a new direction of sorts defined.

Not sure what has led to this. Probably from reading a few blogs I never normally read but I all of a sudden have this new vision for this house that will runneth over into my life in general. So I'm going to write about it here. Well - not so much vision as … let's call it 'Rules.' Sort of like RULES TO LIVE BY when it comes to finishing this house and how I will approach other areas of my life as well.

Let's see if I can state them simply -

Number One: Keep making stuff.

Number Two: Stop buying new stuff.*

Number Three: Buy local stuff.

(And Number Four - which isn't as big as the others: Get rid of stuff).

(And then Number Five - which is kind of like Number Four: Buy less stuff).

* And fix stuff when it breaks.

Okay okay … maybe that sounds a bit much. So I'll try to explain.

Number One. I've always enjoyed making stuff so this one is pretty easy. And I like to think I get a little bit better with each thing I build. But I'm not just talking furniture here. Or porch railings. Or details on my garage I built from 2x6s. Although those definitely count. Especially the furniture. But I'm talking about a whole lot of other stuff beyond my house and what I put in it. So I should maybe re-define it to be: 'Keep creating stuff.' Like keep making photographs. Keep creating music. Keep writing letters … by hand - with an actual pen and paper you know? Keep making cards instead of buying stupid crappy ones at the store. And heck yeah - definitely keep making my own furniture. Even if none of it is any good. Just keep making stuff.

I even think growing my own stuff would fit here. Like finally planting an actual vegetable garden. And then actually eating the vegetables it produces. Yeah - I think that counts. I could even re-re-define it to being something like: 'Take one or a bunch of raw materials - be them wood, paper, brain cells or seeds - and turn them into something cooler.' Yeah - not the same ring but it works.

So then … Number Two. This one is pretty easy too cos I have always loved going to yard sales. I read an article a while ago in some magazine at K's parents' house about the magic of yard sales. About the good they encompass. About how it gets us out of our drywall boxes to actually walk around our neighborhoods and meet and talk to - well - real, actual people. Our neighbors. With the side benefit of being able to paw through all their crap. It's a total blast hopping on bikes Saturday mornings with some panniers (or now a bike trailer … that I bought at a yard sale of course!) and messenger bags strapped over shoulders and circle around the neighborhood following this sign or that sign seeing what we might find. And none of it is new. Yeah - a lot of it is junk. But I have absolutely found some cool stuff at yard sales. An old Beethoven music book - hardcover - of every one of his thirty-two sonatas - printed in German … for a buck. A cool lamp. A spectacular old-timey fan (that - with full disclosure - K went back and bought it to surprise me). A rad old mixer. And on and on and on it goes. Yeah - yard sales rule.

But I won't be able to find everything at a yard sale of course. So then there are other places. For all my book needs (and I have a growing need for books!) there's Better World Books (they have an absolutely ginormous selection of any book you could possibly imagine existing on the planet - I just found a rare book by Bob Spring of the North Cascades! - they offset their shipping, give books back to schools and countries where literacy is low and are just an all-around awesome company with a super-forward-thinking business model). Or Half Price Books. Or Powells for when I'm down in Portland. There's the local Goodwill right down the street. Thrift stores. Consignment shops. And duh - Craigslist and Ebay for everything from camera stuff (like all the old large-format equipment I bought earlier this year) to computers (I detest the new Apple and their business approach but love their old computers - I may have a few humming around this place) to anything I can probably imagine ever wanting (I hesitate saying 'needing').

And for my house - this is where the new direction comes in … architectural salvage lots in Tacoma and Seattle that are chocked full of everything from plumbing fixtures to doors to windows and on and on. It's crazy. If I want a new faucet - I do not want to run up to the Home Depot and pick one up off a shelf over-packaged in cardboard inside a cardboard box. Heck no. So my new idea is to finish this house by buying as little new stuff as I can. That sounds bad I realize - not very true to that simple statement above (but I know I won't be able to find everything used). So let me re-phrase that - everything that I can find used I will buy used. Better? I might need a bath fitting or a pipe or electrical cable or something I'll have to drop by the local Mclendons to pick up. But seriously - all the fixtures for my bathroom yet-to-be-finished will be used (if I can find them). Used tiles maybe. A light fixture here or there. Hardware. Etcetera etcetera. Hippo Hardware in Portland is an amazing place! This house may end up looking eclectic as all get-out. It'll be perfect.

