New Decor: 5$ Coasters and Free Candlesticks

Although it might not be the most "manly" thing to do, decorating my new apartment has been a lot of fun. I've been trying to spend as little money as possible while creating a style that I like.  Making my own furniture allowed me to customize the look of my living room, but that's another post for another day. This will be the first in a series of posts about decorating my new apartment.

First up, candlesticks!  I saw a designer version of these  on pinterest sold by some store [perhaps pier1]. I instantly fell in love and had to make them. When I was home the other week, I raided my dad's stockpile of firewood and found a freshly cut pear log that would be perfect for this project. The log I started with was roughly 40 inches long and maybe 4 inches in diameter.  The first thing I did was to cut it into  three segments.  I actually did some math to figure out how to equally divide them. I calculated what one-sixth of my log was; then I used 3 sixths for the long piece, 2 sixths for the middle one, and 1 sixth for the small one.  Other than my scroll saw, I don't have a power saw up here, so I cut these by hand. I started cutting in a miter box and then used my trusty Fat Max hand saw to finish it off.


The next step proved to be much harder than I expected. I just wanted to drill a cylinder shaped hole into the top of the logs to hold the little tea-light candles. The internet suggested to me that if I wanted to have a flat bottomed hole, I should use a Forstner bit instead of the spade bit I would have normally used.

Forstner bit.

Spade bit.

As you can see in these pictures, the forstner bit has a round blade and a razor edge along the bottom. The idea is that it cuts a hole out that has a flat bottom and a very small dent in the middle. The spade bit on the other hand has two horizontal blades and a sharp spike in the middle. This will cut a roughly cylindrical hole with a cone shaped dent in the bottom. Before this project I was really sure that I wanted as flat of a bottom in the hole as I could have, but now I've noticed that if there was a dent in the wood, it wouldn't matter at all.

In retrospect I would have just used a spade bit, because there turned out to be a lot of draw backs with the forstner bit. For starters, I really needed a drill press instead of a cordless drill, so that I could have drilled a straight hole. Second, the forstner bit makes a lot more contact with the wood at a time, so it goes a lot slower and gets a lot hotter. Third, the forstner bit has a round shaft which means my drill slipped on it a lot. At the end of the day,  I'd say if you can tolerate a bigger hole in the bottom of the cylinder you drilled, use a spade bit.

Anyway, back to the candlesticks- I used a forstner bit and it took me about 4 hours to drill the three holes. I'm happy with how it turned out but it was very very very frustrating trying to use the hand drill with the forstner bit.

But the final result turned out well [and manly!] with some apple spice candles.

These are yet another thing I saw on pinterest. In fact, these my have even had a blog attached with them, but I just saw the picture and had a pretty good idea how to make them.  I bought a roll of sisal rope at Lowe's and got some cork circles at Hobby Lobby.  The secret to these: hot glue. I probably went through 2-3 glue sticks per coaster. I started at the outside and then coiled the rope in a couple inches at a time, gluing it to the cork and any rope that was already there. I cut the rope right at the middle and stuffed it in. 

Here's a final picture tying it all together.

Well thats all for now, until next time, have fun!