Hey guys, after bottling for the past few years and lurking around about 100 different keezer build threads I decided to take the plunge (and hopefully pass on some of the entertainment these threads can provide). First of all, I want to warn everyone that before this I have had about 2 hours of woodworking experience and have never layed tile, stained wood, or cut miters before in my life—things are going relatively well so far but be warned. I started off by grabbing a 3 keg kit from kegcowboy (great prices, but they did take a while to ship everything out—only my personal experience) and a 7 cu.ft. GE freezer from sam’s club because I couldn't find anything on CL right away. After a bit more looking around, I decided on a collar design since I didn’t feel like trying to cool a coffin, and thus it began.
My initial design was pretty simple…your basic freezer with a collar and a tiled top (as you may have guessed, this didn’t last). First I realized that I had a white freezer and (IMHO) it wouldn’t look great against the dark stain I was planning on using on the collar so I grabbed some black rust-oleum appliance spray paint and fixed that issue (it took me 2 cans to coat all 4 sides but not the top). My next revision came when I thought about how I didn’t really like the idea of being able to see the side of the freezer top and the white weather stripping between the tile top and the collar so I added *another* collar which will overlap the original one (pics make this much clearer).
You can see the color of the pine before and after staining here (the raw wood is the stuff with the weights on it)
This is the tile frame (which sits on top of the freezer lid) on top of the second collar which will cover the sides of the freezer lid and come down about 1" over the larger collar (the one with the taps).
Another view of the tile frame--the lighting makes it look really dark but it is the same color as the rest of the stained wood
"
And here is how my first tiling job turned out (not grouted yet)
I decided to use some select pine 1x6’s for the collar and EDIT:1x4’s: for the tile frame and the “upper” collar. I initially bought some minwax polyshades at good ol' home depot but was really disapointed in how it looked on the test board I did (streaky, uneven, etc). It wasn’t until I did a little research on staining that I learned pine can be a bit finicky when it comes to staining unevenly . Fortunately I have a nice woodworking store here in Memphis and one of the guys there was able to point me in the right (and simple) direction. I ended up with some General Finishes water based rosewood stain and polyacrylic top coat (I also tried the wood dye that they sell and was very happy with how much of the grain it preserved but they didn’t have it in the color I wanted and I was too lazy to start mixing dyes). Just fyi I used a foam brush to apply everything.
I was able to get the color you see in the previous pics with 1 generous coat of stain wiped off after 1 minute and followed by 3 coats of the polyacrylic.
I'm going to end this post before it gets stupid long and go pick up some correctly sized screws for the next step on Mr. Keezer.
(PS--never posted images before so let me know how I can improve size/layout/etc)
My initial design was pretty simple…your basic freezer with a collar and a tiled top (as you may have guessed, this didn’t last). First I realized that I had a white freezer and (IMHO) it wouldn’t look great against the dark stain I was planning on using on the collar so I grabbed some black rust-oleum appliance spray paint and fixed that issue (it took me 2 cans to coat all 4 sides but not the top). My next revision came when I thought about how I didn’t really like the idea of being able to see the side of the freezer top and the white weather stripping between the tile top and the collar so I added *another* collar which will overlap the original one (pics make this much clearer).
You can see the color of the pine before and after staining here (the raw wood is the stuff with the weights on it)
This is the tile frame (which sits on top of the freezer lid) on top of the second collar which will cover the sides of the freezer lid and come down about 1" over the larger collar (the one with the taps).
Another view of the tile frame--the lighting makes it look really dark but it is the same color as the rest of the stained wood
And here is how my first tiling job turned out (not grouted yet)
I decided to use some select pine 1x6’s for the collar and EDIT:1x4’s: for the tile frame and the “upper” collar. I initially bought some minwax polyshades at good ol' home depot but was really disapointed in how it looked on the test board I did (streaky, uneven, etc). It wasn’t until I did a little research on staining that I learned pine can be a bit finicky when it comes to staining unevenly . Fortunately I have a nice woodworking store here in Memphis and one of the guys there was able to point me in the right (and simple) direction. I ended up with some General Finishes water based rosewood stain and polyacrylic top coat (I also tried the wood dye that they sell and was very happy with how much of the grain it preserved but they didn’t have it in the color I wanted and I was too lazy to start mixing dyes). Just fyi I used a foam brush to apply everything.
I was able to get the color you see in the previous pics with 1 generous coat of stain wiped off after 1 minute and followed by 3 coats of the polyacrylic.
I'm going to end this post before it gets stupid long and go pick up some correctly sized screws for the next step on Mr. Keezer.
(PS--never posted images before so let me know how I can improve size/layout/etc)