Welcome to my Zenfolio blog which may or may not materialze into anything meaningful. It got started to keep me at a project to finish the panelling in my TV room.
I am not at all happy about how this blog formats, so I apologize for the weird fonts and sizes that appear. There is nothing at all logical about how it goes together.
Back at It - Bottom Trim
It's been awhile getting up the nerve to start drilling and nailing those little oak pieces to go over the plywood edge on the top of the baseboard. I spent awhile trying to conjure a different way to covering it, but in the end, I decided to use the materials we had cut and let it be ok.
Back at it. Maybe I should tidy up first!
For some reason i started with the angled corner which I think was keeping me back. After a couple of nasty joints on the top trim boards, I guess a few tiny messy bits on the bottom won't matter very much. I think it will be ok. Tiny drill, tiny nails - still need to find a tiny nail punch.
The hardest part is getting up and down from the floor.
Looks ok from here.
Teeny tiny nails.This bit of oak is 1/4" thick
That's the nasty bit.
Sanding, Drilling, Gluing, Nailing -- YES!!
Thursday: I spent about a half-hour in the 'room' today. I sanded the first 2 pieces of the top rail, realized that I needed to tidy up the place or kill myself from a fall. There was a lot of sawdust on the floor and it was very slippery. Still is, actually, but not so much stuff to fall over.
I am still frustrated by the disgusting mess of my Fibre-Op installation which will eventually have to be placed in some sort of cabinet, but will need some protection from the sanding dust in the meantime. I also have to do the battery replacement when I settle down to it.
The sanding is pretty simple - Tomorrow might be a good day to finish that. done
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Step 2 will be drill, nail and glue these pieces on. I hope I figure that out correctly. I don't really want to screw and countersink and fill. done
Step 3 will be to figure out if I have enough narrow pieces to make a border along the top. This may require some saw work on the leftover pieces.
Step 4 will be to measure, cut, sand and fasten the 2 pieces along the bottom. This will be fussy.
Step 5 will be varnish and filling the nail holes
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Tools of the Day
Friday: I am impressed with myself. Today I gathered my tools and set to work and the top rail regardless of my intimidation with figuring out drill and nail sizes to make it work. I just took a wild shot and it seems ok. I am disappointed in my joints - I need a better tool or a better strategy. However, a little filler will help I hope, and who's going to examine them anyway.
These play pads make my physical joints quite happy as I kneel on the floor to do the drilling.
Drilling a Lot of Holes
Drilling the holes was an easy job. I put a piece of softwood underneath and drilled until I felt the drill go through the top piece. Sometimes the drill continued past the bottom, and past the foam sheet. I now have several small holes in my hardwood floor. Duh. I thought of this about 3/4 of the way through the job, and put a second board under the softwood. Dumb.
Glue
Glue. It is possible to use too much glue. This I discovered on the first glueing, and added a wet cloth to my tool supply.
The first 1 pieces are on. I think this will go ok. By the end of the day, with several stops to follow the inauguration, I was done....except for a tiny piece between the windows which I forgot about, and which I think ended up in the basement earlier for a sample piece. Tomorrow.
First 2 are done!
Jan 14, 2017 Back At It
It has been a long time since I worked at the living room panelling, but the time has come to get back to this and get the job finished. I've spent a few hours in there mulling over the situation, and I have finally got the top pieces all cut, except for the final one, that has to fit between two mitred pieces. It will be a good luck thing and the very end of the job.
The last piece
What this means, of course, is that I have managed some mitres!! Even that pesky corner wall.
This is the best one.
Hopefully it will look a bit better once it's nailed down.
This is the best of the corners, and below is the corner wall. It's a little wonky to begin with, but I think this will be ok once its all nailed down.
The not-exactly-level wall behind it, can be fixed with a little strip that will look like it belongs there.
It's very treacherous in the room right now, the floor has a lot of sawdust on it -- so be careful if you decide to visit.
Living Room Panelling - Feb 29 - Getting to the hard stuff
Yesterday I finished the sanding of plugs and some stains on the baseboard. There's a bit of hand sanding remaining, and possibly a go-round with a finer grit on the whole thing.
But what has got me excited is the 'hard' part about to take place.
Today I fashioned a jig for cutting narrow strips, which will probably be needed to cut pieces from the short boards I have, since I don't think there will be enough stock for all of the pieces I need to come from the long boards.
I also did a LOT of thinking about process....and a LOT of measuring.
Measurements and muddles.
What I have to work with are a number of short leftover boards ranging from 2'-3' in length, 2 oak boards approx 3' x 11', and 1 oak board approx 2" x 8'.
There are 3 things to be cut:
- The top chair rail which is the same thickness of the posts, about 9/16" by 1 1/4". I need about 30' of that.
- The inside bottom piece that goes on top of the plywood in between the posts against the wall,; it is 9/16 x 5/16". There are about 20 pieces, mostly around 2' long
- The outside bottom piece which runs along the length of the wall in front of the posts, also 9/16 x 5/16". For this I need some longish pieces, about 40' in all.
I spent a long time thinking this out, and the best way to make it happen. I hope my thoughts are helpful. Each of these cuts will have to be edge planed before going through the saw, and the long boards will probably have to be thickness planed before anything else is done.
Well.....the best laid plans........
I changed my mind on the thickness of the bottom pieces, back to 1/4". Brian arrived and said we could cut 1/4" strips on the right side of the saw blade with no problem, so my jig-making was redundant. This worked fine up until the very last strip which was way too tricky for my taste. Because the jointer is not working, I need to sand those pieces by hand.
Unfortunately, apart from the first 9 strips, the rest of the day was disappointing because the jointer turned out to be not working - belt is off, and the bolts holding the top to the bottom were missing. I suppose I could have tossed them in my cleaning frenzy a few days ago. I would expect them to have been someplace nearby, and I moved almost all of the nearby stuff -- so Brian's visit turned out to be more troubleshooting and jointer fixing than making actual progress.
Nonetheless, I learned a pile of stuff from him about planing and cutting and what you can and cannot practically do. I will be having some joints in the top rail, and in the outside bottom piece in order not to lose massive amounts of stock due to crookedness. Might just need that mitre saw after all.
Woodworking as a practical hobby for me seems quite far off. There is way too much to learn and remember, such as the million kinds of bolts there are, and what a nut driver is and which knobs do what on the power tools. The jury is still out on whether I will be making this a long-term project.