649 6th

kitchen wall cabinets

and we got to buy a dancing tool!

bathroom counter

At the end of my vacation I showed the beginnings of the structure that forms the bathroom counter and sink combo. Drawing inspiration from the expanding Danish bench we got for the living room we wanted to integrate the danish slat idea while working with the cedar sauna references the bathroom is using.

The construction was fairly easy. I used 1/4 inch threaded rods with large washers and lock-nuts to bind 36" 1x6 western cedar slats and 6" spacers together. For the first time ever I also got to break out the forstner (or Forstnerboher, if you will) bits!  They were part of the tools my dad gave me and I had been eager to find an appilcation for them. I needed to drill a wide flat bottom whole to conceal the hardware inside the front fascia board; they worked like a charm in the soft cedar.

I left the front and back slats off to shape the center boards to receive the sink. When done the sink appears to hover 1/8" above the boards...oh the details. I'm very eager to get the brackets up in the bathroom and see what it looks like in place, but that means getting in the last bit of grout and caulk (sigh).

day 18: drilling porcelain

Today was an excercise in patience. In the bathroom I needed to drill seven holes for the plumbing in the porcelain tiles. They measure 12 by 24 inches and are 1/4 of an inch thick. Originally I had planned to use the drill press. The holes only need to be 3/4 to an inch max.

The drill press posed two problems. 1) The reach was not deep enough to center the hole that needed to be cut. 2) By applying a steady single point of pressure to the tile (as a drill press will do) the tile is likely to break (aka split) before the hole is pressed.

At around 10:00 this morning I had measured and marked the three tiles (three holes in two, one in the other). By 11:00 I had broken two of them and only managed an 1/8 inch hole in the third. I decided I would hire someone to do the job for me. Trouble is, no one wants to take that job. The best I got was an explanation and a hearty good luck. Peak time of year for trades guys and, like the roofing guys, they've got much bigger fish to fry.

Using a hand held drill with carbide tip masonry bits and progressively increasing the size of the hole I was able to drill through the tile-- in time. You really have to let the tool do the work. If you force it it will break. In the case of the drill press the tile will break, and with the hand drill the bit will break. I broke off a tip in a hole by forcing it. It was like the most perfect tooth filling ever. Carbide steel set in porcelain. Luckily that was on one of the ones I shattered early. The good news is I didn't break any more. It's a good thing too, we're starting to need every single one left. The carbide bits were good, but I still did a lot of shaping with the dremel tool.

In the end the drilling and shaping of the seven holes took about ten hours. Yeee, what a way to spend a day. On the up side Michael is downstairs right now thin setting them in place.

day 14: cutting glass tile

To trim some pieces of glass tile for the bathroom, this morning we made a nifty little jig out of a piece of 1/4" poplar and a rotary saw guide. The poplar was the exact thickness of the tile. The diamond edge masonry blade on the skil saw sliced right through. Before cutting, we wrapped everything in tape to prevent scratching. The results were great (as you can see).

day 11: hardibacker, done!

After what seemed like weeks of dinking around the Hardibacker is installed. I feel like I've said so much about it at this point that everyone must be growing tired of the saga. The 3x5 sheets are a bit of a patch work to deal with, but it wasn't the most tedious job to date (just close).

Tomorrow is Michael's first day of vacation and I will formally hand the bathroom baton to him. We have to thin set the seams and put the remaining floor tiles in place. After that "sets up" we're ready to get going on the wall tiling and cedar. I more than likely will remain the tile cutter throughout the endeavor.

