Skimmed

Yesterday I skim-coated the walls in the dining room and today I did the ceiling. It went well – I think {I hope}. It is kind of hard to tell. I painted on the Weld-Crete on Thursday and it is an odd shade of blue. After skim-coating, the blue color shows through a bit and gives the walls a very mottled look to them. It is very hard to see irregularities.





Normally, I would end up with a more uniform color to the walls and it is easy to spot and fix bad areas before the plaster sets. With these walls it was like plastering by Braille. I know there are a few areas that will need attention. The bay window was a tough area to skim-coat. Those little strips on either side of the window were especially difficult to get right. There is no question I will need to - GASP! – sand them down and go over them again.

The other problem area is where the plaster meets the wood. I had plastic covering the wood and it kept getting in the way of the trowel. There are areas where the plastic is stuck in the plaster a little bit. I also may need to go over a few areas where the walls meet the ceiling. I’m going to let the plaster set up and do all of this next weekend.

Tomorrow though, I get to install this charming little thing…



I bought this at Ohmega Salvage in The Bay Area about 4 years ago and it has been up in the attic ever since. It is real plaster, but it is a reproduction. The high relief areas on the 4 sides are of fruits and vegetables, so it seems fitting for the dining room. I figured since I have the scaffolding up and the plaster equipment out, I might as well install it.



It comes in 5 pieces and they get assembled on the ceiling and then the seams filled with plaster. I will be painting it a gloss white instead of an eye-popping color scheme. My research tells me that this was the more traditional way of finishing these medallions. When ever you look at old, period pictures, the medallions are always white unless they are installed in over-the-top Rococo Revival style interiors with other gilded or painted plaster work on the ceiling. This high style was usually reserved for large and impressive rooms in mansions.

I Wish I Were Taller

If I were ten feet tall it would be perfect. As it is, I come in at a relatively shrimpy six foot four. If I were ten feet tall I could plaster the ceiling without needing a ladder or scaffolding. When I did the kitchen several years back I used a ladder and it was very hard. Lots of up and down, not only to reload the trowel, but also just to work the plaster.

The ladder in question is an old wooden ladder – one of 2 ladders that came with the house. I found that I could straddle the ladder with one foot on the back-side brace and one foot on the 4th rung and the height was perfect for working on the ceiling.



I have spent countless hours on this ladder standing just like that. It worked, but like I said, lots of up and down. Now, I’m going to be working on the dining room which has the largest surface area of any room to date. Not only that, but next will come the foyer and then the 2 parlors, which are even bigger than he dining room. I needed something else.

I could rent a section or 2 of scaffolding, but that would put me too high. I need to be just three and a half feet higher. The ceilings are ten and a half feet so having my head at ten feet is perfect. So I decided to make my own scaffolding.



For about $60 worth of lumber, fasteners, and casters I get a 4X8 foot platform that is the perfect height and can roll around the room. This should work well, not only for the ceiling but for any part of the wall over 7-feet heigh. I’m actually looking forward to doing the plaster work now. Of course, I still need the trusty ladder to get up on the platform, but once I get myself and a big batch of plaster up there I won’t need to come down for a while.

Biohazard

Ok, so I panicked. I realize that now. Still, with everything in the news these days about The Swine Flu, you can’t be too cautious.

As I was walking through the dining room with my first cup of coffee of the morning I thought I spotted a Swine Flu virus on the floor. I quickly dumped out my coffee and slammed the cup down on top of it. I then preceded to isolate the room from the rest of the house.

After I sealed the room off and got plastic sheeting over everything, I donned my homemade biohazard suit and with a can of Lysol in hand I carefully lifted the coffee cup off of the “virus”.









Well, it turned out to be an ant. A very confused and angry ant at this point, but an ant none the less. No, there was no Swine Flu in my house and I was completely safe after all.

Boy, isn’t my face red.

It wasn’t a complete waste of time, though. Now that the dining room is sealed off from the rest of the house and all of the woodwork is covered in plastic, the stage is set for plaster wall repair. The plaster is largely intact and structurally sound. The first step will be to clean the walls and get rid of any remnants of wall paper. I stripped off the 7 or 8 layers of wallpaper years ago, so this should not be too difficult.

I will then patch the minor nail holes and small divots. Once that is done I will paint the entire surface with Weld-Crete. Weld-Crete is a masonry adhesive made by Larson Industries. Its purpose is to help the new skim coat adhere to the 100+ year old lime plaster. They also make a product called Plaster-Weld, which would be more appropriate for this application, but the local supplier only carries Weld-Crete. They are essentially the same thing, only Weld-Crete is designed for exterior, industrial applications.

