Shelving unit

I've spent the last day or so building a shelving unit that mounts in the opening in the mudroom/pantry closet. It went together smoothly and today I installed the trim around it and the door right next to it. Because of the way the two trim casings meet it was some work to make it look like it makes sense, but the end result of having the whole thing in place is very satisfying. It finishes an area that has been rough and undone for months. What's more it gives us an important and useful place to put stuff.

We're actually thinking this particular shelving unit will be a trial-run for a more finer piece that would be a bit more elaborate and considered. We'll see how this works and decide what we think over time.

We had a spider

Morning light on the stairs

A few more small parts and we'll be done for the short term in the kitchen

Another view of the stairs

Hooking up the sink and dishwasher plumbing

My efforts have continued in the kitchen the last few days, mostly hooking up the plumbing, making a back splash for the counter and enclosing/installing the dishwasher. Once the dishwasher was in and a last little bit of cabinet filler was installed on it's right side, we were able to move the refrigerator in from the yurt and finally have all our major appliances and fixtures in and operating. It is not much short of a miracle once again to be able to get water, heat it, make coffee and have refrigerated cream all right in one place and easy to access. I know it's normal and all that, but we've lived for a long time with water out of buckets and all that and now it's just so easy; it almost feels like some sort of embarrassing luxury.

One more coat of finish on the cabinet doors and drawer fronts and we'll call the kitchen "done", at least for a short while. I'll be building an island as soon as we are finished with our obligations to the bank, which should be soon.

Adam finished up a few days ago and now I'll be on my own finishing up the last few projects before we call it good.

Saturday stuff

I was the recipient of an iTouch for Christmas and today I downloaded a free paint app. This is what I came up with

The counter top complete. Next up sanding and final shaping for installation

Messing around with railing ideas

Some of the cabinet doors Nancy is working on

Today was sort of a half-hearted effort on my part as I was sleepy and in need of a nap so I didn't get too much done. Nancy on the other hand has been powering through finish work on the cabinet doors, drawer fronts and cabinet frames. It's all looking really nice. Particularly with stuff like the doors its a lot of work to sand between each coat, but she's making good headway and should have it all ready to go in couple more days.

I completed the counter tops last night and today started in on sanding them down to smooth. Its not so hard as it is a matter of patience just sanding sanding sanding. They're gonna look good when they are done.

This weeks' work

One lamp refinished, one waiting for some work

Nancy getting ready to apply the oil finish to the cabinet doors and drawer fronts

The step that Adam built down to the guest room on the second floor

Adam putting in the plugs on the stair tread screw holes

We rounded off this week with more along the same lines as recent work. Adam got the majority of the stairs in and all the screw holes plugged (there are two stairs left to go that require some special shaping before installing, so that'll happen next week). Nancy began work on finishing the cabinets, which is a multi-stage process over many days (we are copying our friend Kate's recipe for cabinet finish which starts with an oil finish and the multiple coats of polyurethane). I did a small rewiring project to make a the switches in the guest room make a little more ergonomic sence, and Felton was here to wire up our stove/oven in the kitchen.

I spent this evening cleaning the oxidization and accumulated stuff off of one of a pair of lights that we plan to mount outside the west end garden doorway. I just happened to come across these lights a couple of months ago in a free pile outside someone's place on the chance we might want to use them. They strike me as a little formal, but they are nice lights so we are going to put them up and see what we think.

...and we continue on...

The very first fire in the woodstove

Nancy doing some more of the painting following Adam having completed the trim inside the bathroom

The appliances sitting in place in the kitchen. The stove and the fridge are soon to follow, although nothing is actually hooked up yet, I just need them there so I can install the trim to match up correctly

This section cabinetry is very close to complete. A few more vertical trim pieces, fit the drawer fronts and that'll be it. Oh yes, we'll need knobs and pulls.

We've been making steady progress. Adam has been working through all sorts of trim-out projects that includes all the doors downstairs, a couple of doorways upstairs, a single step down into the guest room and coming up in the next couple of days the finish work on the the main stairway from first to second. Nancy patiently did a super nice job finishing and sanding the stair treads five times over. They look great. Also, I think its fair to say that the painting is all done. There'll be some touch-ups here and there, but all the significant stuff, and most of the insignificant stuff is now done.

