french door & antique Morris chair

My house was built with a door opening between the kitchen & living room, but did not have an actual door. Since this opening at the central point in the house, I installed a door there to give definition to both of the rooms.

The wall opening was 36 x 80. This is a standard door size, which means no additional expense to buy a custom size. Unstained pinewood French doors go for $160 at Home Depot.

In this post there are no pictures of the actual installation which included:

mortising, sawcutting, aligning, prestaining, staining, drilling, installing knob, installing latch, installing jamb.

Stain color is Early American. Knob is brushed bronze.

The actual door was about 1/2 inch too wide, if you allow room for swing & hinges. I narrowed it along the hinged side using a circular saw. Narrowing it along the knob side would have required the knob be installed too close to the glass, which might give it an unbalanced appearance.

Morris Chair


The rearranged living room allows much more space, having moved the entertainment center to a far wall against the stairway. Part of it I filled with a Morris chair bought at the Putnam Antique market. This Morris chair was made by the Quaint Art Furniture Co. of Syracuse NY. The antique cost about as much as a new one.

Mission style is part of the American Craftsman style of early 20th century. The craftsman decorative style was contemporary to the Arts & Crafts bungalow style architecture movement which featured clean lines and natural forms. Frank Lloyd Wright was of this genre.

The Stickley Furniture company was started around 1900 by Gus Stickley and run by five brothers. It soon split up and spawned several other companies making similar furniture.


Quaint Art Furniture was in business 1909-1916. They say an original Stickley is the real deal, but that spinoffs, including Quaint Art, were of similar quality, and the company was probably run by someone who worked in the original Stickley business. The shop label underneath indicates the authenticity.


The Morris is a bit awkward next to the Ultrasuede couch. I will be looking for a secondhand dark table or bookshelf to complement it.

Snow 2/10

A few inches so far

4th time painting

Is 4 times of painting enough to get the color right? This post is about what I think are the finally final living room & kitchen/hall colors, after trying at least four colors per room over the last year and a half. In these pictures that follow, apologies for the mess everywhere but the walls. It will be a couple weeks before I clean these rooms up.


Living Room


Below, I’ve repainted a shade darker than in the previous post. Butterscotch Candy above chair rail, Autumn Gold beneath chair rail. The colors were formulated to go together. They are adjacent in the Ace Hardware brand color series. The effect is sturdy but informal. Finally a room you just want to sink into. After I clean up and move some furniture around.

Darker photoshop version below.

Kitchen, round 4

Above the kitchen/hallway wainscoting, the color is Bedford Brown (Behr paints). It’s reddish brown but looks and feels purple. I’m going for the feel of an old, plush, bustling resort kitchen. A balance of formality, liveliness, and utility. Repose and busyness. Light but dark. Warm but cool. Yin but yang. Perfect. Under the new shelf/coat rack, is painted the next darker shade in the Behr series (Clay Ridge). The ideas for the hallway shelf, and chair rail style and high baseboards in living room, certainly might be recognizable in an early farmhouse on the Cape. I hope you notice that the Brimfield doors were made for these colors. I don’t think the track lighting goes with the style, but the lights might blend in better once I put in shelves or tilt-out bins on part of that large section of bare wall. Apologies for the mess on the table.

chair rail

chair rail
–noun
a molding on an interior wall for preventing the backs of chairs from rubbing against plaster.
Origin: 1835–45


New chair rail for living room:

Chair rail is 1 x 5 white pine. I have not finished this project yet because I have not finished the usual experimentation with colors. I will probably go with the combination in the picture above(Summer's Tan above, Butterscotch Candy below chair rail). In photo Below, I tried out Butterscotch above the chair rail.

Below, front door framed using antique shutters from Rudy's. $20 each tops.

wind-swept powder

As busy as it gets downtown on a snowy Sunday

Rte 85

solitude

Poetry

the Box Elder blog is written in an economy that just resonates with me which is why I have a link to it on my blog. I stumbled upon it once when googling filigree. Anyways please read her 2009 new years eve wish.

http://box-elder.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-years-eve-2009.html

tree

Living room window casing

In this post I replace clamshell casing with 1x4 board. Casing is also referred to as trim or moulding.

Below is the original casing. I wanted to go with something wider, and a flat shape instead of the curved profile of the clamshell (in the inset below, you can see why it's called clamshell).

Also I replaced the 4-inch-deep sills with 8-inch. The 4-inch deep sills could not be used as a shelf. Deeper sills are more practical. The new casing/sills will be more rustic, folksy, practical.

Below, same situation with side window. Also I ordered grilles for the windows, which pop into factory-made holes in the frame and set right on the pane.

Below, new casing!

Below, close-up of 8-inch sill. If you buy an 8-inch board, the actual size is 7 1/4. The 8-inch is called "nominal" size. Actual size is narrower. Similar, the new casing is 4-inch nominal, actual width is 3 1/2 inch.