After the Weld-Crete is applied and has had time to dry I will skim coat with Diamond Finish plaster. After that I will paint, which brings me to my most feared and hated job of all…

Picking Out Paint Colors

This hideous and disgusting process started today.

Because I already have the dado in the room I will be doing a traditional “tripartite” wall where the wall is divided horizontally in to three parts: The dado, field, and frieze. This is a style that was popular from about 1870 to about 1910 and was championed by critics of the time like Charles Eastlake and Clarence Cook. When selecting colors of paint or wallpaper it was suggested that the frieze should be light in color, with the field darker, and the dado the darkest. The ceiling will be the same color as the frieze.

I’m leaning towards a red field and a gold frieze with a picture rail where the two meet. The dado, of course, is the burl redwood raised paneled wainscoting that is original to the room. So far the first round of color selection includes Sherwin William’s Bolero (7600) for the field and Humble Gold (6380) for the frieze and ceiling. If history repeats itself I will decide I don’t like these colors only after I have painted the entire room.

Another hair-brained idea I have is to paint the ceiling sky-blue and sponge on large, fluffy white clouds. I think this would only work if I applied a heavy cornice where the frieze and ceiling meets and chose something else for the field and frieze. Given that I have 2 green rooms in the house and the exterior paint is a monochromatic green color scheme, any shade of green is out of the question.

Eighteen of Eighteen

For all intent and purpose I am done with these cabinets!!!! I finished and installed the 18th and final door this afternoon.

Door Goes Open


Door Goes Closed


There are still a few things to do, but the carpentry portion of this never ending project has finally come to an end. I need to putty a lot of holes and everything – and I do mean everything, not just the cabinets – is covered in sawdust. There is also a little painting left to do on the butler’s pantry side. I should be able to finish all of that up mid-week next week.

Oh, and then there’s this…



The shop is covered wall-to-wall in 3 to 8 inches of saw dust. I'm hoping to find a few lost tools under there.

Trim Marathon

I had a late invitation yesterday to a Bar-B-Q out in Freshwater. I had every intention of going, but it looked like rain in the morning, so I started in on the trim for the middle section. As it turned out, the clouds cleared around 1:00 and it turned out to be a spectacular day. By that time I was committed to the trim and there was no looking back.

The Bar-B-Q would have been nice, but now I’m glad I stuck with the trim. It took about 12 hours to get it all done, but it is done!







Before I could even start the trim I had to frame out the little door in the middle section. Then it was on to mind-numbing repetition of measure, cut, cut, router, router and install. Then the next piece. That’s if I got it right the first time. I rarely did.

Each piece took a minimum of 2 cuts on the saw and two passes on the router. If it is was off by as much as an 8th of an inch it was another cut on the saw and another pass on the router. There are 62 pieces of wood total. To make it even more interesting, I was afraid of running out. Below is all there is left from that big pile of trim I cut.





I also milled and installed the trim just under the marble. It is a two part bead and cove trim. When the fabricators came to make the template for the marble I suggested an inch and a half over-hang. I was planning on just doing a ¾-inch cove under the lip. The guy making the template told me that 2-inches is standard, so I said OK. God forbid I should not do what is standard.

For the next week after the marble was in place I cursed the 2-inch over-hang every time I saw. I was too much. It was sticking out so awkwardly. I decided he suggested 2-inches because most people do a laminate edge these days. That is were they take an additional piece of stone and glue it to the underside of the over-hang. They then finish that off and it looks like you have 4-cm thick stone when it is really only 2-cm.

In the end it worked out. I did the 2-part trim and it looks fine. All of those sleepless nights were for nothing. So now it is on to the little door in the middle section. I’m going to see if I can find the time to work on it this week and then install it next weekend. After that I will be officially done with this cabinet!

I looked back through the blog and found that I started them in September of 2008. Really, though, I first mentioned this project in November of 2005.

Three And A Half Years Ago!!!

The Count Up

The sanding of the marble has officially started. I hope to finish by the weekend so I can start in on the wooden trim in the middle section. Here is the progression so far.


Factory cut


Router bit


100 Grit


150 Grit


220 Grit

So far all of the sanding has been done with the random orbital sander, so it goes fast. I plan on going to 600 wet sanding, so at some point I will switch to sanding by hand. The top has a polished surface, but I’ve decided I don’t like that. I polished the marble in the bath, and I was planning on doing that here, but I’m rethinking it. It just looks too new and modern. I’m leaning towards doing a final sanding with 600 grit over the entire surface to given it a dull, honed looked.

