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(horn blowing)
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- Welcome to Mother Daughter Projects.
I'm Steph. - I'm Vicki.
- And today we're making my childhood dream come true.
- I didn't even know she had a childhood dream.
- Well, mom fail.
I'm a '90s kid and I remember when I
first saw the movie Casper,
that made me realize
that the coolest thing to have in a bedroom,
a kid's bedroom, would be a train track around the room.
I don't know why, but that made Casper so happy,
so it was something I always wanted,
but I never got it.
And when I moved into this house, this room,
which I thought would be perfect for my Lego collection,
had really tall ceilings.
I remember thinking one day, I'm gonna make that track.
- [Vicki] And here it is.
- So obviously nothing practical about it,
but it's super fun and it makes me happy,
so that's why we put it together.
- Well, you know there is some practicality to it.
If someone were to buy this house and you left it up there,
you could actually use it as decorative,
stuff for decorations, baskets and things-
- Oh that's true.
- Or some bookshelves for books
you don't really need to access very often.
So there was a practical purpose.
- So it is practical.
So today we're going to make a practical shelf-
- Hm, practical? - For books
or maybe a Lego train to go all around the ceiling.
So let's get started.
The first step was to cut the four corners.
We're using a one by 12 four foot board.
We cut this into four 11 and 1/4 inch squares.
With our miter saw, I was able to make the cuts.
Next was to cut a curve out of the corner.
I placed the two sideboards and curved Lego track in place
and realize I can use the curve of the track
to mark the cut needed.
Then I use a jigsaw to make the cut.
The key to a good cut with a jigsaw
is a new jigsaw blade and adjustable speed.
Then I use the first one as a template
to make the other three corners.
Although we cut four, we only ended up needing three.
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I placed this 17 inches from the ceiling.
And this is solely based on
the height of the tallest Lego set
so it doesn't get in the way of the train track.
Next, I found the studs in the back wall
and mark them with sticky notes.
Then I added another corner bracket,
again going into studs.
And then I added a one by six 10 foot board
on top of each of the corners.
Then I leveled up the board and drilled pilot holes
and screwed in the first bracket.
We added three brackets on each wall,
placing them into studs.
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To figure out how much we needed
to trim off the 10 foot board,
we put the corners into place
and marked where the 10 foot board needed be cut.
Then we trimmed that in the garage.
To attach the sideboards to the corners,
we're gonna use pocket holes.
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Here I'm using our Kreg jig on the end of the 10 foot board
to make two pocket holes.
Then these will be attached in a later step.
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We just continued this process for all the walls.
This concept is very straightforward,
but because this is high up
and I refuse to move my Lego sets on the walls,
it was a little bit of a challenge.
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This room has a bump out window.
This presents a little bit more of a challenge,
but this is how we were able to
work around this architectural feature.
We bought a half inch piece of plywood from the store
and had it cut to the top rounded window dimensions.
We have a scrap piece of three-fourths inch plywood
that we cut to the width of the window
and the depth of the bump out.
We wanted a thick piece of plywood for the shelf,
as we're not gonna be able to secure it in the middle
and anything thinner would've probably bowed.
We cut all this out on our Makita track saw.
Then mom primed all the pieces that we had cut so far.
She's using KILZ primer
and we'll follow that up with the wall color.
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The wood over the window
is going to extend beyond the shelf.
Here I'm marking where the shelf will be on the wood
as we'll be painting the top section blue like the sky
and the bottom green to just blend in with the room.
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We pop the piece of wood in place
and screwed it into the wall on a stud.
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Then I drill pilot holes for the bracket here,
then drilled it into place.
With the brackets in place,
we placed the shelf on top and glued it to the back plywood.
We put that plastic up in case the glue dripped.
Off-camera, I screwed the top of the brackets
to the bottom of the shelf.
On the sidewall the intersects with the shelf,
you can see we didn't use a corner bracket
as this fits nicely on top of the shelf bracket.
The fun thing at this point was my niblings were in town
and my oldest nephew, who is 10,
was very helpful at passing me supplies.
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I also took the opportunity to explain the difference
in a drill driver and impact driver to the niblings.
This is called a drill driver.
So it's made to drill holes and drive screws.
This is called an impact driver
and this is designed to just drive a screw.
So this does both things,
but it doesn't drive the screw as well as this one does.
And what this one does, it has extra torque.
That noise you hear, that er, er, er,
to help really push that screw into the wall,
drive it into the wall.
So that's why we're using both,
but we wouldn't use this one to drill a hole
because it would not be precise with that hole
because with that torque, it would kind of move around.
- See, I'm a good cameraman. - Good.