I've been continuing on the cabinets and am almost ready to start on the counter tops. In fact, my plan is to go get the material tomorrow and begin fabrication later this week. I'm feeling quite happy with how the whole cabinetry project is developing; as I've said before, this is new and fussy territory for me, so it is satisfying to see it work out well.

Oh yes, we've started lighting fires in the woodstove and it is just great. It's quiet, beautiful and puts out nice heat. We had to carefully light a series of small fires that "season" the stone and burn off the fumes from the new stovepipe and stove enamel. It's wicked cozy. Last night the temperature got down to around -16 below zero, so it feels good to have the stove going. Even with the cold it just feels good to be in the house. The experience of this whole super-insulation thing so far is just an even, comfortable, and stable environment.

Cabinets and Trim

Adam at work on the casing around the pocket doors

Lining up the forstner bit with the pilot hole

Drilling the mounting hole

Doors in place. Notice the red line at the top -- I've yet to adjust these doors so they all line up level

Here I'm using the laser to sight the height line for the drawer slides, one of which is mounted on the left

I've been working on the cabinets, specifically the doors and the drawers. Having never before built cabinetry in any real way I've felt trepidatious at some of the critical junctures. One of those junctures is marking, drilling, and mounting the doors. I spent a good bit of effort to make a couple of jigs that allowed me to make accurate marks for drilling. I tested one door before deciding that my jig was going to work and then after it worked fine went ahead and did the rest. The doors are all mounted with what are known as "European" hinges. They are quite common these days, but used to be somewhat exotic. The beauty of them is that they allow for adjustments in three directions (or more on some models), so if your doors are not all quite straight or a little off center or whatever, you have some room to correct.

I also mounted the slides for all the drawers and that went fine too. Actually, what made it really easy was Adam's laser level. I set it up, found my height and the laser shone its horizontal beam into all the bays of the cabinets and I was able to mark all my drawer heights super accurately. The alternative would have been cumbersome and of dubious accuracy. Hooray for laser levels!

Tomorrow I'll mount the drawers and then make the drawer fronts and finish the cabinet face frame inbetween the doors and drawer fronts. When I get to that point I'm basically done with the major work on the cabinets and will then been getting ready to build the maple countertops.

Working alongside me this week, Adam has been building the framed door passages at both the exit doors and between the office and living space, which is the wall that houses the pocket doors. He's done some nice work and these things all look like pieces of furniture. He'll probably have all the doors trimmed out tomorrow and then be on to running the baseboard that connects it all together.

Cabinet drawers

The drawers, in parts

First door mounted

The drawers assembled

I spent the latter part of last week shaping and building the cabinet drawers, seven of them in all. I also worked on coming up with a jig to facilitate the orderly mounting of the cabinet doors to the cabinets. This took some careful planning and a practice run or two, but my first try on the actual door worked quite well. Its worth taking some time because once you start drilling mounting holes and such it is hard to relocate that hole over ever-so-slightly if it's not quite where you want it.

Over the weekend Nancy has spent a bunch of time sanding all the cabinet drawers and doors and together we are putting the final pieces in place to complete the installation of the woodstove. It was slightly challenging, but everything is where it needs to be and with a few more odds and ends to do we'll be able to fire it up.

Drawer Boxes

Big snowfall today

Cabinet drawers in process. The interconnecting joints are called box joints

Today was an effort to keep warm and work well. We're staying out of the house while the nasty fumes from the polyurethane on the floors dries. Tomorrow is the last coat.

Today I spent making the boxes for our cabinet drawers and it went quite well. The easy part is planing them down to thickness and then the slightly trickier part is cutting the box joints at the ends. This requires some careful set-up on the table saw with a dado blade and a lot of micro adjustments, but in the end I got it all to work neatly.

A box joint is what you'll often see on traditional or nicer cabinet drawers. I'm familiar with making box joints for our bee hive boxes. It it a very satisfying way to join wood.

Tomorrow I'll complete the drawers and think through mounting the doors and getting ready to install the drawers. Maybe I'll even get beyond the thinking part!

Progress...

The last few days have seen a few developments: the floor finishing crew has been here and given all the floor surfaces a thorough sanding and have now put down the first of three layers of polyurethane. The floors look great but the fumes are nearly unbearable, so consequently Nance and I are fully living back in the yurt for the week until the floor process is complete.

