M.T. Acres

The electrician came out on Tuesday and our inspector came out Wednesday to sign off for the final inspection!  We are fully legal to live at M.T. Acres!

Of course that required me to apply for a “Certificate of Occupancy” from the county, which our gal Debbie Lee sent out post haste.

I am not sure what “CONSPICUOS” means since it is not a real word in the English language, but I assume it means they want to be able to access this document somehow.  So I figure I will happily allow them access to it (if they have the proper warrants, correctly spelled, prescribed by the 4th Amendment) via a prostate exam.

Regardless, we are now officially residents of the Sulphur Springs Valley and we could not be happier!

On the build, we got the heavy-duty 200 pound drawer bodies assembled.  I started by cutting the drawer bottoms from 1/2 oak plywood, then covered the top with laminate.  The laminate was a serious pain in the neck to work with mainly due to having to glue it down with contact cement.

Then I trim the overhang off with a router using a flush-trim router bit.

Next was to glue up the drawer bodies.

The corner joinery generally looks horrible until after they are sanded and finished.

Technically, 4 of the drawers are not drawers at all.  They are actually pull-out shelves for the center island in the kitchen.  I was able to get them drilled and fitted to the drawer glides before Tina started the finishing.

And Tina started the finishing.

Lastly, it seems every February we get a few days where it is cool, wet and crappy.

In our case, this could not have come at a worse time.  When I cut all of the joinery for the drawers the weather was warm and (more importantly) dry.  When the rain and humidity came, the wood swelled up and twisted some of the drawer parts and made some of the joinery almost impossible to fit together.

I am really having to fight them to straighten out this bloody noodle wood after it twists and worse, having to use a dead blow mallet to even get the corner joints to fit.  It got so bad on Sunday that I brought the drawer parts into the house and put them in the guest bedroom with the fan on just to dry them out enough to fit them together.

The rain also introduced a few other problems.

We are getting sinkholes all over the place!  This particular one is not even in an area they would have dug for the house.  We have 3 more that are over spots that were dug for the house.  Thankfully, Tina made the builder leave about 5 yards of dirt he was going to haul away, so at least I have dirt to fill them in.

The plan for the coming week is to get the rest of the drawers including adding the drawer faces and maybe move a couple loads of stuff from the rental house.

I did not think we had accomplished much this week until I started gathering together the pictures for this post.  We actually got quite a bit done.

Tina has been down and out all week with a bad cold.  But she did manage to break in her new ovens baking some brownies.

The first couple days of the week, I spent getting ready for the final inspection.  The first order of business was to get a door on the water softener closet in the garage.  As it turned out, that was not a requirement for the final inspection, but I did not know that at the time and it was good to get it done anyway.

The doorway was framed for a 26 inch door.  Unfortunately, nobody stocks 26 inch doors and I was unwilling to special order one.  So I bought a 24 inch door and closed in the framing.  Since I was not sure if the inspector would be a jerk or not, I decided to hide my impromptu framing with some mouldings.  I did not have any cheap moulding for it, so I took a few #2 framing studs, re-sawed them and planed them down to 5/8 inch thick.  Then a couple passes over the router to make them match the profiles of the oak mouldings inside the house and some quality time with a sander and boom.

I also made enough to trim out the utility closet as well.

I almost do not want to paint them because with the knots and such, they would look really nice with a few coats of varnish.  But it is just a garage…

The inspector, Zach, came out on Wednesday and although he did not pass us (I did not expect him to on the first go-around), he was not nearly as bad as I feared.

To call for the inspection, I had to look up the permit.  The permit was very adamant, in BIG BOLD TYPE, that we are not allowed to “live in, or in any way ‘use’ the property until passing the final inspection”.  It is arguable whether we are living there, since we do not have any of our real furniture there.  But we do have a bed, a bunch of cooking stuff, all of our work clothes, etc.  In terms of “using” the property, the garage is a full-fledged woodworking shop; is that “using”?  Needless to say, we were both a little worried about that one.  So we packed all of our “living” stuff into the cargo trailer, but there was not much we could do about my shop.

Zach was great.  He did not give us any grief about anything even though it was pretty obvious we are spending extended periods of time at the house.

He got into the kitchen and looked around and asked “Did you build all of these cabinets in garage?”

“Yes”, I said.

“Wow,  These are really nice!  Really nice finishing too.” he said.

“The finishing is all Tina’s work” I responded.  At which point, he gave a look of genuine admiration at Tina.

The only things he dinged us on were not having sediment traps on the propane lines to the furnace and hot water heater and he wanted arc-fault circuit breakers on the “living areas” of the house.

The plumber came back the next day and installed the sediment traps.  I expected them to be some kind of actual “thing”.  No, it is just a 2 inch piece of pipe hanging down before the gas goes into the furnace.

The electricians are coming back on Monday or Tuesday of the coming week to replace the “regular” breakers with the arc-fault breakers.  Then hopefully, Zach will be back to sign off and we can legally move into our new incomplete house!

Beyond that, I got the rubber base moulding up in the pantry so Tina can start hiding her cooking stuff in there if the inspector finds other issues.

