No power - Door install - Window restoration.

Before the Storm

The rains came and the creek filled and the power lines toppled. Well I'm not sure what exactly happened but the power was out for four days. I don't like to fire up a noisy generator and burn dirty fuel for electricity so my work came to a sudden halt. My wife had to continue her office work at CounterPunch so we fired up a small Honda 2000. A nice quiet generator that generates enough juice to keep an office running but not even enough for a skill saw. I had just finished removing glazing from an old sash so I continued cleaning it up and prepping it for building a new bottom rail.

Pinned Mortise and Tenon

Days later the power returned and I built a door jamb and stops. At this point I was able to install the door that was built to fit a tempered piece of glass measuring 28 x 74. The installation went fairly smooth. The jambs were beefy full dimension 2x fir that ended up six and a half inches wide. The door received four pair of hinges since it stands three inches shy of eight feet. The latch was drilled at forty two inches so that it looked proportional to a six-eight door. After the holidays a window jamb will be built and the wall will be shingled.

Installing the Door

While in the shop I also made that bottom rail for the community center kitchen window. The  stiles were modified to fit the wider rail, the profile trimmed and the mortise extended. The sash was then glued up and then the joints were pinned. Before the glass was installed the sash was sealed with shellac in the rabbet and on the inside face. The outside was primed. The glass went in after an inch or so was trimmed and the glazing putty went in quite well, especially since I had a recent opportunity to glaze another sash.

New bottom rail.

Today the sash was reinstalled and I also replaced a worn sash cord on one of the many double hung windows in the community center. The most useful gadget today was the tip of my plumb bob, a string was tied to it and this was pushed through the pulley into the jamb and the tip was enough weight to drop the string down to the access door for the window weights. The other end of the string I tied to the sash cord and pulled the cord through the jamb so that it could be tied to the weight.

Rain, doors and window restoration.

The rain is really coming down now, I am surprised we still have power. It blacked out for less than ten seconds not long ago which made me decide not to go back to the shop and glue up the door I just built. This type of weather limits my projects to shop projects only. That's a good thing unless there aren't any projects lined up ready to start.

Indoor paint stripping project.

On the drawing board are three doors waiting for wood. It is not easy to come by quality old growth redwood these days. Two doors are a pair of French doors with glass panels that will be removed from the existing doors that are being replaced. The third is an entry door similar to the Hawkins Bar entry doors with two wood panels and three lights.

Rough Doug Fir Door Joinery

In the shop I have been building a door with salvaged old growth Doug fir two by eights. (The smell of this wood has a cinnamon aroma, it reminds me of the island I built for the Arc with salvaged flooring and copper back in the late 90's.) Everything was going real smooth until I assembled it after fitting all the joinery and discovered the width was an inch and an eighth too narrow. Luckily I was building this door to fit salvaged panes of tempered glass and there were 34 inch wide and 28 inch wide pieces. I was building to fit a 34 inch wide piece which would put the door at about 44 inches wide. My patron decided to use the 28 inch wide glass instead so I only had to trim the rails and recut the tenons on one side. Now it is ready for glue up and the door will end up about 38 inches wide.

MVCC Windows

Another project on the To Do List is a window restoration for the Mattole Valley Community Center. There is a lot to do in order to bring these back to their potential but to start with I have been approved to start with the most urgent of the problems. Things like replacing sash cords that are about to break, broken glass, and reglazing sashes that are leaking the worst.

Wood stove restoration.

I had success installing a stove pipe in the Gothic farmhouse, the stove draws well and the roof doesn't leak. Moving the wood stove around turned out to be quite simple. Once the stove was on a piece of plywood galvanized pipes were placed under the plywood and the stove was easily rolled from the shop, into a truck and to the house. We moved a huge hutch using the same method.

Bed, Bridge Model and more.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and we will be hosting guests. That means the we are one bed short in the house so we have ordered a new mattress but not a bed to go with it... I am building the bed, no big deal right? Just a front and back panel connected by rails that disconnect when transporting the bed. Well it hasn't been that simple. What materials will I make it out of? What will it look like? How big is a queen mattress? Oh yes, and the house would be more comfortable with a heat source. Right now it is space heaters in the bedrooms and an electric warm floor in the bathroom. Sometimes I feel like this blog is a way to get my thoughts organized and my priorities straight.

Brainstorm with my wife.