Now that we're done hanging the Hardibacker just a few parting notes. Jeff noted today that high speed cutting tools are not recommended according to the website (solely for silica dust production). The truth of the matter is we did use a tile cutting blade on the skill saw to make a few of the long cuts on pieces that were impossible to snap like drywall. Yes, it did produce large volumes of dust. But, 1) I did it outside (with the windows closed), 2) I wore a pretty decent dust mask, 3) I cleaned up the dust after each cut, and 4) where we used the dremel tool to shape a piece once in place, we always did it in concert with the filtered shopvac. Not that I would recommend the saw and dremel technique for every situatution-- I do feel I spared myself silicosis by taking it fairly serious.

day 8: cutting hardibacker with a dremel

After talking about it for a few days now I finally broke out the dremel tool with the tile cutting bit and tested it on some hardibacker. I have to say it's a pretty amazing tool. I had always stayed away from them as I didn't want to be to quick to fall into the category of "aging craftsman". You know, the old guys you see at county fairs intricately carving totems while riding out their golden years, but I digress...

I made sure to wear plenty of protection. the one thing lacking from the photo is earplugs; highly recommended, it makes quite a squeal. I felt a bit like a dentist. It cuts through quite quickly, however it does generate a lot of heat. I'm wondering how much those tiny bits can take? Compared to the the jig saw bits (that were ground down to nothing after about an 18" cut) this was a marked improvement.

I got as many pieces of the backing up as I could handle solo. The nice part about the dremel tool is if you need to, you can still use it to trim a bit once things are in place. The router like attachment allows for great depth control.

day 6: cutting porcelain

Today I spent a good deal of the day waiting on the appliance delivery guys. In the end it was a pretty straight froward exchange. By the time they got here I had the new/old (had just replaced it on the old unit-- never used) 220 power cord removed and ready to install on new simple mechanically switched dryer. Why dryers come without a power cord I never really understand, but they don't.

The dryer gets hot and the freezer gets cold. All I could really ask for. The basement getting clean was just a perk.

Now it's back to the bathroom. Yesterday I said I was going to try out the Dremel tool today. Afer reading up a bit more I think it would be fine for cutting the heardiebacker (outlets and what not), but not nearly as well suited for cutting the porcelain tile. I went down to Greschler's the local "to the trade" supply house. Actually, I had been to the Depot earlier (Dremel bits, and an icecream sandwich) but Grescheler's is the fancy shop that tends to be a bit more high end. They have scant weekend hours so it was a treat to get to go in on a weekday. I ended up with a stone, marble and granite cutting blade. The idea is that we will use it on the rotary saw. If this doesn't work any better it will be on to renting a wet saw or getting someone else to cut the tricky pieces.

Not a lot for a day, but it was singularly one of the most gorgeous summer days we've had. Meaning: I spent a good deal of time just sitting in the back yard enjoying life... I am on vacation after all.

dryer repair

We keep saying "this weekend" we jump back into the renovation fray, but the S-days just keep ticking past. Which isn't to house has been neglected. Our dryer died a couple weeks ago. Circuit had been tripped and wouldn't reset, which we intuited meant it needed to be replaced. Yeah, we're that sharp. But replacing circuits (a multi-part saga in itself) didn't do a thing for the dryer. Fortunately the you-fix-it guide has plenty to say about diagnosing and repairing dryers.

Step 1: make sure there's electricity at the outlet. (Told you we were sharp.)
Step 2: remove cover plate where cord enters.

Charred inside of the cover plate and melted terminal block were pretty obvious problem. Remedying that situation was a bit more of challenge. After a couple false starts, I finally found an online supplier of GE dryer parts and ordered the replacement terminal block. Then I got to thinking I should replace the dryer cord too. No sign of damage on the prongs or at the box, but the terminal end was a bit charred. I got a bit turned around testing and retesting current, and I finally decided replacing the cord couldn't hurt. Couldn't find one at the depot, which didn't seem particularly odd; beginning to anticipate what they don't carry. Thought the cord would require another Internet order, but then I chanced into what I think is a new local hardware store (that's oddly right across the street from the established local hardware store) and they had one.

Depot did come through on the large female connectors I needed to complete the new wiring, and deluxe wire cutters came through with a crimper that I'd barely even noticed before. Et voila!

