Jul 30, 2011

A new life for old wood

The sunroom, see previous posts, was originally designed to be a greenhouse attached to the cabin. Three walls are mud-plastered adobe; the south "wall" is mostly window.  This frame wall is now covered with Tyvek and ready for stucco  and I was going to cover that with stucco.  I decided the stucco would never look right next to the adobe and brick, so I then I thought I would do mud plaster there too.  Then I saw a reclaimed wood wall online (not this one, but similar) and the lightbulb went off.  Thinking about the stuff around the yard at the cabin, I thought I could scrape up some wood, but most of it turned out to be 2x and 3x material, too thick (I'll use it for bookshelves).
No, my mom is not a hobbit.
I scrounged at my Dad's, but he had surprisingly little.  My last stop was my Mom's place.  She also had very little around the house, which was a surprise because she hoards everything.  While parking, I noticed some old pallets by the old horse pens. We waded through the enormous weeds to take a look....

The old goat pens.
My mom said I could have the pallets, but when I went to take a closer look, they were actually half buried in goat manure - not acceptable. Further investigation however, revealed a treasure trove of boards along the goat pens totally hidden by the weeds.  The boards were 1x10s, either four or eight feet long - perfect.  Each is an elegant silvery color and all are in very good shape.
A small sample of the harvested boards.
There is a lot of wood here, so even if I bang-up or rip some of the boards, there are plenty to spare.  The big adventure will be tramping through the weeds, fighting the spiders, and prying each board off the fenceposts.  The rewards will be great.  There's enough wood here to completely cover the sunroom walls, make some shelves in the kitchen and have lots left over for future projects.  Stay tuned

Jul 27, 2011

Big praise for small stones, Part 1

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I gravitate to (but don't necessarily enjoy) projects that require 1) a lot of time and 2) little bits of things to be rearranged into something else.  I'm also cheap (these days by necessity), so if I can make something out of little bits of nothing, I'm pretty happy.  The adobe walls of the cabin are set on a concrete block stem wall which sticks out on the exterior and is indented on the interior. How to cover the unattractive concrete and spend little money?  The original idea... rocks, stones & pebbles.

Scrounging around my mom's house looking for furniture, I found a box of small saltillo tiles.  These are low fired unglazed tiles that have colors very similar to the brick floor and burnt adobe walls - perfect!  I cut the tiles into triangles, sealed them thoroughly and set them with thinset.  I made sure to leave a large space under the tiles to allow for expansion of the bricks during the winter when the solar gain through the windows will heat the room, and the rest of the cabin. 

The rest of the area was filled with small stones and pebbles from around the yard, again set with thinset.  It's a puzzle finding stones to fit the spaces, but the overall look is quite nice - very natural.  Of course, the hard part will be the grouting...  Stay tuned for Part 2.

Jul 16, 2011

Dividends in the form of caps

After collecting over 17,000 caps from friends and strangers around the country, I have quite a nice bottlecap collection - an unforseen dividend from the mural project.  I wanted to display the collection, but cruising the internet only provided unattractive (coffee tables) or permanent  (glue and epoxy) options.  I wanted something attractive, with the ability to move my caps around.  I came up with the following design - easy to do and not too expensive.  I had all the materials in the shed; the only purchase was the magnets (about $30 for 400).


The caps are placed on magnets set on top of wooden disks.  The extra height provides some dimension to the display and gives good finger grip when moving caps.  The 389 disks were cut from wooden dowels.


The back of the display is a piece of 1/2" plywood.  I measured out 1 1/4" squares in an offset grid so that the magnets (and caps) would be evenly spaced.  After making the grid, I glued 1/2" square trim around the edges, nothing fancy, but it gives a nice border to the display board.



Glueing the disks was pretty straightforward.  I used wood glue since each disk wasn't going to hold a lot of weight. I wasn't too worried about centering perfectly because the caps could be moved around on the magnets - tweaking would be easy to do by hand.






Glueing the magnets was a bit trickier.  When designing the board, I forgot one of the most important aspects of magnets, their magnetic properties towards one another.  Adjacent magnets would repel one another and slip off the disks before the glue (E-6000) set.  So, the magnets had to be glued every other row - it took about 3 days to finish this step.



Here I am placing caps on the finished display board.  Quite nice, if I say so myself.  The finished board has room for about 25 more caps, but since everything is painted black (see the top photo), you don't really notice the empty spots.  I can move caps around to my hearts content and everything is at eye level.  If the caps get dirty, I can pop them off and wash them.  The only downside to the board is that it is quite a bit heavier than one would expect.  I wouldn't suggest using thinner plywood, however (it warps easily). 

Jul 1, 2011

The ghost dog in the kitchen

Excuse the mess, I'm working!
Things are progressing in the kitchen, and before it gets too built up, I've decided to install the mosaic above the counter in the kitchen.  As described in a previous post, the idea was to have a long mural placed over of the bond-beam concrete.  As it is now (see photo above), it's pretty unattractive; half is a strip of concrete, half is a mix of concrete, stones and brick.  The colors of the mosaic will blend well with the burnt adobe and the overall darkness of this corner.

An aside: eventually, I hope to make wine here and when that day comes, I'll need a label.  In a previous post, I described the Ghost Dog, and I've been thinking about logos.  I've come up with the design shown at left.  The main body is ceramic tile with bits of mirror for stars and glass nuggets for leaves.  The ghost dog will be cut from pale yellow glass.


The mosaic has made ahead of time in IL, using the same technique used on the mosaic on the kitchen floor (see previous post).  The mosaic will be cut into manageable pieces, packed into a box, and taken to NM for installation.

Stay tuned for photos of the installation and end results.



By the way, big Yea! to Southwest Airlines for allowing me two free boxes of weird stuff each time I fly to Alb.  I have slowly moved  nearly an entire household box by box on SWA over the past two years and the airline staff have never been anything but super positive.