In through the out door, Part 2

the old finish

In a previous post, I discussed the issues with the living room door.  As mentioned, I'm not 100% happy with this door, but it works and it's free, so it's great!  The next step in the door saga was painting to help it blend in with the decor.  One side was white (with many stains) and the exterior (now sunroom) side was wood with peeling varnish.

red on both sides of the room

After sanding for hours, I taped off the glass to prime all surfaces.  There were quite a few pits and gouges, but I left them as is (for character). The entire thing was primed and painted; sunroom side red to match the lockers on the opposite wall and living room side a pale blue-grey.  The funny thing about this project is now the door looks so good it's nicer than most of the other woodwork in the house.  I just can't win.      

in through the out door

Between the sunroom and living room is a doorway.  The door was removed years ago to finish plastering both rooms. This spring it was returned to it’s former place.  What a job!  This is an old-fashioned (at least 50 years old), exterior, wooden, security door.  It is 2 inches thick with steel re-enforced windows - a chunk - and, as far as I can tell, nearly indestructible. It has lived outside for 2 years exposed to the elements with zero negative effects - a tough door.

As with so many other things in the cabin, there were issues.  My dad found this door somewhere at some point in the 70's (he didn’t buy it) and built the doorway around it.  But not in a normal way.  The doorway is formed from boards of various dimensions.  Each side is different.  No stops for the door were installed.  The old hinges were huge and extended out from the doorway.  There was no doorknob, just a hasp screwed haphazardly onto a board and a combination lock hooked through it for closure.

Paul and I wrestled the door back into place.  It did have to be cut down a bit to make room for the mosaic in the doorway (see previous post).  Otherwise, it seemed to fit, but those hinges were still a problem. I had bought a variety of door hinges in the hopes that something would work better (i.e. normally), but because of the way the doorway was constructed, there was no way to use any of them.  Back to the ginormous old ones.  An additional problem was that the adobe+plaster behind the doorway would crumble (and fall away) whenever normal wood screws were used.  The screws were quite hefty to hold such a massive door and were about 3" long. Poor Paul had to use a hacksaw to cut 15 screws shorter.

In the end, the door is pretty much the same as it was before.  Sigh.  Because the doorway isn't plumb, I don't want to hassle with attempting installation of doorknob hardware.  I'll probably use a ball latch that will catch as the door swings.  I plan to paint the sunroom side red (matching the lockers opposite) and the living room side a pale blue-grey.  As it is now, the aged white side doesn't have an elegant shabby chic look, more like a dirty, battered one.  Stay tuned for an update on the painting - perhaps occuring soon!

A Perfect Use for Reclaimed Lumber

A few weeks ago, Paul and I spent some time installing the aged wood (a.k.a. my Moms's old goat pen) in the sunroon (see previous post).  I thought it would be a quick process (measure, cut, apply), but Paul is much more a perfectionist than I am.  I repeatedly tried to convince him that everything in the cabin is rough and/or crooked, so level, straight, and beveled were not necessary.  I won part of the argument and he won another part. In the end, it took the better part of two days to do the window casings & sills and about 2/3 of the walls.


We put in a narrow shelf up high for some art work.  The pieces selected for the shelf and window wills were all boards that had been extensively chewed by one of my mother's favorite horses.  It's tricky to see in the photo above, but the sills have wonderful rounded, organic quality, each is different and there are more than a few tooth marks.  It was a unique way to incorporate a bit of family history into the project.




Paul was pretty adamant about beveling the edges around the door, and although it took a bit of thought to figure out the correct way to cut each board (many incorrect cuts were made!), the extra effort was worth it.  The door looks elegant and rustic at the same time.





The boards were all 1" thick (back in the days when a 1x12 was actually 1x12!), and although beautifully aged and silvery on the exterior, there was no decay on the interior.  The wood was purchased 17 years ago (the building of the goat pen coincided with the birth of a favorite horse), but when we cut into it, it smelled fresh and piney.  I honestly don't know if you can get good wood like that anymore. Quite a few knots had fallen out, but this gave us the opportunity to hide bits of old regional topo maps behind the wood.  We now have quite a few 'Easter eggs' hidden through the room highlighting local rivers, mountains, and towns.  Some of the wood has beetle damage and large splits, but it was slapped onto the wall no questions asked.  With a project like this, you never really know how it will end up, but I think it looks great and I can't argue with the cost (zero!).

A simple sundial for everyone

One of my goals for the cabin is to have an example of each of the major types of sundials somewhere on site.  During a recent trip, I experiemented with a layout for a reflected ceiling dial inside the house.   It didn’t work well in the living room because of the vigas (not a flat surface), but the sunroon looked promising.

As explained in Sundials: Their Theory and Construction, “A mirror placed horizontally in a southern window will reflect a beam of sunlight to the ceiling of the room.  As the sun moves across the sky from east to west, the reflected sunbeam moves across the ceiling from west to east; and if hour lines are properly drawn upon the ceiling, the sunbeam can be used to tell the time of day or even day of the year.”    

Because there is a low roof overhang preventing solar gain in the summer (to keep the house cool), this sundial will only work when the sun is lower in the sky, late fall through early spring.  The sunroom is very narrow, so the sunbeam falls along the wall, not up on the ceiling.  The plaster is a natural mud plaster, so I’m thinking I’ll calculate the meridian lines and place small stones in the mud to mark the hours.  It will take some time to make the calculations and check their accuracy.  We’ll have to watch, mark, and recheck for a year to be sure.

As you can see in the photos, the beam of light is quite bright, and during this visit, we actually had fun guessing the time by the placement of the light.  Lots of jokes about the time being “window thirty” or “half past the pipe”.

a tiny mirror makes the dial

If you want to try making your own dial, it isn't difficult.  You will have to polish your geometry skills, but the projects are straightforward. Sundials: Their Theory and Construction by Albert E. Waugh is my favorite book about making dials.  It's out of print, but still available through Amazon.  Try looking for it at your library.

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

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.