DIY Entryway table

Hi everyone,
I finally got around to post some of the things I made to furnish my empty house. If it's not obvious by now, we moved into our new build house a while ago and since we have been living previously in a furnished rented apartment, we didn't have much to bring into the new house except for the cats ( I hope to present them to you all one day).

Our house has a narrow hallway at the entry through the front door and also a radiator on the wall.The problem was that every time you entered , holding keys, phone or everything else,you had to put them down on the floor in order to take of the shoes. So I thought of attempting to make my own entryway table that would have to be tall enough so it wouldn't interfere with the radiator so here is what I did.

After looking over the internet , I found some plans on ana-white.com that I adapted to my needs.

This is the image that inspired to make my own version. Full post can be found on Jaime's Costiglio blog inspired also after a Pottery barn table.
This is how my table end up looking .

Since the table is pretty narrow, I had to secure it to the wall with L brackets attached to the underside. As you can see I didn't make it so colorful as a child's play table .
And this is how it looks decorated. I must say that I had no idea I'll end up using the small paintings ( I had made them for one of the bathrooms ). Since we live in an open field, the flowers are meadow wild flowers.

The frame I had found on a flea market and painted it white and add a mirror to give the illusion of a larger hallway.
The green candle lantern is made by me by gluing some left over wood . I had seen a similar thing in a house decorating store here in Bucharest and after looking at the price tag, I decided it's best to make my own. So I end up buying from that place just the glass vase and the candle at a fraction of a cost since they were on sale.

After this build, I must decide what room to tackle next. I usually have a very limited budget and many times you;ll see me using scraps of wood or anything else I have at hand.See my next post about the entryway door mat.

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Yarn ball wider revisited - specifications-part 1

I have received requests to post specifications and some steps in making the Yarn Ball Winder ( see the first post about it here)

Now for those who will want to build a similar one here below is a picture with the dimensions of the one I have build .Measurements are in centimeters but I figured you can use the calculator to transform to imperial .

Since the photo is rather small, I took others to exemplify the other measurements. For example the photo below is a view from the side of the yarn ball winder so you can see better how everything is attached.

Let's start with the number of threads, washers and nuts that I have used.
First of all I must mention that since I had no idea of the width of the materials I had to pass though , I couldn't buy a threaded screw ( since they come in different lengths)so I opted to buy a threaded rod of 8 mm in diameter that I cut to size according to my needs.

For the big wheel I used 4 washers,3 type M8 locking nuts and the threaded rod is cut to 7 cm length ( M8 refers to the fact that they are used for an 8mm thread)

For the small "wheel" ( it's actually 2 wheels glued together) I used 5 washers ,4 type M8 locking nuts and the threaded rod is cut to 13 cm length.

For the spindle wheel I used 3 washers , 2 type M8 locking nuts and a threaded screw like in the picture below ( still 8 mm diameter).

I also used an L bracket 2 cm wide and 10 cm sides, 2 small wooden wheels of 4.5 cm in diameter and 1.5 cm thickness, 1 rubber door stop 2.5cm height that is a truncated cone shape as you can see from the photo below, the base is larger( 3.1 cm diameter) than the top part that is in contact with the spindle wheel ( 2.9 cm diameter)and 1 meter of rubber coated laundry rope ( if you can find a round rubber gasket of the size you need it will be better not to have the knot visible)

The pine board that I used to cut the large wheel and the spindle wheels are 1.8 cm thick and the base board on which everything is mounted is 2 cm thick.

Before you start anything you got to understand how this winder works. First the larger it is the big wheel, the ratio is increased meaning you have to turn it less and the spindle turn faster ( less movement from your part). The winder works like this : the large wheel and smaller wheels glued up they move together , being connected by the belt ( laundry rope) , while the door stop on top of the glued up small wheels has a a fixed position( he is jammed on the threaded rod between 2 lock nuts and washers ( please see pictures) so he will never move.

The L bracket is screwed on the the small wheels making it a part of the moving mechanism. The spindle wheel is free to rotate on the bracket ( the lock nuts are not very tight in order to allow it to rotate). As you can see from the image, the spindle wheel is in contact with the door nob that has a stationary position.

Because you spin the big wheel, which causes the smaller wheels with the bracket to spin faster , the spindle wheel being in contact with a fixed element, is forced to rotate around his own center ( the point to which is attached to the bracket).
On the next post I will describe some steps in creating your own and some suggestions for substituting elements.

If you think you didn't understand the working mechanism behind the winder, please let me know and I shall try to make a video to demonstrate what I have written above.

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