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