Bamboo and Mahogany

So a friend Paul and I were messing around last spring with using unfinished bamboo flooring for various furniture pieces and here's a table we put together. It was a collaborative design with me doing most of the actual woodworking. The top is 'solid' bamboo flooring glued up like a regular table top with the 'frame' being made of mahogany (sipo) mitered and biscuit joined at the corners. A typical wood panel would destroy the mitered corners with seasonal movement, so this was a bit of an experiment. The bamboo has nearly zero seasonal expansion and contraction. We recently started using the table as a computer desk in the living room, next to a fir bookshelf that I made a few years ago from timber cut-offs and rips (and unfortunately stained a dark shade).


I love two things: 1. the bamboo flooring is wicked hard, so no worries about writing on paper on the bare surface and 2. the fact that we still use my teddy bear lamp from when I was a kid. I'm saving it for our own kids some day, until then it will be in the living room. Below, a closeup of the leg-apron detail.


In front of the table, a maple 18" Cathance River Stool. A birthday gift for KT from its maker.


I was a little skeptical about the colors matching well, but after a coat of wipe-on poly they seemed to go together well enough.


Work continues on the remodel project as well. Here is a counter-top (remember the glued up panels from a week or two ago?) installed (yet unfinished) on one of the built in units. A window-seat of the same material will be installed in the foreground this week.


The counter top meets up perfectly with the window sills and then continues into another counter top at the same level.

I had to perform surgery on the other counter top because one of the quarter-sawn planks decided to check for half its length. A little West-System epoxy, a heat gun and some clamps solves the problem. What epoxy has joined together, man nor nature cannot separate.

In other news, we're back from all the Christmas/New Year's traveling. The house is somewhat back in order after my bachelor week. The snow is melting again. The days are getting longer, just a little.

May you all find contentment and peace this 2011.

well considered gifts and merry Christmas

A well considered gift for the man who needs to pound things of various sizes.


And at this weight (16lb), I have an excuse to buy another slightly smaller one (maybe a 10lb-er) for 'light duty' applications.


Every little bit of tools brings us closer to building our own timber-framed house. This particular hammer will, no doubt, persuade many a stubborn timber joint to come together nicely. It may drive the wedges to split reluctant logs as well.

The reason I ended up with a gift like this is due to the Amazon Wish List which leaves no excuse for those who are stumped on what to get someone. Never again will someone have to get another Bass Pro Fisher 4, thanks, but no thanks....

God rest ye merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born upon this day.

To save us all from Satan's pow'r
When we were gone astray,
O tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy.

Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night!

more and more

Well the job continues, working with more and more interesting and beautiful pieces of that Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine.

Above you can see the rough framing and cabinet carcasses for the cabinetry, window seats and counter-tops.


Stock for the bookshelf sides glued up, scraped, planed, sanded, jointed and rabbeted....some of them are book-matched sort of. The wood came from the same timber.



Bookshelf vertical divider stock glued up.


Counter tops and window seat stock in the rough, waiting for finish cutting and installation.

I have to miss all the fun tomorrow while I go take Maine's residential building code exam.....

glue-ups

Raised panel stock glued-up and ready.


Counter top stock glued-up.


I had to call everybody I knew to get enough pipe and bar clamps to glue all those panels and counter tops. The counter tops are made of 6 or 7 quarter-sawn longleaf pine 5/4 stock, planed, jointed, biscuited and glued. There is one more counter top to glue up. its 24" wide and 12' 6" long. That may be a two man job.

Heart Pine.

Heart Pine or < 3 Pine as the kids would type these days, means more than just that I like it. It means the heavy dense wood of the Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine that we are using for floor at our current remodel job.

Here are some pics:

From the one side

By the fireplace. Any guesses on how much a piece of slate like that costs?


And from the other side:


That is indeed radiant floor tubing right underneath the floorboards in a specially designed sub-floor called "warm board." It is 1 and 1/8" thick, basically two sheets of CDX plywood with the channels routed into it and then a layer of aluminum stamped over the top of the sheet. It goes down just like regular sub-flooring.

And tomorrow, more building code testing. This time on Residential and Commercial Ventilation.

Adios

---w---

A wet one.

Well, well, I think we're in for a wet one. A wet night tonight and a wet winter. Something tells me that this winter may be more wet than snowy....who knows?

In any case, we'll be here, holdin' down the fort. I've been working on a remodel close to home for the last eight weeks or so. We're putting down a floor of reclaimed boards from old timbers. You'd think it would be cheaper because its reclaimed, but actually its about twice as much. $14 per square foot and 550 square feet. You do the math. Unfinished flooring still needs to be sanded and oiled. Its nice looking stuff though. I'll try to get a picture tomorrow.

