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Thursday, May 26th, 2005
Got my scanner working!
posted morning of May 26th, 2005: Respond
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Sunday, May 22nd, 2005
A status update on my home improvement tasks for the summer. Woodworking - Sylvia's room is painted and lovely; I would post a picture of it if I could figure out how to make my scanner work again. (Update: Scanner working; here's the picture.)
- I finished building Sylvia's playhouse on Friday. Still needs to be sanded and weather-proofed.
- The garbage-can enclosure is pretty well-thought-out now and may commence actually getting built over Labor-day weekend. (Although the priority project for that weekend is cleaning the garage.)
- The small tool shed is still a thing of fantasy.
Patio - Today I started raising the slate walkway up to driveway level, and got about 3/4 of the first section done, before the rains came. The work is going pretty quickly and coming out well.
- Next weekend, when I may-or-may-not start building the garbage enclosure, I also may-or-may-not start laying stone in the area where it is to go. I think I don't have enough bluestone to do this and would like to figure out if there's somewhere I can buy 20 or so square feet without having to buy a full pallette.
- If I might not have enough stone for the garbage enclosure base, I certainly don't have enough to extend the back patio. So that's on hold for now.
posted evening of May 22nd, 2005: Respond
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Monday, May 16th, 2005
A lot more work yesterday on Sylvia's playhouse -- I shingled the roof (in a kind of half-assed way which involves nail heads being visible at the top of the roof) and put up the railing along the sides and back. Today I am quite sore. Next step is to put a railing on the front (only halfway across the front) and a ladder. It seems totally possible to me that the house will be finished by next weekend in time for my birthday party.
posted morning of May 16th, 2005: Respond
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Friday, May 13th, 2005
Frank and I got roof up on Sylvia's playhouse last night -- it looks good and all that is needed now is a ladder and a railing.
posted evening of May 13th, 2005: Respond
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Sunday, May 8th, 2005
Today I made practical use (for I think the first time in my life) of that most vital bit of mathematical knowledge (according to the folks that write the standardized tests), that a right triangle whose legs are 3N and 4N will have a hypotenuse of 5N. (Seriously, if you're planning to take the GRE soon make sure you know that -- about a quarter of the math questions reduce to it.) I was trying to figure out how long to cut the sticks for the edges of the roof of Sylvia's playhouse. Thinking I can use trigonometry but unsure about what angle it ought to be at -- I'm trying to mimic the garage which is nearby, it has a pretty steep roof but it does not look like a 45 degree slope... I was drawing different triangles on paper trying to get one that looked nice when it hit me -- the horizontal leg is 32" (which leaves a nice amount of eaves), if I make the peak of the roof be 24" above the eave then I have a nice 40" long hypotenuse. Cut everything up and a couple of hours later I had roofs. (They are currently lying on the lawn, waiting to be mounted -- this is a task which requires some pretty heavy lifting and I am getting my neighbor Frank to give me a hand with it on Wednesday Thursday.)
posted evening of May 8th, 2005: Respond
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Saturday, April 30th, 2005
I have many projects in my woodworking portfolio that took longer than they should have taken -- furniture pieces generally take me two months minimum and it's always been a source of frustration for me. But tonight I built my first piece of furniture (well, more "finish carpentry" I guess) that I finished in a single session -- 3 hours from a board to installation. It is a built-in shelf in our new bathroom. The main time-consuming part of it was carving out a recess in the surface of the shelf -- basically I wanted the shelf to have a lip around its edge, so I chiseled out the area inside the lip with my new set of gouges*. I was able to get it quite flat except for one corner where the grain is funny -- there is a rise and a depression there. But everything is quite smooth. The shelf is mounted between the moldings of two doorways. I had been thinking for a few days, that a shelf would be nice there, but could not figure out how to do it. This evening it hit me -- pocket screws! I have never used pocket screws before; but I cut pockets for them out of the board with a chisel, and it worked just great. After we finish the painting in Sylvia's room I am going to post some photos of various home improvements we have been doing; I will be sure to put a shot of this up. (Here is a post I wrote at Woodcentral about the technique I used to hang the shelf.)
* I really want to recommend these gouges by the way. If you enjoy carving wood they are going to add dramatically to your enjoyment. They are 18 fishtail gouges in various widths and sweeps, plus two parting tools, available at the low low price of $200 from Woodcarver's Supply. I say they are "new" but I actually bought them about a year ago and have used them lightly a couple of times since; this is the first heavy work I have done with them. When I saw them I found them too good a deal to pass up; plus I love fishtail gouges, and I only ever see straight gouges for sale elsewhere.
