The Doors

We have been busy on a few fronts over the last few weeks. One of those fronts involved the doors downstairs - as untreated pine, they soaked up more than a few fingerprints over the last year or so since they were installed. They have been sanded fresh, re-primed, and painted. Also, door knobs have been installed on most of the doors. This door is looking into the downstairs bathroom, which has been repainted a reddish-brown. I forget the name of the color, but the name is the usual paint company hyperbole.
Karen sanded the french doors downstairs, and then primed and painted them with Mom. She found a good solution to the inevitable dust from sanding. Now there is a lot less mess to clean up afterwards. We like over-built and over-engineered, so a 3" shopvac hose on a 5" orbital sander? Sure, why not?!
This is one of the staging areas for the kitchen cabinet doors. These pieces are cut to length, width, and thickness, are sanded, and are stacked by size waiting for the router table.
This is the other end of the shop. Dad was cutting some quarter round trim, so the miter gauge on the tablesaw and the chopsaw are set up for that. The router table is set up to go, just pushed to the back of the bench for now.
Karen finished up the area under the stairs this week. We aren't quite sure what to do with this space yet. I'm sure something good will come to us.

Just a few pictures tonight. This one is old news, but was a little hard to see in the earlier picture. These are the stairs to the basement with most of the trim in place. The last piece is angled to fit flush with the ceiling - that was done with the jointer set at an angle.
This is the door for a cupboard in the mudroom half bath. I thought it would be good practice before I started on the cherry for the kitchen cupboards. This bathroom door is made from pine that was left over from the interior sheathing boards. In how many ways can one material be used? More than I ever thought! This entire door is made from 3/4" material - even the floating panel. The frame is 2" wide. The long sides are called stiles, and the short sides are the rails (rails being horizontal). The frame was cut using the router with a specialized rail and stile bit that allows the two pieces to mate properly at the corners. The interior panel is roughly 7" x 17", and is a full 3/4" thick, except for the edge, where it was trimmed down to 1/4" thick to fit into the groove in the rail and stile frame.
This is looking at the end of a stile, and is probably better at explaining how these work than any of my blathering. It's a fun process - cut the wood to length, rout the ends of the rails, switch bits, rout the side of the rails, rout the sides of the stiles, and assemble. It's good stuff.

The Face Frames Again

Karen and I were away in Utah for awhile since our last update, but we still have a few new pictures. All of the face frames are built, and all but one are installed. That last one will have to wait another week or so, just until we have the drawer slides in place.
Yes, we took pictures without cleaning up dinner first. :)
Karen is writing down shipping info for some stuff that Mindy sold on ebay, and Christopher is walking around taking pictures.
We also built a frame for the hearth. This is re-purposed flooring that has been ripped, jointed, and fed along the router table. Our friend Dave helped with the hearth bit, too. When we grout the seam between the wood and the slate, we will also finish the grout in the mudroom. Might as well get dirty just once, right?

The Face Frames

A lot has changed in the house during the past month or so. Andy and Mindy decided to move to Arizona, and the boys' old room has been re-purposed into a shop. As a shop, it isn't ideal, but it is better than working outside or in the dining room with all the dust.

