I'm often surprised by how many piles of materials there are waiting in the wings, it seems like by now we would have the timing thing down. This weekend we checked two off the stockpiled list. Interestingly both were waiting for different reasons:
1) Acquiring a particular material way before its turn in the batting order. There are a few of these piles around (I'm looking at you low voltage lighting for dining room).
Case in point: the oak stair treads. To be honest I think we originally bought these thinking we would have to install them when we demolished the old stairs and put in the open risers. In other words, we didn't plan to reuse the old treads as temporaries when we placed the order. Either way, fair to say stocking the beautiful oak planks was done way before it was needed.
Cut each of the 5/4" x 10" planks to custom lengths for each tread with a 1/16" gap to stringer on both ends. Numbered the sides so eventual installation should be a snap. No question the stair run is steep so we added a frictional element. Took a bit of testing on scrap blocks before deciding on three 1/4" wide strips routed 1/32" into the surface with equally sized spaces between them. Softened leading edges by running them across a 3/8" beading bit, countersunk so edges not completely lost. Next steps: sand, clean and polyurethane, polyurethane, polyurethane.
2) Functional is good enough. This is the flip side of "so excited about a project." More like "I'm so sick of this job I'm going to pretend it's done for a while."
Exhibit A: the kitchen drawer faces. They were cut from same plywood as the carcasses, all on Christmas eve last year. Assembly and installation of the cabinets went pretty quick, but we had the drawers built, which sort of made the project "someone else's" and by the time we got them installed neither of us wanted to take what felt like a step backwards to finish the drawer faces. They've been moved from spot to spot ever since. Got the pulls back in June hoping that would jump start the project...
Bonus satisfaction -- job done AND that many fewer raw materials sitting about.
step one of the Great Lift is complete. today we cleared a bunch of space in basement, ie finished finding places for everything we removed from 1st floor, and installed support jack to brace the 1st floor beam, which will be placed under significant load when we start jacking up the 2nd floor.
the support jack is really just the little black metal tube that's sitting at intersection of wood cross we built to distribute load into the basement floor. the jack is pressing on 4x4 post that's finally braced against the beam. the white stripe behind it is the original wood post that inspector told us should be replaced with metal so it's less prone to failure due to fire or stray saw blade. we'll be putting in a proper metal post (or two) with concrete footings soon.
engineer recommended a direct line of contact between hydraulic jack and foundation, which means positioning it over the beam, but also providing support between beam and sub-floor. caught a lucky break with location of 1st floor joist, which can be seen where we pulled section of basement ceiling down, in that it's located EXACTLY beneath the lowest joist in 2nd floor, ie the one that needs the most lifting. if we were talking about newer construction i wouldn't be surprised to find the joists vertically aligned, but so far there's absolutely nothing standard about the original construction of this house -- it's 100 years old after all.
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