Working Toward a Dry Basement (Forever)

Hey All. My plans for Sunday changed on Saturday night, when after a company dinner with a bunch of people from Beth's office, two of our friends turned to me and said "Guess we'll see you at 9 AM tomorrow." Given my short attention span, I had no idea what they were talking about. Turns out that a few weeks back, I mentioned in jest that they should come over and help me dig a sump pump pit in my basement. Well, they didn't forget. And being the opportunist that I am, changed whatever plans I may have had on Sunday to make sure I took advantage of their generosity.

For those of you who haven't been reading Beth's blog for the last few years, our basement has been the bane of our NY existence. We've had serious flooding down there at least 3 times since we moved in. Some serious enough to toast our old furnace and water heater. The new foundation and footing drains took care of most of the problem, but there's still a need for the sump, if nothing more than insurance policy.

As planned they showed up at 9 with shovels in hand. It took us about 3 hours to dig the 30" deep by 20" wide hole. This was due to the fact that the clay in the basement was as hard as rock. Once we got past 12" or so, we had to use a steel rod to cut the clay in pieces small enough to scoop out. This process got us down about an inch at a time, and led to frequent exhaustion that comes from ramming a steel rod into the ground repeatedly.

That's Matt, Jason, and me (left to right) with said steel bar leaning against the basement wall.

Here's the semi-finished product. I'm extremely glad the digging is done and the sump pit is in the hole. It will eventually have a lid with PVC piping coming out the top, all of which I hope to finish next weekend. I have grand plans to pour some concrete down there as well, but we'll see where that falls in the overall priority list.

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 6

Hello All. Long time since I posted about the new bathroom. It's mostly because I'm lazy, but also because the bathroom itself is done (well, 98% so anyway :-)).

One peripheral task that's been sitting out there is the wall on the other side of the new shower stall. I tore the wall out to allow the plumber's to run the new pex supply tubing and PVC drains and vent. Ever since, we've been looking at an open wall with framing and pipes. Well, no more! I decided to close it all in by extending the hallway to the attic doors and building a soffit to enclose the new heat register that was recently installed. Here's some photos of the work in progress:

Shower wall with new framing and first piece of drywall

Bare Soffit around register

funky view of the rear of the soffit

New wall with drywall installed

Finished rough-in of the soffit with drywall and tape

Rear-view after taping

What I have left to do is about a week's worth of mudding and sanding, followed by new paint. By the time Snarktoberfest, the Sequel comes about, it should look all spiffy. Here's hoping that comes true!

Beer Fridge !!

Wanna know how cool my wife is? She too thought that getting a beer fridge for the shop would be a good birthday present!! I must admit that there is a bit of back-story here, but the overall premise is still true.

The prospect of getting said fridge was borne out of our friends Russ & Roe, who have a similar fridge in their garage. The difference being that Russ has filled that fridge with beer and had 5 more cases sitting on the garage floor! You see, Russ is more of a beer collector than a beer drinker, so the rate with which he buys dwarfs the rate at which he consumes. It's rather said, actually, but he shares much of his bounty and I'm grateful for it.

When Roe threatened to take their fridge back, Russ was faced with a quandry... where to put all of the displaced beer? Well, like a good soldier who's willing to take one for the team, I stood up and said, "I'll Take It." :-) and Just like that, I had a full-size fridge delivered to the house to help my dear friend out. The photo below happens to show my two favorite additions to the shop: the fridge and my 16" Laguna bandsaw.

And this is what 5 cases of great micro- and foreign brews look like in the new fridge. It's OK, feel free to take a moment if you need to...

What I truly love about this one is there's no freezer and it's equipped with an internal heater so you can keep it outside in the winter without the contents freezing. This was key since I only heat my shop when I'm out there. The longer-term plan is to put a kegerator kit in the door so I can keg my homebrew. The bottom shelf should be just high enough to fit 5-gal corny kegs. Yeah, Baby!!

A Necessary Evil

I guess evil is a strong word, but it gets my point across. What I'm referring to is tool sharpening. In reading as much woodworker stuff as I can get my hands on, one central tenet of all the masters is the same: you must work with sharp tools. Basically, if you try to do handwork with dull tools, you're going to get frustrated and tired. Frustrated when the pieces look awful or don't fit and tired by having to wail on a chisel to get it to cut.

I got a reminder of both this weekend when working on J's jewelry box. I'm hand-cutting through dovetails for the box joinery, which requires a fair amount of chisel work to get the pins & tails square and fitting nicely. Let's just say I didn't get off a great start. I stopped after being horrified by the amount of tear-out I was getting from my dull chisels. I must at least give myself a little credit for stopping before I would be forced to use the 4 pieces of mahogany as firewood.

