A nice surprise this week:  Brian showed up with a plug-cutting bit.  An excellent thing because in the 6 stores I went to, nobody has ¼” plugs.

I have to point out a stupidness factor, though.  A few stores had the plugs with the rounded ends – not the mushrooms (they have those too) but the straight up and rounded ones.  I don’t like the look of them, and I think they would be annoying to cut off – but Brian suggested genty that you can put them in backwards.  DUH.  Then they will hammer in and slice off as usual.

The good ‘bit’ about the plug-cutter, is that the plugs can be oak, and thus match the stiles.  Awesome.  I’ll be playing at that tomorrow as the snow flies – hoping to remember to match all grain direction.

A Whole lot of HolesThis is what's left after the plugs are snapped out.

26. DONE: The maple plugs in the railing are all installed and sanded. Not too much scratching of the wood with the saw.

Pretty, huh?Hopefully, this will mellow down a bit with varnish. If not, it's a damn fine plug regardless. Here they are: 1/4" across     Waiting for Saw and SanderNot a bad grain match, eh?

27. DONE:  The oak plugs are created and plugged into the stiles.

Austin helped with the drilling,  gluing and cutting off of the surplus…he has a knack for that…while I managed to scratch some places quite badly.  None of the saws works really well, and much worse on the oak plugs.  Not sure I would use oak again – lesson learned.

28. UNDERWAY: Chatted with a guy at Kent’s and another guy at Home Depot regarding possibilities for mouldings along the bottom.

There are many options, most of which will have to use short ends of oak unless I use the long piece from the garage…or maybe there is a not quite to long piece there – must check that out.

My current favourite is to use corner moulding, 1”, slice off one edge to meet the posts, then fill in the back with thin strips of oak to fit.

Another favourite is to use a 2”-ish board on top of the baseboard, cut it out for each stile and let it overhand about 3/8”, with or without a strip running underneath.  That could match the top (chair rail) piece.

29. UNDERWAY Inequities Discovered

There are a lot of things here that are not quite kosher, and won’t be. 

• I discovered one whole wall and another half where the baseboard is held on only by a few finish nails.  No screw or not to screw?  I suppose by all that’s right and holy, those pieces should be screwed into the wall.  I should have noticed that before.
   
• One of the angle corner boards is slightly misplaced wrt the joint on the base.  C’est la vie.
   
• The oak plugs are not quite the same size as the screw holes.  They should have been tapered, that might have made a difference, but the oak doesn’t give like the maple ones did, so I think when all is sanded, that there will be some little gaps showing……maybe not.
   
• There are a couple of stiles that are not screwed in.  They are just the right length to stick between the top and the bottom.  I think that’s ok.
   
• My personally crafted baseboard piece does not match nicely with its neighbor.