I’m Casing The Joint

I’m sort of in a holding pattern this week. The chimney liner won’t arrive until Friday and I can’t start to plaster until I get that in. I did, finally, get the last of the mill work from the mill. There were 4 parts to the order and getting the last of it was like pulling teeth. Click here to read a good story about the mill and the corner blocks I ordered.

Eric, the owner of the mill, is a real craftsman but he can be difficult to work with. You have to be patient and you have to keep prodding him. It is like he has a short attention span. He likes the glamorous stuff like the corner blocks or raised paneled wainscoting he did for me as part of the same order. When it comes to the simple stuff, like the casing, he seems to lose interest and it never gets done.

He is a nice guy though, and he does great work, so I keep going back. Yesterday, when I was at the mill getting the door casing we got to talking about the door I made (you all remember The Door) and other things. I then mentioned that I had found some old growth 1X6 fir flooring. It is really cool stuff. It is milled by a guy in Placerville. He takes 120 year old salvaged 3X12 floor joists from an old mill in Alaska and makes 1X6 fir flooring out of it. The stuff is hard as a rock. The trouble is shipping. It needs to be shipped freight and a lot of freight operators won’t ship to a residential address. Eric tells me, no problem, just have them ship it to my mill here and then you can come get it. He gives me the name and number of shipper he works with all the time. You can’t beat building relationships with people.


That is 120 feet of 1X6 redwood casing. To the left is some salvaged 1X6 redwood crown molding that will go on the kitchen cabinets.



That is a sample of the 1895 casing on top and the new stuff on the bottom.