The First Step for Chairs

I spent Sunday in my workshop…not alone for once. My friend came over to use my tools, she is making a set of wooden blocks in a box for her nephews first birthday.

My project was the chairs, I got my plans out and began cutting. All the cuts are straight or angles on the mitre saw, but the back rails were the tricky part. For strength I designed them as one piece with a straight section for the back then turned 150 degrees to form the back leg. To save money, I was planning to get 4 pieces out of a 2x8x8 board. This proved hard to do; the pieces would have to overlap and could not just be run through the table saw. My friend suggested we stand on either side of the table saw and slowly lower the board down, allowing us to cut in the centre without going in from an end. It worked great and I was able to rough cut all the pieces, and then do a more precise cut once all 4 were separated.

Unfortunately 2 people with saws and sander going for 6 hours creates a lot of dust. We both spent the day with our noses running and I ended up with sinus pain for the evening. The next morning I got a nosebleed. I’m finally convinced that we do need a dust collection machine as my husband has been saying for the past few months.

And now we know: having someone working in the shop with me is fun but takes coordination of how many things are plugged in/turned on on each electrical circuit. Also black wood makes the nastiest sanding dust and gets on everything.

Painting the Front Room

I painted the front living room before we moved into the house and it has never been quite right. The shade of blue and the curtains were just slightly off and it bothered me to no end.

For the past month I’ve had paint swatches up on the wall, I started with blues and went through the whole spectrum from grey-blues to turquoises. I could never find the perfect shade that would go with everything and still be something I loved. Finally I went for what a really wanted; purple!

Unfortunately my husband was no so happy with this new direction; he flat out vetoed the dark red-purples and was very unhappy I was painting at all. He loves blue, never mind that almost every room in our house is blue as it is the 1 colour he agrees to easily. Still I went ahead and chose a grey mid tone purple.

My mum came to help me paint for the day and a few hours later the room was transformed. I am very happy with the new colour, it seems less matchy-matchy and more interesting to me. Tom just grunted ‘my living room is purple’ when he saw it. This really should have been a project done while he was away for the weekend.

I also tackled another eyesore, the upstairs hallway. The patching and spot priming had been done for a while but I was not looking forward to painting all those hard to reach spots. Turns out that paint and primer stuff was sh#t. It took and entire can to do 1 coat and it is super streaky. For the second coat I am switching back to the cheaper, yet less craptastic stuff. Another $30 bites the dust. On the positive going from cream to white has made it much brighter. On the negative the trim now looks even worse.

And now we know: I don’t actually know what is the point of paint and primer in one if you still have to do 2 coats and you wouldn’t have primed anyways? Same amount of work more cost.

Visit to the Wood Store

Off to one of my favourite places; the wood store. Too bad its hours are terrible, but anyways. I got up early Saturday and headed out with a friend. I was looking for wood for the pair of chairs I want to build, maybe oak cause it is hard with lots of grain but is cheaper than other species like maple. My friend was looking for a variety of woods in small quantities to make a block set with.

This was a very lucky trip for me, I wanted to spend as little as possible and it ended up being about $150 for all the wood I needed. We both started in the leftover cuts section, where the pieces are not full length, mostly 24” to 48” sections of all sizes and species. There was not enough 2x2’s in white oak, so I went with red oak and got all the pieces I needed except for the 2x8x8 to cut the back rails from. This I got from their stock and it was almost half of the total cost. Not only did we save a ton of money with the small pieces, but we could close the truck on our way home.

I finished 4 of the 5 items on my to-do list before I bought the wood. Seems pretty good to me and the last thing, which was to fix the latch on the bedrooms door, is not urgent anyway.

And now we know: it takes some time and pre-planning to sort through the cut pieces to get what you need but the amount you save is amazing.

Blinds for the Kitchen

At night time and in the morning before the sun rises you feel really exposed in our kitchen. There’s nothing like standing at the counter making breakfast in your pjs with crazy hair when your neighbour comes out to empty his compost into the bin.