And lastly - Number Three. The local bit. I saw a little while ago someone sharing on The Facebook a phrase about how - if you buy local - you're not helping out some rich CEO and their ginormous corporation but rather some kid getting tuba lessons or going to that summer camp or clothes for school or a Christmas holiday. K knows the folks who run the bakery in town so I know that's the truth. I live a few blocks from a Saturday farmers market. The other weekend I picked up a bunch of über-cheap flowers to plant (they're planted - now if only I can keep them alive!). Some produce. Oh - and some spectacular coffee! Holy cow that coffee is delicious … There are people selling meat packages (need to check into that). Flowers. Obviously tons of produce. And so much other stuff that I probably would never buy. Heck - back in June I finally signed up for local home milk delivery. It's been fabulous. The milk is awesome, local and now I can say I have a milkman (I'm even getting better at remembering to grab the milk off the porch before work every other Thursday!). But beyond the market there are a ton of small shops scattered around. Coffee shops, bookstores, bakeries, music stores for the odd XLR cable I need when I've realized I've rolled over mine with something right before I'm supposed to record a guy singing … markets, paper and craft stores, antique shops (which are mostly over-priced junk but like yard sales - you can get lucky).

So now my confession … I realize I have not always been good about these three things. Way too meticulous and picky about this remodel. I like eclectic better. So this will definitely be a new-ish mode of thinking. I'm even considering starting a spreadsheet and tallying up what I buy used vs. what I buy new. It would be a good idea to visually see a) how much stuff I buy and b) how much of it is used versus new. And I could make pie charts and tables from the data!

Okay … so there it is. Time to start. I think I'll go outside now and build a compost bin.




_th 08.15.12









( ... and ... an hour later ... )

bookshelf [finished].

Well I finished the bookshelf a few weeks ago but just now got around to taking some photos of it. So starting with the 'bookshelf' I had in place since the day I moved in here oh I don't know about six years ago now -



Pretty sweet.

But then I drew up a plan -



And then I bought a bunch of lumber -



And then ... I had a bookshelf -



I haven't glued the 'mission'-style strips to each side yet cos I'm still undecided about them (those are the strips of wood behind the lamp). Overall I'm pretty satisfied - although of course I wish I had done some things differently and I'm already thinking of the next furniture project and how much better I will hopefully be able to make it.

Step #1 will be to move beyond Poor Man's joinery (i.e. pocket hole screws) and pony up for a decent router table and some bits so I can do mortise and tenon and dovetail joinery for my next project ... bedside tables. They'll match the design of the dresser - just on a smaller scale to give me some practice with those dovetails.

I walked to the library a couple weeks ago one evening and picked up some books about joinery, applying finishes (another weakness of mine due to my lack of - well - any real knowledge on the subject) and just general furniture building.

But for now at least my books are not stuffed in boxes on top of boxes on top of boxes ...



(Shows the bit of 'distressing' I did to the edge with a chisel)

jig.

So ... a three dollar jig at a garage sale. Well - that and a couple bucks each for some corner clamps (for putting together drawers - and picture frames - another project of mine waiting in the wings cos solid hardwood frames - especially big ones - are expensive ... ).

Based on how much I've been enjoying putting together this little bookshelf I have been giving much more thought to building myself a dresser. I've - uhh - never owned one personally. I kind of forget what it's like to store clothes in drawers.

But honestly - part of that is a) my pickiness and b) my cheapness. I want an heirloom dresser that I will buy once and still have to pass on to Julian so-to-speak. But I haven't found anything that's not close to two grand that fits my taste and that other criteria.

Enter the idea of building my own ...

Now I get that building a dresser will be tough - it will require precision that I have yet not really had to worry about building a bed and this bookshelf. But it doesn't seem as undoable as maybe I once thought. And of course the benefit - besides really enjoying working with wood and building stuff - is I can a) design it exactly how I want it and b) can do it for way way cheaper than buying one.

Like - I want cedar-lined drawers. Hard to find sub-two-grand but to include it in my design - no problem!  I want a drawer taller than the others to house my wool sweaters cos wool sweaters rule. Buying a dresser you're stuck with someone else's idea of drawer quantity and dimensions ... not if I design my own!

And so on.

It will be a couple notches up on the scale of complexity - but in the end - it's not rocket science. And if it's not perfect ... it'll just have character.

So that three-dollar jig - for mortise and tenon joinery - may be what I needed to get me pumped to design and build a dresser right on the heels of finishing the bookshelf.

yard sale season 2012.

