I posted an entry to the Houseblog with an update on the fireplace mantel, with some details on the top molding and the results of the weekend’s work. It’s coming together, people.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to send shout-outs to my lovely wife for her gift of a table saw last year, and my wonderful sister, who gifted me with a compound miter saw a few years back and the router two years ago. Without you both, this project would not have been possible. It’s a pleasure making stuff out of wood when one has the right tools, and while I don’t have the New Yankee Workshop setup, I have enough tools to produce something this nice. Thank you, everyone.
…Now, if i could only rip that ugly brass fireplace surround out of there and put something nice in its place…
When last we left the fireplace mantel, I’d finished adding wings to the sides of the box on top to make the structure look proportionally correct. The next step was to find molding of some kind that would fit the top of the box, mimic the molding in the rest of the house, and have it be approximately the right size.
This is the basic crown molding sold at Lowe’s and Home Depot, clamped into place for test-fitting and basic aesthetic testing. At first I had it lined up with the top of the box, so it began about 4″ down the box and (to my mind) was squishing the top box too much proportionally. My initial plan was to tack it into place here, then see if I could have a 3/4″ plank planed down to 1/2″ at a lumberyard somewhere and basically just tack it on top of the molding. This would have left me with a thick lip at the top of the mantle though—the squared top of the molding is about 1/4″, plus a 1/2″ board == eccch.
My second thought was to mill the sides of a plank down to fit the bevel of the molding (tip: all crown molding is essentially a thin board turned on its side so that it doesn’t create a 45° wedge at the back, which makes it undesirable for finishing the top of, say, a mantle) and fit it to the mantle, then tack the molding onto it and into the side of the box. This would be considerably more difficult but the end product would be much more pleasing.
Another thing to note is that with this particular crown molding, the angle at the back is not a perfect 45°; it’s somewhere around 32°, which makes fitting the bevel that much trickier. I cut the molding according to the measurements and test-fit it, then measured both the box and the outline of the molding to find the final edge size. (Sure, your fancy “New math” might have helped here, but remember, this house is out of square in five dimensions.)
Cutting the long edge of the plank was easy on the table saw, but cutting the short edges was tricky because my compound miter saw only has a reach of about 7″, and this board is 8 1/4″ wide. So I had to revert to the circular saw, adjusting the blade by guesswork and praying for good results.
And luckily, it seemed to work. I got true 32° cuts from the circular saw in a straight line, and fit the plank into place. Next, I had to jigsaw out the odd scalloped shape of the bumpout above the fireplace into the back of the plank—both edges come out about 1/8″ further than the center— and plane out any inconsistency left so that it fit as flush as possible.
The end result has a few very minor hiccups here and there, but overall looks very good, and turned out better than I’d dreamed it might. I have to cut and fit shims on the top to support the plank, and then the whole thing gets permanently fastened to the frame.
The next step is to cut down those small planks on the right side and fit them around the sides so that they meet the kickplates on the wall, covering up the lousy edging job the floor guy did around the fireplace and the lousy brickwork we inherited. Then, putty and caulk go in to fill any rough edges, a final sanding, and finish paint goes on.
Here’s the fireplace surround with wings on the edges. There are more pictures on the houseblog.
Here’s the fireplace with added wings on the edges, sanded and primed. If I can clear the decks this weekend I’m hoping to finish this project off and move back in before next Monday. Cross your fingers.
This took a little longer than I thought because I built the boxes with 45° angles to avoid having the edge of the woodgrain to deal with when I finish. Clamps are a wonderful invention, and I need to buy more of them.
This is the other side. Under this section we’ll put the rounded bead, and above it will go a milled edge finished off with a 1/2″ flat cap.
So I finally have some decent (well, working) logfile reporting for my personal site, and I spent about 20 minutes going through some of the lists to see who’s looking at me. As it turns out, there are five or six people jacking some of my bandwidth (mostly MySpace punks and an MP3blog), but I stumbled across a blog in Spanish which refers to my illustration portfolio. A quick trip to Babelfish and I had a rough translation of the site:
Apparently this stupid king makes illustrations of well-known people, by reasons or others. But single one by each initial letter, that is to say, with ‘A’ al-Zarqawi has drawn to Abu Musab
With ‘B’ to Paul Bremer
etc etc, thus until the letter ‘I’ that it so far takes, which corresponds to Interpol, to a music group yorkino New punk.
Stupid King. Gotta remember that one.
Peapod, how do I love thee? More ways than can be counted, especially when work is coming fast and furious, and I have barely enough time to dress myself let alone grocery shop. A nice man with a wide smile just dropped off a weeks’ worth of groceries, and shopping took all of 15 minutes. The internet is awesome.
Sorry, I posted this from the vet’s office yesterday and meant to follow up with details (typing out words on a Motorola 551 keypad is as much fun as sticking bamboo up one’s own fingernails) but I got caught up in finishing a rush project.
Sage has been losing weight pretty steadily for the last three months, and his back legs have begun to get erratic and shaky. His water intake has increased dramatically. He’s been weak and unwilling to haul himself up onto the bed with us this last week, which is sort of like the sun suddenly refusing to rise. We’ve had problems with one of the cats missing the litterbox while urinating, and when I clean it up, it’s sticky and never seems to dry completely. Before we left New Jersey on Monday the first thing Jen did was call in an appointment for him.
After a protracted fight with one of those little test strip machines, our vet concluded that Sage is diabetic. One blood test and about a half-hour later, the results were confirmed: his blood sugar was 601, an astronomical sum compared to the standard 70-110 shared by humans and cats. The sticky urine is due to its massive sugar content—he’s probably too weak to make it all the way into the litter pan after navigating the basement stairs.
The vet gave us a quick course in insulin injections, which boiled down to grabbing a handful of scruff and shooting 3cc’s subcutaneously under the skin, on their stunt cat Tommy with some saline. Jen administered quickly and professionally, and Tommy happily obliged my fumbling attempts to hold both him and the needle correctly, drooling all over my sleeve, knowing he’d get fed for his trouble. (I am terrified of needles, both giving and getting.) I was able to inject on my second try, and Tommy made it out alive.
We picked up the insulin and a 100-pack of needles, and worked out a crude system where we distracted the other cats with canned food while we gave Sage a special diabetic formula, and while he wolfed that down (the resemblance to Randy, the little brother from A Christmas Story, eating mashed potatoes with his nose, was uncanny) Jen shot him with the insulin. He didn’t even notice.
The vet tells us it’s going to be a while before his sugar evens out and recovery is noticeable, so we shouldn’t expect him to bounce back tomorrow. For us, this is frightening, considering what we went through with Penn, but having a solid diagnosis and clear treatment options provides a huge sense of relief—this is Jen’s first husband, after all.
Christmas hint for me: Some synthetic socks I can try to keep my feet warm. I think I’d prefer to try Coolmax socks.
Attempting to find a better way to post pictures here via iPhoto, I came upon Photon, which is supposed to use the mt-xmlrpc.cgi interface. I’m still having problems with the export process, and Daikini’s website is minimal at best, which means there’s no documentation, and I’m getting errors during export with no return values.
I’m also trying out a 30-day demo of Flickrexport for iPhoto -> Flickr posting. More later, so stay tuned. Nevermind. Any software that freezes my whole application until it gets a serial number and won’t let me demo gets uninstalled.
Why does this have to be so hard?