On January 1, 2011, a partner and I will be launching a new business doing independent building inspection and code compliance consulting. In the last year, the State of Maine adopted the 2009 International Building Code as the new Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code, so there will be a need for both more municipal inspectors and Third Party inspectors. That's where we think there is a market for our services. We're busy now getting all our ducks in a row (have you ever tried getting actual ducks in a row? I have, and its difficult....) as far as certification, insurance, incorporation and what not goes, but we'll be ready come January. Check back as things develop.

In other news, KT just bought me 3.8 pounds of swedish fish. She is such a good wife!

---w---

Just when you thought it was safe....

Just when you thought it was safe to leave your tools on the job site, the job gets delayed and you're stuck trying to work with your key tools locked in a trailer 36.6 miles away. Apparently I will never learn this lesson.....so frustrating.

Anyway. Last week I got to frame some new walls in an 1842 brick colonial in Dresden. All these old houses tell quite a story. Its mostly a story of neglect and mismanagement. This particular house had seen years and years of neglect culminating in a roof leak that led to a big insurance claim which provided the funds for a three room remodel where most of the water damage had taken place. This is the living room or parlor framed with new wall on the exterior, new ceiling joists supplementing the existing ones, and 1/2" of plywood strapping on the interior walls. I used the plywood strapping instead of framing new interior walls in order to simplify the trim detail around the existing doors.


Here we have a timber-frame and SIP addition to a home in Harpswell. My friend Andrew cut this frame over the last few weeks and we raised it in two days last week. Today we finished boarding the roof, and hopefully tomorrow or the next day we'll start install the the Structural Insulated Panel enclosure.


This area will become a study/office area. Its not really wide enough to be much else.


This area is going to be the new great room, I think.


The far portion of this will be the entry/mudroom.

Next week I start on a new project with Dyer Ridge Builders that may last into December......

Keeping busy

What use is being unemployed if you can't hang out, watch daytime TV and eat cheetos? I can't seem to catch a break with this 'unemployment'. We were back at it for a couple of days to put up this 24x36 high-posted cape. It took about a day to ferry the whole thing down there to Bristol, then another day with a crane to put 'er up. This morning we finished screwing down the purlins and put a couple of big tarps on the roof. We're short on tarp tatters, so we thought we'd put it up there ahead of some 60 mph winds (Hurricane Earl) and that would work nicely. Besides, I don't really get enough of being 27 feet up over a concrete slab.


After a quick lunch in my sweltering apartment, I thought, I haven't sweat enough today, so I'll go over the shed and work some more. I put in a little work bench. 38 and a quarter high, 30 inches deep and a little under 12 feet long. It should do nicely for some little projects for customers and our house project.



12 x 16 feet can feel quite small if there's too much stuff in it, but with some clear floor space, it feels just big enough. I'll have to stay organized.


Still not sweating enough, I decided to use the lumber loft for lumber, and I moved a couple of piles of pine boarding and some 2x8x 16' and 20' framing lumber up there to keep it out of the rain and out of sight.




We're watching the Hurricane tracks for Earl and hoping it doesn't get too wild here. Right now we're just in the 40 mph wind zone. If the seas are going to get too rowdy, we'll pull the sailboat ahead of it. Wouldn't want 'er to get swamped!

Progress!

Well, I got the roof on and a temporary door until I can build the sliding doors. Those roof overhangs look proportionally too big, but hey, its a shed and I gotta keep some wood dry.


Next, I re-glazed some old windows and screwed them in with some hinges so I can get a little airflow in the main level.


Finally, I got some hasps and locks on there so I can leave tools there without it being really easy for them to find new owners.

Roofing in Metal

So I have this prejudice against asphalt/fiberglass roofing. It goes like this: you can only use it as roofing once before you have to throw it away (by 'away' I mean 'into someone else's backyard', someone who can't afford to keep you from putting it there). Yes I know, some asphalt roofing gets recycled, but its a costly, messy process. Anyway, asphalt roofing is a mess no matter how you slice it, and its not even cheaper than metal. Metal has the advantage of being completely recyclable, it will outlast me, and when its finally not doing the job, my children can bring it to a scrap yard and get paid for it.

For my approximately 480 sq. ft. shed roof, I priced metal and asphalt side by side, and metal came out cheaper by almost 20%. The key with metal roofing is that you don't have to sheath the roof in plywood or boarding. You can simply strap it with 1x3's and screw it down. So, I ordered a bunch of 'burnished slate' colored metal roofing and went for it.


They even cut to length for me so I didn't have to buy more metal than I was going to use. (They won't do that for you at Home Depot or Lowes....)


This is a 'wear-gloves' job.


Predrilling all the sheets on the ground (and having square and plumb roof framing!) is the key to success, just make sure you drill the holes in the right spots.

More to come....