Josh Reet
11-05-2009, 2:34 AM
Okay, stay with me here because I'm not sure this will make a lot of sense.
My brother and his wife are very "green" type folks. They love the idea of anything made from reclaimed materials. They also just had a son 6 months back and when I was visiting last month I noticed that they had this cruddy looking plywood-screwed-together bookshelf in his nursery. So I got to thinking...
My local Re-Store has a bunch of chunks of gym floor (maple?) from a local middle school. A fellow I know has had a lot of success taking busting them apart, removing the "gym" finish, and re assembling them into tables or whatnot.
So I'm thinking about using the wood to make a bookshelf for them. I measured while I was there and the the bookshelf would be 30x12x40 or so.
Here are my questions:
1. I was thinking that, since this is going in a kids room, it might be cool to stain each board a different color, in a rainbow pattern perhaps. Is there any way to do this prior to a panel glue up? If not, what are the chances of successfully staining that rainbow on the already glued up boards? I've never tried anything like that.
2. Like most flooring, the boards are tongue and glue. given that the most important thing is to be able to say "this is reclaimed lumber" rather than achieve perfection, should I leave the t&g on there for easy assembly, or cut it off for tighter seams?
3. Am I an idiot for thinking about this? The rainbow aspect really seems neat to me, but I suppose I could just go for a standard panel glue up and stain if I'm tilting at windmills.
My brother and his wife are very "green" type folks. They love the idea of anything made from reclaimed materials. They also just had a son 6 months back and when I was visiting last month I noticed that they had this cruddy looking plywood-screwed-together bookshelf in his nursery. So I got to thinking...
My local Re-Store has a bunch of chunks of gym floor (maple?) from a local middle school. A fellow I know has had a lot of success taking busting them apart, removing the "gym" finish, and re assembling them into tables or whatnot.
So I'm thinking about using the wood to make a bookshelf for them. I measured while I was there and the the bookshelf would be 30x12x40 or so.
Here are my questions:
1. I was thinking that, since this is going in a kids room, it might be cool to stain each board a different color, in a rainbow pattern perhaps. Is there any way to do this prior to a panel glue up? If not, what are the chances of successfully staining that rainbow on the already glued up boards? I've never tried anything like that.
2. Like most flooring, the boards are tongue and glue. given that the most important thing is to be able to say "this is reclaimed lumber" rather than achieve perfection, should I leave the t&g on there for easy assembly, or cut it off for tighter seams?
3. Am I an idiot for thinking about this? The rainbow aspect really seems neat to me, but I suppose I could just go for a standard panel glue up and stain if I'm tilting at windmills.