Upper Cabinets

At long last, the upper cabinets are starting to come together. The cabinets on the back wall also have to house the vent from the range hood and from the washer/dryer, which complicates things a bit. The only range hood that I was able to find in the right size turned out to have a rather large rectangular 10 by 3 inch vent outlet in the back of it, right where there was absolutely no space for even a small vent to live.

However, I think it's kind of fun, and satisfying in a strange sort of way, to come up against situations where something just doesn't work or doesn't fit and then realize that "Hey, I could change that". It took a suggestion from my father to get my brain out of its box in this case, but then I was off to the races, so to speak.

Here I am, happily applying the saber saw and metal cutting blade to the fan's duct inlet.

Here is a new vent-hole-in-the-making:

And here is the newly directed outlet. I covered the old hole with a piece of metal flashing, sealed it with high temperature caulking, just in case it gets hot, screwed it in place, put in a 3 inch 90 for the ducting and sealed it as well, and voila - no rear clearance necessary.

Next came the shelf to hold it. It seems that almost everything I do lately requires twice as much sanding time as anything else. This simple looking little box took most of a day by the time I figured out its size and shape, cut the pieces, sanded everything with two sanders, put it together, cut out the holes for venting, made the little box to cover the vent, and put Osmo finish on it twice. A speed carpenter I am not, it would seem.

Here it is on the wall. The fan works and blows like crazy out the vent, so the alteration doesn't seem to have caused any problems. I got an LED light-bulb for the light and that seems to work well too. I also made doors, but don't have them attached yet.

One more piece is in place here. The shelves aren't in because the dryer vent has to come through the wall and both vents have to then go outside.
More to come in this part of the story...

Counter Top and Window Seat Continued

The counter top is finally done! (kind of. I still need to cut a big hole in it for the sink, and to screw it down to the cabinets).
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out though!

Here's another picture with the stove inserted and the lights on:

The window seat is also coming together. The main part of the top is now hinged and attached. I haven't done the fold out to make it wider for a bed. That will come later, as it seems less of a priority at the moment. Or maybe the floor would be good for sleeping on...  :-)

The dark hole on the right hand side will have a door, but doesn't yet obviously. It will be for shoe/boot storage.

Cabinet Drawers

Drawers are quite a good way to utilize space for storage as they allow organized access to many nooks and crannies that would otherwise be more difficult to use. I therefore have quite a few drawers to make...   Here's the story for the first batch of them:

I decided to use the same 5/8 good one side plywood that I've been using for the cabinets to make the drawers. This makes them quite a bit rougher on the outsides and more rustic than using melamine - which is a more usual drawer material - but I highly dislike working with melamine. It chips so easily and I don't like the little iron on edges that you have to use with it. I could also have used 3/4 inch birch finished plywood, which would have been nice. However, it's very expensive and also thicker and heavier, so I went with rustic.

I did discover something about plywood, however. Some of the plywood I got came from Canada and some from China. The plywood from China was much rougher, required lots more sanding, and tends to warp more easily. It's good for rough projects, but Canadian plywood is better if you want to do work that is  more finished in appearance!

Incipient drawers: The process is a bit time consuming, as there are quite a few steps. First, cut out the pieces, paying careful attention to make measurements precise and cuts smooth and square. Two drawers are cut out here.

Sand each side of all pieces with the belt sander and then the vibrator sander to smooth them out as much as possible.

Boxes: I used an air stapler to staple the sides together. The ends fit inside the long sides so that when they are pulled on it pulls against the staple joint rather than on the staple itself and the drawer is less likely to come apart. The bottom is inserted inside the drawer walls for the same reason.

Once the drawers are together, they are gone over again with the belt sander, especially on the edges, and with the vibrator sander to take the sharp edge off all sides.

The drawer runner is then added. This is set in place centered over a line drawn on the box to correspond with the height of the runners in the cabinet so that the drawer has about 1/8 inch of clearance on the bottom.
Due to some sometimes rather rough plywood, and sanding both sides of all pieces, I sometimes sanded as much as 1/8 inch off the width of the drawer. I had to compensate for this by putting washers under some of the drawer runners.

Drawers: It's quite exciting each time when they actually fit and slide in and out like they are supposed to!

All of the kitchen cabinet drawers are done now, and the drawer under the oven.

Stick out your tongue and say "Aaaawwww"  :-)

This drawer will hold hats and gloves and things, since it's by the door. It uses some space under the fireplace.

I'm not sure what will go here yet, but it makes use of some hard to reach space under the corner of the kitchen counter.

The counter and window seat are almost done now too, but they don't have their Osmo finish yet in this picture.

