2. at least it’s not raining.

not a lot of progress has actually taken place to the house. summer is here; we’re busy doing fun stuff on weekends. work kills most of the weekdays. doesn’t leave much time to work on the place… but think i’m setting aside the next month of weekends to work on the upstairs, hopefully enough to complete framing it all in. i’m really thinking of bringing in a sheetrock contractor because they can knock that stuff out fast.
the driveway may just end up getting poured this summer, assuming i actually remember to call the guy and schedule a time with him.
the front wall is on the horizon, as well…

new driveway gate… now it needs the pergola over it, with some kinda vine. (oh, and a driveway poured/stamped under it).

much too hot to be creative with the writing, today. it’s 10pm and the temp inside is in the high 80s. we’ve been here long enough to have acclimated to a cooler climate… so once it gets close to 90 inside, it’s f’ing hot.

hopefully… with some luck, determination, lack of laziness and some fine BBQ nurishment, there will be more to post about the house in the following month or two. for now, i’m going to go get a couple cold beers and lay down on the floor. not even gonna bother drinking the beer… just pour it on myself to cool down.

spent a couple hours in the workshop today, in between getting up-to-date with my taxes (better late than never audit), and eating a crazy good dinner at nicolas’. didn’t get a lot done, but better than nothing.

built a box-joint jig for the router table. simple, straight forward, and it works like a charm. plus, since it was all from scrap wood, it was free.

the pics prettymuch show how it works. clamp, cut, move the just cut section over, clamp and cut again… wash, rinse, repeat.

the finished product of two pieces of scrap on the jig, in about 5 minutes.

box joints aren’t as pretty as dovetail joints… but work well for my needs. plus i don’t have a dovetail bit for my router and they’re a pain to cut by hand.
the drawers for the desk/dresser/bunk bed i’m making, will all have box joints. want to finish the desk portion, so it can be stained and moved in, to replace the current setup which consists of a tot-table (2′ tall toddler table) which is barely big enough for the iMac and keyboard, next to a night stand on which sits the mouse and printer. not the most ergonomically sound setup…

~

i read a lot of forums. i overhear people, when out. one thing over and over… “but i don’t have all the tools.”
once, i thought i needed all the tools. didn’t know what “all” really was… but i needed ‘em. growing up with my grandpa, i suppose i used what he had… but sometime after that, i got brainwashed (damn marketing departments) into thinking i needed a lot of tools, to do anything. couldn’t do anything until then.

one of the first “big” tool purchases i made was a roll-away tool chest. now, great… i have this huge chest… with just a few things in each drawer. couldn’t afford anything to put in the box… but it looked good. ok, it was also a secure place to store tools that i had and started accumulating… but still. big expense without being able to build anything with it. as the years went by, i accumulated more and more. hand tools and power tools. had bought a small 8″ table saw at a garage sale, but after a year or two i got a big contractor saw and sold the small one. i eventually had a lot of tools.

i worked myself into being a metal fabricator… working in a moderately well equipped shop. it was nearly heaven, as i was given run of the place. i literally slept there, often. worked 60-70 hour weeks through the busy season (spring/summer), plus my own projects. filled my roll-away tool chest; mac, snap-on, matco.

when i became a contractor, i was no longer in a shop but out in the field/on-site. i obviously couldn’t bring everything with me all the time. oh, i brought a bunch of stuff… at the home shop, which was cluttered at best, lay everything that was left behind. other than laying there, much of it would do little more than get in the way. that’s when i started realizing something… i don’t use half of this stuff. around this time, someone must have been trying to help me out with the “too many tools” issue, because a bunch of stuff disappeared from my work truck. i won’t say this was a blessing in disguise, because it clearly sucked… and really pissed me off… but as i re-stocked my mobile toolbox (with duplicates that were at home), i only took what i actually used. my daily-use box went from 910lbs (412 kilos) down to 414lbs (188 kilos).

