With two somewhat active children plus wifey and me, our front hall  
closet
had become a jumbled pile of shoes, so I became determined to whack  
together
a shoe organizer - just a simple 18" tall set of three shelves,  
essentially.

I had some old used 1x12 pine boards that had been painted white in a
previous life, and I decided they would suffice.  I was thinking much  
more
of functionality than beauty - the finished product, after all, would be
sitting on the floor in the back of a coat closet, covered with shoes.   
So I
didn't really care if it was a bit, shall we say, "rustic".

Anyhow, I used my Stanley #80 (cabinet scraper, Jeff) to scrape the  
paint
off, and as I did so, I noticed that it came out looking like the
"distressed" or "reclaimed barn wood" furniture you see in the stores -  
that
kind of weatherbeaten whitewash look, with grain and knots showing  
through.
So rather than completely stripping off the paint, as had been my  
original
intention, I just removed enough so that you could see the grain of the  
wood
and some knots, with some paint still adhering, for that "weatherbeaten"
look.

Simple dado and half-lap construction would suffice.  I used a  
[transmission
garbled] to size the boards.

I realized that I have a Stanley #71 (router plane, Jeff) that I bought  
many
years ago.  When I first got it, I had fooled around with it and  
couldn't
get decent results, since I really had no clue what I was doing, so it  
went
to the back of the cabinet.  I thought that perhaps now that I've got a
little bit of a better feel for using hand tools, and maybe half a clue  
what
I'm doing, maybe I'd try it again.

Honed the straight cutter as sharp as I could (which is to say sharp  
enough
to slice my flesh pretty well, but not quite sharp enough to get a  
really
nice cut in actual wood), and HEY!  This thing WORKS!  Made short work  
of
producing some lovely, very flat-bottomed dadoes.  I'll definitely be
reaching for that tool again when the need arises!

Also finally had an excuse to use my Lie-Nielsen #98 & #99 (right and  
left
side rabbet planes, Jeff) that I got for Christmas last year.  One dado  
was
a smidge too tight, and they did the job quite nicely, right out of the  
box.

I used cut nails and glue to hold the whole thing together; I figured  
the
cut nails would help to give it that "rustic" weatherbeaten/old
barn/reclaimed lumber look.

Once done and sitting on my bench, I concluded that it was the
second-ugliest thing I have ever made.

I just put it in the closet this morning, and it actually looks better  
in
there.  SWMBO is satisfied, so hey - good enough, I figure.  Plus the  
shoes
are much more organized, and the floor of the closet is reclaimed!

Question for anyone: when using the routah and/or side rabbets, how do  
y'all
go about preventing blowout on the far side of the dado?  I'm thinking  
that
if I had done a better job of scoring the sides first, or perhaps don't  
go
all the way out, turn the tool around and come at it from the other  
side? 

-----------------------------------------
Bill Taggart
-----------------------------------------

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