There are still quite a few drawers to come - under the refrigerator and in the bathroom. But that will come later...

Counter top

One might think that there is not that much involved with a counter top. It's just a big flat piece of material that you set things on. The counter top here has been quite a process however, taking place over a period of a couple of weeks. I'm finding that I quite enjoy doing this kind of thing though, and seeing the finished product emerge from the rough wood from which it originates.

The process starts with fir boards of varying widths. The thickness of the boards also varies a bit from a bit less than an inch to slightly more than an inch. I started by cutting them into 2 1/2 inch strips, and sorting out the parts that were cracked, had bad edges, or were otherwise unsuitable.

 A selfy of me with my full complement of various coverings, including ample dust...

Some of the strips, ready for the next step...

...which is to select five strips to glue together, run them on edge through the thickness planer to give them good gluing edges, arrange them with best sides facing one direction and try to get the grain orientation to vary to prevent warping as much as possible. I used five strips each time because this made a glued piece that was just under 12 inches (since each strip was thinned by the edge planing before gluing). 12 inches is what will fit in the planer that I'm using.

Once all of this is done, I run a wavy bead of glue down the edge of four of the boards push them together and clamp them. I also used some 2 by 2 boards with screws at each end to help squeeze the strips together and keep them more flat while the glue sets.

General wisdom is that one should not use a great deal of glue to prevent dripping. I found, in my situation though, that it worked better to just gob the glue on and wipe off excess later. My edge preparation equipment wasn't perfect and the extra glue helped to fill any small imperfections between boards.

The above process was repeated many times in order to make enough pieces. Each glued piece then had to go through the planer repeatedly and be finished to the exact same thickness so that they could be glued to each other.This picture shows the main length of counter top, which is two sections like the above picture (but longer) planed, glued together, and then sanded with the belt sander.

This is the frame for the window seat. More on this later, but it also required laminated pieces to act as the top.

My friend Deirdre came for a visit and very kindly volunteered to help with some sanding. She is stubbornly refusing to look at the camera here.

The two main sections of counter top, ready to glue together. You can also see part of the window seat in the lower corner. The counter hangs 11 inches over the edge on this side to act as a bar for sitting, eating, etc. I had originally thought I would hinge this section so it could swing up or down. In the end, however, I decided to just leave it solid. Two stools will live under the overhang. The rectangular space at the edge of the cabinet is intended to hold a small Asian style folding table that I have yet to make.

To be continued...

The Osmo Saga

As I mentioned in my post about wood conditioning, deciding on what to use to on the inside walls, and then obtaining the stuff, has been a bit tricky. Craig and Ruth hooper, however, have had a lot of experience with Osmo polyx and really like the stuff. It isn't easily available in Canada, and the replacement that I was able to get - Saicos - has a different set of solvents that (for me at least) require a gas mask during application and for the next few days afterwards.

Craig and Ruth, however, helped me overcome my misgivings and also obtain some Osmo Polyx, and then came over for a short tutorial on how to use it. The short tutorial turned into three days (not all day each day, thankfully) of Osmo application. It was kind of like a barn raising party actually, with lots of good food (thanks to my mother) and many hands making the work much more enjoyable. Thank you very much Craig, Ruth, Mom and Dad!

Application of Osmo involves rubbing it on with a kind of scratch pad, letting it sit for a few minutes, and then rubbing it off with a heavy-duty paper towel. It would have been a good task for Mr. Miyagi to give to Daniel in the The Karate Kid as a kind of "wax on, wax off" exercise. All of this loving attention gives a lot of good energy to the place though, and the wood seems to quite like it, glowing happily when it's done.  :-)

My father, not doing one of his favorite things...

 The upstairs ceiling, looking so much better, and not silver anymore from the insulation. Yay! This is also my mother, doing her "no, don't put me in the picture" thing.

A snack and a refreshment break...

Craig doing his "Osmo dipping". A small bit of Osmo goes a long ways, so one doesn't want to waste any of it. He filled our small containers by dipping a stir stick into the main can and letting it run off into the small can. This was not as time consuming as it may sound, but he became our main Osmo dipping guy...

Ruth modelling with the paper towel. She was our principle quality control person, application instructor, and general missed spot pointer-outer.

 An exciting thing about getting this job was that it meant the lights could go on!

...and the ceiling fan could be installed.

Lights on, fan going, wood shining...   Thanks everyone! It looks great!

