I have been working on a router table based on the design of the one on Pat Warner's Website.  I liked the theory, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  I had all of the joinery cut and ready to go last weekend, so I glued-up the frame last week.  I had sliced off an oversized hunk of MDF for the top from a 28 x 96 piece that was up at my parents' place from a previous project, and that was sitting in the basement stairwell.  Everything was pretty much waiting for me to have the time to get the top on and drill the mounting holes.  I finally did that today.  I used Mr. Warner's technique of tapping the wood to hold machine screws in order to fasten the top to the base.  This worked quite well.  I also drilled holes to fasten the fixed router base to the underside of the table.  Other than having a bit of trial-and-error on the countersinks for the short screws into the router base, it all went together easily.  I haven't had the time to build the awesome fence on that website yet, but that's coming.  In the interim, I used a piece of the MDF that I sliced from the top when I cut it down to 24 x 24, fastened a small walnut cleat to the back to help straighten it and keep it that way, and cut a notch to fit over the router bit area.  I ran a few test pieces through with a 3/8" beading bit that I bought today, and it works well.  Having never used a router table before, this was pretty cool.  It is far easier to use for routing molding stock and the like.  I'm excited now, and wish I had built this a long time ago. 

My other project progressed today, too.  Unfortunately, I went to shoot pictures of it and the router table, and discovered that my camera battery was pretty much flat.  I put it on the charger and will get some pictures later this weekend or this coming week.  In the process of working on other things, I mounted a 1/8" blade in the bandsaw.  I've never used this particular blade before.  It took a while to get it aligned and ready to run--getting it to balance in the middle of the wheels was a bit of a feat.  After that was ready, I made my first small trammel arm to mark out a radius for a specific part that I needed to cut on a piece of MDF.  Then I fired-up the new blade and made the cut.  Wow.  I missed my bandsaw.  That thing is awesome.  I cleaned-up the radius a bit with a rasp, and brought it upstairs to test.  This will be a template for the wood part that I need to cut--this will make it easier to clean-up the cut line using the router table!!!  :) 

Now I'm pretty tired.  This weekend is going to be busy, and I don't expect to have a whole lot more shop time.  I'm glad that the router table is ready, though.  I think that is going to save me a bunch of time on some projects. 

jonathan

Jenny and I spent the morning today delivering bread baked by the St. Anthony Guild at our parish to some of the shut-in parishioners.  We volunteered to do this with a number of other people.  There were a few groups there who knew Parnassus and Mt. Vernon well, so I figured we'd shoot for an outlier area and enjoy the drive and hunt for some of these houses.  We ended up taking two areas.  The first one I volunteered for was only five people, though they were some of the most far-flung, with the furthest resident in Oakmont.  This area also included Logan's Ferry and a few other little places.  I felt bad that we were only taking five, so I asked if there were any other outlier areas that we could grab.  One of the guys who had already taken an area offered his, as it included Aluminum City Terrace and some other odd places around that area.  That group had twelve people, so we loaded up our box with 17 little loaves of bread and hit the road.  Well, first I had to organize the cards a little bit, or else we'd be doing a lot of back-tracking.  We had a good time.  There were only a few places that were a little hard to find, one because of some misleading directions provided with the address, and another because the street signs for the road in question were missing.  One house looked like it had been abandoned for some time--there were just a few trash bags lying around inside, and leaves were piled-up outside the door that had obviously been there for a while.  That loaf of bread didn't get left there--the place was a little scary, so we took the bread and took off.  Another house looked like the resident hadn't been there in a while--there was a notice from her borough taped to the door, and the place looked like nobody had been there in at least a few days.  We left that bread there. 

On our way home, we planned to stop up at Pittsburgh Mills to get lunch at Red Robin, then hit Lowes to get a piece of 1/4" plywood so that I could finish my router table.  We got up to Red Robin, and the place was packed with a sports team and a whole lot of other people waiting, so we decided to skip it and go to Ladles back home.  We went over to Lowes, I got my plywood, and we headed to Ladles. 

