New Shop, New Bench

When Alice and I were shopping for a house one of my criteria was a refuge for myself.  Of course, I have my "Fortress of Solitude"in the country, but that won't last for ever. And so I've been busy converting the garage into a workshop.

In the basement of the house we purchased together some 3 years ago  now, we found this:

The top being made up of 3 chunks of vertical grain fir about 3-1/2" thick, 11 inches wide and 7-1/2'long.

They have become this:

The planks have been planed down to exactly 3.5" giving them a new surface and making them the same height as my compound miter saw (which sits in the gap between slabs.  With the 2-foot runout on the end the bench is just shy of 9 feet.

If it looks unsteady it isn't.  Although I plan to add cross bracing, the whole frame is clamped together using just three 1/2-inch threaded rods. The tension keeps everything quite rigid and the weight of the fir is substantial.

Patio or What I Did on Alice's Vacation

While Alice and her son traveled for 2 weeks, I tackled a 31-item to-do list.  By far the biggest task was redoing the patio and yard area. We had the old concrete patio and its aluminum awning removed after we bought the house, but had done nothing since.  Well, two weeks and 5 tons of stone later...

One yard of gravel in the driveway; then a ton of tumble blue stone; followed by 1.5 yards of sand under the blue tarp.

The red pavers were part of over 100 such pavers that we collected from various places around the property.

 

 

 

 Alice enjoys a book on the new patio.

 The restored Franklin Stove sits in its own pagoda.  Still looking for a bargain on an 8"chimney.

Mid-Century Modern & Me

Our home in Portland has a basement bedroom and neighboring bathroom that seemed to us to be quintessentially mid-century modern.  Well, it has wood paneling and a tile ceiling with gold flecks in it.  The bathroom is pink and white, tiny and appointed like a railroad car (from the 1950s of course). I've been given me free rein to manage the decor and I have gone (some might say overboard) with the theme.

It's very hard to find a matched set of nightstands so I finally made some.  These are of my own design.  The legs are ready-made.  The over sized handles were found at The Rebuilding Center in a bin, but they shined up nicely.

 

Likewise I couldn't find a small table and chairs. I ended up buying the chairs ($55/pair delivered)

Again the legs are store-bought.  The construction is very simple and follows the trend at the time to leave the plywood edge exposed.  To keep the thin appearance, here's how the leaves work from the underside.

Finally, the den.  It used to look like this

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But now it looks like this, 

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The bookcase is featured in this posting A Moving Case for Books.  The floor is painted a chocolate brown.  The 50s style rug form Overstock.com; the coffee table was $22 at an estate sale.  The louvered sliding door to the left was a bargain at the ReBuilding Center.  I think we paid $28 for both of them.  They needed some cleaning up and one of the slats had to be replaced (I fashioned on out of old piece of cedar which matches nearly perfectly).  The sliding track hardware is real barn door hardware salvaged from the farm and restored by me. There is also the vintage stereo featured in the posting de minimis.

And so our visit to the 1950s ends, unless you visit us that is.

de minimis

As part of our effort to "embrace and extend" our mid-century modern environment in the basement I acquired a vintage Akai receiver for $20 and a pair of very ratty Radio Shack Mimimus-2 speakers for $5.

In this photo I'd already stripped out the drivers and insulation, refinished the cabinets, including paining the faces black.

The young man who sold them told me the speakers had no bass, which I expected.  Speakers age and, like people, become flabby and unresponsive in old age . (Oh, and in addition one of the woofers had a hole punched in it.) But unlike people, you can simply order replacement speaker components from stores like Parts Express.

Proving once again that any Auerbach can turn a sows ear into a silk purse  here is the finished product for $35 in drivers and $5 worth of fine woolen cloth for the grilles (and $20 in shipping and handling!).

I made new grille frames out of scrap plywood; the old particle board ones disintegrated.
(For those who might notice, yes I did replace the original cone tweeter with a dome one.)

There you have it; a vintage sound system for around $80.

A Moving Case for Books

Th eback half of our basement in Portland is dominated by a rather new oil furnace.  We wanted to extend the guest area into a dual use family room.  The issue was how to cover up the furnace and still provide service access annually.  I also wanted to continue the 1950s theme, so just putting up a stud wall with a couple of doors to the furnace in it didn't quite measure up.   I thought bookcasaees might do the trick so here, in animation, is my solution.

This is just an animation; a human has to do the work.

And yes, the rolling shelves would be top-heavy if it weren't for the counter weights on th bottom back.

Portland Chicken Coop

 

See Slideshow at Kodak Gallery

Coop de Ville

 Portland allows 3 hens without a permit.

The hen house portion of the coop was built in my shop.  All but
the top came from plywood salvaged from the basement where
they had been used as sliding, closet doors.

Creating a jig in preparation for cutting a hole in the garage for the nesting boxes.