fast forward some years… no longer a contractor (though i miss it)… no longer a shop fabricator/welder (though i miss that, as well). got rid of most all of my equipment, and most of my tools in the past 4 or so years. at one time i had decided that i was done with this country, and was leaving it. hadn’t gotten as far in the plans as figuring out where exactly i was going… but bringing lots of tools with me was likely out of the question. i kept one old craftsman top-box, filled to the hilt with what tools i actually use. 280lbs (127 kilos) of ‘em.

now i’m kinda kicking myself in the ass for parting with some of the stuff… my 1920s vintage radial arm saw that was admittedly nicer to look at than to use… an atlas metal lathe… my 1940s US army arc welder… and still dead pissed off about some of the stuff that just plain disappeared at one time or another. i’m rebuilding my workshop. this time with some years of adult experience buying, owning and using tools and equipment. got a flash contractor table saw? nope… bought a 1970s craftsman 8″ bench-top table saw. damn near the exact same thing as the first one i bought and replaced. turns out it’s exactly what i need. huge roll-away tool chest? nope. ok, i actually don’t have room for one… but am thinking much more along the lines of a proper heavy maple workbench with integrated tool drawers and cabinetry. efficient and nice. i very much care for old/vintage american and european hand tools, and post war american power tools & equipment. what i have, one would hardly call “well equipped” if they were thinking along the lines of modern “have everything” shops… but i can build damn near anything with it. ok, i surely have much more than the average handyman/joe homeowner, particularly on the ‘metal fabrication’ side of things… but no more than an early 1950s shop would have.

don’t get me wrong, i love tools… but you’d be surprised just how far you can go with determination, patience to learn, sweat and the bare basics. how do you think your grandpa built stuff? my grandpa built decks with a breast drill (hand cranked drill), a single hand saw, a hammer, twine and a broken yardstick. sure, his fingers were all going in funny directions from the years of hard manual labor… but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done, and done well*. start with what ya got… get as you need (and can)…

*doesn’t mean i like cutting dovetails by hand, though… see above :). yeah, i like power tools…

* although, i’ve realized my work days are only a few actual hours long.

ok… so the work day…

woke up at 7:15am, brought the older child to school. came home and did the “send out the resume” thing, ’cause unemployment isn’t cool. hmm. that’s a dirty word… how about “in between contracts”, as i’m a consultant…

i had fully intended to go to the basement and install more insulation for a while… but the wee one woke up and was calling me. i went into the bedroom, and somehow ended up in bed for a while… reading books and playing with her. then we got up and ate breakfast. went for a nice walk down to stumptown coffee. strolled back, stopping to see every flower, and play with every cat.
by now it’s around 11am.

fully intending to now start working on something, i remember that the new dryer we got from sears last month is on the fritz. spent way too long trying to get through their crappy automated phone system, so i can speak with an actual person. got transferred a few times, then finally was able to set up an appointment for someone to come fix the thing under warranty.

walking around the house, gandering at all that needs to be done… (a lot)… there’s a wet, mushy, splashiness in the basement. after a night of constant rain, the basement got a bit moist… time for a cellar door. guess that project will be bumped to the top of the (very long) list.
for those who live in areas without basements… think something like this:

but not so ugly.

OK, here we go… i got started at about 2pm (WTF happened to the last few hours????)… went to mr. plywood. rummaged through 88 pieces (i counted) of 1×3 radiata pine, to find 8 good pieces. bought the last of 8 pieces of 1×2 radiata. got a sheet of exterior grade 4×8′ baltic birch solid hardwood core plywood. this is something i’ve never seen before… but it sure is pretty…

(exterior grade plywood is made with non-water-soluble epoxy, rather than low grade glue that falls apart in water exposure. “solid hardwood core”, means it doesn’t have chips of scrap wood in the center, but larger pieces of hardwoods like oak. birch is a pretty nice wood)

got a few more misc. pieces of lumber, loaded it all onto the work beast, and came home. somehow the trip there and back along with buying and loading took about an hour and a half, despite it being only 4 miles away. another half hour to unload and navigate the horrid disaster of a “driveway” and yard, where about 10 cubic yards of construction debris lay, and get it all into the carriage house.
play with the little one for a bit… all of a sudden it’s 4pm, and i haven’t actually started working yet.

