Nearing the end of the journey

Well I guess it's time for another update. We had a reasonable month and hopefully by the end of this coming month I might have everything done that is required for the final building permit. If that happens it will be the end of a two year journey from start to finish. So let's update you as to what happened this month.
It was not an auspicious start to the month. I began by having a fellow over to finalize plans to install solar panels on my garage roof. Before he came over I decided to pull a stronger rope through the conduit I had installed when we backfilled the foundation only to find out that somewhere there was a blockage and the rope could not be pulled through. I determined that the blockage was underneath the rear deck so we bug down to the foundation footings on the east side where the pipe was and then dug down to the pipe on the south side which thankfully was only 3ft deep. We then spliced in a couple of pieces to bring the pipe to the top and then ran conduit around the deck to allow the future wire to be pulled through. This was a messy job but by the end of the day it was done. Here are some pictures showing the two holes as well as the outcome of the work. At a later date I installed the PVC conduit around the deck connecting the two pieces of black Big O pipe.

The following day I started making a small coffee table out of the leftover Fir boards for use on the deck. Once complete it received a coating of Teak Oil before being used. As well I picked up a load of red stone to continue working on placing this around the house on top of a weed barrier. I still need one more trailer load to finish this job which I will do later this coming week. Here are a couple of pictures showing the Fir boards prior to final glue up and the result of installing the decorative stone.

So for the following week we spent a lot of time working on the Router table. I needed to slot grooves on all the stiles of the door a 1/2" deep and I needed slots on one side of the rails 1" deep. I then needed to cut out the tenons on the end of the stiles to fit into the grooves on the rails. I did this all on my Jessum Router table using a 1/2" spiral router bit. The beauty of this table is that it has an indicator on it for the raising of the bit that is calibrated in thousandths of an inch so you can get really precise.  Here is a picture showing the table. In the second photo you can see me starting to cut out a tenon on one of the stiles. 

After all the boards were routed we could start on the glue up. Before we glued up all the boards I jointed a slight angle on one of the rails that would house the door hinge. I then routed out the hinges using my template and then took the first rail inside to test fit the piece. It fit like a charm so back to the shop to carefully fit all the pieces. This also included cutting out the panels from Baltic Birch plywood. Once these pieces were all fitted in we took the door apart and then started the glue up process. I basically did one door a day leaving them in the clamps for at least 12hrs. Once the first door was done we took it into the house to test fit it. All that we needed to do was trim a little of the one side of the door to get a nice fit. On the whole all 5 doors went pretty well. The worst one was the door from the spare bedroom to the bathroom. This opening was out of kilter and I thought I had installed the jambs nice and level but we ended up with a slightly bigger gap near the bottom half of the door and the jamb than I would have like. The door stop should still cover this but it could have been better. Here are some shots of the process and the first hung door.

Once the doors were installed we could start painting them. The two doors into the bathroom have received 3 coats of white semi-gloss and the door into the rear entrance area has received 4 coats of orange paint. Over the next week I will paint the two bedroom doors. Once the paint has dried will finish installing the door trim and then work on installing the last of the baseboard around these door areas. Once that is done all that will be left for upstairs trim will be trimming out the front entrance door and the associated trim in the front entrance. Here are a couple of pictures showing painted doors.

 Finally last week the one of the local stores, Canadian Tire, had a sale on some patio furniture. I picked up this teak table with 6 plastic wicker chairs for my deck. I now have a dining table on the deck that will get it's inaugural usage today.

Well as mentioned for the coming couple of weeks I will finish the door and trim, install the last of the landscape stone, and start work on building the vanity for the spare bathroom. I will also get the surveyors in to do the final grade survey so that I can get my final inspection done.

Well until next month have a great summer and enjoy your vacations.

Harold

Happy Canada Day

Well it's the First of July and for us here in Canada it is Canada Day. No work lots of things to do around town and Fireworks this evening. So I thought it was a good time to update you on what has been going on around here. One good thing is that as of now, knock on wood, all my appliances have been repaired/replaced and they all seem to be working smoothly.

