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!

Sometimes a little grey is good

When facing the kitchen shelves with aged wood, I didn’t want to fuss with mitered joints.  I didn’t think it was necessary.  A small detail however, is that a lapped joint shows a bit of clean, non-aged wood right at eye level.  What to do?

I remembered reading about aging wood using tea, vinegar, and rusty nails.  Having all those items at hand in the cabin, I set to work.  At the time I couldn’t remember the proper order of treatments, and I don’t know if it really matters.  The basic concept (familiar to anyone who works with natural dyes) is mixing tannins with iron to create a black pigment.  On wood, the color is grey and it really does match aged wood.  The surface texture will differ, but for a tiny bit of wood, at an edge, this is a great technique.

In the photo above, you can see the effects of two applications on one half of an aged wood scrap; I used one application for my shelf. I also treated the top and bottom surfaces of the shelves (1/4" plywood).  The surfaces are a smooth grey and match the color of the edge closely enough that the entire shelf seems like one very thick board.

I’ve found a recipe online similar to the one I recall from the past.  If you try the technique, play around with the number of applications of each solution to get the intensity of grey you need.  There is a strong vinegar smell while the wood is moist, but disappears when dried.  The solutions are relatively safe, but even so, I wouldn’t leave them around kids or pets; they can be safely poured down the sink when you are finished.

building an horno

Driving through northern NM, one sees hornos (bread ovens) pretty much everywhere. They are especially common in the Pueblos, but are found in the backyards of many older homes. An excellent way to bake breads (and meat) in the summer, the ‘modern’ hornos are based on Spanish/Moorish designs brought over back in the 1500's. Built from adobe, all they require is the right mix of soils, water, and an afternoon. Unlike modern adobe bricks which contain additives to make them water resistant, adobes for ovens must be totally additive free - this makes the project even more do-able for the beginner - and are simple to make at home.

Recently, my family got together to help my father build an horno.  He has built with adobe for over 40 years and founded a school to help people build their own homes.

The base of this horno is dry stacked concrete blocks and adobes. The cooking surface is a single layer of redbrick. For this morning’s work (about 2 hours), four of us were able to mix mud, trim adobes and set 4 layers of bricks. The entire project could easily be finished in a day; add another day for a layer of mud plaster.

The first step is adding a layer of mud onto the bricks.

The interior diameter is sketched onto the bricks and the adobes added on top. Both sides should be level. The mud joints are smoothed with a spoon.

The doorway is made from redbricks set in mud. Each course starts with the door bricks and then follows around with adobe.  

Bricks are cut to size by chopping off chunks. Precision is not important because spaces can be filled with mud.

After the 2nd course, the bricks start to angle up on the exterior side.  Mud is added as before, but now more is added on the exterior edge than the interior one.

The process from now on creates a 2-d roman arch. The only technological assistant is a piece of rebar and flat stick with a line drawn to mark the interior diameter of the horno.

The adobes are placed on the mud, matching the interior edge with the line on the stick.  

Instead of checking level from side to side, the adobes must be level with the flat edge of the stick to achiive the proper angle for the next course.

 

And so it goes, course by course.  At the top the adobes will be nearly vertical and are held in place by friction with the mud.  Believe me, it works.  Once the last adobe is placed in, the ring locks into place and becomes very strong.  This is the process by which elegant adobe buildings were built throughout the middle east (and in some places sill are).

This is the process by which elegant adobe buildings were built throughout the middle east (and in some places sill are).  Shown here is a building in progress with a double roman arch doorway set into an adobe dome.  As lovely as it is outside, it is quite impressive inside looking up. 

Adventures in Shelving

Work in the kitchen is almost complete.  One of the last steps is installation of shelving.  Because the room is so small and relatively dark, I decided against upper cabinets and chose to have a single row of shelves across the wall.  I have to wait until the on-demand water heater is installed to put in the long shelf, but recently, Paul was able to work on the shorter shelf.

All walls in the cabin are solid adobe, but the south wall (along which the plumbing runs) has drywall covering the bricks.  This was the simplest way to deal with covering pipes and had the added benefit of creating a plumb surface along which the lower cabinets could run and providing an easier material into which shelves could be installed.

I don’t like the look of thick supports under shelves, but thought that something would be needed for support.  These shelves will hold all the dishes, so there is potential for a heavy load.  I bought some lovely cast iron brackets (see my Pinterest page for a link), but was still concerned that more support would be needed.  Better to go overboard, than have all my bowls crash down.

After consulting various online sources, Paul and I designed a variation of a torsion shelf based on two websites, one from popular mechanics and the second from a blog.

The first step was creating the hollow shelf.  A frame was made from scrap 1x2's, screwed and glued securely (you can see some finger wipes in the photo).   A skin of 1/4" plywood was glued on the top and bottom.  I wasn’t concerned about perfect alignment (although Paul was) of the various parts because I wanted to face the edges of the shelf with a strip of aged wood (see previous posts about the sunroom).  The aged wood would visually create a thick board, match the vigas, other finishes in the cabin, and just add to that casual, ‘rusticity’ that you see in old adobe homes.

A cleat was screwed into the studs on the wall.  As with the frame, the cleat was scrap wood.  It fits inside the torsion shelf and doesn’t show, so it doesn’t have to be attractive.  It does have to fit snugly, so Paul spent some time sanding to get the shelf well seated on the cleat.

The shelf is then slid onto the cleat and securely screwed onto it. This photo shows the prefitting, before the aged wood was added to the edges.  Interestingly, the adobe wall to the left is so out of plumb that when the shelf was level, it looked decidedly unlevel. We had to fiddle with it a bit to make it look good to the eye.   Ahhh, the joys of working in an adobe home.

Most torsion shelves are sanded and painted before the final install.  Visually the shelves appear to float and have a very modern look.  We installed cast iron brackets before adding the aged wood to the sides.  A side benefit of the torsion shelf is that we didn’t have to worry about the brackets not being screwed into a stud.  We did use expansion bolts (just in case) and the result is a very sturdy shelf.

What a nice shelf! Of course, it would be even better without the junk on the counter and through the house.