I have piles of redwood fence posts that rotted at the ground level. They are too short now for posts but they still have good wood in them. I picked through a couple piles and pulled out six or seven to choose from. I  chose the five best and figured these could work as posts for the bed. I have a couple boards left over from building the windows and jambs for the yellow Gothic farmhouse and what do you know... there is just barely enough wood to give me two side rails about 80 inches long and four top and bottom rails about 60 inches long. Looks like I have the material. The panels within the posts and rails will be a padded and tufted fabric cushion.

Redwood Fence Posts

I have cut the pieces to length and even cut tenons on the front and back rails. I am a bit hesitant because I don't really have a final plan that I am building to, I am just letting the wood guide me. It should start to take shape soon.

Wood stove wire brushed and painted.

Meanwhile I wrapped up a few more projects and jumped into another with the high school geometry class. The shingle project is now complete and my clients shop is fully sided. We almost got fancy and did some shingle art, but you know, time is money and sometimes it is hard to create the time. Also the bulletin board for the MVCC is finished and installed.

Bulletin Board

A project that I am doing with the geometry class is creating a scaled model of a 50 foot suspension bridge. The class came by at looked at the site for a bridge and we talked about bridge ideas, construction methods and also a bit on the catenary curve. I have in turn visited the classroom a couple of times and together we have been constructing a miniature bridge. It was fun creating the parts and cutting small pieces of wood that represent footings, piers, posts, beams, joists and planks. At one inch equals one foot a four by four is equal to a five sixteenths by five sixteenths. An eight by eight is just under three quarters by three quarters. I made all the pieced fit together with tenons and mortises so that it could easily be broken down. We have one more session to finish the model.

Suspension Bridge Model 

Its a wrap, carousel, doors soon.

Autumn has definitely set in and the rains have ceased for the time being. The ground and all that grows above it are almost always wet and the night temperatures are dipping into the low forties and daytime highs in the mid sixties.

It feels good to be wrapping up projects and moving on to new ones. The window sash repair went smoothly and now are installed back to their home. These double hung windows have a severe flaw. Instead of weights and pulleys, the sashes are connected on one side to a cable that is connected to a spring mechanisms inside the jamb. The flaw is the connection of cable to sash. On all sashes the wood had rotted severely at this connection point on the bottom of the left stile.

Repaired Sashes

The lazy Susan turned out flat and parallel, the router sled jig worked great. My only complaint is that I did it on the floor on my knees because I didn't have a large enough flat surface at bench height. My knees and feet hurt after being in the same position for too long. One thing that helped with comfort was pushing the router shavings into a pile under my knees. It turns out that the big selling point (besides the amazing patterns of the maple burl) with this choice of wood was that this particular tree was the same tree the clients son sat and played under (and in) while waiting for the bus as a child. This will be a gift for the aforementioned child who is now in his forties.

Maple Burl

One of my clients brought back a wooden carousel for (I think) the third time for repairs. This two level carousel has a crank that one turns that spins two discs. The larger and lower disc contains wooden figures riding wooden horses. The top smaller disc contains three musicians sitting on stools playing instruments. This particular client has always pushed me beyond what I thought I was capable of. My first commissioned kitchen was for her and I have done many more projects for her home in Big Lagoon, a door is on the list.

Wooden Carousel

I have four doors to build now. They are actually two sets of French doors. One set is for the Cockburn estate to replace two funky old doors that are rotting away and falling apart. The other two are for the Yellow Gothic Farmhouse. These will be two feet by eight feet, unusual proportions, they should look unique. They will divide the kitchen from the music room. Speaking of which I need to get down there and shellac the floor.

Doors to replace and awning to build.

Floor, Rain, Windows, Lazy Susan and Leaks

What an anti-climatic project...the floor in the kitchen. Granted it hasn't even been swept since the last board was fit into its final resting place but still. I am the only witness to the floor as I type...okay since the heavy rain storms we have lately it is not as convenient to cross the creek because I removed the 2x12 board (with a step) because of rising water. There is still the Fallen Tree Crossing but when wet it is slippery and well, you might fall.

Torched Doug Fir Floor

That is why I live here, Nature Rules, we work around the elements, not against them. Such is my work, if it is raining you can bet I won't be standing out on a ladder with my tool belt on. Been there, done that. Sikes cabin shingling the outside, my first and only time I built a cabin from the ground up. More like below the ground and up because we started that project with shovels in our hands. Almost all the redwood in that cabin came from stumps that were left over in the 1950-60's logging that took place in the Humboldt Redwoods. A large percentage of lumber was eaten up during this time... ramble, ramble ramble.

