Porch deck is gone

Spent the evening tearing off the porch deck.  The front is now complete for the lifters.  Next we will turn our attention to the back porch. 

And so it begins...

Not much left of the roof now. We have it broken up into sizes that the pickup can handle.
Here we hooked the truck up to the porch again to pull it away from the house to make it easier to break down. The tin is being collected by a co-worker, the rest will go to the dump.

Finally the porch surrenders to gravity, and bruit strength.
Well, this was something unexpected. All of the posts are out, and yet the porch still is there. It actually took some doing to get it down.
Posts 3 & 4 are on their way out.
Tow strap+pickup=start of the tear down of the roof.
Our attention is back to the front porch, and we have all of the windows out, as well as the window dividers.
The back of the house without the deck. The door and window will be torn off, and then put back on. That part of the house sits on a slab, and we are going to put a basement under that. We will also change the roof style to tie into the hip on the back of the house and gable the right side. It will be a lot simpler roof when it is all done.
We were a little late with the camera for the back porch, but I think you get the idea as far as size and condition. Small and tired. It came up quite easily.
Inside shot of the porch. The door casing was one of the first things I made in Wayne, and one of my first projects since I've took up woodworking after high school.
The house before we started working on the front porch. We really liked the screened in porch, but I don't think we were ever fond of the storm windows. Sadly, the new porch will not be screened in.
Here is the shot of the house with the pine in the front yard. It is currently the tallest conifer in Wayne that sits on private ground, and sadly, it will be gone it a week or so. I love that it shades the house for most of the morning, but it's just too close to the house as you will see in future pictures.

After 9 years of living in our house, we finally decided that it was time to gain some additional living space. Our kids keep getting bigger and bigger, but our small, 2 bedroom, 1 bath house wasn't. Our yard is small already, so the only place to go was either down, or up. The reason our house wasn't selling in the first place was because of the basement, so we decided to go down which will solve that problem.
Our plan is to take out the tree, remove the back deck, back porch, front porch, lift the house and get a basement under it, redo the roof and front porch, and add the back porch and incorporate it into kitchen space.

Finishing (Day 1)

I'm using clear shellac, and at the end of day 1, I've got 8 coats, with sanding after every 2 coats. Tomorrow I'll see how it looks and decide how much further I'm going to take it.

2 coats and counting...

It may look like I'm going to finish all of the pieces where they are, but there is a lazy susan that I put the parts on, It makes it really nice to be able to get to all corners easily.

Little ducks all in a row.

Well, all the parts are sanded and ready for finish. I can't tell you how much I'd love to say this is my finish shop, but I am lucky enough to work for a company that has one. It was kind of a pain to haul projects, gear, and finish to another shop, but you can't beat the clean room, and ventilation that a professional shop can offer.

Setup and ready to finish.

Playing Catchup

Here is the inside of the box. There is a couple of steps in there that I haven't covered. First, there are some runners for the inner box to ride on. The other is the lid aligner? I'm not sure what you call it, but it's an inner frame that when the lid is closed, will align the top half and lower half. That's the theory anyway. :-)

Inside of the box.

Here is the box thus far. There is an applied molding on the lid, and I rolled over the top edge.

Shot of the box closed.

I didn't take any picture about how I made the inner tray, but it was slicing a 3/4 board in half, and planing it to thickness. I then ripped it to height and cut to length. Finally, I cut a groove for the bottom.

Inner Tray.

In my last post, I pointed out my opportunity. Here is what I decided. I decided to leave the knothole. It's character to the piece, and I didn't want to loose that. I did want to try and take care of the chipout on the pins. I mixed up some 15 minute epoxy and added some black pigment. Next I taped off the area and added the epoxy.

Filling the holes.

When you need to mark something accurately, you mark it with a knife. It's there somewhere.

Marking it with a knife.

After the ruler has located the place for the hinge, I slid the hinge into it. Pretty self explanatory.

Putting the hinge in place.

Now that I got the top cut off, it's time to put them back together. I'm using a square to guesstimate the location. That looks about right. I'll come in from that same distance on both sides.

Hinge layout.

I want to get as tight a joint as I can, and my No. 4 plane will get me really close. I'll do all four corners, on both sides of the lid, and then check to see how they match up.

Planing the joint smooth.