This is the south wall of the boys' old room. The SW corner has been insulated and finished, and the wood that is stacked here is being dried for use as ceilings and trim work in a few places. This room was the first to have a new ceiling installed. Roger and Robb came over to help cut and screw the ceiling in place, and we had a good work day. The view changes slightly with the new surface, and for the better. Instead of having the light from the window and fixtures caught between the floor joists, the light now reflects off the ceiling and lights the room better. The two light fixtures and the smoke detector are flush mounted.
This is the original ceiling. Apparently I didn't take an after picture, but you can see the new ceiling in one of the photos below. We originally thought of painting the ceiling white, but sealing the natural wood like we have upstairs is also an option.
The new ceiling is visible here, along with a whole new mess. Trim will be installed where the ceiling meets the wall, and that 1/2" gap will disappear. The table saw, jointer, and Dad's planer are here now, along with a workbench and various other tools. Mom and Dad came out to the house for the weekend to help get started on the cherry for the kitchen. They make a good team, and though they look pretty serious in this shot, they had a good time helping plane and joint the boards for the face frames, doors, and drawers for the kitchen.
This is the joint of choice for the face frames. Pocket screws are awesome, and they have become a favorite solution of mine for joining boards around the house. The trick is to start with square stock, of course. If you do, the end result is a square, solid joint that is invisible once installed.
Add up a few more joints, and you have a face frame. While Karen and Mom sanded and poly'd the carcasses upstairs and Dad jointed rough cherry, Chris measured and cut the stock for the face frames. He spent a lot of time running up and down the stairs looking for his tape measure.
More face frames... the single frame on the dining floor was too large and awkward to take up the stairs, so it was assembled in the dining room. The pocket holes were drilled downstairs, and since there is no dust or mess made during the assembly portion, it worked out fine.
Dave came over to help a few times, too. He helped install the cabinets above the fridge, the solid sheet of ply on the east side of the fridge, and he drilled the pocket holes in all of the face frame stiles. The section below will have two large drawers on the left, and four graduated drawers on the right. We will build a rolling cart with a butcher block top for the middle section.
We did a lot of this - holding the face frames in place to see how they look. It reminded me of working on models as a kid, because the first thing I did was pull out the body and hold it above the wheels to see how it would look when I was done. The piece below wasn't quite done - it needs two rails installed where there are shelf divisions. The cherry ply on the end of the island has received one coat of oil/urethane mix. In the background of this picture you can see under the stairs - we put a ceiling here to finish off the area. Well, almost finish. It needs some quarter round to be really complete. The quarter round is downstairs, and we'll get to it later.
This was a very awkward piece to face. Nothing is quite as square as we'd like, so that makes everything that much harder to true up and finish properly. I guess that's the end result when you try to build a furniture-grade product with a circular saw and in semi-darkness. Lesson learned, and next time we'll do better.
Installing this face frame was a two-person job, at least until the first few pocket screws were in place. We screwed the face frames on from the inside of the cabinet, so there are no mounting points visible from the faces.
The installed face frame. The insides of the cabinets have two coats of polyurethane, and cleaned up nicely. We will continue to install the face frames until they are all up, and then comes the work of assembling the cabinet doors and drawers. The drawer slides and the door hinges will be next after that. Lots of fun work coming up!

The Thanksgiving Day Project

Three piles of leaves, all piled up pretty. There didn't seem to be any sense in raking the lawn more than once, so we just let it all fall before we started. These leaves are in a compost pile now. Most of them. Some of them I just raked into the woods. :)
Andy and Mindy and the boys are in Utah for Thanksgiving, but all of the other West siblings and their parents are in Chester. The project for the day was to fill the woodshed - and it's all done. It was a good job for the day - everybody helped, everybody who wanted to got to drive the tractor, and we have almost 2 cords of wood tucked away in our shed. We also extended the front of the shed by two feet for more protection from the elements. Bring on the snow!

The work crew, with the full woodshed behind us. It is a good feeling to have the winter's heat all set aside and prepared.

So... I don't know why Chris looks so ridiculous, but here was our table for Thanksgiving. We borrowed two long tables from some friends, added a sheet of melamine to the middle, and ended up with a table nearly 8' square. It left lots of room for a great centerpiece, and plenty of food to make the rounds as well. A lovely meal, and we certainly have a lot to be thankful for. I mean... for which to be thankful.

We will not be together for Christmas this year, so... in the spirit of family togetherness, we held a vote, put on some Christmas tunes, cut a tree, and we all opened one present from each other. It made for a wonderful day and a good memory. And we all promised not to feel bummed if our presents feel small this year on the real Christmas day.

The Woodshed

Why lift with your knees when you can lift with hydraulics? We are getting ready for winter here, so most of the progress this week was focused on either cleaning the house to prepare for holiday company, or cleaning up the yard to prepare for snow and cold. The woodshed was moved away from the house - to put it on a better foundation, to better expose it to light, and to simplify the area around the house.
This kindling pile will probably last us all winter. We split this from left overs and scraps of ship lap exterior boards and tongue and groove interior boards.
The woodshed in its final location. At least for a few years. It gets plenty of sunlight, but that's moot, really. By the time the wood gets to this shed, it will have already dried properly in the sun and wind for a year or two.

The Stone Walls

We have done some stone work outside recently - this wall is on the West side of the house, right outside the kitchen windows. It is about three feet from the house, and will become a planting bed of some kind.
Last spring we made a mental checklist of things that would make the next winter easier. A woodshed was at the top of the list. Digging under an ice and snow covered tarp for wood every weekend was not always pleasant, and the wood wasn't always as dry as it could have been. This shed will hold about a year's supply of wood; just under two cords. It is built from leftover 2x8s and sheathing boards from the house, and placed on top of a 4'x13' pallet that came with the roofing. When we move it into its final position, I will have a few more pictures.

This is another wall that has seen some progress. We scraped away a lot of soil to get to this point, and the grades will carry water away from the house. The far end of the wall will circle around a patio - possibly stone of some kind, possibly just a nice circle of lawn. The close end of the wall needs to have a drainage line plumbed under it before we finish the wall and the grading.

We were not the first people to use our piece of the planet. An old, debris-covered stone wall was uncovered this week up near the driveway entrance. I wonder who built it, and how long ago? We added a few rocks to this wall, and it adds a welcoming touch to the entrance.