A little bit of woodworking a little bit of home repair and One heck of a view

This past weekend I had the opportunity to do some work for a friend.  This friend has a house on a lake that needed some repair work done to a couple of exterior doors.  After many years of weather some of the wood finally started rotting. 

First of all this was my view at 7:30am Saturday morning……

 

 

 

 

 

I have to tell you it doesn’t get much better than this.  I have always been a lake guy even though I have never spent a ton of time on them and I love boats, so this view pretty much made my day.  I had to keep reminding myself that I am there to work not watch the boats go by.  So anyway…  To the work part of this…..

Take a look at the shots of the rot --

This is one of the doors. This one was the difficult one.  The one that scared me, the one that had me thinking for a few minutes what the heck did I get myself into, however after stepping back cooler heads prevailed. 

 

 

 

 

 

This one looks pretty bad but it was actually really easy to fix, so lets start here.

This is on a single open French door so this is the bulkhead between the door that opens and the static window/door.  The first thing we did was figure out how to separate the rotted board from the rest of the door or if we would have to build a patch.  We were able to find the seam and start to separate the bulkhead.

 

 

 

 

A little prying and she came right off.  You have to make sure not to pry to hard and damage the other side of the door.   Just take your time and go slowly.

 

 

 

 

 

I trimmed a board that was the same width of the bulkhead.  I just used a miter saw to cut it to size.

I attached the board using some finish nails.  I set the nails just below the surface and filled them with some caulk.  Make sure to use an exterior caulk.  One the board was attached I also ran a bead of caulk down the inside edge where the wood meets the door to seal any gaps, I did the same where the board meets the other part of the bulkhead.  One area that you want to make sure you get some caulk into is at the location of the original rot, make sure you get plenty of caulk at the bottom of the board between the board and the metal transition plate.  That way if there is ever any standing water it keeps the water from soaking into the wood as much as possible.

This is how that door turned out.  I painted the entire door frame and doors, in addition to the new wood that was installed.

 

 

 

 

 

Now onto the scary door…..

So you saw the rot from above.  I made some assumptions about the construction of the door that turned out not to be totally correct. 

*******  If my friend is reading this post please just skip this section.  This totally isn’t your house…   *************

  Once I started the demolition of the rotted area it became apparent that the door was not built as we thought.  Instead of being multiple pieces the door was a single piece or it was glued together so well that we would have destroyed the entire door trying to go the original route of removing the rotted piece.  Instead of being able to just pry the piece off like the other door I ended up having to cut this section out.  There was more rotted wood than what you could see with the eye so I cut a little bigger than the rotted wood so to make sure there was no bad wood left. 

To cut this section out I used a great new tool from Dremel tools, called the Dremel Trio this was a super handy little tool. 

From this point I started rebuilding the frame.  I used several pieces of wood to build up the thickness we needed to fill the gap.

Once I had the right thickness I was able to start test fitting the piece in the hole and fine tuning everything.

Here is what the section looked like after I got the piece built up, at this point I caulked the heck out of everything to make sure it was sealed up tightly.

 

 

 

 

 

After Painting caulking and painting some more here is what the door looks like now. What rotted wood and hole are you talking about.  I don’t remember any rotted wood or a large gaping hole in the door. 

 

 

 

 

 

So here is the whole area all cleaned up and doors repaired and repainted.  I think it turned out pretty well. 

I know it looked scary at first but keep in mind there are very few things that cannot be fixed and usually they are pretty simple once you step back and take a look and think things through. 

Have a Great Day!

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: wood working,home improvement,DIY,Home repair,paint.

Milk Paint – You painted with milk are you nuts?

No No, we didn’t paint with milk.  That could be interesting however.  What I did do is use a great product from The Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company.  This paint is something akin to what early American craftsmen would have used in painting their furniture or other household items.  Milk paint was made at home by hand typically using skim or buttermilk, and a combination of limestone and more or less anything they could find for color.  What The Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company did was create their own recipe for their reproduction furniture business.  After seeing what they were able to accomplish they started receiving requests for their paint and thus what we have today. 

Now this stuff is totally different than anything I have used before, for one it comes in a dry powder form that you have to mix with water to make the actual paint.  This is easily accomplished by adding the powder and water to a nice sized mason jar and shaking the heck out of it.  The directions call for warm water, I used water that was closer to hot so that it dissolved completely.  Once you have it mixed up and ready to use get yourself ready if you are sensitive to smell.  Once you open that jar you will be met with a slight sour “Milk” smell.  Nobody told me about that.  Whew did it catch me off guard.  It really isn’t all that bad I just wasn’t expecting it.  It’s one of those things that you get used to as you are using it and don’t think anything about it after a few minutes.