After the stress of the inspector coming, I got started on my favorite part of the house build: the technical part.  I started with building the drawers for the cabinets.

I am making the drawer bodies out of popple, because it is cheap and easy to work.  So the first step was to plane the boards down to 5/8 inch thick.  It always breaks my heart to plane good wood because you end up throwing away a LOT of wood in the form of sawdust.

I am using box joints for all of the corner joinery because they are very strong and they look pretty nice.  So the first step is to cut all of the sides and fronts/backs to the size of the outside dimension of the drawer.

The key to getting good looking box joints is planning ahead because, even though I am machine cutting them, there are slight differences on each part just due to any number of factors when cutting them.  So I like to index each part with the part next to it.  So I always start out drawing an arrow pointing to the top of the drawer.  Then I number each joint.

Then I make sure I have plenty of scrap so I can cut several test joints to get the jig setup exactly right.

Actually cutting the joint is pretty easy.  I made a jig which is just a fence that fit on the crappy old mitre guage that came with my table saw.  The jig has an indexing peg that is used to size the joint.

The first cut is made on the front/back piece with the arrow pointed toward the blade.  Subsequent cuts are made by moving the board to the next cut on the indexing peg.  The process is repeated for the whole width of the board.

To cut the sides, the front/back is flipped (so the arrow is pointed the opposite direction) and the indexing peg is in the first cut.  The side board (with the arrow pointed toward the front piece) is pushed up against the front/back.

After the first cut, the sides are cut using the same procedure as cutting the front/back.

When the joint is complete, the two pieces should fit together nicely.

That was when I noticed a problem.  There was a LOT of tearout on some of the parts and it was a lot deeper than what I could just sand away.

After farting around with it for a while, I determined my old jig was just plain worn out.  So I took a detour to make a new jig.  The new jig worked much better and I was able to finally get my first complete drawer cut.

Then I set about cutting the rest of the drawers.

There are 2 parts that are not quite as clean as I would like.  One was due to me not having the part firmly against the indexing peg for the last cut.  But that one I think I can fix during glue up by just glueing a chip in the joint.  Another part got some pretty bad tearout.  So I may have to remake that one if I cannot hide the tearout.

It was getting late in the day when I finished the drawer sides, so I did not want to start cutting the bottoms until I had enough time to dedicate to getting them all cut.  So I spent the rest of the day getting the rest of the case mouldings hung on the doors.

The only doors that do not have mouldings now are just the doors inside the guest bedroom and inside my office.  But those will have to wait until we figure out what we are doing for flooring in those rooms.

Lastly, Saturday afternoon we looked out and noticed Mt Glenn was on fire (again).

This is the same mountain that burned last spring in the Lizard Fire.  That fire was much worse than this one.  This fire only burned about 2000 acres and they had it under control in a few hours.  We had really strong winds, but they were blowing directly from the south which pushed the fire right into the area that burned last spring.

As much as I hate wildfires, I do have to admit the smoke does make for pretty spectacular sunsets.

This week was a hugely productive week at M. T. Acres!  I had to work on computer stuff from the rental house all week, so Tina spent the week at M. T. Acres letting workmen in and out.  We have both been slammed pretty hard with a cold recently, so our productivity was down but that did not stop us from getting a LOT accomplished this week via the workmen.

The countertop people came out on Tuesday and got the countertops installed.

The plumber came on Wednesday and got the sinks hooked up and more importantly, the propane hooked up and hot water heater installed!  That means we have hot water and heat!

He also got the bath fixtures installed!  That means we can actually shower with hot water at home!  WOO HOO!!!

Our good friend Eve, who lives about 3 miles from us, has been gracious enough to let us come over and shower at her place for the last several months.  That has been a HUGE help and I really enjoy hanging out with Eve for a couple hours every night.  But it is still a great luxury to be able to clean up at home.

The showerhead in the master bath has two settings, one where it “spits at you”, another where it “pees on you”.  Tina likes the “pee” setting, I prefer the “spit” setting, but now we do not have to fight over the shower setting because it is just a simple switch.

Once the plumber was done on Wednesday, Tina was able to get all of the caulking done on both bathrooms.

I came out to M. T. Acres on Friday evening, after work.  The electrician came by on Saturday and between him and I, we were able to get all of the remaining electrical done.  The remaining electrical involved a lot of “bull work” that one person could not do by themselves.  I was pleased because he did not even charge us extra because I helped.

We got the ovens installed.

And the range hood and under-cabinet lights.

He also got the last few outlets and switches installed, plus the Edison lights over the center island in the kitchen.

The plumber also came back Saturday to finish off the few outstanding items he had.

He had partially installed the water softener on Wednesday, but did not finish because he needed to get some other part.  I am VERY pleased to report, the stuff that he did install on Wednesday had a leak because we had a pretty good sized puddle in the garage.  I say that I am pleased because if a professional can get leaks, I do not feel quite so stupid for some of the plumbing debacles I did in our Minnesota house over the years.

Saturday, he got the water softener completely installed (with no leaks).

And the garbage disposal and dishwasher.