It would be useless as a jewelry box if you can't open it, and here is how I did it. I took out my standard blade in my saw, and put in a skil saw blade. The idea here is I wanted to remove as little material as possible, and that blade was about half as thick as my heavy duty blade. The trade off is that the blade had quite a bit of chatter and didn't yield as smooth a cut as I would have liked.

Getting ready to cut the top off.

I'm terrible at keeping on top of this, so here is my catchup post to get me back to where I'm at on this project. I've got all of the boxes out of the clamps, planed and sanded them smooth.

Out of the clamps and ready for cutting.

Vondrak Jewelry Boxes

This is almost where I'm at now. I have all 3 boxes out of the clamps, I did plane the pins flush with a plane, (sorry no picture) sanded smooth, and I've also made a molding for the lid. I felt that the distance between the top of the box and the top of the lid needed a little help. I'll get a picture of that later.

Tower 'o Boxes.

Here is what I did to glue the boxes up. I cut some small pieces of wood that fit between the pins and tails, and taped them in place. Glue on the pins and tails, and a few clamps. Pretty straight forward.

Gluing up a Box.

Well, its not handmade without a little opportunity. I've got a double whopper here. First, I had a little tearout on the tails. I'm thinking that the way to fix that is either with a little black epoxy, or glue in some walnut endgrain. I'll do some research on that and I'll take pictures along the way. The other one, I thought was going to be a design feature of the piece. The knot looks really neat, and has a lot of nice grain around it. The problem is that I haven't cut the box apart yet, and guess where the cut needs to be...you guessed it, right through the knot on the right.

Opportunity.

Here is the veneer saying hello to the plywood substrate. Both sides got 2 coats of contact cement and were then stuck together. Even with both windows and the door open, "Towely" from South Park showed up and asked me if I wanted to go get high. Those fumes were pretty strong. I'm thinking a good mask might have to be in my future if I do this again...or wait until summer.

Getting Ready to Glue Veneer.

I was a little slow on the picture taking, so imagine taking rough boards and running them through the jointer, planer, and dovetailing them. The result is what you see here.

Stack of Boxes Ready for Glueup.

Along for the ride is my prototype box. This box is built a step or 2 ahead of the other boxes so I can figure out things like assembly procedures, finishing, everything and anything that can make the other boxes go together quickly and easily.

Test Box.

For this project, I was given creative license (thankfully) and I've always wanted to try my hand at veneering. I ordered some Carpathian Elm Burl off of ebay and this is what I got. This should look really good when it gets its finish on.

Veneer for the lid.

Adirondack Chairs Done!

Well, just in time for the 4th of July weekend.
My previous set of chairs were stolen this year, ending my study to see how long painted pine can survive outdoors. I was about 5 years into that study. I was kind of bummed.
Anyway, if there was a silver lining to this story (and I'm looking really hard for one) its that those chairs didn't have an ottoman to go with them, and I've always wanted one.

Details:
New Yankee Workshop design.
Pressure treated pine deck boards.
Roughly 3hrs per chair/ottoman ~ 6hrs total
No finish yet...I'll wait a year or so and either paint or stain.
Plugged screw heads at arms and back.

Project DONE!

Here it is, completed, with the doors closed. I had it in the back of my mind that there might have been a way that the remotes would have worked due to the fact I had a bigger gap in the drawer fronts than I wanted, but no such luck. The doors will have to be open. As you can see, the sapwood is all but gone on the drawer fronts. The camera also does a poor job of showing how alive the rays are on the front drawer.

Front view with the doors closed.

This is a side and front view showing the ventilation that the components will get. The back is all open, as are the sides, so I'm not really worried about anything overheating. In fact, the front will be open as well whenever it would even think about getting hot.
There are a couple of "better to be lucky than be good" things I should point out. When the drawer fronts are open, the dvd player tray misses the drawer opening by about 1/4". A little too close for me, but not much I can do about that. I also knew that I was going to be tight across the front with the dish, center channel speaker, and stereo. I didn't have much room to spare, maybe an inch or two.Front view.



Side view.

Here is a picture of the entertainment center all waxed up and loaded up.

Doors open for component access.

All that's left to do now is install the top, take some pictures, and watch a movie. I'm using figure 8 clips ton install the top. Predrill and install the clips on the cabinet side, position the piece where it needs to be on the top, mark the location, and drill into the top with a forstner bit. Then predrill and install to the top. the clips will show, but only if you are looking directly under it.

Figure 8 clips being installed.