Rising water

With the rain comes the indoor projects and they have been stacking up. The first rains are a good reminder that your wooden windows (with missing glazing putty) should probably be dealt or else the moisture will work its way into your home and destroy the window. Glazing putty is the protective barrier that keeps water from getting behind the glass. I have three sashes in the shop now that have putty problems and also structural issues - mainly two funky bottom rails. Damn those dowels, they always rot away and there is nothing left to hold the rails to the stiles. Mortise and Tenon joinery should be standard for wood window sashes.

Window sash without a bottom rail.

I agreed to make a lazy susan that will display different roasts of coffee. I offered a couple suggestions and it was decided that I use a maple burl that has been under my roof for over a decade and came from a majestic tree that once resided in what was known as the Ranch House. The previous house to the Rathbun family who opened their home to the hill abiding residents of the early back to the landers, acting as a message center and postal pick up. This is a 5 inch slab cut from one of the many burls this tree had. Today my sister and I removed the bark with the aid of a steamer and assorted nail pulling tools.

I have a few more projects like a current conditions and assessment of the Mattole Bell Tower. We were hoping to clear the water pump and filtration system out of the tower and into a separate shed so that the tower could be used as a local museum. A room that the school kids could visit and view historic photos of the Mattole valley and even have rotating historic artifacts. It could be opened to the public once a month and serve as an historic monument, not a barricaded pump shed. Well it needs some maintenance, I have found a few daunting leaks.

Leak in the Bell Tower

Rot, Floor, and Flattening Jig

Busy time of year is the autumn season, gardens are coming to a close, firewood should get under cover, and houses need maintenance. I was asked to build replacement doors to replace French doors  at the Cockburn estate and found several rotting areas of wood around windows. I spent a day replacing rotten sills and walked away with a couple sashes that need repair.

Rotten sill

I am very excited to be laying the floor in the kitchen of the house. We let the wood guide us in how to lay the (locally milled) rough sawn Doug Fir boards ranging in width from 4 to 14 inches. There was just enough wide boards to do the perimeter and then we divided the room into three sections determined by the tiles for the wood stove. Two of the three sections are again split in half and these areas are infilled with a log cabin pattern. Get it? The boards are perpendicular to each other pressing them together. This is a first for me but it seems like it would be a ancient way of laying a floor with rough lumber and keeping the joints tight.

Laying the floor in the kitchen.

The oak cabinets for the Arcata rental were installed. Oliver helped me out and we discovered the tenants were all music majors at HSU and they knew Oliver's violin teacher Cindy and showered her with compliments.

New upper cabinets.

The shingle project is close to being finished. We ran about two bundles short. The last section will have some sort of vine pattern flowing through it. I also finished siding the last wall with corrugated galvanized steel.

Cedar Shingles 

I have seen a few people recently (on Instagram) using a router to flatten slabs. I needed a slab to bolt an old apple peeler/core to. I built a quick jig with a sled that the router slides back and forth in as you push the sled along the length of the slab. I worked really well! I tried using a power planer and a belt sander first but the slab was severely twisted. This jig flattened both sides in no time.

Flattening Jig

Strip, shingle and oak cabinets.

apples the bears didn't get

My back feels much better,  I tried so many things to get it back to normal. One thing for sure is that I couldn't lie around for long,  I had to get out and walk around.   I laid on a heat pad,  I stretched, rolled on a firm roller, laid around on an inflated ball, bounced around on my toes, hung from things. It seamed like I was trying everything, I guess what it needed most was time and water...drinking more water is so important.  One day I took the loppers and cut scotch broom that was encroaching on a pair of wild apple trees next to a maple and some oaks. After that session it started to improve.

choosing paint colors

I finished stripping the paint from the ceiling in the music room, hallelujah! The only thing left to strip now is a couple of doors. Alex worked his mudding skills over the sheet rocked walls and Becky is hard at work sanding and priming. She has picked up a half dozen paint samples to try out.

ladder scaffolding

I started shingling a wall at a clients shop. I am using western red cedar #1's for the wall and placing them in a random pattern rather than straight courses. I love the look of shingles. For a square (100 square feet) they run about $250, a square is four bundles, this project is about two squares of shingles.

face frame and side panels

I am moving along with the oak upper cabinets. I had to order a 3/16 rabbeting bit because the plywood I got to match the existing cabinets is only that thick, (it is actually a hair under 3/16) so I got an 1/8 inch bit too. Face frames and side panels are glued up and have finish, door frames are made but need panels and carcasses need to be cut out of melamine.

