My little boy Eli has entered a “banging” phase in his toy usage, and my wife Sarah suggested I make him a hammer for Christmas. Here it is (he doesn’t read this blog, so no surprises will be spoiled). The head is a scrap bit of Oregon black walnut, and the handle is a turned and carved bit of basswood, so it has a nice balance and isn’t too heavy. I used some mineral oil for a finish in case he chews on it. Merry Christmas!
I’m co-organizing an “adult Pinewood Derby” for the Portland Advertising Federation with a few friends. For those of you who weren’t in the cub scouts, it’s a chance for boys (and usually their fathers) to take a simple block of wood, and turn it into a car that gets raced against other boys’ cars on a sloped track.
This version is called the “Stumptown 40,” a reference to the length of the track (40 feet) and one of Portland’s many nicknames (Rose City, PDX and Beervana being among the most common). I haven’t started working on my car yet, but I did get a chance to make some of the trophies last week. First, second and third prizes are being given in the “speed” category, and attendees will vote for the “most creative car” award at the event, for a total of four trophies.
My friend Drew gave me a box of old wooden type before he moved to Brooklyn; given the wood cues in the event itself (Stumptown, Pinewood), and the audience of professional communicators, using the antique printing relics seemed a good choice.
For the “Creative Car” trophy, I tried to do something a little different. I used a short piece of some massive, old-growth Douglas Fir I had laying around for the body. The wheels (used on the other trophies as well) are actually the scraps left over from using a hole saw (the holes from the Labyrinth project, in fact) that I stained with vinegar/steel wool aging mixture, and screwed onto the body with rusty screws. The type atop the sculpture rests on an old wooden spool. Thin strips of recycled Doug Fir provide a resting surface for the letters, which are held together with glue and a little bit of hope.
Hey there, blog. Been awhile. Sorry about that.
I have been working sporadically away on the attic, trying to wrap up some details like painting trim (apparently the only problem with pre-primed trim is that it looks almost done), and trying not to think of the tile job that lies behind my custom door.
Tonight I installed something I’ve been excited about for some time – a built-in, Shaker-inspired desk I made over the last couple of weeks, using flooring we pulled up from the attic. We had originally intended to re-use the old flooring, but some miscalculation, haphazard removal techniques, and a fair bit of lead paint prevented our doing so. Still, I saved all the nice, clear vertical grain stuff that didn’t have lead paint on it, imaging a re-use just like this (and I have a few more ideas to come). It was also my first time turning drawer knobs – not a bad first effort if I do say so!
I really, really fought the finish on this project, though. I saw Norm Abrams fill nail holes with black-tinted epoxy once. What I didn’t see was how difficult the invariable drips are to remove, particularly from a wood as porous as Douglas Fir. The surface is far from flat where I sanded too long – I call it “rustic.” Next time, I’ll mask the area around the hole with tape before filling with epoxy.
Then, I appled a couple coats of danish oil, hoping to get some nice finish depth, but after two coats, decided it wasn’t going to provide the moisture protection a desk beneath a skylight might require. So I applied some water-based polyurethane. I’m not 100% sure that’s what caused the finish to craze, but I suspect that a water-based finish over an oil-based one is not a good idea in general. I also failed to recall what a bubbly mess polyurethane can be. More sanding, and I ended up reverting to Daly’s ProFin, my old standby.
I really like the look of the finished piece, though. It’s rustic, time-worn look is a good match for the door I finished a few months ago, and it’s nice to give an old material, native to the space, some new life.
I am no stranger to “temporary” fixes. In fact, just yesterday I bungeed the battery into my 1970 F250′s rusted out battery holder, replacing the zip ties some other Jerry rigged. Once, in college, I delayed moving day so long that all the cardboard boxes in town had been snapped up by the well-prepared. Being resourceful, I packed up an apartment using nothing but plastic shopping bags. It’s about the right tool at the right time. ThereIFixedIt.com is a collection of some amazingly impromptu fixes.
It’s been awhile since I updated on the attic progress, and it’s certainly come a long way since the drywall and paint of a few months ago. I made a big push to get all the trim in place, as the electrician couldn’t get back in there without the baseboards in. We’d elected to have our wall outlets placed in the baseboard, you see. And I couldn’t hang baseboards until the floor was finished … so many dependencies in a project like this!