As I started painting I was really concerned with how the paint was going to turn out.  When I started brushing it on it went on differently than Latex or Oil based paint it was almost streaky and blotchy all at once.  I tried smoothing it out as much as I could but could not get it to lay like I wanted to.  I went ahead and painted the whole piece at this point it was the back slats of the Jelly Cupboard build.  I was so frustrated with the way it looked I went to Lowes and bought some latex paint to repaint with, well they say time is a great healer and well they don’t lie whoever they are.  By the time I went to Lowes purchased the paint did a few other things came back and looked at the paint it had dried and had dried very smoothly.  This was not at all the outcome I was expecting.  I was very pleased.  I decided then I would give the Sea Green color I had purchased a chance.  Boy are we glad I did.  This stuff looks AMAZING.  It recreates the primitive/colonial/country look that I know a lot of you go after.  I couldn’t be more happy with it.  It beats the heck out of using a latex paint and having to work with it to achieve nothing close to what this stuff does.  I couldn’t believe it I had on one of my pieces finally found the look that I wanted.  In order to protect the great paint job I also applied the Milk Paint Clear Coat product that is available as well.  This stuff is also great but a word of warning do not use this stuff in an enclosed poorly ventilated area.  I opened the bottle and immediately knew that I had to open the shop doors turn on the fans and the air filtering system.  It’s some strong smelling stuff, but is totally safe to use.  Make sure you put it on thin I goofed in a few places and let it build up and had to adjust fix it. 

Oh I totally forgot to mention that before I applied the clear coat I took some 0000 Steel wool and “Sanded” the whole piece.  This helped level the paint out and dull the paint just a little. After the clear coat dried I did the same with it.  I did not want a super shiny clear coat and you don’t really get one with this stuff, well at least I didn’t, but the steel wool levels it and make it look even better in my opinion. 

Okay so to wrap up.  I totally recommend and will be using milk paint on future projects.  Here is the skinny though, it’s a little more expensive than what you would pay for latex based paint but if you are going after that period look or just want something different it is totally worth it.  At the retailer I purchased it from it was about $13 per package and each package gives your roughly a pint of paint so I have about $20 worth of paint on the Jelly cupboard.  I used almost a full pint of Sea Green and a full Pint of Oyster White.  Now I usually would by quarts of latex paint so it’s quart for quart about half the cost, but I also don’t have almost a whole quart of paint sitting around taking up space hoping that it will get used on another project, wondering if it was good enough, and if it lived up to my standards.  I mean that’s a hard thing for paint to have to go through day in and day out watching me build and wondering if this is the time that it will get used.  Well I can tell you I will still use Latex paint, but for anything that is going to be even remotely period based or primitive the milk paint will be my paint of choice.  It almost makes me want to go and sand all the latex off the couple of pieced I made last year and redo them with the milk paint. 

Please make sure to check out their website http://www.milkpaint.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: Jelly Cupboard,Milk Paint,Paint

Mirror Makeover

A mirror, a stick of lumber, and a saw walk into a workshop…..

The other day I mentioned a series of projects that are about to begin at Grover Woodworks.  One project I failed to mention was a mirror makeover.  No this is a different one that the shutter mirror, we are getting to that, this was a quick makeover and I am not totally finished with it.  Tomorrow night I should have it totally painted and ready to install.  We decided we wanted a new mirror for our downstairs guest bathroom.  We looked around and found several that we like the cheapest being $40.  Being cheap frugal my wife and I both new I could build a better mirror for less.   We took a trip to one of our favorite bargain stores Big Lots and found this…..   It’s a little uglier in person.  Big Lots had this for $10.  I removed the mirror from the frame without killing the frame or the mirror.  We will reuse the frame for another project it will be modified as well. 

So tonight I decided it was time to make the frame for the mirror.  I took some extra sticks of lumber that I had left over from the shutter mirror project and built the frame using a miter saw and a Kreg Pocket Hole Jig.  I really like my pocket hole jig.  I need to upgrade to the K3 at least.  Anyway I digress..  After a little bit of planning, measuring and cutting I started to see the frame come together.  Here are a few of the pieces cut out for the frame.

