Woke up realizing that today would have been my dad’s 93rd birthday. Man I miss that guy every day. 

 

Happy birthday Dad .. I love you… Miss you every day ! 

nite all, nite sam

-me

Now comes the hard part of the wainscoting project.. how to match the pattern of the top rail in the other parts of the house. 

It’s actually a bit hard to tell when parts of the house were built or rebuilt. Anytime we do work, there are layers of history.. We noticed that there are at least 2 types of wainscoting in the living room.. one is obviously much more recent.. perhaps from the 1970’s when the building was converted to a house..   We wanted to match the older stuff.. it might be as old as 150 years.. but probably more like 100 years.

Anyway.. the trick was to understand what the contours of the top rail of the older stuff.. and how we can compose something similar out of modern components. 

Thank goodness for the contour gauge.. here’s what we’re trying to match.

 

And here are the types of parts we can use to reproduce it.. It seems that one company, Brosco, seems to have cornered the market on moulding (or is it molding ?!).. 

 

How will it turn out ?!

stay tuned !

nite all, nite sam,

-me

The cahllenge today with the wainscotting project was to marry the beutifully level wainscotting boards witht he insanely unlevel pitch of our floor.. Actually its not a pitch.. its a hump.. nearly 5 inches tall in the middle of the room. Mason had gvin us a primer in how to accomodate this.. We took the baseboard and leveled it as best we could at the top.. Then we took a block of wood with a pencil attached and ‘scroibed’ the line of the floor on the bottom of the baseboard. That gave us a trace of the mountainous topography of our floor. Then I cut that out with a saber saw.. Diane is showing the shape of that peice.. whcih gives ytou an idea of how crazy our floors are.. then I sanded and shaved to get the baseboad to marry to the bottoms of the baseboard.. lots of work.. but it really looked great  in the end!

 

Kyle and her twin sister emma came by to say hi while we were working. Nice to see them both !

 

Now on to the top rail

nite all, nite sam

-me

TOday we made great progress on the wainscotting project. We got the plywood cut and installed.. and then started nailing in the wainscotting boards. I put a samstone in the wall, and Diane made a great time capsule message on the wood before we covered it up. It’s so fun to work together on projects like this !

 

Then one more stop at fluffy to check out some final  issues with the fire control and check on the cable stowage..

 

 

I think we’re kinda done !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me