Below is that old wall shelf Steven and I made, I put up last night warms up the living room. I think it goes perfect.

Installation of Hanging pot hanger

In this post I install a half-moon shape pot hanger.

The pot hanger I have had for years was wall-mounted with a bracket. However there is no place convenient in my kitchen to mount it on a wall. Here is how I hung it from the ceiling using chains. It took an hour and a half (or three hours if you count the time at Home Depot and on this blog.)

I hung it above the sink so it can double as a drying rack for the large pots. A pot hanger located above the sink is very convenient because I cook tons of pasta and have pots and strainer out all the time. And it's been a nuisance storing pots on the stove & also taking up dish rack space after washing. There is no dishwasher.

First locate four points where it will hang from ceiling:

about $20 worth of hardware from home depot

Toggle bolts expand above the ceiling to support a load. The holes need to be wide enough to insert them. Below, twisting the wallboard saw to make holes.
Below, what a toggle bolt looks like before installing. Toggle bolts come with screws so I needed to replace them with eye bolts of the proper diameter (1/4 inch) to screw in to toggle.
Ceiling mounts in place, below. S-hooks to connect chain to ceiling mount
With the hardware in place, chain length can be measured and cut so hanger hangs at desired height. Stainless steel chain was about $1.70/foot. I bought five feet but only used half. Any chain would support the hanger so I went with something that looked good.
Below, chain sections after cutting links. Dremel drill with steel-cutting bit used to cut links. Locking pliers used to pull links apart because drill bit would jam right before each cut was complete.
Below, I used hardware at the hanger similar to at ceiling except using nut/washer instead of toggle bolt.
Ta da!

hallow's

Break

Home projects for the year are finished....taking a break till spring. Then in spring, replacing upstairs shower & maybe redo back deck.

Snow Fri. AM 10/16 I had just mulched leaves the day before, here is snow over the mower track.



Final kitchen, view from back

Front door - epilogue

As shown in my post from Sunday (10/4/09), more trim was required beneath the front door corbels. This post describes making and installing the additional trim.

It might be better to skim through this post, then read it again to understand these following details!

For additional trim, I cut 2-ft high pedestals, and a series of 1-inch wide strips to connect the pedestals to the corbels. The strips were 1-inch wide spaced 2-inches apart to match the relief on the corbels.

Wood board sizes are described in cross sectional area, so a 1x1 board is 1 inches square in cross section, and could be of any length. I wanted 1/2-inch by 1-inch pieces but could only find 1x1 at home depot. Below, I used a table saw to "rip" 1 x 1/2 inch strips from 1 x 1's. Ripping means to cut a board along its length. Using table saw, I ripped 1 x 1 boards in half to create 1 x 1/2 in. strips. It is done by feeding the 1 x 1 through the saw, sliding the board along an adjustable guide to get the desired thickness.

Then using miter saw, also called a chop saw, I cut an 8-ft 2x6 pressure-treated board (about $20 at home depot) into 2-ft boards, to make the pedestal. A chop saw is easier than table saw to cut boards crosswise.

It was a gorgeous day and setting up your power saws outside is helpful because you don't have to deal with sawdust.

Below, I cut angles at top of pedestal boards, using miter saw, for an angled look.

My door trim is a composite of layered wood strips and boards. This means moisture could get between the pieces. I painted all surfaces, including the inside surfaces that will not be seen, for protection and life. I painted all surfaces with Rustoleum oil-based black, figuring that will be a thick protective coating from mildew and moisture. Once installed, I used silicone caulking along the edges so water does not get between the pieces. The silicone caulking hardens like rubber.

Each pedestal consists of two 2x6 pieces. Below, you can see the first pedestal pieces. The second 2x6 pieces get nailed to the first, so the pedestals stick out more and complement the corbels. Below, I am getting ready to nail the 1/2 x 1-inch strips up to the 2x6 trim that runs the full height of the door.

Below, 1/2 x 1 strips partly in place. Up by the corbels, you can sort of see how I spaced the strips to match where the corbels flare out.

Below, I made 1/4 x 1 strips to go beneath the 1/2 x 1 strips, for further relief. This is because the corbels are so intricate that I think the rest of the trim must have some variety to complement.

Also below, you can see I've nailed the outer 2x6's to the pedestal.

The pedestal top is consists of two angle-cuts and two quarter-round molding pieces. It serves as a break between the strip lines above the pedestal and strips that I will put on the pedestal.

Below, two strips on the pedestal and blocks are used to create a recess on the pedestal, that is wider than the recess created by the strips above the pedestal. This is to give the pedestal a wider look, as it should since it is the foundation piece for the door.

I am pretty close to a color I like for the door, as you can see below. Note how Midnight Black and Gloss Black seem to go well together. Gloss Black is on the more intricate parts such as strips and pedestals, and Midnight Black is on the flatter, less interesting pieces.

ta da!