Stephen’s Personal Blog

Dang it. My legs are tired.

The blog hasn’t been updated in a little while, but writing has stopped. There’s a tonne (British) of stuff to post from the past two weeks. The start the latest projects have been coming along well. I would still be at it if I could stand.

The MBR door is closer to down. Just not smooth enough.

A few of the other doors still have issue. Only one has been hung, but that’s because a closer look at things got me off on other details. And because these doors are kind of shitty. The installer messed up the spade drilling of the keyset and I did the same thing on the Master Bathroom door. The wood veneer is very, very thin and weak. Still haven’t figure out how to fix this so it doesn’t show.

When I got to looking at the hinges I discovered a beautiful coppery brass on the side that hasn’t seen the light of day in 40 years. This set me off to removing all the hinges on all the doors, boiling to remove the old paint, and polishing mostly clean. Then I noticed the closest doors had not been painted on the inside. Those two went into the garage for a sand/prime/paint job. One is done and another will be done in the morning.

Also, the pantry door doesn’t hand quite right and previous attempts to fix it only work for a little while. Turns out it has unique, sealed, aged bronze hinges and the screw holes in the door frame and door are huge. This is also an air intake for the AC. There are cheaply installed grilles on the bottom and when you close it they thrum. This is its own project. New grilles, which might mean on the other doors with grilles and some way to stop the thrumming. The screw holes have been wood filled and sanded. The door is being painted.

There’s still the matter of the steel backdoor, it’s replacement trim, and the laundry room cabinet doors. The door primed up well and it’s painted. I used a brush and the lines from primer and paint blend to give it a wooden appearance like the other doors. Cheap easy trick. The trim finished sanding and priming last weekend. This weekend was painting and installing. That went well. Love the pneumatic nailer. White wood filler in the corners and in a bead between the door frame and trim. All to kill the dark 3d lines that our eyes are good at picking up. Still needs a light touch up.

The laundry room cabinets have been very time consuming. To my great annoyance they don’t fit. F**k! Too narrow. I installed them anyway to get them out of the way and feel the the room was more complete. It also shows what the room and by extension the kitchen and maybe bathrooms will look like. Except for the dark spaces between each door it looks very good. I made some mistakes when I was staining; color variations and the edges aren’t good. It’s ok for a laundry room.

The pattern for all the other cabinets will probably been new doors worked up by myself with the current off white color on the frames and antique brass hinges and pulls. The doors are smooth without any pattern to make them easy to clean. Same goes for the handles. The wood grain is the pattern to present a natural feeling mirroring the floor.

Some of the research into natural methods of staining and painting have presented some other options. Tung oil and variations might be an alternative to polyurethane. I’m looking for sustainable, effective, very long term, safe (non-toxic) products. ‘Poly’ is plastic which is not good for the environment, is toxic, and photo-degrades. Tung oil (pure) is from a nut that can grow on most continents. It seals the wood and can be used in marine environments. Surprisingly, it’s edible in the pure form. Most of what you can buy in hardware stores has been mixed with petroleum distillates to alter color and evaporation time. People with nut allergies might have a reaction. Repairing nicks and cuts is very easy. The section is lightly sanded and the the oil reapplied a little at a time over a couple of days. A similar action with poly sealed wood is to remove, sand the whole piece, and reapply. The question is whether the color will match the floor.

Let’s see..

The window sill is ready to install. Though that brought up the issue of the window. I like plants in the windows and that room would be great for holding a garden window sticking out of the house and holding two rows of houseplants. That window and the kitchen window would be good garden windows for cooking herbs.

This week I was thinking about the laundry room, all laundry rooms really, and making Christmas presents, and what else I could door to clean up the appearance, reduce lines, and remove places for dust and dirt to collect. Spaces behind the washer and dryer are magnets for dirt, fuzz, and powder light dust. The machines have to pull away from the wall for all the connections to fit leaving a place for things to fall into. So, I drew up places for a kind of table shelf that can “seal” in the cables, cords, and hoses. The tricky part will be making it easy to access. Every design includes a hinge to flip up the shelf top and gain access. Cords have to come out too. This is the next project and that will be about all I can think of.

For now.

Added legs to the old backdoor turning it into a tall work table in the garage. Smaller doors would work better for this. The hollowness of the door doesn’t make a good workbench. Had to screw some spare plywood sheets on top to ensure that the screws going through the door into the legs hold. Doors make good table. The hole for the door knob in the middle makes a good pass through for electric cords.

The door installers sucked.

The stain that most closely matches the floor is Pecan, though the dark streaking of the floor isn’t brought out by the stain. Funny how that works out since there are 5 Pecan trees in the back yard. I reviewed 6-8 different stains. Possibly I-something Pine + Honey(?) Oak. The oak is much better at bringing out the dark streaks in the wood. Maybe a 1/10 addition of oak stain to pine would really match the flooring.

This weekend I removed the MBR door and began finishing it. Staining the MBR door is not as high quality as I would look. Staining is hard.

On several doors I removed all or one hinge, boiled the hinges to remove the paint, and polished them. Now, I have to chisel out the hinge insets in the new doors and get more hinges to boil and polish. Lowe’s no longer carries my beautiful, heavy, shiney, copper(?) tinted hinges. All hinges now are cheap steel painted gold and marketed as bronze. Rather gaudy, ostentatious, and a little ugly.

Bought the remaining wood and hinges for the laundry room cabinet doors. Sanded the shit out of the crappy wood and routered the edge to match the existing doors. Looks good. Feels great. Ready to stain like the MBR door.

Got the materials to fix all the doors; replacement trim, exterior white paint, QRound for outside…

Finished “The Places in Between”. Laptops rock. Need another set of iPod speakers for the garage. That covers the kitchen, bedroom, and garage. The computers play in the office.

The cabinet doors set the style for the kitchen. Right now I’m thinking, replace the doors, hinges, pulls with single sheet pecan stained boards with antiqued bronze hardware. Repaint with the off white trim color. Replace stove, stove top, faucet, counter top, hood, etc. More work to do.

Would love to door the kitchen next, but should really need to do the two bathrooms next. One right after the other.

Looked at Windows. A window by itself is $100. Doesn’t look hard to knock out and replace. What gets me is the use of plastic on everything and the inattention to detail like mold lines. Also, the window is bordered more widely than the old steel windows. This reduces the amount of light by reducing the hole size for light. Another thing is that plastic is going to make a sucky window component, because it is photoreactive. No matter what you do plastic falls apart under the sun unless it is painted or shielded.

The replacement materials available at Lowe’s and I assume at most places is quite disturbing. Materials are made as cheaply as possible and maintenance is not reasonable or possible.

Compare the materials in my house, which are 40+ years old vs the current materials. The windows are now steel, single pane, cold in the winter, and feel very lossy. The new ones are plastic and will degrade in ~25 years becoming brittle and prone to crack around the glass. This forces the windows to be complete replaced.

The door hinges are solid metal. I was able to removed them after 40 years, clean off the paint, polish, and reapply. The new hinges are painted bronze. Polishing will remove the paint and leave steel. So, in 40 years if the paint is still on them they have to be replaced completely. Cleaning and reattaching is not really an option.

Really anything that is plastic is suspect, especially if it faces the sun. Glass, concrete, steel, wood, hair, and plant fibers are better materials. They are either long lasting or easily repair and replaceable. Plastics leak toxic materials into the home. Be aware that polyurethane on wood evaporates over time.

blah bluh blah blah blah

No one’s getting to the bottom of this post. Even I’m bored by now.