After lunch, I changed and got down to work in the basement.  I had a bunch of stuff to do today, one of which was to finish my router table.  I managed to get it all glued-up and ready to go today.  I have the material for the top, which I need to cut to size.  I have the bolts necessary to install it--I'm tapping the wood for the bolt threads.  I was also working on a few other projects today.  Part way through one, I took a break and came upstairs.  I was trying to figure out how to make a quick stand to test something.  I thought that pocket screws would do the trick, so I pulled the trigger and went back to Lowe's to pick up a pocket screw jig.  I picked up the Kreg R3 jig kit, which includes the jig, bit, driver, some pocket screws, and a few setup guides.  After I came back and we had dinner (left-overs), I went back downstairs and knocked-together the test stand in a near record amount of time, especially having never used pocket screws in the past.  My take on pocket screws?  These are awesome!!!  I really prefer to do traditional joinery on most projects, but I can really see where this jig is going to help me to build other jigs, shop furniture, and probably even help with some other projects around the house.  I'm impressed.  :) 

I'll probably be back at it again tomorrow--I have lots of stuff to do.  Today was a highly satisfying day, though. 

jonathan

More work tonight.  I didn't get nearly as much finished as I had hoped, though.  My plan for tonight was to complete finish sanding the pocket door frame.  Yesterday was spent sanding through 180 grit on all of the mostly-flat pieces that I could get with a pad-based finish sander.  Today I switched to the detail sander and my hands to finish the curvy bits.  I love that MultiMaster, but I love even more this new sandpaper from 3M.  It does still get loaded sometimes when hitting some pockets of old varnish that didn't get completely stripped, but it is much better than the other stuff I had been using.  That new paper on the MultiMaster--now that's a thing of beauty.  I was able to zip through most of the sanding on the curvy bits.  I made the decision to only sand them through 120 grit.  This was partly to save some time, partly because I only did the other two windows up through 120, and partly because I have a hard time telling the difference between shellac on a 120 grit sanded surface, and shellac on a 220 grit sanded surface.  Even with the MultiMaster, some of this trim still has to be hand sanded to get into some of the areas.  Before I do the hand sanding, though, I bust out the dental picks and go after any stuck paint bits that were missed during the stripping phase.  After that, I re-sand anything that I had hit with the picks, then hand-sand the necessary areas up to 120 grit. 

Tonight, I was only able to get completely finished with half of the frame.  I'll have to do the other half tomorrow.  I just got too tired.  I was starting to feel tired on the ladder, which is when I knew it was time for me to clean up and hang-up the mask for the night.  I can't wait to get some shellac on it, though--I think that it looks really good.  I'm finding a good balance between super-anal-get-all-the-paint-out-no-matter-what side of me, and the hey-I-can't-see-it-from-five-inches-away-so-just-deal-with-it side of me.  :) 

In other news, I determined that the hand scrapers I have for woodworking will work great on the baseboards.  There are some areas that we'll have to sand by hand, but having these tools should make that job go faster. 

jonathan

Today was another day of good progress.  Thanks to the work we did yesterday, today we were able to get the other window in the room done with its first coat of shellac.  My Mom and Dad came down today, after we all enjoyed some city chicken and ice cream at their house.  Jenny had to do a little bit of shopping for the week, so she went out to do that.  I put Mom to work with me applying and then stripping wood with the chemical goop (technical term there).  I had my Dad take one of the cheap plastic scrapers that I bought and shape it to fit a curved profile that we're going to have to scrape soon, then put him to work with my new sander (a Bosch 1297DK 1/4 sheet pad sander) and the MultiMaster on the other window in the room.  His job was to get it prepared for finishing.  When Jenny came home, I had her help my Mom on one side of the pocket door frame, while I continued to work on the other side.  My parents were getting ready to leave, but Dad still had a little bit of energy, so I had him put the first coat of shellac on the other window.  It looks great!  After they left, I asked Jenny if she'd make some iced tea, and I finished-up the stripping that we had started, and scrubbed-down the areas we worked with mineral spirits. 

Now we're relaxing, still running the fan to exhaust some of the stripper fumes. 

Thanks parental units for helping (and taking more pictures from today:  Check out the gallery!). 

jonathan

We needed some sleep this morning, so we slept-in a bit.  We were up and moving by 10AM, though.  The first job for today was to get the one chair from the room and move it "someplace else."  That someplace else ended up  being the front porch for the moment, but that's fine--I posted both of those swivel rockers on Pittsburgh freecycle, so hopefully they'll wander away soon.  They are still in pretty good shape, but we just have too much furniture.  The plan all along was for these to disappear when we moved our "new" furniture into the living room, so now seems like a good time to get them gone.  We didn't have room for both chairs in our temporary living space, so one of them had to stay in the room.  It was getting to be a pain working around it, so out the door it went. 

Next was some general clean-up in the room.  Jenny had been working in there a few times over this week while I've been doing the show, but I never really did a good clean-up after we got the front window reinstalled.  This was a good time to do that. 

