Coffee Tableau: Part II, or, the Stain

The next step in distressing the wood for the coffee table involved staining it a couple of times.  I followed a technique the couple at Young House Love did, but adapted it a little bit.  We wanted a brown finish, but first I did a "quick" coat of black stain, to bring out the indents, divots, hollows, holes, crevasses, gullies, caves, and whatever-it-was-that-Yoda-lived-in-on-Dagobah.

To keep the black stain from soaking in too much, you first brush water onto the wood.  I got the best results from brushing a good amount of water onto the wood, then immediately slathering on a healthy amount of black stain.  I generally left it on somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds, I think-- the fumes kind of made time fade away.  Also, the stain I used was really, really old, so you may get different results.  The guy at the local hardware store where I bought it told me that this rusty can of stain came over with him from a previous hardware store he owned when he opened the current store 15 years ago.  I think he said something about how this stain had "boot black in it, like the old timers use"; I wasn't 100% listening after the whole hardware-store-timeline thing, but he did give me the can for $2.00 so I politely nodded.

After the 60-90 seconds of fume-enhanced reality, I sort of half-heartedly wiped the stain off with a paper towel.  I didn't remove all of the stain, since I wanted to leave it in all of the aforementioned Yoda holes.  I guess I would say I used the amount of pressure you'd use to give a backrub to a child with a sunburn.  Oh, and this is important: don't change out the paper towel.  As it soaks up the black stain, it becomes more forgiving and removes just the right amount.

Once the black stain had pretty much dried, I painted on a regular coat of brown (I chose MinWax Colonial Pine, because our house is a colonial-- great simplistic reasoning, huh?)  To my relief, it wasn't too dark, and it let the nice black distress stain show through:

The stains on the bottom of the board on the left are from when I opened the can of black stain and it sprayed all over the place, including onto that board; it was very distressing, if you catch my drift.

Here's a side-by-side of a stained board next to a pristine piece of white plywood.

Tomorrow: the assembly of the table.

Coffee Tableau: Part I, or, Scraping By

If there's one thing I love, it's propping my feet up on something in front of the wood stove.  We have an ottoman, but the cat has staked that out as his territory--our daughters even call it "Harvey's couch."  Displacing him would be an unpopular move with the ladies, whether it was to free up the ottoman or, more eccentrically, to use the cat himself to keep my legs raised up.  That kind of thing might fly in a Dr. Seuss book, but out here in the real world it's frowned upon, no matter how much that cat might deserve it for non-playfully biting your heels and darting inches in front of your legs on stairways after you've had a few drinks.  You're the worst, Harvey.

Anyway, I set out to build a coffee table. I found a great plan for a rustic-looking one at the incomparable Ana White's blog.  Since we have wood floors dating from the early 1900s, I figured I'd try my hand at giving the coffee table a similarly distressed feel.  I didn't really want to go to the expense of buying reclaimed lumber, though, so I decided to cause the distress myself.


I found another cool blog that discusses ways to distress wood.  I borrowed a lot of the techniques they used, and added a couple of my own, too.  The idea was to take soft, brand new pine and bang, scratch, and sand it to make it appear way more experienced.

In the picture below you can see what I used.

 Orbital sander: I used 100 grit sandpaper to sand the surfaces, edges, and corners of each board.

Bag of screws:  The Young House Love guy used this (along with many of the other techniques here).  Basically, you put a bunch of 2-3" wood screws in a sandwich bag and drop or throw the bag at the wood.  It creates a bunch of random indents in the surface.  It's a really cool effect; kind of the canvas upon which the other effects are painted, if you're prone to really pretentious metaphors.

Hammer:  A few clusters of hammer hits here and there.  The only downside to this move is that if you end up having to put a nail in the area of one of these clusters later, you look like an idiot who couldn't hit that nail.

Long metal rod: I laid this across the surface of the board and hammered it:

Eyebolt screw: I hammered this on the board to create semicircular indents.  You can see one above.  I also stood it on its threaded end and banged the eye end to create fake nail holes.

Threaded hook: I used the coarse threads of a hook for hanging up your bike or whatever (I bought these hooks, and have no idea what I intended them for) to scratch the surface of the board up a bit.

Screwdriver:  This was one of my favorite techniques, which I came up with.  I used a regular screwdriver to create deep, narrow, sharply defined holes in the wood.  As you can see below, I often did a few parallel ones next to each other.  It sort of makes you think, "Oh Lordy, what has been smashing into that wood now?"

I also used the screwdriver to just kind of scrape long flat lines into the wood.  The trick is to do it quickly to make the line more or less straight.  Not only will doing so make the table look better in the end, but this is by far the most intimidating technique if someone is secretly observing you distress wood. You're doing this fast, dramatic thrusting move, and they can't help but know you'd probably be really good at stabbing people, if it came right down to it.  Maybe you wouldn't even be doing it in self-defense; maybe you just wondered what it would feel like to shiv someone while you're looking them right in the eye the whole time.  That kind of thing makes folks think twice before tangling with you.

