Activities on several fronts

Melissa continues at her regular station of tile cutter, working through the complicated pattern for the bathroom floor. She's at this wet saw about 5 or 6 times a day:

the doors on one side of the mud room all got on... though they still need to be oiled:

the first set of kitchen cabinet doors went on. The smallest ones, under the sink. We're still not sure we like the shelf paper for the surface. maybe wallpaper?

The garlic harvest has again had some clunkers, sort of soft and aged right when you pull them out of the ground. To save them, Melissa sets out the cloves and we dehydrate them under glass in the sun. Makes a nice pattern:

and, found some awesome Prince mushrooms the other day. They are so prized, they made the front cover of the reference guide. Tastes great.

Cabinet doors and doors and doors

So, yesterday I cleaned off one set of shelves and oiled them up. They clean up well!

and all the doors (for everywhere) are made now, and the ones for this side of the mudroom are complete, with their oak horizontals cut from slats from old pallets and screwed into place:

I lightly oiled the inside of the doors as I had a bit of slightly thinned oil from working on the floor... I'll do the outsides once their up. Here's my first 3 (out of 22) put on with the hinges:

Then I went back to working on the kitchen side, where I decided to make some glass doors for the upper shelves. All was going surprisingly well until I got the first high one on... and realized that the center 'beam' of the loft is lower than the top of the cabinet. Great. so, I had to cut the top doors down about 1/2 an inch, and now will have to come up with a different way to trim up the top bit. not that big of a deal I guess.

Here they are put in, without a flash for the photo, trying to show the glass with reflection. (I know how to clean glass!)

and look, already crap on the shelves. what the...?

Foggy mornings

When I walk the dog in the morning, we hike over to an overlook towards the ocean. I love it when the fog comes in, yet we're above it.

Floors and Floors

Bedroom got another coat, this time thinned out a bit, and the entryway got the first whole coat:

and the 2nd bedroom got it's earthen layer

starting to clean up around there!

The outside view

we haven't had a picture of the outside of the house lately - not that it's changed recently - so I thought I'd toss up a few:

The front door:

looking west down the south side of the house:

and, looking east towards the west wall of the house:

More Details

Got the door onto the cold box in the wall today, part of the oak table (that's also the counter top). The latch is from the windows we used on the front of the house.

stepping back a bit, with the door open:

Did a proto-type of a possible light shade for above the bench in the living room. I'm going for a Japanese lantern sort of thing... we'd glue a light paper in the four main square sides if we go with this:

it looks pretty good for no glue and no plan before I started cutting.

Floored!

Got down to put the last coat of mud on the entry way. It was a small space, so not to grueling a project

I use my trowel to smooth it out, instead of the scree boards, as they leave seams that are too hard to go back and fix. this means there's some tiny variations in my surface, but not too much to notice.

Now it has to dry, and then we oil and oil. In the background, you can see the bedroom floor with two coats of oil on it.

Door Knob!

we're getting to the details level around here. Put in the first door knob on the french doors

went in beautifully. Two more to go.

Kitchen and Floor

Melissa's tiles are going in well:

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the old antique accents from my parents collection look pretty good mixed in:

and the whole effect is coming together:

in the meantime, I've put together all the cabinet doors, and added crosspiece supports (on the inside)

and, the bedroom floor gets its first coat of linseed oil!

Kitchen Drawer

Took a shot at some real carpentry for the first time yesterday. I decided to go for the dovetail joints on the one kitchen drawer I intend to make. I used an old piece of pine for the sides that had been used as a closet shelf (I think I found it on the street in San Francisco years ago). Here you can see my best joints, actually looking pretty good - no glue!

The front redwood piece I went for the blind dovetails... and included an extra edge, making them even harder to get started. Those joints didn't turn out quite perfect, but they do work... and don't look too bad.

I used a board from a wine case for the bottom. you can still see the burnt on label a bit (not in the photo though). This is where the main kitchen utensils will go - spatula, clever, knives, etc.

Amazingly, it fit perfectly in the hole.

Various things move forward

I got the first coat of varnish on the shower side of the interior windows (the blue tape will be removed at the end):

I did a TON of smoothing and fixing on the wood edges of the floors - these are the madrone sort of retaining walls for the earthen floor... they're also the steps themselves, to cut down on possible wear on the earthen floor part. Working with madrone is really hard.. it's a hard wood that warps a ton, but it is so beautiful when done and oiled (not including my crappy glued up seams):

and the redwood edging around the kitchen counter got screwed in - with wooden plugs for the screw holes - and oiled as well. Melissa and I call them 'hip huggers'

AND, I milled up the entire amount of wood for the kitchen cabinet fronts today. I love it when the mill and the chainsaw are working well.