posted afternoon of April 30th, 2005: Respond
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Friday, April 29th, 2005
So the garden is going like gangbusters. The bulbs I wrote of previously are still out (the tulips in majestic force), and I can't mow the lawn because it is full of daffodils and hyacinths. Plus: the shad bush which Ellen planted in back last year is in lovely white bloom. Some purple flowers on the side of the house that I don't know the name of. The two azalea bushes (one in front, one in back) have thousands of crimson buds out. Of the three bushes we planted next to Sylvia's sandbox, one of them has large white flowers on it; I think it might be rhododendron but that guess is random. The other two I thought were azaleas but I don't see anything happening on them. The lilac bushes, two years old, have a couple of flowers. Many buds are visible on the dogwood and it should be coming in soon. For Mother's Day, Sylvia and I are going to buy Ellen a myrtle tree to plant in front. It will be a couple of weeks though until the actual purchase transpires, as Ellen's preferred nursery is Foliage Farm in Kutztown, PA. Update: Checked my memory impressions when I got home. I did not get everything right: for one thing I forgot the phlox, which is very much a part of the first impression you get from the garden. And: the bush is a rhododendron; and the others are azalea, and they have some small buds on them too. And: now that I get a good look at the back yard I see there are a lot of light-colored violets toward the back of the yard, on the lawn and in the garden, and some small pink flowers closer to the house. Update: Ellen writes: hi jer,
just read your recent posts, which i enjoyed very much. just to add about the garden: there are bleeding hearts now - remember when they are finished, they are really done for - they disappear magically into the ground til next spring, so worth taking note of. it was fun explaining to sylvia why they are called that- not many plants have such literal names. i divided one of them a few weeks ago into five separate plants and placed them around the garden, where they are all in full bloom, if smaller. also - i think it's worth noting that we have at last count, about 15 different varieties of daffodils, some of which are incredibly untraditional looking - like a pale yellow almost peony-like one on the side of the house, and another that has multiple orchard-like blooms on one stem. for anyone in the market for bulbs - it's worth getting a daffodil variety pack and not just the samo-one shape of yellow kind. it's really been a trip seeing what comes up - and they stagger in bloom- so we've had them for almost a month and they're still appearing. sylvia and i picked out a bouquet of them, each different, to bring to school, so the kids could see so many types of one flower.
love,ek
posted morning of April 29th, 2005: Respond
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Saturday, April 23rd, 2005
I spent today putting the chair rail molding into Sylvia's room and spackling various bits in the room to prep it for painting, which Ellen will start tomorrow. (this afternoon when I took Sylvia to the library, Ellen finished touching up the paint job on the cabinets.) The molding is a bit freehand; I wanted to match the chair rail which is in the entry way to the room (the room is part of an addition to the house built in the mid-20th century; the entry way is part of the original house), which is a pretty simple curve. I went to Home Despot and found that all the moldings they sell as "chair rails" are big things with lots of compound curves and would look ugly in this application. However they sell a baseboard cap which is pretty close to what I wanted, except with a lip at the bottom and an extra curve at the top. So I bought that, and just shaved off the top and bottom with a block plane. Not too bad for ~24' of molding, but it would quickly become onerous with much more. (Also while I was at the HD I got hardware for Sylvia's playhouse, which I am certainly going to start on this week.)
posted evening of April 23rd, 2005: Respond
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Monday, April 18th, 2005
The following things are in bloom in our yard now: - Daffodils -- a profusion thereof. The first ones started blooming a week or two ago; every day since then we have seen new ones, new shapes and colors and varieties.
- Tulips -- the first (and to date only) ones to bloom are a pale yellow and next to our front steps. Many others are showing buds. Ellen is surprised they came back at all.
- Grape Hyacinth -- these are poking up between the daffodils here and there.
And you can see buds on a lot of other stuff; the dogwood for instance should be coming in in a week or two.
posted morning of April 18th, 2005: Respond
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Sunday, April 17th, 2005
So I have several projects I'm meaning to do, working on the house this summer. They are generally divisible into two categories; woodworking projects and patio/stone projects. Woodworking - Today I finished installing the wall unit I've been building for Sylvia's room, that's been dragging on since late last year. Oh happy day! (Actually the desk part of it remains to be done. For now Sylvia's work table fits okay in the space where the desk will go, and she has not quite outgrown it yet. I plan to build the desk in August or so.) Ellen will be painting the wall unit in conjunction with painting Sylvia's room, which she is planning to do in the next few weeks. Before she can do that, I need to install a chair rail around the room; I ought to get to that sometime this week. Also Ellen was mentioning that it would be nice to build a small shelf on the wall by the head of Sylvia's bed, to hold a box of tissues and some other things.
- Two summers ago I built Sylvia a sandbox in our back yard, with the intention to build a playhouse above it. That is currently the next project on my plate, and I am going to start designing it this afternoon.
- Ellen has asked me to build an enclosure for our garbage cans, which are currently loose in the side yard. I will be doing that after the playhouse is finished, hopefully in a month or so. I need to do this in conjunction with some of the patio work below.
- Also in conjunction with the patio work, I would like to build a small shed by the side of our house, to store our barbecue and some garden tools.
Patio The major project last summer was laying a bluestone patio in our back yard and a slate walkway next to our driveway. A few things remain to be done before that is really finished. - The slate walkway is just slightly too low, about 1/4 - 1/2", and it drains poorly. A quick project of a couple of hours will be just going down the length of it, lifting up each rock and packing more sand under it to bring the walk up level with the side of the driveway.
- A section in front of the porch, where I am going to build the enclosure for the garbage cans, needs to be leveled and filled with sand and stone. This is only about a day's work, but I need to finalize the design of the enclosure first.
- I would like to extend the back yard patio in one place to make it reach the fence. This is where I am planning to build the shed.
posted afternoon of April 17th, 2005: Respond
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