This past Saturday was the official kick off of the 2012 yard sale season with (duh) the Lakeland Hills community sales. I often joke that abomination-of-a-development has it's own government and armed forces and such - but one Saturday a year in May I brave beige-coloured-house-hell and we pile into Stuart to see what we may find.

And this year ... this year was all about supplies for my growing wood shop.

A couple of nice wood handscrew clamps ($5 each) and a couple different corner clamps ($3 each or something I think) - those will come in handy if I am going to be building drawers. Just sayin' ... And a table saw jig for joinery (more on that three-dollar find in a bit). Oh - and the big spend ... $35 for a Dewalt 18-volt drill driver and charger (I blew one-fifty on mine - but now I can keep one in the garage and another in the house I guess - yeah ... ).

And then some random stuff -

Yep - some game for $2 called Constellation Station! For three bucks - the base for a craftsman table lamp (now just to find an art glass square shade - sort of like this). A cast iron skillet for fifty cents or something and some miscellaneous piano books for J (good ol' John Thompson!).

Not a bad morning - after going to the farmer's market here in town and getting coffee of course. Yard sales rule - looking forward to many more finds.

ps - something I really would love to find would be a vintage, industrial wall-mounted task light (I know I said wall-mounted - but they're hard to find) - like a for-real one - not an over-priced Rejuvenation replication (or one their buyers have found likely at a yard sale and are selling for eight hundred bucks) ...

bookshelf finishing.

So now I'm up to putting on the stain and varnish. Definitely learned some things from J's bed (like have a plan on how much to assemble before staining - too little would make assembly tough if not impossible - but too much makes staining more difficult and potentially sloppy-looking). I ended up trading in the rosewood stain for a slightly-less-red-slightly-more-orange black cherry.

It is beautiful. And just about matches the coffee table.

And another thing different this go around ... I felt it when I botched up the top piece by over belt-sanding it ... but no worries - it added character and made it look a little beat up (uhh, the in-vogue term would of course be 'distressed'). But the point that hit me so instead of getting upset made me smile a little to myself - this bookshelf is not mass-produced somewhere by machines. It is hand-made. By me. And so all the little imperfections - in the assembly - in the finishing - I have already begun to cherish. That's character.

And I'm cherishing the whole hand process - like not rushing through it but enjoying the moments. The delicate hand sanding to the edges. Putting on the stain by hand of course and then rubbing it off with old torn t-shirts of mine.

And the best part I've found ... rubbing on the Minwax poly.

On J's bed I used General Finishes (the same brand stain I've used on both now) poly acrylic that I applied - like the stain - with a foam brush. It did the trick and - while nothing really wrong with it - there is something special about soaking an old t-shirt and hand-rubbing in the poly. How it brings out the beautiful orange tones and warmth of the stain while the satin finish gives the piece just a hint of a subtle gloss -

So the shelves are already done (3 coats of the poly) and the two sides and back are drying out in the garage while today it pours rain after probably two weeks of unseasonably sunny-for-Springtime-in-the-northwest.

But one thing I forgot to mention - last weekend at Mclendon's after Katie pieced together an adorable planter of ground cover for her mum's day I went to pick out some hemlock lattice on a whim. The idea ending up being this -

Adding a touch of arts and crafts-slash-mission styling to the shelf for about twenty bucks. I ended up staining and varnishing the lattice trim separately and will glue it on once the sides have three coats of varnish themselves - part of that balance of how much to assemble before finishing. The only catch will be making sure the glue doesn't eek out ... but that'll be part of the whole assembly gig that I should be up to doing within the week.

Overall - I am having a grand time building this shelf and am really starting to enjoy woodworking. Maybe I'll build a dresser afterall ...

bookshelf finishing test.

So just wanted to test the wood conditioner and stain combination and see how it was going to look on the luan-veneered plywood and VG fir before I go to town this weekend and finish this thing (well - it'll take a week to put on the 4-5 coats of varnish - so it'll just be the stain this weekend).

Exhibit A -

I had some of the Zinsser stuff leftover from when I did J's bed + some Minwax stuff from I have no idea ... so I thought what the heck - since I had both of them why not see if there was a difference.

On the left obviously is the Minwax. On the right - the SealCoat. Hmm - the SealCoat is pure crap. The Minwax stuff is about 3.6 billion times better. Oh - and on the far left - no conditioner (note how the wood grain has pretty much disappeared ... so that's no good - duh).