 

 

 

 

Here I have drilled some of the pocket holes and have started to assemble the frame.  One thing I forgot to mention is the rabbet that I cut on all the frame boards.  I did this on my jointer as it has the ability to cut rabbets.  It’s a handy feature, you can also cut the rabbets on a table saw or use a router to cut the rabbets.   The frame is finally

complete and it’s actually pretty square.  There looks to be something a little wrong in this picture however.  Do you see the huge gap at the bottom.  Are my measuring skills really that bad can I not read a measuring tape.  The answer is probably yes no I planned it that way.  I planned it that way because I knew I wanted to add that shelf to the frame.  Wait there is still a really big hole.. :)  Oh yeah the mirror goes there.  Anyway..  I used some scrap wood to fill the gap at the bottom and a little more of the extra lumber to create a small simple shelf.  To make the corbels I took the same lumber and took my speed square and drew out the 45° angle.  I did however slide it over so that there is a small flat front on the corbel.  I used a small nail gun to attach the shelf and corbels to the frame.  Here is the mirror frame after a quick coat of paint.  I am happy about how it turned out.  We are going to try it in the guest bathroom and see how we like it.  If not I am sure we can find a spot for it somewhere in the house. 

As soon as we have it mounted in its permanent location I will post some final pictures for you to see.  To recap this project I am going to estimate that I have about $8 to $10 wrapped up.  The frame was $10, the wood was $1.97 a stick and I used just a little over  one stick and a little bit of paint, so I split the cost of the mirror $5 for this project plus lets call it $2.50 for wood and .50 in paint and screws.  All in all I am pretty pleased with the outcome.  I am getting more confident in my ability to use my tools and had a really good time tonight it was very relaxing.

Let me know what you think or if you have any questions feel free to comment or shoot me an email and as soon as I can get this thing done I will get the last couple of pictures posted. 

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: Kreg,mirror,makeover,DIY,rabbet,corbel,biglots

5 Drawer Dresser Makeover/Refurbish Progress

Sorry no pictures as of right now.  I ran out of the paint stripper the other night and have not been able to get much more done.  I was able to get the two sides stripped and most of the drawers.  Tonight I hope to get some more Formby’s and stripe the rest of the paint off.  I did take the chance last night to spray some paint I had mixed up on it and decided I really don’t like it.  It’s very odd as in some light it looks a little purple, then blue and even black.  Oh well… You live and learn.  Oh yeah I said in the last post that I was going to stain it. Well… I’m not, okay not totally…….

After getting the two sides stripped and some sanding done I realized that the original stain was very deep in the wood and wasn’t going to come out 100%, and the wood was freaking ugly, so I will be painting the body of the dresser a color to be determined probably black cause I feel monochromatic and stain the top with some ebony stain.  I hope to finish up the project this weekend.  I was able to stabilize the dresser from raking back and forth.  When I get back into the shop with the camera I will show how I accomplished this.

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: Refinish,dresser,paint remover,stain

Restoring and Refinishing a Five Drawer Dresser PT. 1

My wife and I inherited this five drawer dresser from her grandparents.  It’s a great old dresser.  The current finish has about four or five coats of paint on top of stain.  You ask how I know that it has stain under all those layers of paint, I know because I took a belt sander to the top when we first got it to the house.  I quickly realized what I already knew you don’t take a sander to a restoration project that has paint all over and OLD paint at that.  Not only did I have a ton of dust, it was one of the worst smells.  A combination of a musty sock drawer and that funk you get after about an hour on the treadmill. 

 

Here is what I was able to do with the power sander before the belt gummed up from all the paint and heat.  I discovered there was some great looking wood under there.  I honestly had no idea what I would find.  You can see in this picture that there is some stain underneath all that paint. 

Formby’s Paint and Poly Remover to the Rescue

I went to Lowes and got some Formby’s Paint and Poly Remover.  This stuff works great.  I really didn’t expect it to work as well as it did.  You paint it on thick to your surface and wait about 20 – 30 minutes.  After that you take a scraper(just a typical plastic spackle blade) and scrape the gunk off.

This is after the first coat and scraping.  I was shocked at how well it took it off in the first pass.  There were some stubborn spots so I reapplied the paint remover on the troublesome areas.  After another 25 minutes I scraped the rest of it off.  There were only a few spots so I just sanded those spots off.  My wife joined in the fun and games and helped with the side of the dresser.  After a couple of coats and a little bit of sanding we have an almost bare dresser side.

