So that you know I am not dead...

...I will post to say a) I am alive, b) the house remains standing, and c) things are continually being done both inside and out. But I keep forgetting to take pictures, so a several-months-long list of things like:

• expanded garden beds, did some light landscaping
• hours upon hours of scintillating work scraping off old wallpaper to reveal even older wallpaper
• old stuff of finishing painting the eaves on the front of the house
• even older stuff about rerouting gutters
• minor flooring additions to the attic
• repair of a return pipe on the boiler
• storing of lumber and beautiful walnut branches in the basement 
• ... and no doubt much more.

I will take some pictures and write some tales, I promise. Just don't ask when.

It's so comfortable...

So at long last I followed through on my threat to use the rest of that pressure-treated lumber I'd salvaged years back...

... and make something both functional and aesthetically pleasing:

No, wait, that's not it.

There we go. Sorry Ryan, you won't weather as well sitting outside all winter.

Even after completing that picnic table several years ago I still had maybe a dozen 8-foot lengths of almost 1x6 (I'll explain the almost later) and a desire to create a sitting space other than my front porch. I've always liked the look and feel of Adirondack chairs (variants sometimes called Cape Cod-style, or Muskoka apparently) - the wide arms, the curved seat (not always a standard design element, FYI), the high backs, and the rustic quality, plus I used to go to Boy Scout camp in the Adirondack Mountains. So there we are.

Searching for chair plans online brought up literally dozens of options. I settled on this plan for its look - it really seemed the most comfortable of the designs I viewed - and its largely complete instructions set including three excellent options for creating the cut templates.

Depending on the wood you buy, 38 feet of 1x6, 8 feet of 1x4, and 68" of 2x6 could wind up costing $100+ easily. Because these chairs are meant to be used outdoors - and therefore may be painted - this is a great project to use reclaimed or even scrap lumber. It's even better if you have 'spare' pressure treated (or, heaven forbid, redwood or other traditional outdoor furniture woods) boards. $10 in fasteners and several hours of work later and you'll have a conversation piece from which to have very relaxed conversations.

This project got stopped and started several times due to other work, but I'd estimate it as doable by one person in four hours (not counting sanding) IF you have all the tools and space so you don't get in your own way.

Tools:

• Mitre saw
• Table saw (at minimum, the seat slats need to be ripped)
• Jigsaw
• Drill with paddle bit and predrill bit
• Circ saw
• Workbench with adjustable opening in top. (If your table saw can cut a shallow enough angle for the back slats and arms, you won't need this or the circ saw)

Everything except the arms cut to length. I chose to rip the 1x4s out of the 1x6s instead of buying or finding 1x4 pressure treated.

I opted for combining the grid plan and measurements templating options from the site. Pro-tip on making templates for symmetrical cuts (like the back supports) - you only need to draw out half of the template; just flip it over on the board to trace the other half. You also only need to template the top of the back slats. The long angle can be marked with measurements and a straightedge on the board itself.

You can also 'nest' some of the templates since cuts are only made on one edge of the wood. Saves time and paper, but does require a bit of spatial reasoning. Above, the upper and lower back supports.

Not much else to report - the online plans (and handy pictures) were easy to follow and made a lot of sense. Two adjustments, and then another pro tip. First, I skipped the part in the instructions where they suggested temporarily attaching the sides to the leg/arm unit and using temporary spacers to keep the right width. I just maneuvered everything into place, clamped, and attached the bolts directly, several steps early. It's possible I lucked out and got everything pretty square by accident. If anyone sees a good reason to do things the way the instructions say, I'm all ears.

That should be my mantra.

Second adjustment - I was sloppy in measuring the salvaged wood. The boards are actually 1 1/4x6s - so one inch thick instead of 3/4" thick. This had virtually no impact on the construction, save for the rear spacer which had to be cut down a half inch (1/4" on either side) to fit. As always, measure twice, cut once, then remeasure, realize your mistake, and cut again.

No, I was wrong. That's my mantra.

Quickly now - pro-tips all around:

1) Narrow scrap wood should be a mainstay of every shop - easiest way I know to guide a circ saw along a long angled cut, like for the back slats.

2) Invest in a good saw blade for said circ saw. If you're cutting pressure treated wood or heavy hardwoods, get a new blade, period. My old blade was bucking and binding when trying to cut the arms especially. $11 at the hardware store later and the cut took less than three seconds.