Ella was very interested in helping, so at first I gave her the hammer to let her bang some dents into the boards.  But her backswing was bringing the claw of the hammer to within inches of her eye.  I kept telling her to swing the hammer to the side, but to no avail.  Finally, we decided she might be better off using the hook to scrape the board up a bit.

 

 In the end, we got a lot of cool markings on the boards.  They're kind of hard to see in the pictures here, but wait till you see how the wood stain really brought them out...  

 

(As those ellipses at the end of the last sentence there strongly implied, I'll do another post tomorrow about the staining process I used.)

Shed Collapse

It's been quite a while since I posted here. The last you all heard, I had announced my plan to spend a weekend in early October trying to "get as much done on the roof as I can." That was nearly three months ago. Do I owe you an apology? Quite the contrary, friends! Have you any idea how dangerous it is to be up on the roof of a structure built by an amateur?  And yet, when I abruptly disappeared from the blogosphere, no one even thought to come look for me! For all you knew, I was laying in a pile of rubble, dead leaves and torn shingles all this time, waiting to be rescued.  It's also quite telling that you read the title of this post and continued to just sit there, clicking and reading an obscure blog, without calling to check on me.  In fact, the shed has not collapsed. It's still standing, nearly a quarter of a year later!

Anyway, I know we're all sorry for what we've done-- me for not posting in a while, you for leaving me for dead--so let's just move on.

I did work on the roof that weekend and another. First I got all the rafters up:

Except I marked but forgot to cut the end of one of them perpendicular to the ground.  Oops.

Luckily, I was able to resolve the issue by executing a tricky maneuver involving a circular saw and a wobbly ladder. It was pretty precarious. Not that you care.

 Next I got the roof sheathing up (9/16" OSB) and then started papering and shingling.

 Ella wanted to come help me, but Erin and I both told her she couldn't come up on the roof. Except she found the ladder and snuck up anyway.  She was a great helper, handing me nails and shingles. She even drove in a nail herself.  We had a lot of fun, especially when Josie was playing outside and we yelled her name, then snickered as she looked for us.

The shed is now done, save for a few things I plan to do in the spring. For one thing, I want to paint it, and for another, I'd like to put up some slats at the halfway point to split it into two compartments, each sized for a single cord. Otherwise, the logs tend to want to roll if you have them stacked to one side.

I may also figure out a way to hang a tarp from the front in the event of driving rain or snow. So far, the logs have stayed pretty dry, but we haven't had any big snowstorms yet. Oh, and a hook for a lantern. And a whiskey shelf. Because if the shed ever does collapse on me, I'll need something to do to pass the time before I'm rescued.

For the Birds

When we left off with the woodshed, it was a mere platform on the ground. It was still a platform a couple of weeks ago, when Erin's brother Pat and his family visited for the weekend. We woke up at 6:00am on Sunday morning (there were four small children present), and it was pouring rain. A few hours later, though, the weather had cleared, and Pat offered to help do a bit of work on the shed. So we went and got some lumber for the walls and got started.

First we built the back wall, hoisted it up, braced it into position, and nailed it in place. We realized we didn't have enough 2x4s for the header, so we borrowed the crossbeam from one of my sawhorses (no, not those sawhorses).

sorry, guy!

Next we put up the front wall.

Here's me sneaking up on the miter saw, while Pat steadies the end of what appears to be a 30-foot board. Damn you, optical illusions!

Next we built the side walls, and made the two end rafters.

Before I started this woodshed, I had a pretty good idea of how to do most of it, except for one part--I didn't understand how the roof attached to the walls, or wherever? I spent a whole Saturday night looking up different plans online, but rejected all of them, because they required "birds-mouth cuts," a term I didn't understand and refused to look up.

Next I called my dad, who has been advising me on this project all along, giving me direction and encouragement. He promised to send me a diagram showing how I should do the roof and the walls. He did, but sure enough:

At first I though, "ahh, well, 'birdsmouth' is in quotes, so maybe it's just a figure of speech." But then I also thought "hmm, what I just thought makes no sense." So I gave in and looked it up.  Good news: a birds-mouth cut is just a triangular cut to allow the rafter to fit over the front and back headers. You know, like all those birds you see flying around with their beaks open at really wide angles!

This weekend I'm planning to cut the rest of the rafters and get as much done on the roof as I can. Thanks for the help, Pat. I wouldn't be nearly so far along without it.
 

I think I canned, I think I canned...

By this point in the blog, I'm sure many of you are pretty intimidated, thinking "Christ, Nate is pretty manly! Look at this guy, talking a lot about building a woodshed, and getting his brother to use a chainsaw on some branches!" It's true, I talk a pretty good game, or have others bring the game for me. But if, because of that, you think I can't make things happen in the kitchen, you couldn't be more wrong.

