Of Doors, Casing, and Baseboard...

The kitchen is nearing completion... most of the hard work is finished. The walls are up, the floor is in, the furniture is nearly finished and the appliances are purchased. Last weekend we set the door in place and put up the trim. It's been a long process...

Remember this? By the way... we sold the range and refrigerator on Craigslist for $600, the cabinets, and counter tops earned us another $200, the sink and carpet got us another $50, while the fluorescent light fixture netted another $20. Kind of fun to see money coming in instead of going out... anybody want a beast of a microwave from about 1988? You can have it for free!

And this?

It now looks like this...

And this!

Both of the most recent pictures are fairly dark. That is because I was so busy putting the door in and milling all the trim work that I forgot to take pics until it was nearly dark outside. The lighting in the kitchen is pretty minimal right now so it doesn't do the room much justice. Lighting is on the to do list. Caren has big plans, most of which involve me crawling around in the attic, wrapped up in a pile of 14 guage two wire with ground...

Anyways, busy is the right word when talking about last weekend. I thought the door would take two to three hours to hang after Caren had done all the finish work on it. I keep shorting myself on time. It took all day to hang the door and two trips to the hardware store. The first trip was planned--to get flashing and bitch tape to make a water tight pan. The second trip was for temporary exterior trim and replacement deadbolts.

The water tight pan was easy enough. We struggled a little getting the door to hang square and plumb because the floor is not quite level (recall all of the house jacking I blogged about earlier). The big problem was the lock. I'd purchased a set from Home Depot... oil rubbed bronze, extra secure. Seems as though somebody had purchased the exact same set before and returned it... after messing around with it and mixing it with another set. First, there were two key sides and no interior locking mechanism. Second, the key was not correct for the either of the two key holes. Hmm? No problem. I'll return it to Home Depot and use the matching one that I purchased for the front door... The key that came with the front door lock didn't work either, and the interior locking mechanism was missing parts. Hmm? It gets better... The key from the first box opened the lock from the second box, while the key from the second box didn't open either lock. My guess is that somebody purchased both sets from Home Depot along with at least one other set, proceeded to mix all three sets up, lose pieces and then return them to Home Depot. Unwittingly, Home Depot placed the returns on the shelf, and I blindly purchased both of them. What are the chances??? After much cussing and consternation, both locks are going back to Home Depot and off to the local hardware store we went. Fortunately, Meek's had the same set in unopened boxes. When all was said and done, the day was nearly over, but the door was in and insulated with spray foam. I also temporarily trimmed the exterior to protect the door and insulation from Winter's ravages. The final exterior trim work will be finished once we reside the house next Spring.

The interior trim for the door took another whole day, but I planned for that...

This is where all the millwork on the trim was completed. By Sunday most of last weeks snow had melted off and the ground was dry, so I was able to work outside albeit with a jacket on.

I spoke with Jesse, purveyor of the redwood barn siding that we purchased for the trim work and asked him why there were so many nails in the wood. The siding wasn't actually siding. It was roof decking. No big deal, except that roof decking gets shingled and every shingle gets nailed. Peal the roof off of a hundred year old barn and most of the nails break off because they have rusted nearly thru. The rust and nail holes make for very cool distress marks in the wood, but every nail must be removed before the boards can be run thru the planer.

The first step of the milling process involved punching the rusted off nails thru the board with a nail set and pulling them out the other side with vice grips. At three to five nails every linear foot with over eighty linear feet of trim, that is an awful lot of nail setting and vice gripping. I'm saving all of the nails and will display them prominently in a glass jar as a reminder of the painstaking labor of love!

After pulling all the nails each board was rough cut to size before running them thru the planer. By rough cutting the boards I could work around cups and bows, cracks and knots and make the planing much simpler.

Planing the boards involved several passes on each to find a workable surface. When all was said and done each board was planed down to exactly 9/16th of an inch from the original 3/4 inches. I think I hit one or two nails with the planer that I missed in the first step, but they didn't seem to damage the blades on the planer at all.

After planing, Zach helped me route the the top edge of any pieces that would be placed horizontally to give them a quarter round profile. We decided to leave the vertical pieces square and just knock off their edges with a sander.

Step five was sanding. I spent about an hour and a half up close and personal with the disk sander and a box of 180 grit discs. My hands didn't appreciate the effort and seemed to vibrate for an hour or two more.

The next step was cutting the boards to their final lengths. I allowed myself a sixteenth of an inch tolerance and measured thrice before cutting once. After all, it wasn't like I could run down to Meek's and pick up a few extra linear feet if I screwed up. Instead I would have to go all the way back to step one, and there weren't enough hours in the day for that. I did blow one cut... hence the lack of baseboard to the right of the door. However, that will be rectified when I repeat the process for the trim in the living room and around the front door.

And finally after cutting, each board was oiled with Watco in a natural finish. The finished product made the labor intensive process well worth it.

Alex and Zach were around long enough to observe/help with the whole process, lending a third hand when needed. So I figured I'd let them have a go at the nail gun. They enjoyed the work, but seemed more interested in how similar the nailer sounds to a paint ball gun than the finished product. They did comment on how cool everything turned out tho.

All that is left to do in the kitchen is... well, maybe there is a lot left to do... hang and trim the window, finish the stonework above the range, lighting, built in shelving, sink base and counter top, hook up the Detroit jewel to the gas line, rebuild the refrigerator, etc, ad infinitum... Maybe we aren't so close after all.

We did finish two of the pieces of furniture this week and are excited to get them up to the place on the weekend.

The pie safe and jelly cabinet just need a final coat of varnish or wax to protect them. Caren gets to decide on which it will be. She plans on completing that task tomorrow. She is scouring the internet for just the right drawer pulls and door knobs as I type this. If one looks closely at the picture, one can just see the antiquing we did on the edges of each piece. It is kinda scary to have spent so much time applying the paint and stain only to take a sander to the edges, but we both think that they turned out really cool. It is the small details like the knobs and antiquing that we really love... the things that make each piece unique, our very own!