Plumbing and a few other things

The past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind of long days and of my getting stuck in thinking that I have a deadline to finish and I have to get it done. Going back to work, winter on it's way - both are things that add some feelings of pressure to getting done. However, I'm also finding that this thinking is not terribly helpful as I've been getting up-tight and losing the kind of "Quaker" approach to just loving what I'm doing that I was cultivating before. So, I've let go of the deadlines and gone back to a "it'll be finished when it's finished" attitude. It feels a lot better, and it makes the work so much more enjoyable.

I haven't posted for a while either, so have a lot to catch up on. Plumbing was a big piece of the puzzle, and most likely would still be undone if not for my father. So - thank you very much Dad!

The plumbing layout is pretty simple - all of the pipes are basically in a line on one side of the house. However, the compactness of things adds many challenges of its own.  Here is the picture story:

Some of the parts and pieces. Thanks to the very patient help of the crew at the Vanderhoof Home Hardware store, we were able to get lots of extra parts and pieces and then take back what wasn't needed. They were also great with advice, suggestions, help and encouragement along the way.

We used Pex flex pipe for all of the fresh water. It's great to work with and the compression band connections are surely a lot faster and easier than the soldering I used to do when I used copper pipe many years ago!

My fresh water tank, looking kind of large.

The hot water heater. This is an on-demand gas heater that I got from a place called Precision Temp, located in the US. I haven't been able to use it yet, so can't give a report on it's operation. However, I bought it because it is small, it's exhaust port can go out through the floor, it doesn't require a large hatch in the wall and isn't open to the outside like most small gas hot water heaters, and it is supposed to manage changes in water pressure better than most hot water heaters so that there is less temperature fluctuation. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works!

The bathroom sink cabinet is an important place as it is where water will come into the building and is the central link location for all of the water pipes. As you can see, it's not a very big place to do all of this.

The only water line that crosses the house is one pipe coming from the fresh water tank. This line is not needed if I'm connected to a continuous water supply. Here you can see it placed inside the tub enclosure. I also put some extra water and ice roofing material and tar paper under the tub as an extra precaution to protect the floor from water. Hopefully none will get down there anyway though. The hole is also drilled for the drain here.

Pipes starting to come together around the hot water heater. This is also a tricky corner as it has to contain pipes for the washer/dryer and a drain coming down the corner and the clearances are rather small. A supply line for a toilet is also plumbed in here, as a precaution if my compost toilet doesn't work as well as I'm hoping.

First steps of figuring out how to organize pipes in the sink cabinet.

I used some more of the shale to make a top for the bathroom sink to sit on. It's quite thin and cut relatively easily with an angle grinder and masonry wheel. I used clear silicone to glue it to the counter top and to fill in the spaces between pieces. The small pieces in the back are the water guard and edging, and will continue around the sides. Making the small hole in the back for the faucet was a bit time consuming. I didn't want to break or chip the thin rock, so I used a very small drill bit and drilled lots of small holes in a circle. I used the angle grinder for the larger hole.

The faucet is installed.

and the sink is in place.

I framed in around the hot water heater using 2 x 2's. There will be a drawer in the top part of the frame, but I left quite a bit of space around the heater so that I can access pipes and/or the heater for servicing if necessary. The washer/dryer sits on top of this frame.

Pipes in the sink cabinet all set and organized, drain installed, sink connected and shower lines heading up to the shower faucet on the left. The water comes in through the floor where the blue handled valve is. We were careful to put lots of valves in so each part of the plumbing can be isolated if necessary.

The drain from the kitchen sink is in place now. I wanted to run pipes inside as much as possible. I'll build a box and make a little shelf to cover the transit between the washer/dryer area and the sink cabinet. There is a PVC standpipe for the washer/dryer drain that goes up in the corner, but isn't in this picture. You can see the white fitting where it attaches though.

I learned a lot about gluing pipes in this process. The black pipe is ABS and has it's own glue. White pipe is PVC and has a cleaner and glue that have to be used together. Places where black pipe and white pipe come together require the cleaner and a different transition glue.

Parts of the drain do have to be underneath the house, unfortunately. This is the main drain pipe. It links from the toilet (hopefully an unused portion) and connects the kitchen/bathroom sink and washer/dryer drains that come down from the bathroom sink cabinet (foreground) and the tub drain that comes straight down from the tub (background)

Pipe coming from the toilet.

This is the most problematical part of the pipe system. I had to have a trap under the tub drain to prevent sewer gasses from backing up when I'm connected to a septic system. However, there isn't any way to have the trap on the inside. Most of the sewer pipe will not be a problem for freezing as the water carries enough of it's own heat to make it through before freezing. However, water will sit in the trap and freeze easily. I will have to insulate around this trap very well, and provide some heat for it when it gets really cold.

We hooked the system up to the garden hose, and everything works - so far at least!  :-)