i get out to the carriage house and set up the router table…

super low-buck router table, it is. a well used early 80s Craftsman 8″ table saw, which i modified to hold a router as well. i don’t have a proper fence for it, so i just clamp a piece of straight, smooth wood on as a fence. works very well, just not as quick to setup as a real fence. gonna make one, eventually… unless one shows up at ted’s tool shed (a cool used tool shop here in portland, that has hidden gems of vintage tools hidden among piles of crap).

cut all the pieces needed for the frames of the doors. routed the pieces so the plywood can sit flush/framed in…

somewhere around there, went inside for dinner…. guess around 5pm.

back out to the carriage house.
ripped the plywood to size, then routed V-grooves in them…

the router:

a cool Craftsman pro, picked up second hand. not sure how old it is, but at least 15 years. has a nice feel to it, very solid, balanced well. for being only 1.5hp, it easily out powers my previous router- a 2hp porter cable.

came inside around 7:30 or so, took a shower, back to playing with the wee one (who’s teething, i think… could explain some things). really don’t know where all the time went, today… because the actual work that was done is about 2 hours worth, if i were billing somebody for it (and believe it or not, this is what i did for a living, for a long time).

maybe tomorrow will be more productive….
maybe.

maybe tomorrow’s writing will be better, too… but the reason for the poor writing is well worth it: the wee one. she loves being right there for everything. writing included. it’s tough to write when a toddler is hanging on you

aside from antique pieces, i have a difficult time bringing myself to buy furniture. most of the new stuff is made in china, using questionable materials and generally of substandard quality. much of the overseas wood is from overharvested non sustainable forest clearing, which further dissuades me from purchasing. plus, it’s fun to build it myself.

we need a bunk bed, with a desk… and drawers… and shelves… a whole unit, of sorts. here’s the start of it:

it’ll still get a desk drawer, as well as leg side cabinet. this will sit under one end of the “bunk” bed, the other end will be supported by a drawer and shelve unit. the space in between will nicely fit another bed, perpendicular to the bunk. hard to explain, hopefully it’ll be done soon enough to just post pictures of it.

the materials are plantation grown radiata pine (sustainable), poplar solid/hardwood core plywood, some oak and hickory. the oak and hickory are from cast-off pieces that have been salvaged and re-sawn. no exotic hardwoods, but the radiata pine is quite hard (for a softwood), and great to work with. i cut v-groves in the plywood used on the sides to give a tongue and groove appearance. dowel and glued joints, no visible fasteners, lotsa routed tongues and groves in the structure. the drawers will likely be finger joints, ’cause dovetails are tough by hand

i probably should have taken pictures of the building process, but the amount of dust in the small workshop surely would have done the camera in. lungs are more resilient than overpriced electronics, so i was fine in there.

speaking of “there”… the 10.5′ by 17′, 94 year old carriage house that’s my workshop:

excuse the mess… not much room to put stuff. have to rotate tools from the floor to the workbench, to the shelf on the opposite side of the room… back to the floor. i get a good groove going with it all for a while, then all of a sudden can’t find anything. it needs a bit more workbench, and more utilization of vertical space (instead of things being spread over the floor). organization is tough when you’re just using some existing (old) nails in the framing to hang stuff, putting faith in gravity failing the moment a nail holding a saw that’s overhead lets go due to rust…
overall it’s not a bad space… pretty comfortable to work in, actually. you know, as long as you’re not claustrophobic.

this… this is what i need for organization of such a small space:

an antique pattern maker’s tool chest. mounts to the wall (can also be transported), holds… well… everything. one for woodworking handtools, one for metalworking handtools, a proper cabinet for power tools… all easily accessible while working.

more to come tomorrow, when i’m better rested, have more to show, and don’t have my little helper tugging on my arm and kicking me as she flails about while i try to write this… as much as she loves helping me work on stuff, she doesn’t like me typing when she wants attention… so attention she’ll get!