Holy cow that's gorgeous. It's General Finishes Rosewood water-based stain that I picked up at the local woodworking shop the next town over. Tomorrow I'll test what a second coat looks like - but with that + 4-5 coats of satin varnish I am definitely excited to see how this bookshelf turns out ...

(close-up of the lousy SealCoat results ... )

Oh - and the other day I finished assembling all the pieces, routing the top and the final sanding so everything is ready to go ... supposed to be gorgeous out this weekend - perfect time to put on some music and stain away!

furniture building ... take two part two.

So moving on with building this little bookshelf ... I had left off with having glued the plywood sheets together.

Note to self: use more glue when laminating plywood. Lots more glue.

But after cutting everything down and reglueing some sheets I moved on to planing. Then more cutting. Took 5º off the bottom 4" of each leg by using a jig I had made a long time ago for my chop saw -

Then - in order to cut down the lengths wider than 2' (the widest cut possible on Katie's dad's table saw - a full foot more than mine) - I splurged $18 at Lowe's for a 100" circ saw guide. Best $18 I ever I spent. Seriously. This thing rocked the party -

I would use my drywall square and butt the guide up against it to make sure everything was nice and - well - square. Then clamped it down. Worked like a charm.

(It came with the guide - which could be halved into two 50" sections for shorter cuts - and the two C-clamps)

Then I had my 1-1/4"-thick top that I was 'veneering' the edges with 1x2" fir that I had planed to a width of 1-1/4" -

So I glued those around the front and sides -

My longest clamps are 24" so I had to get creative with the glueing options ... it worked is all I can say. And then - to even the little bits up that weren't perfectly smooth with the plywood - I used my new best friend to get the job done -

But no - I didn't even pay $5.00 like the sticker says - the guy I bought my table saw from at a garage sale just gave me the belt sander. I did have to get a new 80-grit belt for it but it works like a champ. Then some good old fashioned orbital sanding -

Followed by some hand sanding on all the pieces (including the legs as shown here) -

I even broke out a 3/4" chisel and added some knicks and stuff on the edges of the shelfs here and there - I may still 'distress' the wood a little more. But then - finally - time for assembly ...

Like I mentioned - this will involve lots of pocket holes so off I went (I did splurge for the 3" Kreg face clamp to help speed things up a bit) -

In order to screw the legs on I used my 24" clamps and secured them in place before drilling in the screws -

And in short order - the first side was done -

This is going to be one solid bookshelf.

Next - the other side. Then the back (just the 2x2 on top and bottom). Then ... finishing all the pieces before final assembly. We'll see how that goes ... it'll be interesting.

furniture building ... take two.

So it is springtime of course which means among other things it is apparently time to try my hand at building another piece of furniture. I was seriously all set to buy the Kent bookcase from Pottery Barn until seeing it in the store - thank goodness. Yes - some of their furniture is beautiful and totally heirloom quality ... that bookcase though - was not. It felt like a light breeze would blow it over. And the glass doors - a classy idea and what really appealed to me - were hinged on cheap, plastic tracks that felt - well - just cheap.

So ... I dug out an old receipt from Chom's Chevron in good ol' Marblemount dated eight-twenty-six-twenty-eleven. After a climbing weekend (a night at the Newhalem campground followed by a night atop Sourdough) we had stopped in Mount Vernon at this little spectacular sandwich shop. Next door to it was a random antique store where we wandered through and there in the far corner where the sun was streaming in was a cool bookcase. 'I could build that' I said to myself. So I pulled out the only scrap of paper I had at the time - that receipt - and scrawled on the back of it -

Seemed pretty simple. Some 2x2s, 1x2s and veneered plywood. I had taken a lot of pics of it on my good ol' iPhone 2G but ... that died on my backpacking trip out to Whatcom Pass a couple weeks later and they were lost for good. But luckily - I had that receipt.

So from that I fashioned a more detailed plan -

Some actual measurements and - well - a layout for how I was going to cut all the pieces out of the 4x8 sheets of plywood.

Then it was time to take a trip to good ol' Gray's Lumber off Sixth Ave in Tacoma (where I got all the lumber for J's bed - much, much better than the crap you find at the Home Depots and such). And surprisingly - their veneered plywood was only thirty bucks a sheet. I also picked up the fir 2x2s and 1x2s.

My plan then was to get four sheets of half-inch stuff - then glue them together so each face would be veneered (since you can see the outside and inside of the panels on a bookshelf). Plus - then the indent of the panels and such with the 2x2 posts would only be about 3/8" (I'm going to plane the 2x2s and 1x2s slightly to shave off just a bit of the dirty stuff and get down to the really nice, clean wood).