Next was putting the carpet back down around the perimeter of the room.  What's that, you say?  Why did we do that?  Well, we plan to get rid of the carpet when we're done anyway, so we might as well save some money and use it as our drop-cloth and floor protector while paint stripping and painting.  The plan is to get working on the chemical stripper all over the place now, so it was a good time to get the drop cloth (read:  carpet) back in place.  There are a few places where it doesn't reach, but I'm not too worried about that right now.  Those places are where the heat registers go, etc., so they're going to be covered again soon anyway. 

After all that was finished, I noticed that there was a small area of the window sill for the smaller window that we had not stripped yet with the heat gun.  We use the smaller window to contain our fan, so this is the area where the fan normally sits.  It was a pretty small area, so I opened the window a bit to get some airflow, and fired-up my heat gun.  Most of that stripped off pretty easily.  Then, I got to work applying the stripper (Strypeeze, for those who are wondering) to the frame and trim of that window.  That took a while to get slathered appropriately.  I took a break for about ten minutes after that, then came back and started cleaning off the stripper in the order that I had applied it.  This stuff works like gangbusters, and the wood cleaned-up pretty well.  There are a few crevices that are being a pain in the rear, but I don't know how much effort I'm going to expend on those.  I can't see them on the big window anymore, so they seem to disappear pretty well.  I'm trying to do this window well so that we don't go through so much sandpaper when sanding time comes (which should be tomorrow for this window, actually!).  I also own a set of hand scrapers of various sizes and curves, and I think I might try to use them to do some of the work prior to sanding.  I use them for woodworking projects, and they leave a surface much nicer and with less dust than sandpaper.  I don't know if I'll be able to get all the tiny curves and stuff with them, though, so we'll have to see. 

Speaking of sanders, the Craftsman ROS developed some issues that I noticed when I was finishing the big window last weekend.  Specifically, when not in contact with a surface, the sanding pad starts to spin at high speed.  If the pad is brought back in contact with wood at this point, it generates a giant dish-out and circular marks, which is not cool.  Using my jeans to slow the pad before bringing it back to wood works, but is far from ideal.  I need to call Craftsman about that.  It's my Dad's sander, though, so I should probably get my own for projects here.  I think I'm going to pick up a 1/4 sheet "finish" sander.  These sanders can be used with any type of paper, really, to make them as aggressive as one wants them to be.  They excel at getting into corners and edges of flat surfaces the way that ROS units just can't match, and can be used for really fine sanding, if desired.  I think I'll do that after church tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, my Mom and maybe Dad are coming down to help us.  Lots of stripping and hopefully some sanding are the order of the day.  We're getting closer. 

jonathan

Today, the big window got much closer to living again.  While Jenny worked on some of the last bits of heat-gun stripping, I was able to finish sanding the trim and frame around the window, and get the first coat of shellac applied!  Of course, there are places where I just couldn't get all of the paint out of a little crevice, or where the paint soaked-through an old screw hole to the point where it would be impossible to remove it without removing the wood there, too.  I could have obsessed over this for at least a few more full days of working at it, but I had to call it quits at some point and move ahead with other tasks.  The MultiMaster did a great job in most of the hard-to-get-to areas.  There were a few places where I still had to resort to hand sanding, but having that tool (along with the ROS) made sanding actually move forward pretty quickly.  I'd still be sanding for the next few days otherwise.  Check out this page of MultiMaster tips, if you're interested in the tool. 

The trim and frame now has two coats of shellac.  Jenny and I had a few errands to run this morning, so we woke up, I applied another coat to the window sash, and we took off on our errands.  When we got back, I put another coat on the sash (total of four), and got to work on the window.  I'm thinking that the trim and frame are going to need at least one more coat.  The shellac is nice, as it is dry and ready for another coat in about an hour.  I'd love to be able to get away with just one more coat on the trim and frame, though.

The plan is that the window is going back in tomorrow.  To make that happen, I need to do the following stuff:

• Trim and frame needs at least one more coat of shellac. 
• Top piece of main sash stop moulding needs to be reinstalled (nailed in place--the removable pieces will be replaced after the sash is back in place).
• Some old paint in the cavity between the bottom sash area and the transom area needs to be scraped of excess crap.
• The sash and sash trim pieces need to be waxed to allow for easy movement. 
• And if I have time:  The sash hardware (latches and pulls) need to have paint stripped and get reinstalled.

My thought is that the sash is going to be heavy enough that it won't want to go up on its own.  If it does, I'll probably leave the pins I'm using to keep the chains from receding into the walls right now in place, which will provide no lift on the sash.  That, of course, will force it to rest in its closed position. 

