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.