So then - starting with a big pile of lumber -

And then after hauling it to Katie's parents' place to have her dad help with his slightly-more-solid table saw to cut down the 4x8 sheets -

And then - glueing all the sheets up -

Now - time to start planing the 2x2s and 1x2s. Putting it together will involve about 3.7 billion pocket hole screws so I may splurge for one of the Kreg face clamps - much faster than loosening/tightening my C-clamp that many billions of times ...

april first.

So after finally finishing a couple-month-long project completely unrelated to anything of a remodeling nature I finally got to head out this afternoon to dig in the dirt a little as the sun waned in the sky and when the wind picked up it was downright chilly for an April day in the northwest. Maybe we'll be in for another cool/wet spring like last year.

But no thing today - picked the winter's weeds and planted some lavender and daffodils and winter creeper I had picked up at the Home Depot.

I do love my little house in the springtime of the year when the colours pop and the sun peeks out for an afternoon late as it sets and I head in feet half-numb hands cold downright chilled to flick on porch lights and let the glow waft outside.

a slight change of plan.

So it all started - as most things seem to do - sort of randomly ... in this case, Cost Plus apparently was blowing out all their furniture. Some more than others. The key being their mission table and chairs which I had already sort of had my eye on for a while cos it's beautiful, solid (the table must weigh in at easily over a hundred pounds) and quite affordable. But 60% off was unbelievably affordable.

I might have bought the table and six chairs ...

So currently then - our kitchen set up -

Well - not entirely - I just sold the Dania bar table and chair set that used to be in this corner -



But now that's what we've got. An old, tiny table I bought from Pier 1 I've had since before Julian was born and refinished plus a smattering of garage sale mission-style chairs. So Katie got me thinking - kind of out-of-the-box thinking that's good from time to time.

My original plan for this place was to gut the entire back of the house - move the bathroom (and reduce it from a full- to a half-bath) and put a kitchen nook where the shower currently is, an island with a cooktop and a pantry. But a while back I came to the conclusion I needed a reality-check and that this place - though I love it - is not going to be my final house and is only worth putting so much into it. Gutting the back of it to put in a bigger kitchen - though a nice amenity and such - just didn't seem realistic. A bit over-the-top for such a small house. This place is what it is - a starter house for someone. It seemed unrealistic to build out a dream kitchen in such a space.

But I miss having a real, big, solid kitchen table that isn't tiny crammed in a dark corner of the kitchen. To come home in the evening and gather at for dinners. To wake up weekend mornings the sun streaming in through the blinds to plop down and have a bowl of cereal. Play a game of Settlers of Catan.

So - I hadn't really thought up a new plan until now ... and while the newly-acquired mission table and chairs sit unassembled in my basement that plan is -

- where that little table is now (and the fridge to the left) - build out a pantry like originally planned and enclose the fridge with cabinets above and to the right (or the left and move it to the opposite corner along the wall) sort of like this (although I'd only have two doors and they'd be painted white and match the 5-panel doors I installed a couple months ago - with cabinets likely overhead as well since the ceilings are 9' tall) -

- completely rearrange the living room - move the piano to the front of the room and put the TV and two couches in the basement (more in a sec) to create a media room space down there
- where the piano is now - put the mission table (I, umm, bought it and six chairs)
- move the recording setup to where the TV and audio equipment are now
- in the middle of the living room, get a small loveseat and matching chair or two, a bookcase (possibly build - this has been on the wishlist ever since I moved in cos I still have all my books spilling out of various boxes stacked against a wall) and hopefully still have room for the coffee table I bought last year - hopefully sort of all centered in front of and around the fireplace
- more or less leave the laundry room and back bathroom the way they are - well, finish the laundry and back entry - do something like this with the laundry area (I like the countertop for folding laundry and stuff and the utility sink that I'll need once the last bathroom is finished cos right now it's serving as my utility room) -

(Sans the random smiling lady)

That'll of course mean finishing at least one room in the basement. Flooring. New tiled ceiling. Wiring for all the audio and stuff. Redoing the corner and gas fireplace there now. So it'll be a work in progress. And I've got a bathroom to start and finish which I think will take priority. I've put that thing off too long.

But anyways - it'll be a lot of shuffling but in the end I'll have a nice, big, solid kitchen table next to some south-facing windows that'll be beautiful and work well for all the reasons I've mentioned.