New Pine Floor & Door For The Sewing/Crafting Room

First, We Tore Out The Carpeting... Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Our current project is the renovation of the sewing room.

Before we could start on the fun stuff we had to tear out our vintage 1969 lime green carpeting and pull up the foam padding to reveal the plywood sub-floor beneath. Then we pried off the nasty carpet tack strips at the perimeter and pulled out all the staples which held the padding in place. Once that was done we had a clean slate to work with.

To keep it simple and affordable, and to avoid using exotic hardwoods or synthetic laminates, we went with standard 1x12 pine planks from our local lumber yard.

We used Taylor's 2071 Tuff-Lok solvent-free floor adhesive to adhere the boards to the sub-floor, and then nailed the planks down, three nails across, every two feet, with square shank copper boat nails to add beauty and help prevent cupping of the wide planks.

Yes, pine is soft, and it does wear faster than hardwood, but in my opinion it wears beautifully.

We made the decision to use pine planks after looking at photos of wide-plank pine floors in old houses, some of them over 100 years old. That's durable enough for our purposes.

Square Shank Copper Nails Add Beauty & Durability
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Laying these floors is a pretty simple straightforward job. We measured and cut all the boards first and laid them in place to make sure everything was square, then we picked them all back up again, and glued & nailed them down one at a time. I pre-drilled the nail holes in the planks to prevent splitting and the 3-inch long 8-gauge copper nails (from Faering Design) go way into the thick plywood sub-floor.

We did the living room floor by the same method nearly 5 years ago and it's still as flat and solid as the day it was finished.

A New Pine-Panel Door Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

We also relpaced the beat up holllow core door with a pine-panel door to match the floors.

The door isn't the pre-hung type so I had to buy door jamb stock and build the casing myself.

I've hung a lot of doors in my time but this one was a bit of a chore because standard door jamb sets are too wide for our walls. They're milled to fit 4x4 framed walls with drywall on both surfaces, but our cabin doesn't have drywall, only a much thinner wood paneling, on the interior walls.

So I had to rip about 3/4 of an inch off the jamb stock to make it fit properly, not really difficult, just a little extra work.

The New Floor & Door Together
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

This is how the entrance to the room looks now with the door installed and a preliminary sanding done on the floor.

The Semi-Completed Floor
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

This photo shows the floor before the preliminary sanding so you can still see the pencil lines I used to lay out the nailing pattern. I have since sanded off the pencil lines and any obvious stains or rough spots in the wood which still needs to have a finish applied and baseboard installed.

Nearly Completed Door
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

The pine panel door as it looks from inside the sewing room.

The trim molding has been applied, the finish nails recessed with a nail set, and the holes filled with wood dough. A little more sanding and it's ready for a few coats of satin clear finish.

Getting A New Computer Bugs Me!

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Where have I been all year?

Our old & slow 1999 computer was locking up on a daily basis, I was losing e-mail by the box loads, and the poor thing could barely play a CD anymore, much less a video or DVD.

Over the years I added all the RAM it could support, replaced the original 8 GB hard drive with a 20 GB drive, installed a USB 2 PCI card, CD/DVD burners, a second internal drive, card reader hubs, and two external 80 GB USB 2 hard drives until finally all the slots and ports were full and the antique 486MHz Pentium III just couldn't keep up anymore.

So, on January 3rd, UPS delivered a fast new computer (2.40 GHz dual processor) to our doorstep, and then I spent several days adding a Firewire PCI card, 2 Gigs of Ram (in addition to the 2 Gigs which came installed), a 3.5" bay hub 13 in 1 card reader, a Firewire 3.5" bay hub, a second external USB CD/DVD burner, the two 80 GB USB drives scavenged from the old system, and I still have a second 250 GB internal hard drive to install.

Phheww...

Then it was time to transfer files and programs.

Yikes!!!

