Almost A Seat

Well I've managed to make 2 of the 3 sections for dining room window seat. Of course my plan to make them had to be slightly modified. I originally planned on using the templates I made as a guide and using a router with a straight cutting bit and a roller bearing to cut out the oak pieces - but this did not seem to work so well. The bit seemed to chew and splinter the wood and cut behind the template in a place or two. Maybe this procedure would have worked better with a softer wood or if I had rough cut the piece out and us the router as a cleanup. Anyway I went with the old trusty sabre saw and slowly cut by hand. Then did some cleanup with the sander. So far not too bad - I only will need to square the joints better once all three pieces are made and fitted into place. I used a circ saw on the sides that butt for a straighter line, but the angle must have been not quite 90 degrees.

Once cut out and sanded, the joined boards did come out almost seamless. I was able to match grains up pretty well, and this time unlike the foyer staircase bench seat - I alternated the cups of the grain and this gave me a very flat board which should not cup at all.

Time To Make A Window Seat

Today was the first step in making the oak window seat for the dining room. I already have a template made from MDF in three sections that I will use to transfer to the oak panels. The first step involves making these panels. I need about 24 inches to fit the templates, so this will be made using three 8 inch 1x boards. Using biscuits, the three boards are glued and clamped as seen here, which will then be sanded smooth when dry. Two more to go and then its router time....

Been Awhile

It's that time of year again - when I go from rebuilding my house to what feels like living at work giving the power plant a tune up. This outage is an 8 week'er, so won't be doing a whole lot till May. But at least the old piggy bank will be ready for another season of projects.

Here's the latest....

Was able to salvage the foyer closet door. I used a few heavy coats of stripper and used a small brass bristle brush to work the white out along the 5 panel borders. Then followed with steel wool and a final sanding. The details are worn out a bit, but most of this was done by whoever sanded the door before they painted it. So the stairs are pretty well complete except for the steps themselves - to be done when I can open the house up. I bought new brass hinges for the door and the seat, plus a new lock and an oak door stop. Was pretty impressed with the quality, since most repro usually ends up being junk.

I've been working on the dining room windows now. I stripped and sanded the ledge, plus added some detail trim that was missing. The windows themselves I've been trimming out. The original window guides were a little to narrow, so I've been making 1/2 inch wide oak pieces with an ogee routered along the edge. Then a final small piece of trim I've used elsewhere to hide any final gap. I had to make some filler pieces along the top since the windows were a little shorter than I had planned on. Hopefully this will all get stained soon.

I made a new updated seat template from 1/2" MDF that comes out a few inches further. This final revision looks pretty good and these templates will be what I use to router out the final oak sections from wide oak boards than I need to make still. I'll probably start gluing and clamping these boards together soon - a good project for when I have little time.

We bought some stained glass panels finally for these windows. We were going to go old, but didn't think having window frames around the panels would look good here, so we went with new ones at a pretty good price. They have a nice arts & crafts look to them that works with the house.

And here finally is the latest addition to the house. It's an old upright player piano made by Conway (about 1920ish). I picked this up on Ebay last year along with the seat for it and a cabinet filled with scrolls. The guy even dropped off and rolled it right into the garage. Finally it was time to get some movers over and get it into the dining room. I was going to try and get it in myself building a ramp out back.... then came to my senses! The player mechanism doesn't work and should make for a fun restoration project some day (like retirement). The cabinet really needs a refinish too, but looks OK with a little Old English till I can get to it in a few years. I did start stripping the cabinet for the rolls which was in pretty poor shape. It will sit on the adjacent wall.

Happy Easter!

Stair Progress

Things are wrapping up on the first stage of the staircase restoration. The spindles are all back in place, all the caps are installed, trim work finished, and the stain and first coat of poly have been applied. Two more coats, and then I can start the second half of the restoration - stripping the treads/risers. I may wait a bit until I can open the windows some, since the stripper is pretty potent. For the the railing parts and sides, the majority I was able to strip in the kitchen where I have the exhaust fan already hooked up.

The closet also is wrapping up. The woodwork in finished and staining/first coat of poly are on as well. The closet door is still in the stripping process which has been a real bear to get the paint off the one side. The old shellac was sanded on the one side before painting, so the paint has really bonded to the wood. The cables have been routed to the basement and connector plates installed. One for power, one for the DVD player to feed flat screen in living room with 2 RCA cables for sound and S cable for video, and finally a pair of speaker connections for the stereo. I have an extra pair still in the box if I decide to add another set of speakers downstairs and will just have to get another connector plate.

