Quick project for my brother

One of my younger brothers recently bought a new house that his family will eventually move into. The house was built in 1900, it has been some kind of Episcopalian Spiritual Retreat for a while, and there is a little meditation house with a closed-off room that he wanted to open up. I was glad to go up there for a few days over my Christmas break and take care of it.

The little house is little. There's a deck, maybe 5' x 8' on one side, then a room with a kitchenette and bathroom in there, maybe 8' x 16'. Then another exterior door, and another exterior door to get into the meditation room - an all glass former porch. The whole thing is maybe 300 sq ft.

Starting point for the offending wall

That's a perfectly good wall. They wanted me to put a big hole in there. Bathroom is on the right. On the other side of that wall is the meditation room. Let's break on through to the other side!

Day 1 started with getting into the sheetrock. I popped off those 1x4's and we punched a few holes to see what it looked like. I was surprised to find insulation back there. After I let my brother and his wife get some aggression out on that drywall, I went in for some math.

Specifically, I drew lines where I wanted to make the edges of the opening. There's a light switch on the left and a perpendicular exterior wall on the other side that I had to avoid. On the right, I had to be sure and make it look like an opening so leave enough room for some molding in there. The ceilings are different heights int he two rooms, so there was no way I could take it all the way up either.

Once I got the drywall down on this side and all of the insulation removed, I discovered an electrical wire where there should not have been any electrical. I thought that switch was going to be powered from either the top or bottom instead of going through each stud. Oops! Well I can make some adjustments there.

The other side of the studs had some blackboard, so I think it was originally an exterior wall. Then a layer of drywall on top of that, which was unusual. The drywall and blackboard were each 1/2" thick, so that was a really solid wall! I decided to remove all of that side of the wall up to the ceiling, and replace the drywall after putting the new framing in place.

Demo day

Now that's a hole!

From the meditation room

So drywall went down, insulation came out, pull the electrical wire from the switch, then cut all of the blackboard and drywall from the other side and all of the studs have to go. That means we can start rebuilding, finally.

Of course the air compressor we brought had a faulty quickrelease. I also brought the framing nailer but forgot the finish nailer, and no other nails at all. So all I could really do was cut but not assemble anything.

I decided to run the electrical over the door framing, and put an outlet box up there. Michael was talking about putting a wall mounted tv up on the nearby wall, so I figured an outlet was the easiest way to junction those two wires together. So I cut king studs and put a hole in the top of each for romex.  Then cut jimmy studs, cut a header from 2x4's, and put in cripple studs above those, each with a hole for romex. And that was all I could get on Day 1.

Nothing is nailed in place there, but it all fits

Day 2
Really I think if I had the right nailers and all of the tools worked I could have finished this up in one day. We fixed the air compressor at my parents house that night, so for Day 2 I came back with the finish nailer too. First I nailed up all of the framing, installed the electrical box and wired that switch up again. Then I had some 1x6 pine to wrap the opening. Again, I cut those on day 1 and just had to finish nail it in place once the compressor was working.

We also stopped on the way home from day 1 to pick up some 1x4 pine for molding around the doors. So at this point I could cut and install those on the inside of the opening.

That's a good looking hole

I did cut and install drywall on the other side to cover the headers, but Michael picked up 1/4" thick drywall when I wanted a quarter sheet (2'x4') of the regular half inch stuff. Oh well, we put 3 or 4 layers of that thin stuff on there with a crapload of mud and it came out ok, but still a bit thin. I hate installing drywall with a passion, and mudding/sanding the stuff is something I am actively terrible at, but have to do it more often than you might expect.

While the mud was drying, I cut and installed the 1x4 molding for that side. And of course, that's when a gasket blew out and the finish nailer wouldn't hold air pressure anymore! Bad enough I broke the air compressor on day 1, in my 2 hour workday of day 2 I broke the finish nailer so I couldn't even finish the job.

Bottom half from the room

Terrible mud & tape drywall job and the top piece of molding didn't get nailed

Overall this was a great project. I scored some serious brownie points with my family for helping out, and my brother might have learned a thing or two. My dad came up for most of day 1, so it was fantastic hanging out with him and my brother for that long. On day 2 my wife & kids came up and we left his house to head back home to Raleigh.

We hiked to a pond on the property

The eldest and my mug

All the kids

Starting off, and a quick project

Well, it looks like my next boat is starting to come together. I need to come up with a proper name. Some proper plans would be nice too. Here's how it all came together, or at least how I think it's coming together.

I want to build a 17' sloop rigged sailboat for a trailer with bench seating so I could fit 6-8 people inside comfortably. I'm going to piece this thing together from a couple of sources. First, I'm starting with the free plans for Petrel, a 16' sloop rigged sailboat. You can download the plans from that link. I like the lines of the hull, the framing and lofting looks easy enough to pull together, and I think lofting and framing is going to be a flexible operation. The first two frames (from the transom) are spaced 30" apart, I'm going to move those to 36" to get the extra foot that I'm looking for. Also it's supposed to be planked with a plywood bottom and a hard chine line, so I think I'm going to add more curve to the frames and plywood the whole thing. Might even be able to work out that hard chine line too, depending on how much fairing I can do in the lofting. This is going to be fun.