- Next we added vinyl clouds
that I cut out with our Cricut Maker.
If you look closely, I tried to make them look like
they were made out of Lego bricks.
And finally, it was time to
start securing everything into place.
We started with the back wall and we just used a clamp
to secure the two pieces together
and added two screws into the pocket holes.
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I also put three screws to the top of the corner brackets.
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The brackets are doing most of the support here,
so the screws are not getting a lot of weight on them,
which is why we didn't also use wood glue.
We screwed the top of the brackets
to the underside of the shelves.
And as we were doing this,
I also started to add some of the Lego track.
I was able to buy all the extra track I needed on Amazon.
Time to test it out.
I added my Disney train and made sure it went
all the way around without any obstacles.
Around this weird corner, I use flexible Lego track.
Once I adjusted the tracks so that the train moved freely,
I use tiny screws to secure the train track to the wood.
You can see this fits perfectly flat.
I didn't attach them at every single location,
but enough so the track would be secure.
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And lastly, I added some LED light
to add a little bit more drama.
- Oh, that's cool.
Oh wow.
Oh, that looks good.
- [Steph] And to cover up the long cord on the wall,
we built a simple wood cover
and use L brackets to attach it to the wall.
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We added one more shelf to display a few more trains
and got to give the bottom part of the plywood
a little bit more purpose.
- [Both] What we learned.
- Way before Steph started this project,
she wanted to change out the fan, which she did,
and she changed it to one of these enclosed fans.
And she thought that would be a better fit in here,
especially with the lights that go around.
It gives you more even light.
And then we didn't have to deal with those exposed blades.
- So this Lego track around here, or train track,
is gonna be ever evolving.
So when my niblings were here,
they also had some really good ideas.
They want to actually hang some Lego sets from the ceiling.
Some like planes and things like that.
And some Harry Potter that are on broomsticks.
And I also thought maybe it'd be cool
to make flat Lego buildings and put them around the tracks.
So it'll be ever evolving.
Who knows what we'll look like in a year.
- One of the things we were really concerned about
was how was that window gonna look from the outside?
And it looks absolutely perfect.
You would never know walking by this house
that there was something on the backside of that window
and painting it the house color
was the perfect thing to do with that.
- Now speaking of the window,
we did put that piece of wood up with the shelf on it.
And originally we put the shelf on in the garage,
we had glued it in place.
But then when we try to put it, kind of maneuver it up,
it was heavy and it was just too hard to get up.
And we ended up making a hole in the wall.
It was a whole thing.
So we pulled the shelf off.
We put the half inch plywood up
and then we attached a shelf.
But because we had to do it that way, there is some gaping
and that means that our shelf is a little bit wider
than it was supposed to be, so it sticks out from the wall.
So we had to ultimately change the design of how
the wood worked up there,
but the way we ended up doing, I actually like even better.
So it worked out even better than we had planned.
- It was a good little detour, wasn't it?
- Exactly, it was a good detour.
- Another one of the things we're gonna do
is take down the blackout curtains
and we're gonna replace it with a pull down shade.
And we decided to do that so there wouldn't be any strings
so dogs won't get entangled
because they do like to look out that window.
So that is coming in, we don't know when, but it's coming.
- Yeah.
It's in the mail probably.
- It's on order.
- It's been ordered.
And lastly, you might be wondering what is behind us.
One of the things about this train is
I have to push a button on it to turn it on.
And so I knew this about it and that meant that I was
gonna have to have some kind of ladder in here always,
but I decided, I was like Mommy,
let me make a library ladder.
Also known as a rolling ladder.
So basically this ladder can roll side to side,
meaning I can get up and access the train
and I can move it out of the way
so I can open the closet still.
I can get to the doors.
So it's actually is perfect in this room
and we are gonna be sharing how to do that
in a upcoming video.
It actually was way more straightforward than I expected.
And also another 90's movie, Beauty and the Beast.
In that movie, Belle has a library ladder
'cause she loves books.
And so two of my childhood dreams that,
I didn't know I had that dream,
but I actually always have been wanting
to do a library ladder.
And so now I had an excuse,
but it's of course not for a library.
It is for my Lego train.
So thanks for joining us.
If you want to see more projects from us,
be sure to visit us at motherdaughterprojects-
- [Both] .com.
- And hit the bell notification here
when you hit the subscribe button
so you can get notified of all our new projects.
So thanks for joining us.
Bye - Bye.
Woo woo.
(laughs)
- You was just waiting the whole time for that, weren't you?
- I was, I was.
I wonder if I just upset the dogs.
- Nothing.
They're fine. _ Oh she didn't react.
- They're at our feet. - Bye.