There is some wood missing on the bottom foot.  I am going to spend some time figuring out what I want to do with this.  I believe the wood is oak so I could get some oak and make a filler for it.  I might also just leave it as is.  The dresser does rake side to side when you push it.  I will go over how I resolve this in a future post.

 

 

 

 

We went back and forth deciding if we wanted to repaint it or not.  You may wonder why I would strip it if I was going to repaint it.  Two reasons 1) I really wanted to see what kind of wood was hiding under all that paint. 2) I’m not sure what kind of paint is on the dresser.  It might be lead based as old as it is but I am not positive and even though my shop helper doesn’t go around biting the furniture I would rather pull it all off and redo it, plus I have a better base to paint it.  If we decided to paint it, which is totally not what we decided to do.  We are going to stain it.  Out of curiosity I threw a little Cabot Ebony stain.  You can see that in the picture above.  I gotta tell you we both think it is going to look

great.  A few coats of stain to get a nice dark color on it and I think it is going to be great.  I hope to get this finished over the next couple of weeks.  Check back to see the finial restoration and further posts on shoring this thing up. 

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: stain,dresser,refinish,refurbish,formby's,paint,paint remover,woodworking

Bedroom Makeover: Nightstand Edition

So it is now time to make over our bedroom.  It’s still in the drab white that was painted with the house built.  In an effort to maximize our dollars we decided to give our current bedroom suit a make over.  There are several things wrong with it all of which I will fix over time but the first thing that hits you is it’s just plain ugly.  We still haven’t totally figured out why we bought it 10 years ago.  I guess we were young it was in our budget and we needed furniture for the house we had just moved into.  That being said how do you take a 10 year old not so good looking night stand and bring it into the new decade.  Let’s explore this in a little pictorial.

The ugly nightstand

I guess really it’s not all that bad but it is far from our current taste in furniture and design.  I have some ideas on how I would like to fix this guy.  The first thing that needs to happen is that I need to remove all that molding next to the drawers.  I just think it really disrupts the look of the nightstand.  So what to do…..   Find one chisel well two actually and one hammer and presto you get the following result.

The Ugly Nightstand Molding Removed

Now how did I do this?  It is not that hard really.  The molding was nailed and glued in place and my goal was to have as little tear out as possible so take one of our chisels and place it on the back edge of the molding and start tapping it breaking the glue joint and prying the molding away.  Take your time and do a little bit at a time.  You are most likely going to get some tear out, not to worry we will address that in a minute.  Eventually you will be able to pry the moldings off of the project and you get to take a cool picture like this one.

Demolition Tools

As  you can see the moldings don’t always come off in one piece no problem I had not planned on using them for anything anyway.  Now we can address any tear out that may have occurred.  There are at least  two ways of dealing with it.  One if you are planning to paint you can fill any of the tear out with wood putty if they are really bad, do this before you start any sanding, let the pudding try and sand it flush with the rest of the wood.  Now if you are going to stain the project then the putty isn’t probably a good idea as the stain at least in my experience will be soaked up more and look different than the rest of the wood.  If you are in this situation or if the tear out is not all that bad then you can do what I did.  I sanded the faces down until most of the tear out was gone and anything that was real deep I smoothed out with the sand paper and made them appear and part of the character of the project. 

A Sanding we will go…..

Here is the result of a few couple of hours of sanding.  I wasn’t worried about totally removing all of the finish that was on the nightstand previously.  I mainly wanted to get it scratched up real good so that the latex paint I am using would have something to grab a hold of and stick to.  If you can get it to bare wood all the better but I didn’t find it totally necessary on this project refinish.

 
And now through the power of the internet we have a mostly refinished nightstand.
  This is the first of 2 coats of Satin Black latex paint.  I wasn’t worried about overspray so I didn’t mask off the interior of the nightstand.  Now that the main part of the night stand is taken care of lets focus quickly on the drawers.  Remove the hardware sand as you did with the main section and paint.

You can paint the sides if you want to, I decided it wasn’t needed as the drawers are closed 99% of the time.
Now that you have everything painted you can either put the hardware back on and be done or you can distress things just a little.  I spent a little time sanding off the paint in some key areas.  It is pretty hard to tell from the picture but there are several distressed areas.  I took the sand paper and sanded until I got bare wood and then took a little stain and stained over the area let it dry for just a little while and wiped the excess away.  Once I was done I had the following refinished nightstand.

So I hope you have fun taking on your own refinishing project.  If you have any questions please feel free to email.

Here is a before and after side by side:


Have a great day!  --Grover

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