Day 1432: Back in the saddle

In 1432 Columbus sailed the ocean blue...wait, that's not quite right. Our long absence seems to have dulled our knowledge of history.

We haven't been too active around the old homestead, in part because we've done most of the projects we wanted to do. But...there's always something.

We took advantage of the last mild days of the year to do an outside job that we've been thinking about for probably a year. As the name of this blog suggests, our house is from 1957, which means the bricks around the foundation are from that year. And frankly, they were looking a little tired. Here are a variety of angles on the left side of the house to show you what we mean:

The last one shows a mystery splotch of white that we've never been able to figure out or been able to clean off. So we've wanted to paint the brick to match the yellow of the siding. We had some paint from when we redid the garage door and some masonry primer from the front steps, but needed a bit more for this job. Here are the same areas with the primer. It's already looking much better. 

And here's the final result with two coats of paint. It's about 1000% better in our opinion. Gives the whole house a fresh and clean look. 

To ensure that our hard-won woodworking skills hadn't atrophied, we delighted when a friend asked for a small favor.

He had some cabinet doors that he wanted to convert to rounded edges. Perfect job for a router. The only uncertainty was whether the door material--MDF--would hold together under the cutting/shaping. It's harder than some other manufactured woods but has a feel like really sturdy cardboard, so we bought a test panel from HD to see how it would hold up and to practice.

The first step was to measure the distance between the center of the bit and the outer rim of the router so that we'd know where to place the guide clamp. This way we can slide the router along the clamp knowing that we're making a smooth, even cut.

Then we had to pick out the bit to give us the right angle/design. This was pretty easy because our friend wanted a curved edge.

Next we had to know how deep to set the router bit. Set low and you get a lip, kinda decorative but not what was requested:

 
Set too high and it doesn't round down the whole edge:

Like Goldilocks, the third time was just right:

With all this prelim work done, we could turn to the actual cabinet doors. Our friend helpfully identified which edges he wanted to be rounded. It's the tops, bottoms, and outer edges, leaving the squared off edges to meet in the middle (the little holes toward the bottom are for the knobs).

As with the practice piece we set the guide clamp on the door at the right distance:

Six edges later and here's how it turned out. Not a bad afternoon's work.

Day 1362: Back in action

So many projects and so many updates since our last post. Where to start? How about going from the outside-in?

In recent weeks we had noticed a distinct crack in our front steps. It might have been the weather or more likely some settling. Regardless, the two steps had separated from the main part of the platform and the walkway. Below are a couple shots of the upper crack/crevice.

This obviously wouldn't do. With the crack nearly an inch in a few places, we knew we needed to fill it with something first before adding a concrete patch. We had bought this foam backer years ago and find that it works really well because you can squish it into about any shape and size.

With this in place we used a concrete patch. It worked great, but you can see that it didn't look very nice. All two-toned and clearly a patch job. We knew we'd have to apply a skim coat of cement over the whole staircase and took advantage to take down the handrail that we put up in March and fill all the holes from that and a previous attempt.

What we discovered in this first attempt is how hard it is to get a smooth, even surface. It didn't help that the only mixing instructions on the package were to avoid a "soupy" consistency. The result was a mess.

Fortunately, we're stubborn. We did a couple more passes with the concrete to fill in gaps and low spots. In between we used this little tool (aka, a rub brick) to smooth things out and remove any blobs. It's basically a block of hard concrete with a handle, but it sure helps.

We decided that we'd paint everything, so we took advantage to fill some holes and gaps in the bricks around the platform. Today we applied this white concrete primer and a first coat of gray. It's looking pretty spiffy now.

We also had an occasion to do some fun, creative projects. Regular readers will remember a project from about 18 months ago to build a laundry hamper. It turned out great but was far too big for its original purpose, so we'd started using it kinda like a coffee table. 

The one part that didn't live up to the rest was the plywood lid. What to do, what to do? The top was recessed about the height of a standard tile. We had some of the Mexican tiles left over from the downstairs bathroom, would they work? You be the judge.

This is pretty long, but we'll include one last project from start-to-finish. We had an idea for a little woodworking that would involve some pretty, new wood that we got from our local dealer. It's the one on top, although for the life of us we can't remember what it's called.

What we really liked were the interesting colors and grains in the wood. You can see a neat streak of red that's completely natural. The little cross-section piece shows this well.

 
The next step was to cut a few 1x1 inch pieces.

This project required routering a .5x.5 inch corner off (the pine is there to help keep the router level).

 

After cutting the pieces to the right size, we glued them together, sanded everything, and finished them with our favorite water-based sealer. And voila! We made ourselves a picture frame. It looks even better in person, with the red streaks more prominent.

To quote the pig, that's all folks! Ain't it enough? ; )

Day 1315: back at work

So this post has been a long time in the making. Some parts of this project were begun quite some time ago. Like New Year's Day long ago. Sigh. So many projects, so little time.

Well, no sense sighing over cut wood. Let's take this little project to completion. As a refresher, this was the target. We'd seen this some time ago at Crate and Barrel and liked the style and its little design elements.

We have a need for a couple full-size cases but wanted to practice techniques and such on a smaller, lower stakes version. We cut all the pieces back in January and in the past couple months cleaned and sanded them...

and stained and sealed them...

and began final assembly. We had drilled pilot holes for pocket screws (thanks to the Kreg jig) and wanted to see how it would all work out. Here's one of the sides as seen from the inside and with the two legs next to it.

With everything tightly clamped we could put in the screws.

An empty pilot hole:

became this (repeat about 30 times):

Here's the case coming together, as seen from the back. There's a temporary spacer at the top to ensure that the sides are the same distance apart (18 inches) at the top and bottom. It wouldn't do to make a trapezoid.

And voila!

We're pretty pleased with the result. It'll serve its purpose, and we learned a lot that we can apply to the bigger versions:

• make sure you stain inside the pilot holes
• see how few pilot holes you can get away with
• recess the side panel somewhat inside the legs to further obscure the pilot holes
• make sure to include a cross bar at the top for symmetry and generally to avoid looking incomplete