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I got the second door hung today and sanded down the first cabinet. When putting these together I was very aware that they are going to have to hang on the wall. At 30X53 inches, and with all the crown detail that will be on them, they are big and heavy cabinets. Or at least they seem big and heavy to me. I am concerned not only with them staying on the wall, but also with staying together.
While laying in bed at night I would have these thoughts of hearing a big crash in the kitchen. In my mind I would run in to find that the backs of the cabinets where still attached to the wall but that everything else had pulled away and went crashing to the ground. With that in mind I may have over designed them a bit. I used a 3-inch nail to put them together and a lot of glue. With out taking an actual count I would say each cabinet has around 50 or 60 3-inch nails in it, and maybe close to a pint of glue.
The use of the 3-inch nail lead to a bit of a problem. In all instances I was nailing it in to a board that is only ¾ of an inch wide. If you don’t keep the nail perfectly straight all the way through the 3-inches it will pop out the side. This happened on a few occasions. Eight times to be exact. I guess that is not too bad after 120 nails.
I did pre-drill the holes but I was not able to drill the entire length of the nail. Most of these occurrences happened on the top and on the one side that will be against the wall. A bit lazy there. I didn’t pull these out because they will never been seen. Four times it happened on a side that will be visible. I was able to pull the nails out but I am left with a little damage that will need to be dealt with. I will need to see if I can sand it down to a divit and then fill with putty.
If all goes well, I think I might be painting by Saturday. This cabinet looks pretty much like the first one so I didn’t bother posting pictures.
In other news, I talked with my sister tonight. She was evacuated from New Orleans after Katrina. It is odd in a way what happened to her. If you followed the story of Katrina and the aftermath you would think that the city is a complete lost cause. You would think that everything was completely devastated and everybody would have suffered massive losses.
There is of course a lot of truth to that. With my sister and her family, though, it wasn’t like that at all. Her husband is back to work in the French Quarter and she will be going back to work next week. Both her and her husband never missed a paycheck. Her boss wanted to make sure they came back so he continued to give them full salary through all this.
Both my sister and her daughter have homes in the Historic Garden District. My sister’s husband has been to both of them and they suffered almost no damage. There were a few shingles missing on my sisters 1905 home and a little water got in, but it was very minor. That’s it – no looting or floods or blown off roofs. The only reason she isn’t living there now is because there is still no electricity. She is currently living at a co-workers house expects to be living at home and back to work in The French Quarter very shortly.
Granted the losses have been staggering, but those things that make New Orleans New Orleans seem to be intact. The historic heart of the city is still there and beating. She says there will be a Mardi Gras next year. Pretty amazing.
5 comments:
I'm so glad to hear your sister's house and job is OK. And hurray for Mardi Gras!
you know...i really dont see anythig wrong with a little over-designing...i mean...you have to leave something for future homeowners to someday stumble across and go "wtf?!" over!
Hooray for your fam in N.O. Can you even imagine the party that next year's mardi gras is going to be?
Glad to hear your sister and family are OK. And I'm so pleased to hear the old part of New Orleans survived... when we visited a few years ago it was clear that they were the 'heart' of the place and what made it so special. If the old part had been destroyed I don't think it could have recovered.
I'm sorry, I just stumbled on your blog, and I don't think there's any humanity in saying that the historic garden district and Bourbon St. and so on make New Orleans New Orleans. The people make New Orleans -- that is, including the majority black population -- and not the privileged folk and their property, the most prestigious property in the Southern states. Sorry, but there's something so wrong about saying everything's great because the tourist attractions are up and running. If your sister STILL didn't have electricity at the time of writing -- having suffered minimal damage to her home -- how much worse off are the masses of poor, mainly black folks whose people's history and culture really make New Orleans New Orleans? Please don't forget about them just because the city's eye candy and upper middle classes survived intact.
I guess it's how you want to look at things. I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just that the point I was trying to make was that the city was not a hopeless lost cause you would think if all you know you learned from the evening news. I saw nothing but utter and complete destruction on the news, but my sister and her family - who still live in NO to this day - did not suffer a complete loss.
I was in the Loma Preita earthquake in Santa Cruz in 1989. I remember watch the evening news and hearing reports that MY CITY was "wiped off the map". I lost a planter and a few pictures were knocked off the wall. Everybody’s experience is different. You need to put what I wrote in the context of what was being reported in the first few days after the disaster.
Also take in to consideration that my sister and her family, after they were evacuated, had know idea what the state of their property and belongings - their lives - were in the city they love. As news trickled in, and they were allowed back, they found that they had not lost everything and the city was not completely wiped off the map. She was happy and I was happy for her. I wrote about it.
Should I apologize because my sister did not lose everything.
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