649 6th

stair finish

rack'em (in the name of cosmogonism!)

Here you see the drying rows of polyurethaned oak treads that perhaps as early as tomorrow will be installed as:

1. shiny new and 100% DIY stairs!!!

2. or the completion of a project that started long, long ago in a far away place...

3. or was it way over there that other time ago?

4. or will it be at last the conclusion to the VERY FIRST act of destruction-in-the-name-of-construction (that this property ever saw (under our watchful gaze))!?

(((stay tuned)))

cedar finishing

We officially have a column of cedar running through the house (technically we still have a couple of errant pieces to install, but for practical purposes it has been checked off the list). I'm still getting used to it. It's beautiful in a way I hadn't expected. The one big massive run (click photo to left) is really only visible when you are in the stairwell. Once you in any particular room it's just a small lick of detail in one corner.

Tomorrow the board walk is supposed to be laid. Let's see what it looks like when we add yet another wood grain next to it!

stair finish

The angles on the stringer and ceiling made the cedar installation a bit more complicated than the time alloted. We didn't make quite the progress I had hoped today, but what we did looks damn good. Tim was in town and helped. Michael cut, I measured and fit, he nailed; the assembly line made a glacial paced solo project almost zippy in comparison.

The moonlighters song got stuck in my head after last night's post, I figured I'd share.

batting order

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.

sponge sanding drywall

It's Monday night and the plan had been to come home to sand and prime the stair ceiling so that we could finish installing the cedar Tuesday. The bonus kicker was it represented a whole and complete task I could check off the project plan, as not that many have been checked as complete in a couple of days-- it was a worthy motivator.

I've discovered using a sanding sponge for small drywall projects is the way to go. It takes a bit more concentration than using sand paper or a sanding screen, but let me tell you; the limited dust production is worth is weight in gold. Especially if your project has both "done" and "almost done" sitting next to each other.

The down side is I didn't get the bonus biscuit of the check mark.I didn't do the priming. I needed a roller and a tray liner and I just didn't have it in me to trottle down and get one. Tomorrow it is. Perhaps tomorrow evening we can knock that and the last bit of bathroom caulking off the list in one shot...perhaps.

stairway to heaven

Did I mention we were going to put in a moon roof? Really? Oh...

Well, how about this? Did I ever mention we were going to have one these?

slow and steady

Another week night, a bit more cedar. Underneath the right side of the stair stringer is almost done; save the plank that needs to be ripped to fit properly under the soffit.

I checked the task list tonight too. As much as I would like to say things are being checked off left and right, the truth of the matter is it's slow but steady. After all, it is finish work.

cedar therapy

It's Monday night and we both came home exhausted. Yet, I still couldn't resist setting the angle on the chop saw to cut planks running level from the stringer.

It's was almost like therapy. Don't the monks call chores like that "active meditation" or some such?

pipeworks

Third floor walls are painted! So where's the picture? Shades of off white will be tough to capture so remote viewers may need to be satisfied with statement of fact for now.

What's much easier to see (and feel!) is the stair railing that had to wait for wall finish before it could go in. The vertical rail and short horizontal run provide a good handle around the stair winder. In design I planned to use black iron to synch with raw metal of the radiators I stripped last year; however, the fittings and pipe have such different finishes that I switched to galvanized.

So far the assembly's been fairly easy in that I've had to make only a couple tweaks to fittings estimates, eg replacing close nipples with 2" nipples in the wall bracket assembly so that rake rail runs parallel to wall. (Pun alert) But real test is right around the corner. Feel like I'm so outside intended use of threaded pipe that I can't even articulate the challenge, though it's possible the challenge is all in desire to pre-assemble as much as possible. To counter this, I'm taking a one-piece-at-a-time approach and hoping for the best.

Seen here: rough assembly out of spare fittings so I can measure for horizontal railing. Plan on using a union fitting in short horizontal rail to join 3rd floor section to what's already installed. I wanted to avoid this "cheat" but I can't see any other way to draw the whole thing tight.