Deluxe Sewing Center

With the finishing completed all that remains is to scuff all the parts with 0000 steel wool and reassemble the cabinet.  As I do this, I'm looking it over carefully to make sure I haven't overlooked anything, and touching it up if I find anything.  Then we'll polish it up nice and toss a sheet over it to keep it clean while we build the crate.

Open for business or closed up snug, this is a very pretty piece of furniture.  I hope Paula enjoys it.

Now it's time to make a trip to Morristown and get the crating board we need to build the protective cocoon that will make sure it gets to Paula's home just as pretty as it was when it left here.

The first step in crating a piece is to wrap it in 3/4" Styrofoam.  The Styrofoam serves to cushion the piece against being jostled about as the semi-trailer it's riding in bounces down the road, and to keep it centered in it's crate.

The trick is to get the pieces of foam to stick together, yet get no adhesive from the duct tape on the piece I'm wrapping.  A piece like this that has wide over hangs on the sides requires multiple layers of foam to build out beyond those overhangs.  I put a band at the top, a band at the bottom and a full sheet over the top of the cabinet.  This will keep the cabinet from moving around in it's crate, and with the triple wall corrugated crate board, we use, puncture resistance is taken care of.

After wrapping the foam padded cabinet in crate board, I build a lumber frame around the crate board.  This allows the truck line to set other crates on top of this one if needed without crushing our carton and damaging it's contents.  This allows us to get a better rate on the shipping fees.

Once crated, this big bad boy weighed in at 212 pounds -- built of white oak.  Other woods would be somewhat lighter.

Most of the non-billable hours below were spent getting the supplies we used and building this crate.  These are non-billable because they're considered to be covered by the crating fee.

Now it's time to calculate the exact shipping fee and let Paula know how much we will need.

Project Home