After a few more days of saving files from the old machine to disks, and then, realizing that I didn't have a clue about how to move my essential programs into the new one, I broke down and called my computer geek buddy Tom. He came over to help me out last night and now I finally have enough stuff transferred so that I can blog again.

It's truly a love/hate thing with me and computers...

I love the creativity enabled by them, the access and democratic openness (for the time-being) of the internet, and I even rather enjoy installing hardware (it reminds me of working on cars in my younger days---without the grease).

However, installing and learning software is another thing entirely.

I hate the installation and registration processes, the steep learning curve of a good in-depth program, and, especially the complicated marketing, monitoring, security, copyright protection & surveillance schemes of corporations like Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and Symantec, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

But I'm hooked* on the damned things just like I was on the automobile in previous decades and that bugs me!

So, right now I'm going to play with our new toy, err..., I mean do some work with our new tool!

;~\

* The radical Luddite in me is highly critical of dependence on such contraptions!

Peggy Power!

Click on photos to enlarge

Although we do plenty of bicycling, walking and hiking, and Peggy is trim as she can be, she's always had a weakness for exercise machines. At different times she had one that simulated cross-country skiing, a rowing machine, and one that she could set up differently depending on what she wanted to do. Trouble is she never used them, so they ended up at yard sales or the thrift store (I think one of these contraptions is still in a closet somewhere).

So when I saw this hydraulic splitter, I thought, now there's an exercise machine Peggy can use, while getting her chores done at the same time. Here she is splitting logs yesterday before the big snow hit, and building up muscles too!

Just kidding girls!

I do most of the wood splitting but Peggy did try it for a spell yesterday having no trouble operating it long enough to split several hefty logs.

Her part of this job is usually the placing & removing of logs from the splitter, and as a two-person operation the task is done quite efficiently.

The splitter is much like the gasoline powered ones in design, a long I-Beam frame with a sharp steel wedge at the far end, and a fluid-driven cylinder for pushing the log.

But instead of an engine, this one is powered by the hand-pumping a hydraulic jack with long handles that pump at two separate speeds. The one on the right is low speed, for easy pumping against strong resistance, where the high-speed handle on the left is for pushing the cylinder out rapidly to engage the log, and breaking through it faster after the end splits.

With a little practice you are using both handles in conjunction for fast, efficient, non-polluting, healthful log splitting.

The splitter will accomodate logs up to 18" long, the same length that fits our stove, and I've split logs up to 30" diameter with it so far.

The splitter is simple, sturdy, well-made, and the jack is rated at 10 tons which is 20,000 lbs of splitting force, and does the job just fine. We got ours online for $99 at Northern Tool but the shipping is very expensive for this heavy item. I think they had a deal on the shipping charges when we ordered ours, I had been looking at them for quite some time.

We spent a couple of hours yesterday having fun together in the brisk winter cold, getting great exercise, and moved, split & stacked over a 1/2 cord of wood.

Sewing Talk

Our daughter Jamie and Peggy discussing plans for new sewing projects this evening.

Earth Mother!

We had a busy day of hard labor in the yard today and I didn't take pictures, but here's one of Peggy tilling the soil for a garden expansion in spring of last year.
What we were doing today was simply cleanup from our winter storms, nothing visually interesting to photograph, but the place is sure looking better.
More pictures soon!

Pedal Power!

Me sharpening my machete on the pedalstone for some compost chopping duty today.
photo by Peggy

Treadle Lathe

More human powered tools!
I found this cool old lathe on eBay, minus its treadle base. I'm going to adapt it to and old Singer Sewing Machine treadle so I can do some small wood turnings. Click on pictures for a larger view.

Saving water

Peggy pumping water from the rainbarrel this morning for the chickens.
Note the diverter on the raingutter downspout behind the pump which enables us to either fill the barrel or bypass it for other purposes.
Presently we have two of these barrels with pumps and hope to get two more this year.
We plan on connecting the bypass downspouts to a pipe which will feed our future vernal pool.