We’d intended to re-install the flooring we removed last summer. It was not the highest-quality Doug Fir, but it looked similar to all the “before” samples we saw in flooring showrooms sold as “reclaimed fir,” so we thought we’d save a few bucks and re-use the stuff we had. Turns out we didn’t have enough to use, and what we did have was covered in lead paint, so we had to come up with another option. Thankfully, our flooring guy was able to track down some gorgeous new CVG (clear vertical grain) fir locally, and we went ahead with that option. The material cost was higher (it wasn’t free), but the install cost dropped quite a bit since newly milled stuff is so consistent in width and machining, it requires less labor to install. And it looks amazing, as you can see from the photo below (the paintings are encaustic originals by Portland artist Amy Ruppel from her “state bird series.” The one on the left is Iowa’s Eastern Goldfinch; the one on the right is the Common Loon of Minnesota. I’m from Iowa, Sarah’s from Minnesota.)
From there, it was relatively quick work to get the baseboards in for the electrician, thanks to my Dewalt chop saw
One thing I will say – I’ve used pre-primed MDF trim (both standard and ultralight versions) throughout the project, and would highly recommend it, both from a cost savings standpoint (less than a third the cost of poplar), and also ease of installation. I mean, it’s pre-primed. What’s not to love about that?
Once the baseboards were in, I dallied a bit on finishing some of the other trim to move forward with a built-in Sarah had requested early in the project, a bench over in the corner she’ll use as a reading nook. I found a nice plan on finehomebuilding.com (a great resource for remodeling that’s answered many of my questions, and worth the subscription fee) that I used as the basis for my own version. It’s basically some 3/4″ poplar plywood, a piano hinge and some trim scraps. The whole thing went together in two hours, I’ll bet, and it was built in situ, so it fits the space perfectly (or it looks like it does with some caulk!).
Probably my favorite feature of the project so far, though, is the door that separates the bedroom from the bathroom (still very much a work in progress). We bought a door from the Rebuilding Center, a local materials recycling center for just $20, and it even had the original wavy glass when we brought it home. But, the low cost carried a hidden price: the door was covered in at least four coats of lead paint that had to be removed.
Fortunately, demand for green products is now common enough that there’s a non-toxic version of almost every chemical, paint stripper included. I put on a thick coat of something called Ready Strip
Once the years of lead paint were gone, I had a few other issues to contend with. In my attempts to get the glass out in one piece, I broke it, as well as the wood molding holding it in place. There were also quite a few holes left by the door lock hardware that had to be filled, as I had another mounting idea in mind. I did this with a few carefully placed dutchmen (re-using some of the old flooring) installed with the help of my mini router and a sharp chisel.
After a few coats of clear Seal-A-Cell, I moved on to hardware, which was surprisingly difficult to find. I’m not sure where I first saw barn door hardware used, but I thought its rustic look would go really well with the rustic door. I ended up locating it at a farm store nearby called Wilco, and it was among the cheapest hardware I’ve bought for the project (total of about $50). I am so pleased with the results.
Every cake needs icing, and every door needs its glass. Since I’d broken the original, I went out on a limb and tracked down some security glass, aka wire glass from Culver Glass, a local specialty supplier. But that wasn’t enough. My door needed a little more, supplied by an amazing Portland craftsman named Lee Littlewood, proprietor of Lee’s Better Letters.
Lee hand-painted the front of the glass to my specifications, using as inspiration my direction that “the type style should look like it came from a factory door, circa 1930 or so.” He did a few sketches on paper, then painted the type directly on the glass in black enamel. Once that had dried hard for a few days, he added silver-colored gold leaf to the interior of the letters, burnished on in a light circular pattern. No computers were used, except in the exchange of paper sketches. I could not be happier.
Well, maybe if the tile fairy finished the bathroom for me.
Wow, the difference a few sheets of drywall, 2 gallons of primer and 8 cans of paint can make.
I hired out the drywall job after talking with a lot of people, and I have to say, I’m glad I did. The folks at New Era Drywall in Portland were easy to work with, very friendly with Jasper, and very good at the job, much better than I could have done. In five short days, we went from bare studs to super smooth, paint-ready walls. It was fun to come home each day and see the progress that had been made, but no day was more amazing than the day they hung all the drywall … the space started to look finished!
After the final skim coat had been applied, priming was as easy as rolling on a coat over the whole surface. Because New Era had left the paper covering on the floor, and there wasn’t any trim up, it went very quickly, and I was able to do both the bedroom and the bathroom by myself in about 6 hours (spread over two nights).
Once I’d primed the space, New Era asked to come back one more time to take care of any scratches the primer revealed, and I was more than glad to let them do so, even though I didn’t see many errors while I was painting. Great attention to detail.
And then … color! We had a painting party on Saturday, and a crew of friends (thank you!) showed up to help us put on a few different colors. Most of the walls in the bedroom are a pebble grey color from Miller’s historic series, and one wall is a rusty orange. The ceiling is a warm, flat white. In the bathroom, we went with a robin’s egg blue color, with an eggshell white on the ceiling. Here’s a sneak peak at the room just before the final touch-up coat.
Flooring goes in tomorrow … we’re getting there!