Yesterday's activity was getting the chisels back to form. I've been using the Scary-Sharp method, which uses ordinary sandpaper to hone chisel & plane irons. I buy 400 - 2000 grit automotive paper and work my way up the grits until the metal looks almost like a mirror. The hardest part is flattening the backs of the chisels first so you can actually generate a nice edge. Unfortunately, chisel backs are anything but flat when you first buy them. Here's a nice step-by-step description of the process I generally use (sans waterstones for now). Once the backs are flat, honing the bevel is easy. After about 5 minutes or so, they're sharp enough to shave the hairs off my arm. Not their primary purpose, mind you, but it is a good test of sharpness. :-)

The sad part about yesterday is that I had to quit working in the shop before I had a chance to put them to work. Hopefully, I'll get out there tonight after work since it's a balmy 53 F today. Happy Monday, everyone.

I Finally Got My Shop Back

Hey all. Has it been over 2 months since I last blogged? Of course it has because this is me and I'm quite possibly the worst blogger ever (well, not in content, but definitely in frequency).


I got a bug to write again because I got a nice e-mail from a few windsor chairmakers out in Missouri who found this blog through my instructors' website. Turns out they studied together at the same place and are also professional chairmakers. It was nice to hear from them.


The good news is that the workshop has been busy again lately. I've made it a point to reclaim the shop from the storage area it had become during the bathroom remodel, so over the last 3 weeks I've been doing just that. I basically cleaned it all out (found out that several local mice had been feeding on a bag of birdseed - yuck), moved some stuff around, made a few upgrades, and got it back in working order. The upgrades are a few small cabinets for extra storage that I'v ebeen thinking about forever. They're nothing fancy, but they do manage to keep some tools and supplies from getting dusty, which is key in a shop with little or no winter ventilation. Here's what the weekend oasis looks like now. It looks more crowded than it actually is. There's alot of multi-tasking going on with the benches and equipment.





In fact, I have several projects in progress as we speak. I'm building a jewelry box for a soon to be 13-year old niece (shhh, don't tell her), and have been experimenting more with my lathe. I really want to do more turning, starting with spindles and working my way up to bowls. The first project will be legs and stretchers for a few windsor stools. These have been in the offing ever since I finished my sackback chair over a year ago. I'll let you know how they turn out.


I'm off to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a business trip, so wish me luck that I don't get stuck somewhere due to snow, wind, or both... Have a good week.

Furnace Replacement - Day 1

Today was truly one of those best of times, worst of times kind of days. This morning, I had the misfortune of experiencing the death of a pet. Beth published a wonderful eulogy for our boy Milo on her blog. He was a good boy and will be missed.

Given the grief of this morning, it was a welcome diversion to have our HVAC guys start on the new heating system today as well. I delayed the install a week due to some business travel, which meant the house has been COLD for an extra week. To drive home the impact of that decision even more, we got out fist real snow & ice last night. yippee... The saving grace for us has been the pellet stove we installed in the kitchen/breakfast room and the space heaters we bought when the knittas came to town. With these things running 24-7, there's just enough heat to keep us from becoming popsicles in these beginnings of a frigid NY winter.

The new system is a complete overhaul, with a boiler and hydro-coil air handlers replacing the normal gas furnace. We decided to go this route so we could place a second air handler in the attic to handle the 2nd floor independently. The guys focused on the basement today, removing all of the old equipment and installing the first air handler (photo below) and new duct work. What may not translate in this simple photo is the joy that comes with the fact that this unit will NEVER come in contact with any water that could reside on the floor of our basement. That fact alone is huge in this old house...

They'll be back tomorrow to begin the install work in the attic. We're on track to have real heat again by the end of the week. Hallelujah...

Look What I Got!

Yep. That's what they call in these parts 'One Kick-Ass Snowblower'. I was the major recipient of some good will last week when our Friend Todd let Beth know that he was getting a new one and wanted to give his "old" one away. Well, this isn't what I was expecting. For being 'old', this thing is awesome...8 HP, electric start, hand controls, you get the picture. For a guy who's never had one of these, I am feeling like a kid on Christmas morning. Many thanks to our Upstate Mom & Pop for this fine gift as we later found out that this belonged to them. THANK YOU!! I'm actually looking forward to our first major snowfall just so I can run this big bad boy around the driveway!!

As you may expect, it's been rather quiet on the master bath front. I've been traveling quite a bit lately and we've also decided to take the plunge on the furnace replacement. I did manage to make a little progress this morning while Beth was making Mac & Cheese for Thanksgiving dinner...

These are the new mirrors and flyover lights. They have the same finish as the vanity and storage cabinet that will eventually grace this room, in case you're wondering how this whole experiment may look when it's done. Hopefully within my lifetime it will be.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you all have a fun-filled day with your families and get plenty to eat in the process.