Tweeked back, oak cabinets and more paint removal.

Flat on my back with a heat pad underneath feeling shocks of pain in my lower spinal area if I move wrong. It is a good time to write, a bad time to work. Of course this happens nearly every autumn. It seems like it is either my knee or my back that is giving me problems lately. As soon as my knee started feeling better from that skate session at the Eureka skatepark my back started acting up and I don't think scraping paint from the ceiling helped it any.

Smokey September Sunset

Before getting back to scraping paint I started building upper cabinets out of white oak. They are supposed to match existing cabinets in an Arcata rental house. I haven't used oak much, it seems very stable... and smells good too. The face frames are glued up and the side panels are made. Doors are next, they will have curved top and bottom rails so I will have to divise a jig for a flush cut router bit to get smooth curves in this hard wood.

Oak Mortise and Tenon

Whenever I came to a good stopping point on the cabinets I went down to the house to hang drywall, spread some mud and strip more paint. I have a new heat gun just like the last one and I am nearly finished with the ceiling in the music room. I probably would have finished today but I decided to take a break before I cripple myself, I feel pretty  close to it right now. I think I want to sport a cane for support and to be able to stand up straight. Or just lay here and listen to Pandora.

Just a bit more paint to remove.

Burning Wood and Stripping Paint

I was turned on to an excellent blog that takes you on a building crews adventure erecting the Newport Ranch Inn along Highway 1 near Fort Bragg, CA. I usually check it while eating breakfast. These guys are pros and skilled craftsmen, and the redwood they use is amazing. Makes me wonder why I work alone, these guys get a lot of work accomplished in a short amount of time.

I torched the Doug Fir from Dave with a propane torch... that was fun. It would be real easy to burn down a barn with one of those. I kept a hose nearby and burned it over dirt. I burnt three sides of the board and then wire brushed every single stick. It took some time but now it is over and ready to install.

Of course there are a few things to do before installation. We figured the hearth for the wood stove should go in before the wood floor and it seemed like we should finish all the dirty work before starting on the hearth. The dirty work I am referring to is removing the paint from the redwood bead board ceiling. That is almost as much fun as torching and wire brushing a huge stack of wood.

The heat gun finally gave up the ghost. It has removed almost all the paint necessary on our house, it only had about two more days to go. My focus instead went to finishing up the drywall. As you can see this wall doesn't have any and the opposite side of the room needs it too. We have decided to keep the ceiling bare instead of painting it which will save us some time, that means this room is nearing completion. The last room to finish is the kitchen. Unfortunately I am pulling away after Labor Day to make some money building upper cabinets for a house in Arcata. I also have cedar shingles to install for a client nearby. 

Rough Fir Flooring

We finally found wood to use for the floor in the kitchen of the Gothic Farmhouse. Wife and I searched the woodlot/homeless camp at Recycled Lumber in Arcata, nothing that would really work. Almquist had piles of flooring of all varieties of wood but not what we were looking for. Most boards were 3 inches or less in width. We wanted something that was rustic, having the saw marks from the mill would be preferred, wide plank would be even better. On the way home we stopped at Valley Lumber, I love the people that work there, they are all so friendly. We saw some rough milled Redwood 1x12 that looked interesting but it was already 3/4 of an inch and was full of knots and flat wide grain, definitely second or third growth logs. We talked to Troy and he suggested talking to Dave Short. Dave is the guy that milled the curly maple I am working with now and also the cypress I used in our bathroom.

Locally milled douglas fir

Sure enough Dave had what we had been looking for, full one inch Doug fir boards ranging in width from 4 inches to 14. Some boards have knots, some have patches of a blueish/black stain. That is okay, we are thinking of torching the wood with a propane torch, wire brushing it, then oiling it before it even gets into the house. That should make it look old and also help to preserve it for centuries to come, this is a Japanese technique for preserving wood.