New Item For Hall Collection

Noted local historian Keith Lockhart found this neat little item recently and offered it to me to add to my collection of Hall items for the house. It's a bar spinner, which I'd never seen one before. On the top side is advertising for the L. Norris Hall Steel company. On the back is an arrow and the words "YOU PAY". The object was to spin the coin which rotates on the little punch in the center and whoever the arrow lands on has to buy the round of drinks. A unique advertising item, especially from someone that the closest thing he came to drinking alcohol was Hires ROOT beer!

Te-de-ious

The one word that definitely describes restoring a staircase. I've been at it a few weeks now and just finally can I see some light at the end of the tunnel. As you can see in the picture the first section is completely finished (excluding the steps). The second section handrail, newel posts, and side trim are finished and I'm working on stripping and reinstalling the ballusters. The salvaged caps I found on EBAY worked out well to replace the ones missing on the middle and top newel posts. I did have to trim them down about 3/4 inch on each side since they were made for a larger post - after that they worked perfect. Working around the new floor certainly can be a little scary, especially with stripper! I'm still used to not caring much about what ended up on the floor. I managed to rig up some tarping to catch any debris/stripper while working that worked out pretty well - no oopses to report yet. It looks like I will need to make two pieces still. I need a pyramid cap for the bottom of the upper newel post that protrudes through the ceiling. Also there is a piece of trim missing that covered the plaster/trim seam along the rising ceiling. That one will be easy, but I need to find an oak block to make the pyramid.

I may end up going on and finish the stairs completely - steps and all. HD sells some cheap oriental style runner that I could install to protect them while the restoration continues upstairs - and then eventually I could have a nice runner installed when all the work is done. It be nice to see the stairs finished soon, since this is the first thing people see coming in the house, and it will be several years away before the upstiars in finished.

If Only I Had A Picture...

A nickel for every time I've said that and I'd have this resto paid for. A major detail of the main stairs was ripped out when the wall was built through the foyer to make apartments. The basic clues were on the bead board of the closet, a recently discovered marking on the newel post, and markings that I noted on the floor before they were sanded. Also talking to the grandchildren I verified that there was a built in bench here and that it did have a lid (where the toy stash was!). So now to come up with a design to make something close to original based on some vague clues. Checking the web for similiar arts & crafts influenced staircases with built in benches, I got some ideas for the end that I would need to build. Initially I was going to go with a full side, than a friend suggested that maybe it was more like a lower case "h" design - and that's what I went with. Kinda like a pew design.

First problem was to be able to copy the beadboard that was still there. Markings on the floor showed that more was used to form the bench. Well I found oak casing that was close, and all I did was run each side through the router to get the bead design.

To build an end for the bench that had the design showing on each side I glued these pieces back to back, ending up with about an 1 1/2inch thick board. The original board is tongue and groove, but my copy was just casing molding, so to build a panel I needed to use a biscuit joiner and connect all the pieces with biscuits and wood glue - then clamped for 24 hrs. What I ended up with was a nice end panel that was pretty close to the old bead board.

To finish off the vertical edges I ripped down a 1x piece of oak and attached to the bead board panel. Then using a small piece of stock trim, I added along the horizontal edges where a "handrail" piece will be added on top of each level.

With the side panel permanently attached, I then built a frame for the front of the bench out of 1x2 oak and mounted the same bead board trim to this frame. This completed the side and front sections.... now for the top. I used a 1x4 to fill in the back out even with the edge of the newel post. I used the same 1x4 for each end of the top as well. This left the bench with a nice opening to add a lid that would hinge open. I mounted support pieces inside to support this side trim. The lid will be supported by the hinges in the back and the front will rest on the front wall of the bench.

Now for a lid. I built the bench to fit a 15 inch deep lid - which would be built from two 1x8 oak boards biscuit joined together (7 1/2 inches wide each actually). This was a small scale practice run for when I have to reproduce the dining room window seat. Actually it's quite easy and after clamping for a day I had a pretty tight board which required just a little sanding to hide the joint. I then cut the lid to fit the opening and finally routered an edge bead to the entire front lip of the lid and ends to copy a detail from the window seat which is original to the house.

For the arm rests I tried a few designs, ending up with using a simple 1x3 oak and routering an ogee along the edges.

And here is the final result....