Roman shades are nice, so I decided to sew some. Unfortunately I dislike following a pattern, so quickly veered off on my own path with mixed results.

I didn’t want horizontal stitching to show on the front of the blind as it would have detracted from the graphic pattern. After watching a tutorial on youtube, I was amazed by the power of jewel glue and glued the wood battens to the fabric instead of sewing them. It worked well and no glue seeped through the fabric. The ribbon with little rings got attached to the lining and I turned the whole thing inside out.

Somewhere around this time the cat tried to help and broke one of the wooden battens glued to the blind. More glue to the rescue and you couldn’t even tell. Luckily I then tested them and realised that because only the front fabric and not the lining was attached to the batons, the lining ballooned out when the front folded nicely. It is hard to describe but basically it looked really bad. More of the magical glue to the rescue; I glued the baton to the lining as well and was good to go.

Now they are sitting in the dining room, waiting to be hung. Why are they waiting? Well to be installed they need strips of wood at the top which I still need to cut and paint white to match the trim.

And now we know: there are some really rad sewing videos from the eighties on youtube; mauve and floral wallpaper everywhere!

Insulating the Eaves and Attic

Not a project to look forward to, but we sure are glad its done! When we took out the old blown insulation in July, we intended to put new stuff back the next day. Three months later it was still as empty as the day we cleared it out.

When we reached October and the weather got colder, nights were not pleasant in out house. We were already using the comforter and fleece blanket on our bed. It was time to re-insulate so our first free weekend we got into our suits and got to work.

In the eaves we put R22 between the studs with a layer of vapour barrier on top. Tom hung out in the hall cutting and I hung out in the crawlspace installing and stapling. After laying down R40 on the floor, the eave was done. About an hour and a half of work but it made a huge difference to the temperature on the 2^nd level.

The week before we hired a contractor to fix the bathroom vent so it actually vented outside. While he was up in the attic, he noticed a lack of insulation in some areas. So while I was in my suit, I climbed up there and added a little more insulation to the floor. It was really dusty and poorly lit, giving the whole space a kind of ethereal vibe.

And now we know: hanging out in a 2 foot high attic space with poor lighting and insulation floating around is not something I want to do again. It probably will be done because I am cheap and Tom is claustrophobic, but I will not enjoy it. Installing insulation in the eaves on the other hand was a lot less work that anticipated and a lot more pleasant when it was not 30 degrees out.

Installing the Door Jamb

The lovely jamb I built the previous weekend was all set and ready to be installed. I gave it a light sand and got to work filling in that hole.

I added some shims to level it out and tried nailing it in place. Unfortunately the edges started to split. Screws would have left giant holes, so I used a ton of adhesive and glued it in place. This is a low traffic area and I did add a couple of screws in a hidden spot at the back, so hopefully it will stay in place. It still needs to be stained or a clear coat added so it blends in a bit more with the existing floors.

And now we know: was not too hard to install and really makes a difference to have the gap covered up.

Cutting a Door Jamb

One of the things on my to-do-in-the-future-sometime list was to fill in the gap in the floor under the new door we installed in the upstairs hall. It has been sitting in this state for a year and a half now and looks pretty bad.

The gap is about 4 inches and both sides have the same wood flooring, so my plan was to patch it with left over maple flooring from the backroom install. When I test fit a piece I realized that not only were the pieces different heights, but the wood below was uneven and the flooring edges were not straight. So I ruled out the floorboards. Then I thought a pre-made wood jamb would work, unfortunately they only come 3 ¼” wide so that was too small.

A custom jamb it is! I used leftover maple from the dining table project, patched 2 pieces together, cut them down, angled the edges and created a lip along the underside edges. The final project is a little wonky, but once it is sanded and installed, you will never know.

And now we know: patching floors in an old house is never easy