Erin is off at a bachelorette party this weekend, and Ella is having a sleepover with her cousin at their grandmother's house. That leaves Josie and me to hold down the fort here. I did a little more work on the woodshed today while she was napping, but I didn't want to be outside tonight after she went to bed and it got dark-- I've read In Cold Blood. So I planned ahead to find something to keep me occupied for the roughly 6 hours between when Josie goes to bed and I do.

That "something" was making jelly. Specifically, raspberry and blackberry jelly. One thing I never fully realized is that when you're eating jelly, you're mostly eating sugar. I guess that makes sense, since fruit doesn't just start turning into jelly in everyday life, but still-- the amount of sugar involved is shocking.

I don't drink when I'm using power tools, but jelly-making was uncharted territory for me, so I thought "what the hell?"

The first thing you have to do is boil the jars and lids to sterilize them. You don't want to catch, nor transmit, botulism.

See all that smoke? That's the germs burning off! Also, I don't understand basic physics concepts!

 On the substantive jelly side of things, you basically smash up a bunch of fruit and add some pectin and an obscene amount of sugar and some lemon juice, and boil it for awhile. Here's the fruit by itself:

I didn't get a picture of the whole mixture boiling, I kept procrastinating and then suddenly it was boiling over. But before it boils over, you have a few minutes to do whatever you like. You might take this oportunity to set up the cooling racks the jars will cool on later. Or you might say to hell with the cooling racks, and do something else. Totally your call. Could you cautiously try out a few dance moves, holding your wine glass out at arm's length, like a dance partner?  Of course you could. Especially if you just moved into the neighborhood a few months back, and want to let the neighbors know who they're dealing with.

Anyway, the thing will boil over while you're dancing, so you'll have to snap out of it and pour the jelly into the jars, then put the jars back into the boiling water to process them. If you want to be able to brag to people that you just "put up some preserves," this last step is absolutely crucial.

The jars processing. That vapor/fog is probably a spirit materializing.

Once the jars are done processing, you can take them out and let them cool on a cooling rack for 24 hours.

Go ahead, put them right next to the amazing salsa you also made and jarred today but didn't feel the need to brag about on your blog. Yeah, that's right! What a twist ending!

Platform

This morning I got some lumber and nails and started building the platform/floor of the woodshed. Except I bought the wrong nails, so I had to go get new ones. And I miscalculated the wood, so I had to go get some more of that. Also, we had company, so I visited for awhile. Anyway, I didn't finish the platform yet, but I'm pretty close. As you can see in the top picture, I'm going to double the 2x6 joists in front and back; I made it partway along the front before it was time to stop for dinner, the girls' bathtime, etc. It should be pretty quick tomorrow morning to finish doubling those joists, nail the plywood down, and get ready to start building the walls.

So far everything is lining up well, and the floor joists are level.

I'm really getting sick of that old sailboat photo-bombing every picture, though.

Woodshedding

Erin and I often laugh about the fact that, before we closed on the house, we thought that it needed very little work--sure, the bathrooms and kitchen needed updating, but everything else was fine. I guess in one sense that was true, in the same way that a woman furious at you insists, with her arms crossed, that she's "fine." That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we have been working nights and weekends to get a lot of things done before winter.

Luckily, there haven't been many unpleasant surprises, but the other day I was jolted by a sudden realization: we don't have any structures for our kids to crouch behind when they're teenagers to experiment with smoking! Sure, there's the barn, but the area behind it is overgrown and covered in poison ivy. Besides, I'll probably be hiding out in the barn from the sullen teenager girls.

Something had to be done, and quickly. Since we need a woodshed anyway, I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. 

Last weekend, I cleared out a spot on the edge of the woods.

The woodshed is going to be a 4'x16' lean-to, (hopefully) very similar to one my dad built a couple of years ago. I took pictures of his earlier this summer, but accidentally deleted them. Oops. I've since called him a few times to pick his brain about how to do this, and will need to do so again this weekend, as I get started in earnest.

Yesterday I set a foundation of ten cinder blocks--one every four feet along the front and back of the structure. I dug out about 6-8" of dirt under each one, then filled each hole with stone dust to make the blocks level. The first two blocks (the front corners of the shed) took me about two hours of crawling around on my hands and knees to get just right. It didn't help that I was unknowingly using a string level with the stupidest marking system ever. But once I found a better level and got those first two blocks right, the rest went a lot quicker, probably because I wasn't spending as much time swearing at the old string level.

The correct string level, reading dead level.

Though at first glance this looks like a picture of a weird combination cemetery/boatyard in the woods, it's actually going to be the foundation for the woodshed:  

Stay tuned! This morning I'm going to get the wood to build the floor platform; I will post about my progress later. But with a shopping list this decisive and organized, what can possibly go wrong?

I'll be using 4...no, 10...no, 8...no, 6...no...yeah, 6 eight foot pressure-treated 2x6s for the floor.