Scrape, scrape, paint, paint

A good weekend working on the house.

Friday night I cleaned the fish flies off the shed then scraped off all the loose paint I could. Rather than stripping it down to bare wood I decided to just clean off the loose bits, prime and them paint it. It was last painted in 2003, so it wasn't in too bad shape. There were a couple of non structural rotted pieces of trim on the doors and I did rip those and and replace them.

Saturday I cleaned of the fish flies (again) and primed all of the bare wood areas. I am using an oil based primer and finish coat, so cleaning the brushes is a pain. Saturday night we took a trip to home depot to get some more paint for the trim. I still have some paint for the main shed body so I had them shake that, but I was out of the 'silver gray' for the trim so I bought a quart of that paint. I'd saved the original label so they were easily able to mix it up for me.

Sunday morning we went down the road to do a sprint triathlon. Other than having a terrible swim I had a good time and the weather cooperated.

Sunday afternoon I got back to work on the shed. Painting always seems to take longer than I think it should and this was no exception. I think it took about 1.5 hours to paint the trim and touch up the main body as required. It'll still need a second coat in some places so I'll finish that up late tonight when I get home.

I forgot to take before/after pictures of the shed, but it was looking better on Saturday after the primer had gone on, now it looks almost like a new shed. With the new roof I put on last year it complements the backyard instead of being an eyesore like others around the neighbourhood.

Here's a picture of Joshua and I before start of the triathlon.

Morris Chair Finishing Finished

Second and third coats of wipe-on poly are done. I added some metal sliders to the bottom of the chair from Lee Valley - 06W01.02 and the chair is complete except for the cushions.

This week I've got a few more leather options to check-out before we give in and go with a leatherette or suede.

It'll be nice to complete this project, though we don't yet have a place for it in the house...

New Fridge / Water Line

We had a new fridge delivered the other day. Our previous fridge came with the house which we bought 6 years ago and was probably 10 years old when we took possession. Masking tape held the seals in place and it had a paltry 15 cu ft of storage space.

Rosemary wanted the new fridge to have the in-door ice/water dispenser and we shopped around a bit before deciding on a 22cu ft model that would just squeeze in between the counter and the outer wall of the cabinet line (a 5/8" piece of plywood.

The room underneath the kitchen is unfinished, and the cold water pipe runs about 8ft away from where the fridge is (in the floor below) so I was able to easily tap into the line to run the 1/4" copper pipe to the fridge. I had previously installed a saddle valve on the line for filling up Joshua's water table when it was in the basement, so I decided to pull the copper line out of that and reuse the valve. Later when I read the instructions for the fridge it said to not use that type of pierce valve, but it's working fine so I'm leaving it.

I ran 20ft of 1/4" pipe up the floor to the fridge. Since the floor was all tiled I wanted to run the pipe up through the drywall right behind the fridge. Using the floor register as a reference I measured out to where I thought the wall was, crossed my fingers and drilled a 3/4" hole in the subfloor. If I missed on one side I'd hit the tile, the other side would be the cherry hardwood in the dining room. Lucky for me I didn't miss.

I carved out a hole in the drywall and then poked up a clothes hanger through the hole, grabbing it with a pair of pliers to fish it through the drywall. After taping the 1/4" pipe to the wire I passed it back down the hole and then completed the hookup.

Rosemary is happy with her new fridge and lucky for us Joshua has not yet discovered the water/ice dispenser...

Minwax Wipe-on Poly

My current recipe for finishing projects is to start with two coats of Minwax Provincial stain, allow one week to cure then move on to a wipe-on poly.

The wipe-on poly is applied with a lint free cotton cloth, allowed to dry for at least 4 hours, then sanded lightly with 220 grit sandpaper. After sanding I wipe the project down with another cotton rag moistened with a bit of paint thinner to pick up all the dust, then apply one or two more coats of the poly.

This weekend I only had time to get one coat of poly on, followed by sanding. I'll clean up the project and get a few more coats on during the week.

We did get out to look for material for the cushions. We didn't have success finding a local leather supplier but found another lead that I'll check out this week. The most usable fabric we found was a leatherette material that had a tan marbleized finish. $10/yd is very cheap and we could easily change it out if we found later that we didn't like the colour (need about 4 yards). Ideally we are looking for a dark brown leather. The one dealer said he could order in leather but we could only get it by the 'hide' and a hide costs $600.

Air Drying Construction Lumber

The rough lumber required for the bunk bed works out to be about 370BF of construction grade spruce. The idea is to save money on the lumber and air dry it in the basement before using it to build the bunk beds.

I couldn't find a good article on the web about drying construction lumber, but the sidebar in the CHW article says stack the lumber and let it dry for about a month before using it, with an oscillating fan to help the drying process.

Before picking up the lumber I cut up some 2x2 stock to get enough stickers to support the pile every 24". I also laid out some plastic where the pile would sit on the concrete floor to prevent the moisture coming up through the concrete.

My workshop is located in my basement, so bringing home the lumber was quite a workout. Each piece was moved four times : stack to truck, truck to front entrance, front entrance to stairs and finally stairs to pile. My father-in-law whose truck was used to bring home the lumber has a bad knee so couldn't help, and Rosemary was off with Joshua so it was all me. Good times.

Once I had the lumber stacked in the basement I added a box fan at one end and a dehumidifier at the other. You can see some melamine shelves I added to the top of the pile to help keep it from warping, I'll dig up some more weight this weekend to add to the pile. Concrete blocks would work well but I don't have any lying around so I'll have to see what other heavy scrap I have to use.