Window sash glue up

In the shop I just glued up a couple sashes and now need to make stops. Old growth redwood is amazing wood! I am building a redwood deck for a shower for my sister's funky metal shower and hopefully I can jump back onto the kitchen soon. Although I forsee myself focusing on the flooring next so that it can go down before the cabinets. I promised to build the Arcata rental cabinets the first couple weeks of September so the last couple of August weeks are going to be busy pushing ahead on the house.

Redwood shingles and door repairs.

Last week I built a jamb for a small stained glass piece and then shingled the wall around it. The wall was a pain to shingle especially under the 2 foot roof over hang that was only 1 foot above the roof below. I had to squeeze into the tight space to mark the shingles to be cut then squeeze out of the space to cut the shingles and then squeeze back into the space to hammer them in place. I am glad to be done with that, although it was a pleasure to be installing redwood shingles again.

redwood frame for (ebay find) stained glass

Two of my clients doors were sagging and coming apart so I eased them apart more and slathered glue into the gaps and clamped them back together. One door needed a new latch, a door shoe, and stops. The other needed a threshold and one side of the jamb to be replaced.

A bit of metal flashing for the roof and some corner trim details and the building is starting to look more like a finished structure instead of a work in progress that hasn't changed in years.

new shingles and window

Now I am getting back into the shop to build a couple sashes and a window jamb. I have some beautiful old growth redwood boards to work with. They used to be a fence but now will serve as a window jamb. I also will be cutting into more of those amazing redwood 3x12's.

cabinet face frames

My kitchen project is sitting on the back burner for another week. Luckily the face frames don't take up too much shop space. I will be looking at some locally milled 1x4 fir today that hopefully will work for the kitchen floor. We might treat the wood by torching it, then wire brushing it, then oiling it before it is installed. I will do a test piece first to see if we like the result.

Clean Slate

The shop is cleaned out and many of my recent projects are complete. I started to pull slabs of maple out of the storage area in the barn and I am thrilled to gain empty space, I'm sure it won't last long. The maple will be used to build the kitchen for the Gothic Farmhouse. I have stopped calling it the Yellow House because there are at least three other yellow houses here in Petrolia and I know that two of them are also referred to as the "Yellow House."

One of my recent projects was stripping paint off of redwood beadboard that covers the ceiling of the Gothic Farmhouse. The kitchen space was once two rooms and in one of the rooms the paint on the ceiling was better than the other so I only had to strip half of the large room which now measures 14 feet by 30 feet, plus a bay window. Becky is painting the ceiling now and is nearly finished. Next to do is the floor, we are hoping to reuse the old flooring that was removed,  unfortunately there is not enough to cover the entire room so we are hoping to use 1x6 fence boards that are the same thickness and vertical grain.

Tools for removing paint.

Upcoming projects include more windows (jambs and sashes) for a shop, I will be using salvaged fence boards for the jambs and those chunky 3x12's for the sashes. One of the windows will be a stained glass unit that will be single hung with weights and pulleys and drop down into the wall framing.

Another project is building upper cabinets for an Arcata rental to match the existing cabinets. Whoever built these had fun with a simple carving under the sink and the shelf brackets that will be coming down.

Maple slabs to dissect.

Off to the shop to begin cutting cabinet parts out of two inch maple slabs that I had milled from our last home nearly ten years ago.

Curly Maple

The maple slabs turned out having a fiddle back, curly grain pattern.  It took two of the stickered stacks of 2 inch slabs to get all the parts. The curly grain tends to chip no matter which direction the wood is fed through the jointer or planer.

fiddle back maple

I switched out the blades in both tools and put a sharpened blade on the table saw too. My tools received a beating building sashes for a shop with salvaged redwood. Everything is sharp and the surfaces are waxed and working the wood is more of a pleasure now than a hindrance. I roughed out the parts using the dull knives and saw blade and it was noisy, the table saw left burn marks and the planer struggled to pull the wood through.

Maple slabs marked and ready to cut.

After roughing out the wood an (eighth of an inch over size) it was jointed again and planed then all the wood was sent through the thickness sander. This removed most of the chips that happened even with sharp knives.

Rough cut tenons.

The last few days have been spent cutting the tenons and then drilling the mortises. Now I am cleaning out the mortises and fitting the tenons. It won't be long now until all the face frames will have taken shape. At that point I hope to switch gears and make some money. Hopefully one of my upcoming projects will be ready to begin.

Fitting mortise and tenons.