It's just mocked up for now. I need to run some cabling into the closet from under the stairs. Then I can add supports and line the inside of the bench to make a storage compartment. Finally I'll do the permanent install and add hinges to the lid. The design "feels" right so I think I got it close to what was originally there.

Stair Strippin

I decided to start working on the staircase next. I'll finish everything but the treads until I get much of the heavy upstairs work done because of the heavy traffic they will still get. First order of business was finishing the baseboards in the closet which I used new quarter round for the toe piece and the same cap I bought for the rest of the downstairs minus the piece I made to back it. The originals had the same problem of white paint that had soaked in pretty good and would have distorted the design by the time I sanded it all off. Next was stripping all the beadboard that when installed forms the closet - talk about tedious stripping. I made a new bottom nailer trim piece for these that was pretty beat up. Then came the install and stain. Even the old timers made mistakes as I discovered, because they started nailing the pieces from the corner of the steps out and when they got to the last two pieces before the corner post for the closet door - they were going to have a 1/2 inch gap. So they used filler on the tongue of the second board in instead of it fitting into the next board. Well I decided to fix this a little better and used a small piece of trim to hide this gap and it works fine.

Next I added the toe piece for the bottom riser which bends a full 90 degrees into what will be the bench seat. I wish I could have bought some of the flexible trim that's available, but mine are custom so I could never get a match. I ended up installing the flat and then over two weeks keeping a damp cloth on the trim to soften it and slowly worked it around the corner. It didn't come out perfectly tight all around the riser but it looks ok.

I started working on the closet door which is also a real bear to get stripped. I think it was sanded down before the white paint was applied and has soaked in the wood a bit. It taked a heat gun for the top layers, then two coats of stripper for the bottom coat, and then a good going over with my sander. The biggest problem is the detail between the panels and the rails. Nothing but tedious stripping and hand sanding will fix that and I haven't got that far yet on it. I would replace the door since the bottom has been chopped shorter for carpeting... but finding a thinner style oak 5 panel door that hasn't been drilled for a lockset will be tough at best.

Now it's time to start stripping the side panels. These aren't to0 bad and at this point I have sections left. I also did one face of the main newel post. At this point the idea is to strip everything that surrounds the built in bench so that I can start replicating that. When I stripped the post I discovered a sillouete about 1 inch wide and about 40 inches tall. When working on a bench design in my head and what clues I have to go by I initially thought it would be open on the newel post end. The more I thought I just couldn't come up with a design that made sense to fit the cavity I had and how the stair was chopped.Then I started looking at pictures online and closer at my situation - and discovered that most had another full side to them. Then I noticed a slight line in my newel and after initial stripping it was even more evident because of how the white paint stubbornly attached to raw oak (this time was a plus). And some filled nail holes as well.

Stay tuned as I work on a design and replicate the missing bench (if only I had a picture to go by.....)

Jump Juke Jive'n

After two years of being in parts and pieces, I was finally able to get one of my favorite toys back together. It's a 1939 RockOla Light-Up Luxury Deluxe jukebox - and it still plays original 78's. This was one of my early EBAY finds about 10 years ago and I drove from PA all the way to Minnesota to get it. What an adventure that was! It's former life was in a night club somewhere in the middle of MN. So here it is all back together and proudly lit in it's new home in the foyer.

1939 RockOla

Someday..... when the house is done.....heh heh....... I will get to these two. The first is a sister to the restored RockOla - but it's a 1940 model needing full restoration. I'm still looking for a few parts for it. The other is about 80% done needing mostly some mechanical work and some cleaning from being moved and stored for the past few years. It's a 1936 Wurlitzer - made just before the "plastic" era started, this guy is all wood with just some colored lighting instead.

1940 RockOla

1936 Wurlitzer

A little Glenn Miller or Sinatra anyone?

Baseboards On A Budget

A good bit of thought went into finding a way to replicate the baseboards that originally were in the Hall house. Fortunately I found enough evidence to have a sample of what was - but duplicating it would not be that simple.... or cheap. They consist of a 1x6 oak board that is raised about an inch off the floor on block shims. The toe piece covers this gap and you end up with a full 7 inches of base before the cap is installed. The original toe piece was not your typical 1/4 round, but a stop moulding used in the door jambs. This piece is approx. 1/2 inch thick and 1 1/2 inches high. Finally the cap is a fairly complicated piece that overlaps the top of the base, protruding past the board a good 1/2 inch. The back has some relief cuts as well to help form to an uneven wall when being installed. This would be by far the hardest part to duplicate and most costly.

original cap and toe pieces

So I started out previously milling 1x6 oak boards and installed them a few months back. Next I work on the a solution for the toe piece. The closest stock lumber was a 1x2 oak that I would have had to rip in half, then rip shorter, then finally run on the router with an ogee bit to get the top profile - lots of work - and not very cheap either. I could also have made the piece from my lot of oak planks - adding even more work, but the cost would have been nothing but lots of time. Then it dawned on me that I had all the oak flooring I took up from the first floor that I had no idea what to do with. And these were already 1/2 inch x 2" - but after you take off the tongue and groove you're there. Plus I had these in up to 12 ft. lengths, so I could do some long runs in one piece.