Shwing! Marble’s Here!

There was a message on the machine last night when I got home, but it was too late to contact them. At 10:00 this morning I got a call saying it was on the truck and ready to go. I met them at the house about 10 minutes later. Installation took them all of 5 minutes because it was pretty much just drop it in to place.



I had them leave it hanging about 6 inches off the edge so there was room for the router.



It is pretty much just a rough, saw cut edge when I get it, so the first thing to do is run the router over it.



The router bit has a bearing on the bottom that rides along the edge as the blade cuts. This ensures a even depth of cut. In the kitchen I did a quarter inch round-over and was able to do it in one pass. This time I went with a 5/8th inch round-over and it took several passes. Note the vacuum hose on the router. This is am absolute must.

The first couple of feet were very nerve-wracking. After a few minutes though, I got in to a groove and it went quickly. I would work on about a 1-foot section at a time and keep running the router over it until the bearing bottomed out.



Here is what I’m left with. From here I’ll work on it with the random orbital sander, starting out with 100 grit and working my to at least 300. I’ll probably finish it up by hand with some 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper and then polish it out. It is just the edge, so doesn’t take too long.

As it turns out, the slab they ended up getting was over 9-feet long. Even they couldn’t explain it. What this means is that there was no need for me to shorten the width of the middle section. I brought the sides in 3-inches on either side so it would be less than 8-feet. Not much I can do about it now.

Because I bought the whole slab they have a huge piece left over. Originally, the plan was to store it in the garage, but based on the size of the “remnant” (There is more left-over than I used) they talked me in to leaving it in their yard. I think I have a plan for it, but more on that later.

All Dressed Up And No Where To Go

Two weeks ago the fabricator bought the slab of marble for the cabinet. I made 3 phone calls to them and each time I was assured it was a simple job and they should be able to get it to me soon. As far as stone counters go, it really is a simple job. It is just 4 or 5 straight cuts, with no sink holes to cut, and no finishing or polishing of the edges or surface.

Last week someone was out sick and they got a little behind. No big deal. These sorts of things happen. This week I called and was told I would get it by Friday (Yesterday). I was sure it was going to happen, so I spent a few hours after work each night getting ready for the installation. I got all of my tools set up and took care of some normal weekend chores so I could spend all weekend working on marble and trim for the middle section.

The marble needs to have the edge trimmed, and then the surface polished and sealed. The final trim for the middle section will consist of more than 4 dozen small pieces that will need to be cut precisely as they are installed. I decided to just set up shop in the dining room, rather than making what could be hundreds of trips back and forth between the shop and the dining room. Each piece will take multiple cuts, so despite the potential for mess, this will save hours and hours of time.

Below are some shots of what the dining room looks like right now.

1. Router hooked up to the shop vac with a new bit installed and tested for height, ready to finish the edge on the marble
2. RO sander with 100 through 220 grit paper, along with the polishing attachment and solution
3. Compressor, hose, and brad nailer to put on the trim after marble is finished and in place
4. Compound miter saw ready to install the trim
5. Router table set up with the female bit of the rail/stile set installed and tested for height, ready to install the trim
6. All of the trim I’ve milled over the past few weeks ready to be installed






There is, of course, just one little problem…..



The marble never showed up. I feel like I’ve been stood up for the prom. I spent all week getting all gussied up, only to be left here waiting and wondering where my date is. It is very frustrating. If I were a woman I suppose the thing to do at this point would be to start shoveling ice cream in to my face while I watch predictable chick-flicks all weekend. As a man though, I feel compelled to get shit-faced drunk while I sit around and watch predictable sci-fi movies. I have nothing else to do!

The Internet To The Rescue!

I think I came up with an idea for the trim. I couple of readers left some good comments, and others with rad Photoshop skilz submitted a few doctored up pictures. While it is hard to say at this point how any of the ideas will work in the end - mine or theirs - the different perspectives allowed me to think of things I might not have otherwise.

Allen’s Idea


Paul’s Idea


Allen’s would definitely work, and is not off the table at this point. Paul’s idea is closer to what I will most likely do. The rest of the trim for the middle section is sort of a coffered ceiling look. Because I must maintain symmetry with all of the squares, I can’t have the new trim encroach on the other trim. Think Paul's idea, but a little less.

The real problem all along is the space I have to work with. It is only a half inch thick. The existing piece I made is about 3/8th inch thick. Quick math will tell you I only have an 1/8th of an inch left. That is not enough to do much of anything with.