3) Finally, if you're using reclaimed wood, take advantage of the ravages of time. Knots, gouges, nicks - don't sand them all away. And with weathered pressure-treated wood, experiment with not sanding down too far to allow for multiple colors and graining to emerge. The arms (which I have no idea where that wood came from, just that I had almost the perfect lengths sitting on my shelf) have three or four colors, like desert wood, from yellows to grays (of course) to even a bit of reddish purple. And the sides (second shot below) are tiger-striped because of how deep the worn ridges in those boards were. Great accents to the piece, I think.

Now to build a deck, and I'm all set...

How to keep yourself sane at night

When you've replaced a smoke detector and stuck the old one somewhere with vague intentions of recycling or properly disposing of it or whatever, take that extra moment to remove the battery. This way you will avoid spending your 2am hour going up and down stepladders replacing perfectly fine batteries in all of your other smoke detectors.

The more you know...

More things that can be built with 2x4s

A ramp for the shed which *should* be capable of supporting the industrial drill press that's currently in there.

Quick (stackable) sawhorses using these plans, currently minus the plywood caps.

Updates (and pictures) to follow.

Quick updates

I won't get in the habit of posting about the house if I don't get in the habit of posting about the house.

QED.

Recent work, as opposed to rearranging stuff to make room for the NY stuff, includes:

• painting the porch eaves
• painting the sides of the house to at least the top of the second story windows
• various sealing and puttying on eaves and trim
• installation of some new shelves in the laundry room

One thing led to another...

I built a dolly:

I did this because I need to clear and rearrange space in the living room, workroom, and attic to receive a bunch of (mostly) books from back east that have been sitting in a storage locker for several months longer than my father would like. This sudden flurry of boxing and moving boxes and furniture contemplation led to the following:

1. Box up books in one corner of living room. Consider placing them temporarily where the desk is currently located.
2. Realize the bookshelves that are also coming from NY would fit well where the desk is, and decide to place something else in that space, something that will be gone before the shelves arrive.
3. Decide to take all the stuff I agreed to store for someone for the month of August and put it in the place where the desk resides currently. Plan to move other things to the foyer where the stored stuff is currently.
4. Realize all this is contingent on moving the desk.
5. Remove everything from the corner where the desk will go.
6. Empty desk drawers, clean top, finally unplug and put away various electronic devices atop the desk that are no longer being used.
7. Find that desk is too heavy to move by myself.
8. Mutter 'I could do this if I had a dolly.'
9. Decide to build a dolly.
10. Get sidetracked for an hour sorting all the lumber I rescued from the theater festival strike by size, even though I only need four pieces of wood.
11. Finally begin this fifteen minute construction project:

You'll need:

• 2x4s (I went with 2@18" and 2@25")
• four casters
• carpet padding or scrap carpet
• staple gun and staples
• 2.5" screws
• power drill and bit set

Cut your wood and lay it out, ensuring everything squares up. Fasten with at least two screws per intersection; predrilling recommended. Remember to keep the screws to the outer edges of the intersection to make sure you can place the caster in the center.

Cut the carpet padding to size (a little hanging over all edges is best - the point is to protect anything you're dollying) and staple directly to the top surface of the 2x4s. If you're using carpet, you will need heavier staples or possibly tacks.

Drill a hole dead center of each intersection. The casters I had are threaded, so I chose a bit a little narrower than their dimension, inserted a caster, hand screwed it one or two turns so it was firmly in the hole, then used an adjustable wrench to tighten them down. (These casters, conveniently, had an octagonal plate between the wheel and the stem.)

12. Use new dolly to move desk fifteen feet. Call it a day and plan to deal with the rest of the living room tomorrow.

Believe it or not...

I've done a bunch of housework since February, I just don't have internet at the house so I often forget to post anything. Besides, you like pictures with your stories, I know you do.

More of the exterior is painted, the garden beds have been expanded a little, the raspberry bushes are coming in all over, and more light fixtures have been upgraded. But all of that is but words. Pictures, and more frequent updates, hopefully soon.

Tea shelves

Today on Well That Was... An Idea... a good idea to turn scrap wood into a useful kitchen organizer.

We'll be back after these commercials.

(That's your clue to click on all the banner ads on this site and make me millions.)

So I had a cabinet full of boxes and bags of tea. I also had a small gap between a door and a cabinet, and plenty of scrap wood just waiting to be project-ed.

Top: Scrap wood. Bottom: Scrap wood, lovingly sanded.

Ten minutes with a random-orbit sander can take weathered wood and turn it into a paintable, or in this case stainable, surface that retains the scars and irregularities of the scrap.