Next weekend I'm involved with doing sound for a show on Friday and Saturday nights.  Saturday during the day and Sunday, though, are going to be work days again.  I'm hoping to get a few people here and get people working with the chemical stripper on the rest of the woodwork in the room.  Jenny is going to try to finish the heat-gun stripping on an evening this week, which would put us in a good position to get cracking on the chemical stripper and prep work next weekend.  If it is possible to do that and get some sanding done next weekend, then we could be putting the finish on the trim that week.  That means that there is an ever-so-slight chance that we could be ready for primer on the weekend of the 8th.  That's a real stretch, though. 

jonathan

I know we've been making progress, but today I actually felt like we were getting a little bit closer to being done with the living room.  My Dad came down to help us this afternoon.  Jenny had to work for most of the day (her employer let everyone out early, though, so she got home at around 15:00).  I took today off from work.  I'm starting to feel a little bit better, so I took Jenny to work this morning.  After I dropped her off, I grabbed breakfast, then stopped by Ace on the way home.  I had made a decision to try the nasty stripper stuff, as I seemed to be getting nowhere fast with the CitrusStrip.  I picked up some of that (Stripeeze), some TSP, a can of orange shellac, some denatured alcohol (thins shellac, amongst other uses), and a few brushes.  I was ready to go. 

I got started as soon as I got home.  I had a little bit of heat gun stripping left to do on the big front window.  Part of my goal for this weekend is to get that window back in place.  I had originally planned to do that today, but being sick yesterday severely impacted my ability to do work yesterday, and slowed me down a lot today.

As I was stripping with the heat gun, I came to the realization that we can't do the paint around the stained glass window transom right now.  That almost has to come out for us to do it right, and we can't take that time right now.  I also have a feeling that we're going to need someone to help restoring it when we try to start working on it, and I don't want to get into that right now.  So, after consulting with Jenny, I decided to strip the area around the transom, but not the transom itself.  While doing that, I discovered some more moulding that could be removed for easier stripping outside, so I did that.  Doing that also made it easier to finish what I was doing with the heat gun, so it was a win-win situation. 

I took the moulding that I had removed outside, and put some of the new nasty stripper on it.  It turns out that it isn't really all that nasty (I had a respirator on and gloves and everything, though, so maybe it was worse than it seemed).  I went back inside and finished-up the heat gun stripping.  At around this same time, my Dad arrived.  I put him to work sanding the stop moulding for the front window, and then the sash itself.  He got to use the new Fein MultiMaster, which worked great.  We also put his Craftsman random-orbital to good use, as the paper for that sander is a lot less expensive.  The Craftsman did all the flat stuff, and the Fein was pressed into duty on the curvy bits.  All of this wood had been stripped with the CitrusStrip stuff, so there was a lot of clean-up necessary.  That killed a few sheets of sandpaper for both tools, which sucked, but they really made the job go fast.  If we had to hand-sand all of this stuff, we'd still be sanding on Monday.

Jenny arrived shortly after my Dad, and she ate some late lunch and got to work with the other heat gun stripping more baseboard. 

As soon as I was finished with my heat gun stripping, I tried the moulding that I had put the stripper on less than an hour prior.  Holy cow--everything came off in one stroke over most of the moulding!  This stuff worked great!  I put a touch-up second coat in a few places on that moulding, and I took some more inside to try on the window trim.  All I can say is, "Wow!"  This stuff worked wonders on that trim.  Cleaning it off is messy, but much easier (and less messy, if that is possible) than the CitrusStrip.  I also didn't need more than one coat to remove the old finish that didn't come off with the heat gun, so that was extra-cool.  It worked so quickly that I was able to start finish sanding with the random-orbital (I start with 60 grit to clean-up, then move to 100, then 220 is my finish grit).  I can do all of the flat parts with the random-orbital, so I hit all of those on the big window trim with 60.  I was just finishing up that while my dad finished-up with the 220 on the sash.  It was ready for its finish!  Holy cow!  I've been waiting for almost a year to try this!

There was a ton of dust on the sash.  We decided to carry it outside and use the compressor to give it a quick clean-off.  Then it was back inside and a rub-down with a tack cloth.  And then...

My Dad had the honors of the first brush strokes.  I decided to use amber shellac.  It's a historic finish, and is likely one of the components of the original finish on this woodwork (it appears to have been a shellac-varnish blend, which I've read was pretty popular).  I decided on the straight shellac because it is easy to apply and really easy to repair (just put on more!).  The trim in our home is some variety of pine, and it is pretty soft.  It has been dinged, and will certainly be dinged in the future--this just makes it that much easier to repair.  It also looks pretty darn good on pine. 

My Dad had to leave after the first coat, so we cleaned-up, put the plastic back down over the open window area, and he went off on his way.  I waited a bit, gave the sash and stop moulding a quick sand, and applied a second coat.  The second coat makes it look even better.  I think I'll do a third coat to see how it looks, and will consider a fourth coat.  I don't want to have a too-thick film, but the additional coats really add depth to the finish. 

