Hey there…Happy New Year! Hope you had fun watching the ball drop, and by now are hopefully hangover free.

We started prepping one of our upstairs rooms so we can paint it tomorrow. We are turning it into an office for Linda (the wife unit). By doing that, we can move her computer upstairs, and make more room for games.
I spent a good part of yesterday and today working on Moon Patrol.

Here’s one side stripped of it’s Aliens sideart sticker and black paint:

The bottom of the cabinet had some pretty bad water damage:

I ended up having to put new wood along the bottom on 3 sides. Here it is as I was working on it…

Right side before:

Right side after patch:

You can’t see it in the pic above, but I nailed a cleat below this out of the same stock (1″ x 2″) so I would have something to nail this to (visible in the next pic).

The left side had water damage a bit higher up, so I had to use a 1″ x 3″.

Left side after cutting away the bad wood:

Because I had to cut more off of the left side, you’ll notice if you look carefully (click for larger pic) that the side of the cabinet is no longer attached to the bottom because the cut is higher than the bottom plywood. To add a little strength to this, I used dowels and some wood glue in this repair.

Left after patch:

There is a chunk missing from the new piece of wood on the left side of the above pic. It happened when I cut it, but doesn’t matter because it’s gonna be loaded up with Bondo anyway.

Front before:

Front after patch:

It was a little tricky cutting out the old wood for the front, because the sides stick out past it. I wanted something I could temporarily put over the front to sit the saw on top to make up the height, so the edges of the sides wouldn’t get in the way of the saw. I used the back door, as it is the exact same width, and made up the height perfectly. I then tacked a piece of 1 x 2 as a cutting guide through the door and the front of the cabinet, and cut almost all the way to the edge. I was able to cut the rest of the way using a utility knife and a chisel.

All 3 repairs, before Bondo:

The bottom of both sides are actually not perfectly square in the corners. The corners aren’t just rounded off. The whole bottom is slightly arched like a very crappy rocking chair. The cabinet before repairs actually did rock when the leg levers were off. Anyways…I held a piece of the side that I cutoff on top of each repair and drew the curve. I then hit it with the sander until I reached the line, and finished it with a sanding block. You can see it in the pic above for the front corners. I hadn’t done the back ones at that point.

Here’s one side completely sanded and slathered in Bondo.

I felt like I was decorating a cake with this stuff…. I wonder if Bondo comes in butter cream or double chocolate? (Oh God, I hope so!)