I installed the shower fixtures last Sunday before work on the floors began. They look great but we haven't had a chance to actually test the shower out yet since we were waiting for some caulk to dry. We'll get our chance this weekend once we can get back in the house.

I've been back at the cabinetry project and have put together most of the cabinet doors. Tomorrow I'll start building the drawers and drawer fronts.

Today I also made a run over the mountain for maple that we'll be using for the baseboard and door trim on the first floor.

Cabinets and Moonlight

Moody moonlight

All the parts to ready for mortise and tenons, then assembling into the cabinet doors

Not posting on the blog is probably more a sign that we are more and more busy these days rather than that there is little to report.

I've had some time to continue on the cabinets and now have the face frames in place and have cut all the parts for the doors. I now need to cut the tenons and mortises to fit them all together.

Meanwhile we are putting together everything we need to lay our slate floor down in the kitchen, under the woodstove, and at the west door entry.

Pocket Doors

Yesterday morning Joe hung the pocket doors. They look really nice and after we gave them a look and admired them for a couple of minutes, slid them into their protective homes inside the wall.

The last couple of days have been wonderfully warm and today I took advantage of the outside temps to give the kitchen cabinets a first coat of polyurethane finish on the interior. From what I understand, tomorrow and the next day are supposed to be simillarly warm, so I'll continue doing this stinky work outside as long as I can.

Joe is just starting the stair finish tread and riser project with rough cutting all the lumber down to manageable sizes.

Doors and Cabinets

I sorted out all the various plywood parts I cut a week or so ago and assembled the kitchen cabinet boxes today. It went quite smoothly and everything fit together as it should. Tomorrow I fix everything in place and start in on the face frame.

Meanwhile, Felton was back continuing work on the electric and has the house nearly all wired up. The one missing element is light fixtures which we have yet to either make or purchase, so for now he is installing your basic porcelain-base fixture so we can have light until we sort out our fixture choices.

Joe wasn't here today but spent the last few days previously installing the interior doors. We all think they are quite handsome.

The tub got it's first coat of yellow-orange. We're diggin' it.

Window work

Joe putting together another window unit

My cut plan for the cabinetry so I know how much plywood I'll need

Two horizontal strips cut out of the sheetrock in second floor bathroom. I'll be installing strapping pieces in there as an attachment point for the vertical bead board

Joe is steadily building out all the window sill, returns, and trim. Each window is a project in its self, but he's got it worked out to a system and is churning through the project really nicely. In essence each window unit gets a box-like unit consisting of the window sill, the side returns (think of them as the walls that go from the sheetrock surface to the window) and the top return (the roof) that when assembled, slides into the rough opening and gets shimmed and screwed into place. Once the box is in, the trim goes on around the perimeter and the window is complete. It sounds straightforward, but there's a lot of planing, sanding, edging, trimming, fitting and beveling that happens to make come out just right.

I'm making headway on the kitchen cabinet project although so far most of that progress is on paper, but today I finished off with a materials list for the first phase of the project, which will consist of the guts of the cabinets; the base and plywood walls that will be eventually hidden by the face frame and doors. Like the house its self, you start with the foundation, then move on to framing, and finally finish with the fancier parts. Its going to be fun to actually start building them.

Otherwise, I ordered the necessary plumbing parts for the clawfoot tub, some lamp parts so I can start experimenting building light fixtures and I completed a tile plan for the first floor bathroom. Oh yeah, over the weekend I also cut into the sheetrock in the second floor bathroom to allow for horizontal strapping onto which we'll afix bead board. It would have been easier to have just laid the sheetrock out like it is now rather then having to go back and cut it, but that's how it goes.

Windows and Cabinets

The cabinetry plans as they currenlty stand. We've simplified and cleaned up the whole package a bit and it feels better

One of the windows Joe has built out. The apron (the bottom piece) is not in place because I asked Joe to hold off installing it because I wanted to modify the design slightly, which I've since done; it'll be a little more refined and in keeping with other thematic elements of the house

Joe has been plugging away at building the window returns and installing the trim. Its a particular job and requires a lot of attention and careful work and Joe has been doing a great job. We're over halfway done at this point.

I've been concentrating on the cabinetry project for the kitchen. We've pretty much worked out our plan and now my job is to draw up construction plans, make cut lists and order materials. Its going to be an involved project, but I'm pretty psyched about it.