I should do a full post about making black walnut stain (the gist is pretty straightforward - throw husks into water, boil for a while) but meanwhile, here's what one and then two coats on these pine boards looks like:

Installing was straightforward: sink a couple of 2" drywall screw from the other side of the cabinet into the board:

Voila. Now I can find things.

Worth noting: the straightforward install was not the original method. That method did not work as intended. Learn from my mistakes and do it right the first time.

The plan was to drill holes into both the back edge of each board and the face of the cabinet and use wooden pegs to connect the two. There are two main areas where this can go less than great. The first is lining up all the holes correctly. A drill press can simplify drilling the holes into the boards (it's not necessary - see my trick below), but you'll be going freehand into the cabinet. 

The second problem is you'll want a peg that goes all the way through the cabinet wall and sinks into the board; much easier to achieve this with a screw or nail.

There's actually a third difficulty if you're going into artificial surfaces (like the heavy particleboard of these cabinets) - it'll be almost impossible to drill a hole of the exact right size so the peg can be tapped in yet won't slide out over time. Natural woods will be slightly more forgiving. Regardless of your woods, skip this approach and just use the screws.

I need this like I need another hole in my random metal rectangle

UPDATE: Figured it out - these are rail tie plates for railroads. They'd be attached to the tie and the rails would lay on top of them. I put two and three together when I found another one attached to a decaying tie used for a landscape boundary in the backyard. Why these were buried next to the house, I can't say for sure - they quite possibly were forgotten during some renovation project.

I haven't Googled that thoroughly, but anyone know what these things are? Heavy old metal, possibly iron, about ten inches long (each; there are two in these pictures, next to each other). These were uncovered while digging an inch below the grass, but I've found one of these lying around in my basement as well.

Oh look, there's a closet in here...

An upcoming trend on this blog (should I manage to get back into anything resembling a habit of posting regularly) will be the Virtues and Varieties of Shelving and Storage. I'm not a believer in having tons of stuff - if I ever rent a storage unit, please slap me. I am, though, a believer in having the stuff you do have simultaneously accessible and out of the way. Shelves, appropriately sized and positioned, are a great way to do just that. Duh. 

This is why I don't write for the IKEA catalog. Anymore. Curse you, Lars...

Lets skip to the end for a moment. Here's what I built:

The closet in my foyer is a small triangle, the result of doorways being re-positioned in the 50's or earlier. Its size and shape make it so even a few items on the floor rapidly became a messy pile. It also presented an interesting planning challenge, namely figuring out the angle of the triangle's apex so the shelf could fit as cleanly as possible into the back. 

There's probably a more technically-adept way of pursuing this, perhaps with calipers, or a degree in mathematics, but all my geometric scratchings just resulted in a worn pencil, so I went back to trial and error. I set the miter saw to what seemed like a good angle and made two cuts:

Then I trooped back and forth between the foyer and the workshop just fitting this one piece of wood into the back corner, and altering the angles needed until it fit 'squarely'. I think I hit an acceptable fit on the third try - for many reasons, this is not an instance where extra time spent getting it justsoperfect gets you much of an improvement in end-quality.

With the angle noted, it was an easy job to knock out several more cuts using a tape measure and a combination square.

Same thing for the second grouping of boards, just without switching the miter back and forth:

This project was done mostly with two-by scrap for durability (how careful are you with the things you toss into the front hall closet?), because I had it around, and it's easy to work with and forgiving (assuming you have an accurate enough saw). The rail is an easy cut since we already know the angle; I added a piece of scrap one-by to hold the stack together more cleanly.

The two-by rail could screw directly into the wall (if I knew where the studs were), but I went with a couple of simple legs made of two-by, and a 'fancier' leg cut from an old broomstick. Using a paddle bit, I set the leg about a half-inch into the shelf...

Then screwed in cleanly from the top:

Looks pretty, eh? This is why it's nice to have piles of miscellaneous (sorted) fasteners, so you can find the right size and finish for the job.

Now I only planned on three legs - two two-bys on the long edge, and what turned out to be the broomstick - to maximize access under the shelf. I debated about the placement of the broomstick leg, ultimately deciding on the 'front' placement because I expected any unbalanced loads to be towards the front. Maybe this will prove completely wrong; if so, expect a lengthy report on the matter. In all likelihood, it won't matter a lick - with the partial triangle shape, this is a stable design even though the leg isn't placed at the center (if it was placed further 'out', tipping would be quite possible).

 

Next week: more projects that take longer to post than to complete.