It looks good.  I'm happy.  Jenny is happy.  We have lots more to do, but this proves to me that we can do it, and that it will look pretty good when we're done.  I'm excited.  More pictures from today are here.

jonathan

Earlier this week, I was pondering how to make it easier to strip paint from some of the more intricate moulding.  While thinking about this, I wondered to myself how much it would cost a company to produce some standard-ish blades for stripping different types of details.  Then I had a bit of an epiphany, and said to myself, "Self, you have some nice tools and at least a passing knowledge of working with metal stuff, why don't you make your own?" 
Doh.  I should have though of this earlier.  I had to get a few things to make this possible.  Namely, I needed some files of my own, some sheet metal stock of appropriate thickness, something to use as handles, and a profile gauge so that I could copy the profiles more easily.  I already had this great new jigsaw with a metal cutting blade that I thought would make easy work of some of this, so I went ahead and got the stuff. 

At home that evening, I used the profile gauge to get a copy of the profile, then headed down to the basement.  My first attempt was passable, but it needed help to be really useful.  Version Two was great, and fit the left third of the profile.  I made a new copy of Version One that worked and fit the right third.  I still have to make something for the middle third, though that may end up just being a finely-pointed tool, because I think making a full profile for that middle third is going to be a bit iffy.  I was happy, though,  I got to use the jigsaw, an old anvil that was left in our basement, and some of my fledgling metalworking knowledge.  It was fun.  I came up and stripped some paint with the tools, just to make sure that they worked as I thought they would.  It was a good evening. 

Yesterday, I got an email from a local woodworking store that had a 15% off coupon for any of their power tools.  I've been getting ready to get a Fein MultiMaster to help with the eventual sanding of all of this woodwork, and for use on other projects around the house.  This tool is not cheap.  I wanted to get the "top" kit, as it has all of the various attachments that I would probably be using (including dust extraction, which I plan to use to catch paint dust when we sand the ceiling).  While the kit is expensive, it saves a bunch over buying the accessories separately.  Since it is expensive, I was working to try to get the best deal I could.  It looked like Amazon was going to be it, until I saw that coupon yesterday.  Today, I called the store to see if they had one, and if there was any chance that they could put it aside for me, with the understanding that I'd be buying it during the official sale period (which starts Friday and runs through the weekend).  Well, the guy said that he'd put it away, and that I could pick it up at any reasonable time, even after the weekend.  I asked him if there was any chance that I could pick it up today (I was trying to avoid having to spend time away from the house this weekend, since we're trying really hard to get finished as fast as we can).  He said yes, and that he could sell it at the sale price.  I emailed Jenny at work, a plan was hatched, and we went out after work to pick it up. 

Let me just tell you:  This thing is completely awesome.  I set it up today with a regular sanding pad and went to town on some of the woodwork, just to see what it could do.  Holy cow, it is fantastic.  I gummed-up the pad with some of the old varnish, though, so it looks like we're going to want to use the chemical stripper to get most of that off before sanding.  I suspected that would be the case.  This thing was great, though--it's going to save us a ton of time when sanding time comes, which should hopefully be soon. Jenny heard me sanding like crazy, so she came in and stripped some paint while I was sanding so we're getting at leasta little further along in that regard. 

My wife is awesome.  :) 

This Saturday, my Dad is coming down to help us.  We're going to write an outlet for the freezer currently residing at their house, then we're going to get to work in the room.  I want to get the rest of the quarter-round up off the ground, and the rest of the tack strips.  Then I'll be working on more paint stripping.  I have a lofty goal for this weekend, and that is to be done with the majority of the heat gun stripping.  I think it can be done.  We don't have that much more to do right now.  If that happens, that means that this Wednesday would be the start of the chemical stripper and clean-up, and maybe the start of sanding after Thanksgiving.  That could put us on track to have a finish put onto the woodwork as early as the weekend of December 8th, which would be completely awesome.  If there's any way to accelerate that, I'll try.  Still, that would be a major accomplishment.  That means that we could be painting the weekend after, if not earlier.  And that means that we could be back to having a room again at least a week before Christmas, which would be truly fantastic.  Hey, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.  We'll see. 

Tomorrow is light-up night in Pittsburgh, so we'll be going to that.  Saturday is another work day, and hopefully it will be productive.  Sunday is my sister's birthday party, and then we'll be working some more. 

I need to take some pictures in there.  It's come a long way, I think, since I last took pictures. 

Time for sleep. 

jonathan