Ok onto the house work. At the beginning of the month I spent some time installing some Casing around the interior door frames that were installed last month. Since I was short some trim I then picked up what I was short as well as door stop material and spent some time painting these pieces. Somehow I never got around to installing it yet so I guess that is still to come. I then started work on installing the trim on the front and rear deck. This is basically more of the rough cut Fir that I am using to cover up the beams. Here are some pictures of the front and back decks. I've cut some small strips of 3/4" by 3/4" Fir from the leftover and will cover the cracks in the corners at a later date.

Once that was done spent a little time forming up a small pad for in front of the man door into the garage and poured some concrete. Here is a picture of this job.

Then in the middle of the month my Brother and his family came down and we cleaned off the old shingles from Mom's garage and reshingled it. If you want to see a short video on this you can check out this link  on my Brothers Youtube Channel

The next thing we did on the house was to continue working on the rear deck railing. So off to the local lumber yard and pickup some clear cedar lumber. Let me tell you it looks great but it is not cheap. The railing is basically two 2by4's between the posts with one 2by6 on the flat on the top 2by4. We then screw square balusters to the 2by4 with 3.5inches between balusters. The code here states that for any deck more than 24"above the surrounding area must be railed and max spacing between balusters is 100mm or appox 4". Here are some photo's showing the deck railings as well as the stair railings. The rest of the railing will be built in July so that it is on the next months billing cycle.

 Next we took the time to build a small fence just beside my Air Conditioner. This will do two things, one baffle the noise a little towards the neighbour and also make it a little less visible from the street. This was just two 4by4 placed in the ground with dirt tamped around them and then some cedar deck boards on either side of a pair of 2by4's between these posts. This was then topped with a nice piece of cedar 2by6 on the flat. Here is a photo of the fence rail.

Next we spent a few days sifting dirt and spreading it out behind the rear deck towards the garage. Once we had enough dirt there we leveled it out rolled it down and then spread a little more dirt to bring it up to the level I wanted. Once it was all down we scratched the top with a rake spread some grass seed, raked it again, spread some more seed, raked it again, spread some more seed, raked it again and then rolled it. We then spent 5 days watering it off and on and we now have some green grass fuzz starting. I'll continue to keep watering it until the grass is well on it's way. Here is a picture showing the area I am talking about.

Now I had to go back to a specialty wood store near the middle of the month to pick up some for fir 1by6 for the deck trimming. While I was there I noticed a really nice piece of Peruvian Black Walnut they had. This was 20"wide by 12ft long. I thought this would be a great piece for the eat in bar top area in the kitchen. As the cost was only 250$ I decided to take it. Once we started working on it the first thing we needed to do was cut one straight edge down the 12ft. So we took some string stretched it from end to end and marked down a straight line trying to save as much of the width as possible. I then laid down a straight edge clamped it down and used this to guide my skilsaw. Once we had one straight edge we could use the table saw to cut off two 1.5" wide strips that I would glue to the bottom along the edge to give the impression of a thicker top than the 1" thickness that it was. Inside I screwed two pieces of 5/8" plywood to the top of the pony wall and then built three brackets from the left over walnut. These were varathaned and then installed before the top was installed. While this was going on we glued and screwed the small strips to the underside of the top in the garage and then rounded it over and sanded it all down before bringing it into the house for installation. I installed it onto the top of the plywood and then drilled and countersunk 6 holes to secure it to the top of the wall and then screwed up from the bottom of the plywood on the overhang to secure the top in place. We then plugged the countersinks with small pieces of walnut wood. Sanded the plugs smooth and varathaned the top. Here are some pictures showing the whole affair. The last picture is after one coat of varathane. I have now placed 4 coats on it and will most likely do at least one possibly two more coats.

Lastly we spent some time in the shop with my new/used jointer preparing the lumber for the 5 interior doors. First we jointed one face side smooth, then we planed the boards to the finally thickness. I then jointed one edge square to the face and then cut them down to the required width on the table saw. Here is a picture of all the rails and stiles standing awaiting the next procedure.

So for the month coming up I plan on trying to finish the doors and get them installed. I also want to finish the deck railing, spread some more stone around the house and possibly start on digging the last trench for a small retaining wall along the driveway between me and the neighbour. I guess you'll find out next month as to how I did. Until then for all you Americans Happy 4th of July and see you again in a month.

Harold