So I went ahead running enough floor boards through the planer and then ripped the tongue (left the groove since it will sit against the floor), and then routered the ogee profile. In an afternoon I was able to make enough to do the three rooms downstairs and the staircase - and the cost was absolutely nothing. Plus I have plenty of flooring to make toe pieces for the entire house.

new 1x6 and toe piece

For the cap I convinced myself that I since I had no original capping in the house to match to (unlike the casing) it would be perfectly OK to use something close to the original if it was easier and cheaper - especially since nobody would ever no the difference but me. So I browsed the trim aisle and found the usual base capping, but nothing else. So I bought a piece and figured I'd see if it would look good enough to use. Unfortunately when placed on top of the true 1x6, the scaling was all wrong - since these are made really to be on top of a 3/4 board. So back to the drawing board.

what's wrong with this picture?

I though I might be back to milling the original, then my buddy John said try shimming out with another piece of moulding - after all lots of mouldings are made from several pieces in ornate woodwork. To make things look right, I needed to come out about 1/2 inch and maybe another 1/2 taller. Hmmm - my flooring stock is 1/2 inch thick..... so I grabbed a scrap of toe piece I made and placed it behind the cap I bought and things started to look much better.

on the right track...

At first I thought this is it.... but after looking at the cap for awhile the 90 degree angle at the joint between the two pieces just didn't look right. The profile should flow smoother than that. Then playing with the two pieces some, I shifted the front piece up until it was even with the beginning of the curve of the ogee on the toe piece. Now everything look right. I just needed to rip the toe piece down so it was shorter and the pieces lined up like this. Problem solved!

the solution

So back to the shop to make another run of toe pieces, this time shorter, to complete the cap. The front piece cost about 90 cents/ foot at HD. With the cost of the 1x6 at about $1.00/foot since I made them myself from rough oak boards - at the grand total of under $2.00/foot I have solid oak 8 inch high baseboards, that are a close enough match to original that I'm satisfied I did the house good.

not bad, eh?

Shiny Happy Floors

Well the guys at Shamrock Floor put on the 3 coats of poly (2 gloss - 1 top coat satin), and they had a week to dry. We are very pleased with how they came out and the downstairs looks like a different house. We can start putting furniture on, but have to wait a month for rugs. In the meantime I went ahead and finished the baseboard work while the furniture was out. I came up with a solution to replicate the original base trim that came close to original but cost me only $1.00/ foot using a stock piece from HD and milling some pieces from the oak flooring I took up. I'll show you how this was done in the next post. But here you can see some shots of the finished floors with the base assembled and stained. I like the contrast of the darker oak and the lighter pine. We can finally use some of the downstairs now and it's time to get the jukebox parts from the basement and put that beast back together for the foyer.

The Floor Sanders Finally Cometh

Finally - the floors are getting done. I thought this day would never come.... and of course when it did, it would be the coldest days we've had this season. Hell - throw up all the windows, the oil only cost me $3.50/gallon. But at this point I didn't care, I just want them done.

I was a little hesitant to finally pass on my first project to an outsider, but after watching the two of them drag that beast of a sander in the house... and then seeing about 5 minutes of them man-handling it - I was sold - they can have that job. After an hour or so into it they remarked that this was one of the worst floors they encountered in awhile! When the floor guys who do this everyday can say that, I 'm definitely glad I didn't tackle it myself. So they had to start with 20 grit paper to strip all the grime and faux paint finish that was on. Followed by 36. Then they had to counter sink all the nails that were put into the floor - no, of course whoever put them there didn't use finish nails. So this just added to the problems with the floors. In the end it took them a day and a half to sand the three rooms, which was longer than they anticipated. But in the end they did a hell of a job and brought them back as good as I could have hoped. Now just three coats of poly.

These picks are after the rough sanding was finished and spot filler done. The next morning was the finish sanding.