Like I said, I think I came up with a good solution, but rather than confuse the issue more, I’ll post better pictures in a few days. I thought the marble was going to arrive this week, but it didn’t happen. I spoke with the owner of the shop on Tuesday and they purchased the slab, but didn’t get a chance to cut it yet.

I’m going to call again this Tuesday. I really need to get it in next week because I’m reaching a point where I’m running out of things to do without having the marble in place. On the plus side, I am literally weeks away from finishing the project.



I got the shelves finished today….



And I have piles of trim waiting to be installed after the marble is in.

The only thing left to work on really, is the last little door in the middle section. I’m hesitant to work on it because the final shape and size will be determined by the middle section trim and marble. None of that matters though, right now, because this weekend is The Big Race, so it is not like I don’t have other things to do.

For The Glory!

Doing Lines

When I was still in the design phase I made the decision to bring in the sides of the middle section of the cabinet so I could have a single piece of marble for the counter. If I made the middle section the same width of the rest of cabinet, the width of the counter would have been 8’ 4”. I was told by local suppliers that stone slabs only come in 8’ widths. So I brought the sides in 3” on either side, which makes the counter 7’ 10”. I can now have a seamless piece of marble.

One problem solved and another one born.



As you can see in the picture above, I now have these gaps to fill. I’ve known about this all along and never gave it a whole lot of thought. It was always thought that as I trim out the middle section, I will just add a piece of wood there to cover the framing. {You can see a blog entry I printed up and stuffed in the cavity}

So yesterday I made up some trim pieces to cover the cap. Because I was impatient months back, and wanted to see progress, I put up the casing around the edges. This should have been one of the last things to do, but I couldn’t wait. Now, I may need to get the trim in place before the marble goes in.



I left a half inch thick space to slip the trim in behind the casing. So I planed down some scrap pieces of curly redwood and slipped them in to place, but I don’t really like it. In the picture above, the red circle marks the door and the green circle marks the stile of the face-frame. It seems like this trim piece should line up with the stile.



If I move it back, though, it will leave parts exposed that shouldn’t be. Because I only have a half inch to work with, there is very little room to get something else in there. I’m not sure what to do at this point, but I need to come up with something this weekend because the marble is supposed to be here next week.

I may try and cut a then piece of veneer to go behind the new trim piece and in front of the exposed section. It will need to be very thin, though. Remember, I only have a half inch to work with and I need to be able to fit both the trim piece and a new veneer piece.

The Marble Is On Its Way!

They came by today to make a template. I supplied them with an accurate diagram, but the woman in charge strongly encouraged me to get the template done. I started to protest, but then capitulated because I just got the feeling that the more I insisted against it, the more likely something would go wrong and it would be my fault because I gave them the diagram.

So they came by a made a template today. They showed up on my lunch hour and were in and out in about 20 minutes. They showed up about 10 minutes late and the woman actually apologized for being late. And it was a sincere apology! This sort of thing is almost unheard of coming from a contractor or tradesman.

I called 3 different people for estimates. One place said they only do granite, not marble. Whatever – click! The next place got the estimate wrong. I sent them the same diagram with the same explicit instructions on the edge and they still added in more than $300 for a laminate edge I didn’t want. Even after deducting that, they were still 20% more than the people I ended up going with.

The people who are cutting this marble are the same who cut the slab for the kitchen island. I’m doing the same deal, where they cut the basic shape and then I finish the edge. For the island, they had a partial slab in the yard and I picked it up, so that was dirt cheap. This time, they will need to order a new slab and I will have them deliver the final piece. I will also get the remaining part of the slab, which is larger than the piece for the cabinet. More on that later.

While the young man made the template I took the woman in to the kitchen and bathroom to show her the other marble work I had done. It was fortuitous because she said she would try and find a piece of marble that closely matched what I already had. They buy from someplace down in San Leandro. She told me the cost was about half as much as buying locally.

So they should have the slab by Monday and cut it sometime next week. If all goes well it will be in the house by next weekend and I can start to work on the edge. In the meantime, I’ll work on the shelves and start to make the final door. The only thing besides that, is the trim on the middle section.

I could be done in a month!

Back To Solid Foods

Which is good because I like solid foods. Many of my favorite foods only come in solid form. Unfortunately, a nasty abscessed tooth prevented me from eating solid foods for several days last week. On Monday I was able to pay an endodontists absurd amounts of money to drain nasty liquids from my jaw. By the weekend I was back to eating solid foods and back to working on the cabinets.


