magic of pocket holes, I thought this little tool was the coolest thing. For the uninitiated, pocket hole joinery is a way to attach two pieces of wood or similar material using screws instead of glue/nails/fancy notches and keep the screws hidden. When we reached the point of starting to work on the cabinets, we decided it might be handy to invest in a jig. We landed on the Kreg Jig Jr. - versatile and, at $40, not as expensive as the full on $100 jig.

Kreg Jig Jr. for pocket holes

This baby was sitting in the basement and hadn't even been used once when it got sent back to the store. Why? Because we found this instead:

Solid metal Kreg K2 Jig

For a mere $15, this solid metal tool came home with us after another successful Kijiji deal. Don't know exactly what era it's from but this thing looks pretty indestructible. The only con is it's less versatile than the other one we took back since it's only set to work with 3/4" boards. Since we're mostly working with 3/4" boards, this isn't a big deal. We can easily add some sort of riser so it'll take thinner boards (the other one had a setting for 1/2") and the vertical piece can detach so we could rig something up for thicker boards too. The second we brought it home, I wanted to try it out. I figured we would just play around with some scrap boards and then Garrett had the genius idea of actually making something out of our newly attached scraps:

What's better than easy-peasy screwdriver storage? Making it while not planning to do anything productive at all!

The pocket holes are visible since we weren't actually planning to use these boards when we attached them but the idea is that those would be on the other side and all you would see is a clean board. Since it's a couple planks of scrap screwed into a bare stud with a nice insulation foam background, I'm not too concerned about a few visible pocket holes ;)

Then I decided to try making something nice(r). You may recall that back in the summer, Garrett bought a working fridge to replace the ailing 80s one that came with the house. After several bags of milk gone bad, he bit the $80 bullet and shelled out for a classy Inglis fridge. From what we know, it's a pretty low end brand but it does the job (aka ice cream doesn't pour of the box anymore) and this is definitely a temporary solution. It's worth noting that he singlehandedly brought the fridge home in our little hatchback and got it into the house. Garrett + dolly = doesn't matter that Evonne's off in Quebec not providing manual labour.

Need for function and temporary solution > Need to spend lots of money on brand new, classy fridge

But the fridge is too tall for the space where the old one sat so, as you can see in the photo, it lives in the opposite corner of the kitchen. It actually fits really well there with the little kitchen table fitting almost perfectly between the fridge and the doorway. A few weeks ago, we got around to getting the old fridge hauled off for free thanks to the Ontario Power Authority's Fridge Pickup Program we've used in the past. (I'm curious about the difference in energy use between the two and am kicking myself for not borrowing a meter to test the old one before we chucked it. Lesson learned: always gather interesting nerdy data before you lose your chance!)

Coming back around to the Kreg Jig (oh, that's what I was talking about!), we now had an empty space  to fill where the old fridge sat. So I found a piece of plywood downstairs (leftover from that free pallet plywood we used for the laundry platform), cut it to size, routed the edge, and painted it a beautiful minty green from a can of paint labelled "kitchen cupboard and trim."

My high tech method to make it easy to paint both top and bottom.

Once the several layers of paint dried (lesson: if you care, use wood filler and sand before painting), our beloved jig came into use once again.

Kreg Jig in action

So the special drill bit that's tapered on the end (shown in the top photo of the kig) goes into the holes at the right and a hole is drilled perfectly through the wood so that the screw will come out right at the middle of the edge for a strong joint. And here she is:

Blending in like a kid throwing on some bellbottoms and fitting right in when he goes back in time. "Hey, daddy-o.  That newfangled Instagram thing sure is boss, isn't it?" Well, at least he tried.

The beautiful dishwasher pictured isn't ours (we're holding it hostage until it finds its way to its rightful owners) but we'll fill that space with some additional counter space or perhaps even a temporary dishwasher solution. Wow, that was a pretty long winded way to tell you that I made a shelf. I should say that I don't think this is the best way to build strong shelves (and may be "not recommended" by the pros) since the little screws holding it all together are probably not meant to hold a ton of weight... not to mention the fact that it may only be screwed into a panel board on the right. I think I'll be adding a little bar of plywood under the shelf on the back for extra reinforcement.

Finally, I'll share a few shots from the basement where Garrett put the jig to use in a big cleanup effort to make room for another recent acquisition.

Resource Management Centre gets a facelift - and a shiny new resident

Sigh. Isn't it beautiful? Garrett goes off to Home Depot for jigsaw blades and comes home with this baby. It was a returned item so for $100 (regular price $200), we are now the proud owners of a 10" single bevel compound mitre saw. This is an exciting addition that'll make little cuts so much faster than pulling out the speed square and circular saw. I'm thinking it's safer too - using the circular saw to cut a 10" long plank is kind of scary. And it (along with the Kreg Jig) was put to good use with the building of new shelves for all our sauce jars full of screws and nails. Of course, the circular saw will still see lots of love for any cuts longer than 6".

That floor is cleaner than it's been in months... and about to showered with sawdust once again.

What's he building there, you ask? A little project that made use of all our recent tool acquisitions (Kreg jig, mitre saw, router, straight edge) and retired our monitor-laptop balancing act. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a desk. It still needs to be painted so I'll hold off on posting photos, but let me just state for the record that having space for a mousepad, notebook and water bottle is awesome. It'll be a warm welcome for that shiny new computer that's on its way...