It's no trivial matter to cut through the heretofore undisturbed wall of a 100-year old garage.

I reluctantly had to cut a stud.  The nesting boxes are in the garage due to
space considerations, the ability to retrieve the eggs without getting rained on, and
"coolness" factor.

The nesting boxes.  It turns out you only usually need one for 6 or so hens.

The main wall has 3-way operation.  1. Shutters open to admit light.
Shutters are needed because it is a sunny spot.

2. The window, a reused one from the basement windows we replaced,
swings out to provide additional ventilation.

3. The whole wall swings open for cleaning.  Notice the zero clearance hinges.
Also, the note their are no bracing cleats at the wall intersections.
This is so there is an as easy to clean as possible interior.

the interior still needs to be primed and painted.

The hen's front door.  On the left a picture window (yes, the plexiglass is in.
On the right the closed door rides in an aluminum channel.

The front and back have vent holes that can be open or closed by sliders.

Knob & Tube

Lest you think all I did all summer was play with Lego (almost the truth) here's how I really spent it.  From dawn till dusk, for 3 weeks, in a hot attic, wearing a respirator, wading through rock-wool insulation to remove hundreds of feet of old-style knob and tube wiring.

The goal was to remove the K&T so that we could add a lot more insulation  into the attic.

Our knob and tube looked something like this, except buried in  6"  of nasty, rock-wool insulation..

 I originally planned one week expecting no more than two max.  Three weeks later I had run over 600 feet of new wiring, installed 7 ceiling light junction boxes (when we took the fixure down we found no junction boxes at all, just two wires sticking out of the ceiling) and reinstalled a dozen receptacles and switches.

Although the house had been upgraded to brekers in the 1970s, they had retained the old fuse panel to run the knob and tube.  This panel was completely removed.

This original panel was 30 amp capacity for the whole house.  Today 200 amp is the norm. 

At the same time we rewired the garage which had been supplied by a Rube Goldberg system that made the connection to the house in 1/2" indoor -rated conduit running overhead between the buildings.

Inside the garage a vintage fuse box led to an udersized junction box.

The garage got 100 amp, underground service with a real breaker panel.

A real breaker panel for the garage.

We did this all with permits, and throughout the inspectors were cordial and knowledgeable.  I wouldn't attempt anything like this without permits.  Some insurance companies won't insure you if you have ever had knob and tube.  But others' will if it has been removed properly.

Brace Yourself

 As can be seen in my prior post, the knee braces, while covered over in aluminum, were not really that interesting.  Only a nod to craftsman style.  I had planned to replace the two and add a third one at the peak purely for aesthetic reasons.  But once the soffits were removed and we could see the damage to the sheathing would require replacing it, the 3rd brace then became necessary.


As far as design goes there is the basic form.  A triangle formed by a 4x4 on top, a brace that ranges from simple to fancy and a backing plate or not if they were actually extensions of the framing.

It was clear right away that the diagonal brace at full width was too much for this diminutive brace so I cut it down to 2-1/2".  Nice.

I was holding the left-over 1" piece and it occurred to me that I might mimic but modify an existing style where the cut blocks are added to the brace.  Of course, the traditional style is full width, but I'd already stepped it in once, so I thought it might look good on this scale to step in again.

Unsure of the triangles, I experimented with rounds.

 

Six braces (3 front and 3 rear) ready to go.

 

 

Primed and in place.  The new design is also follows the more traditional method of having them pierce the trim board.

The middle one in the front is missing its "teeth" because something special goes there.  Stay tuned.

Look What We Found!

 The house that Alice and I own in Portland dates to 1921. The interior has been well maintained in near original condition.  The exterior of the house and garage  been carefully preserved by being shrouded in aluminum.  Aluminum siding, aluminum shingle roof, aluminum storm windows and even the knee brace details (those triangular bits of wood that stick out of the gable end of the roof and support the trim board) were fitted with custom bits of aluminum.  I say "preserved" but we didn't know if this was true.  Maybe the siding was put on to hide damage. Maybe moisture trapped under the siding has done damage.

We knew the garage needed a new roof when we purchased it, but we waited till this year to do anything about it.  The garage is to be a test case on two fronts. 1) how easy is it to remove the aluminum  and what's the building look like underneath.  2) choosing a color scheme that will be eventually be used on the residence. 

Here's the garage in its full suit of aluminum armor.

Removing the siding and finding a layer of Reynold's aluminum reflective paper.  In this photo you can see the knee brace with some of the metal pulled away.

Here is the knee brace exposed.

Et Voila!  Underneath 240 pounds of aluminum is a near perfect, cedar-sided garage.  There were few nail holes and the paint was even in good shape.  If we simply pressure washed it we'd be in good shape.

 

I had a fantasy that the salvaged aluminum would fetch enough to pay for part of the garage roof.  $0.58/pound.  About $130, but it beats paying to have it taken away.