If you're reading this and you have an electric dryer, do yourself a favor and check the screws at the terminal block. My reading on the Internet says this is one the most common dryer problems. When a screw gets loose enough the electricity will arc. Got the impression it's a gradual process where you may smell burning while dryer is running. I don't remember any smell; for all I know it happened all at once. Also can't swear in hindsight whether the terminal connection that melted down was loose. I didn't read about commonality of this problem until after I removed the old terminal. And there was the slag to chip away. And the caution of poking at something that under slightly different circumstances could kill.

Sort of spooky, but also reassuring that various safeties did what they're meant to do.

paperstone

A while back we talked up the use of PaperStone for our kitchen countertops, and a few people had questions about it. At the time all we had to go on was the word of the manufacturer and some samples at local supplier. Now that the job is done, here's our hands-on report:

Definitely DIY-friendly, but that's not to say it's easy. As the name suggests, it's made of paper, but it's (almost) hard as stone. What I imagine working really hard wood to be like without the complexities of a grain. Followed all the great advice I found online, especially about drilling pilot holes for fasteners; sizing for the right size drill bit I took the head clean off a screw when I drove it into too small of a hole.

Panels were delivered rough cut. Trimming to finished size was a bit much for the trim saw, which left a couple scorch marks where the cut slowed, so we switched to full size circular saw for remaining cuts. Black saw dust is peculiar looking. We cut them with an extra 1/8" because we planned to use the router table to plane the edges smooth, but after trying that out on one edge we scrapped that idea. Panels were too heavy for the two of us to move them with adequate control and results were far from smooth. Fortunately, it sands well, though not fast.

On other details the router worked great. Prior to installation, we bevelled the edges all the way. Free-wheeling the panels around an open router bit smacked of danger, but given size and weight of panels we needed to be able to get as much of them onto the router table as possible so fence was out of the question. Pilot bearing kept everything in line, and we found that an arcing pass around the bit allowed us essentially to rotate the panels around on the table like some enormous spirographic project. 

Here's the rough jigsaw cut for the sink. Direction of saw cut resulted in small tear-outs around edge; cutting from the other side would probably help with that but we didn't use jigsaw for any finished cuts so I didn't bother to try that out. The template provided with sink was intended to expose the turned metal edge, but we wanted a more integrated look and only used the template to locate the hole, then scribed a line inside that for our cut.   

Again with the router to finish the sink rim, but this task called for as much power as we could call in. First time we've used the monster plunging router since we started using the router table. Pilot bearing allowed us to use the sink itself as the limit of our cut. Quite a bit of material to remove (didn't want to get too close to the sink with that jigsaw) resulting in a ton of papery shavings.

But not before we busted the 1/4" shank on an older trim bit. For all the harm that a power tool can cause, it was a remarkably anti-climactic moment. No metal projectiles, no shocking sounds, just a clunk as bit dropped into the sink. I'm pretty new to the router so excuse my ignorance but other than expense I don't know why anyone would pass on a 1/2" shank. So why did we? Forgot it was still sitting in the table router and just grabbed what was available. Good reason to take bits out of routers when done with them.

Water-proof? Less than 1% absorption. UV stable? Manufacturer says it can darken, but we've got no direct sunlight in the kitchen so I'm not worrying about it. Do we like it? You betcha!

Oh, by the way, we've got a sink again.

show us some leg

slowly but surely the kitchen cabinets are coming together. we glued up the last of them this weekend. now the carcasses are basically done. they have a water based poly seal and primer on all surfaces, and the legs have been installed. we have the drawer slider hardware that I'm hoping we can check off weeknights this week.

beyond that it's only counter tops (ordering from bettencourt this week, they claim they can get what we need in a couple of days), drawers, faces, and paint. I realize I say *only* but, in the grand scheme I think the bulk is behind us (unless we get a sudden urge to dovetail all of the drawers!).