I milled and installed the baseboard. That was pretty straight forward.


I also got the glass installed. In the end I did not do any etching on the glass. I couldn’t decided on anything and I’m too far into this to drag my feet now. Even so, this was a time consuming and tedious project. I made the quarter round to hold the glass in myself. It is ¼ X 3/8 quarter round that I made on the router and table saw. Then I had to nail it in to place! I’ve broken glass in the past doing this and I didn’t want to brake any this time.


I also made the shelf brackets. Veeeerrrrry tedious work. Lots of time with a jig saw. If you’re not familiar with these types of brackets, you can read about them here.


Aaaaand, I bought a carpet for the room. I’m a sucker for 25% off and couldn’t pass it up. The rug is 8X11. Originally (1895) the room had a 9X12 rug in it. I can see where it was tacked down to the floor. I could probably find a 9X12 rug at a zillion times the cost of the 8X11 one I bought at 25%. I’m happy with the 8X11 rug.

The Last Of It

Well, Heter Brothers it ain’t, but I’m hoping the tour-de-force use of curly and burl redwood will detract from my obvious lack of fine cabinet building skills. Yes, it looks fine, but lets face it, people normally go through apprenticeships and train for years to be fine cabinet builders. I didn’t have that luxury, so it is was it is. What it is, is a very passable substitute for original 1895 cabinets in the dining room.

Here is the trim stock for the middle section after being run through the router, sanded, and oiled.







Most of this came out of that big chunk of wood I wrote about yesterday. It is interesting that the whole cabinet is being made of redwood, yet with the variations in the wood you might think there were different species of wood used. This last batch of redwood has some of the pretties grain. Some of it kind of reminds me of tortoise shell.

As I wrote before, the wood is difficult to work with. This batch had the added difficulty of being in such a large and unwieldy shape, but the curly redwood in general has its own idiosyncrasies that present challenges.

Because the grain undulates through the wood, all of the dark areas are like end-grain and the light areas and like straight grain. Even with brand new router bits and planer blades there is a lot of sanding to do with the “end-grain” areas. Straight-grained redwood mills up so nicely that it usually comes out of the machine needing little more than light sanding. Not so with this stuff.

I may not have enough of this curly trim to do the whole thing, so I ran a few pieces of regular redwood just in case. You can see them in the last picture. I’ll start at the bottom and more visible areas and work my way up. The non-curly stuff should end up in areas that will only be seen when you’re on you knees.

Hmmm, come to think of it, that happens a lot in this house. I'm on my knees a lot lately whimpering about how I will never finish this house. I may need more curly redwood.

Trim Stock

Once upon I time I bought a big, gnarly chunk of redwood burl. It turned out to be a very difficult thing to work with. In the end I was forced to cut it in to very small pieces in order to work with it. Over the past few days I’ve taken those small pieces and made them even smaller.

What I’ve ended up with is roughly 60 uniformly sized pieces of curly redwood which I’ll use to trim out the middle section of the cabinet.

Below is what I started with….
{The top slab in the back became the drawer fronts and the bottom two became the face-frames for the cabients}


It was really a difficult thing to work with. I still have some of it left in tact, but most of it ended up looking like this….


Now today I turned most of that in to this - 1.25 X 7/8ths….


There is still some of the cut up stuff left over….


Eventually the uniform pieces will be used to trim out the middle section like this…


Tomorrow I’ll run the uniform pieces through the router. Once the marble is in I can trim out the middle section. No word on when the marble is going to come in.

Seventeen Down

These last four doors are the best yet. It is nice to see that I can improve with practice. They all fit the openings well. The hinges are mortised in perfectly. They were a lot of work to make, but for the most part there were no real problems.









There is just one more door to make. It will be for that small, center opening in the middle part of the cabinet. You can see the opening in the picture above, and to the left of the opening you can see the curly redwood board that I’m going to use to make the panel for it.

Before I can do that though, I need to install the marble counter and trim out the middle part. The trim will define the jamb and casing for the door, so that needs to go up first. I’m going to order the marble on Monday and there’s no telling how long that will take.

There is still plenty to keep me busy. I need glass for the upper doors. I need to build brackets and shelves for the upper cabinets. I need to mill all of the curly redwood for the trim on the middle section. There are going to be a lot of small pieces of trim for that area and they are all in odd shapes and sizes. Finally, I need to make a baseboard for the bottom. Even if I don’t get the marble for a month, I think I have enough to keep me busy.

The bast part is, I have a punch-list and the end is in sight.