I really want the seating to be low enough so my sailors won't have to duck under the boom, so seating inside the boat, not on top of the boat. When I stumbled on the Glen-L 15 the pictures looked like what I wanted to produce. It's too small to use the hull design, but the sail dimensions are the same as the Petrel. So without buying the plans, I'm going to try and come up with similar bench seating and work that in with the Petrel front deck design. However, I will purchase the sails, rigging, and all of the hardware from Glen-L for the 15, so I'm still giving them about $1200. The entire sail rig is perfect for this boat and I don't have the desire to sew my own sails.

In the workshop, getting started

and out for painting

Since I have to do everything outside to build a boat, everything gets coated in white exterior paint. I started with a full sheet of 3/8" plywood and a handful of 2x4's cut to length. I'm going to have to build it in the front yard, but I need to put the strongback on smaller sawhorses to get the base low enough to build frames. The plywood is to loft the frames, then I will move the tiny sawhorses and stongback in place to get ready to build.

I still need to find some air-dried white oak planks for the frames. Got a supplier for this?

Kid Project
Ella, my eldest daughter, came home from school with a class project where she had to build a guillotine. I procrastinated for about a week, but eventually got into the shop. There was a scrap 1x4 pine board, about 3 feet long in there, and that was almost all that it took to build this thing. Plus a lot of time on the table saw and some scrap 1/4" plywood from my last boat.

Day 1

Day 1 I cut out all of the pieces and put a groove in the two big legs there. Lots of TiteBond III holding this thing together. After that it was mostly just assembly (with Ella) and waiting on glue to dry. She didn't want to make it dangerous, so the "blade" was just a plywood cutout in the end.

Day 2+
We added a topper, and front braces to keep it from falling forward. I cut rabbets to ride in the grooves on the tall legs, and the blade falls in front of the platform. We put a hole in the top and used twine to raise and control the fall of the blade. She got an A on the project, and we had a great time putting this little thing together.  Fun times!

Now with more concrete

In the continuing escapades of my landscape adventures, we're now adding more concrete to the mix. We have always wanted to stop at this one store on our way home from my mother-in-law's lakehouse, this time we did. In particular, we were looking for a fountain for the new back patio. We did not expect to come home with like 7 new pieces.

The new fountain - just add patio. You can see an existing concrete angel in the background

Small birdbath, about 18" tall

This Gryffin fits right in with the rest of our landscape

This Buddha is a happy addition

It's a rabbit

Yeti sighting!! I'm gone 'squatchin now

The cat coming down the deck stairs

With my favorite landscaper

It looks like the sasquatch is hunting the rabbit

Since Kelley's mother had a retail store selling concrete statues like this, we've already got a bunch of other pieces in the yard. But this was our first time stopping at this store and we went a little crazy. I love having these decorations in the landscape.

Also I still have several landscaping projects going on right now. Still trying to deal with the fallen leaves, sure, but NC winters still have temps in the 50's or 60's most days. I can be outside woodworking, boatbuilding, or landscaping any day of the week. Fun times.

Buy 'em Books, send 'em to school

and you still can't learn 'em nothing - that's what my grandfather used to say. But this time it's the Beginning Boatbuilding class at the Harvey W Smith Watercraft Center at the Maritime Museum in Beaufort, NC. They put on the class once a month and it was the best $135 I've spent all year. The kids are in a year-round school, so they had the entire month of September off and that's when we like to take our family vacations anyway. So I took Friday and Monday off from work, and we did a long weekend on the coast.

Beaufort is a fantastic small coastal town. It's the very lower end of the southern outer banks of North Carolina. The waterfront is a marina with some amazing boats. That's my kind of beach town - no sand and lots of boats. We saw some wild horses roaming the islands across the bay! It was beautiful. A bit warm, perhaps, but overall the weekend was amazing.  We started by getting down there Friday.

The first beer of vacation! Actually got that in before leaving the office

The kids picked this room in the hotel

Awaiting the pirate adventure

Our first stop was the Pirate's Revenge - a boat tour of the bay. The kids got to fight off the attacking pirate bad guys with water cannons. It was fantastic fun. The pirates were hilarious, and I highly recommend taking the tour if you get the chance.

Water cannons capable of fending off pirates

The evil attacker

They drove him away!

Ella wants me to build a sailboat that looks like the Black Pearl. Addons like this might be the closest I can get

a 50' sailboat called the Miniskirt

The Maritime Museum

In front of the Watercraft Center

Day 1:
We started with lofting, and I finally got it! I had read through the lofting process a few times but it took an in-person explanation to finally get the finer points through my thick skull. Buttock lines, waterlines, frames, how to read the table of offsets and turn it into actual drawings. We also got to cut some molds from the drawings and get the body assembled. It's amazing how much stuff you have to build before you actually start building the boat.

Interior of the watercraft center with a restoration in progress and some show-off boats

The center is right on the water

This years volunteer built boat

Day 2
On the second day we were able to focus more on building techniques. Spiling planks, laying both Carvel and Lapstrake planks down on the frames that we built on Day 1, that kind of thing.  We went through in detail about finishing techniques & materials as well.

Overall the class was very informative and the center was amazing. Really grateful that my family was able to take this adventure with me and that it turned out so well. Here's some other pictures of stuff around the center, including the frame & techniques we built.

spiling a plank with a batten and the icepicks

carvel planking with cotton caulking

lapstrake and carvel planks over a keelson

Next years volunteer giveaway boat

and older restoration project in progress

The front end of a kayak that we used Stich & Glue to build

whale weights & half models

the finished lofting boards

that white film is caused by an epoxy condition on solid wood

cool canoe with a motor!

The 2017 volunteer built boat up for raffle at the museum

The watercraft center is a really amazing place