For my part, I have been doing a bunch of little clean up jobs that need to be done before we can get the final inspection.

First I got the last deadbolt lock installed on the door between the laundry room and the garage.

Why the county requires me to have a deadbolt lock on an interior door is beyond me.  If Tina does not want me inside all she has to do is tell me to stay in my garage.  That is my favorite place in the house anyway.

Then I made a door frame and some doors for the utility closet in the garage.

Stupidly, I did not think to check and see if the studs were plumb before nailing up the frame. – They were not.  So I ended up having to trim up the top of the left door with my belt sander and jam a couple shims in the bottom of the right door to get everything to look decent.  You can see it a little bit on the bottoms, but otherwise, it looks fine.  Plus, it is a damn garage!

Tina spent today cleaning and cleaning and cleaning the kitchen.  Then she started moving stuff from our temporary kitchen (which is currently in my office) into the real kitchen.

It is looking pretty dang awesome I think!

This week’s plan is to get a door hung on the water softener closet and get a frame on the attic access in the laundry room and get the first (of what I am sure are many) final inspections from the county.  Then I will be able to focus on making the drawers and doors for the cabinets and getting the last of the mouldings hung.  And that should be the last of the build other than some “touch up”.

As I mentioned in my post last week, the countertop people, who were supposed to install the countertops this week, postponed us until next Tuesday because their whole shop came down with the flu.

The plumber was supposed to come out Thursday and do what he could do without the countertops being in.  But on Wednesday evening, he called me to let me know that he forgot about us and had not ordered any of the stuff he needed to complete our job.  I have to say, I was not too upset about the plumber since he needs the countertops to be in to get all of his work done, so that would have necessitated another trip.  So, no harm, no foul.

The plumber also does all of the propane hookups, so I was asking him about hooking up the furnace.  He mentioned the HVAC guys should have hooked up the furnace to the propane.  They did not.  (You may remember my mentioning back in June, the HVAC guys are a couple of dopers that surprise me that they can even tie their shoes in the morning.)  The plumber said they needed to install a propane conversion kit on the furnace.  I have no idea if that was installed or not, so I called the builder (who hired Cheech and Chong).  He did not know either.  So the builder called Cheech and Chong, but of course they could not remember.  So we had to take a picture of the model number and serial number of the furnace to send to the retards Cheech and Chong so they could check with their supplier and see what they bought for the job.  This all happened last Wednesday.  As of today (Sunday), we still have no idea if the furnace they installed will even work with the propane system for the rest of the house.  GRRR!!!

The electrician was supposed to come out on Thursday or Friday or Saturday and finish up the last few items remaining on the electrical.  Thursday and Friday came and went with no electrician.  At about 9:30 Saturday morning I called him and asked if he was still planning on coming by.  He said he was, but he had to stop by “Marilyns” and finish a few things for her.  Who Marilyn is or why her money is more green than mine, I have no idea.

He finally showed up about 11:30 with some really awful looking LED lights for the kitchen cabinets and promptly informed us that he had injured his back at Marilyn’s and could not do our work that day.  But he promised to come back today (Sunday).  Of course today, he never showed nor even called.  GRRR!!!

Tina and I finally came to the conclusion today, the electrician has until next weekend to get our work done or I will do it myself.  There is nothing we are asking him to do that I do not know how to do myself.  But it will take me 2-3 days to do what he can probably do in half a day.  But we have been asking him to do this work for almost 2 months and he cannot seem to fit us into his schedule.  Screw him!

For our part, we got all of the drawer glides installed in the kitchen cabinets.  That does not sound like much, but it was a very time consuming process to make sure everything was matched up perfectly and drilled tight.  I am sure we got a couple of them not quite perfect, but how I drilled them, I gave us some wiggle room.

I think I came up with a good way to keep the drawer glides at least within the ballpark of being accurate on each side; clamp a piece of scrap to the bottom of each cleat and set the drawer glide on top of it for drilling and screwing.

We also got some more door moulding done.

Tina has all of the vertical pieces finished.  So I got a bunch of those nailed up.

The blue door in the orange “Trump” wall does not look quite so hideous with a moulding around it.

At the same time, I cut the pieces for the tops and Tina started finishing them.

And I got the top pieces she finished last week nailed up.

So was it a good week?  No.  But we have a plan moving forward.  It may not make us popular with our new neighbors, but it has to be.

This was one of those week where we just did not accomplish a whole lot on M. T. Acres.  I spent the week in Phoenix for work and I picked up a nasty cold there.

Tina went out to M. T. Acres on Wednesday and finished grouting the shower in the master bathroom and got some more mouldings varnished.

I especially like how the front of the shower came out.  That part had me a little worried about how it was going to look when it was just red bricks.  But once she got the grout in, it looks pretty dang nice.

The electrician finally came by on Friday.  He did not actually do anything other than make a list of the supplies he needed to pick up to finish the job.  Supposedly he is coming out this week to do some actual electrical work.  We’ll see…

The countertop people were originally scheduled to install the countertops on January 23rd.  They called this week to tell us their entire staff was out this week with the flu.  So they rescheduled us for January 29th or 30th.

But the plumber is still planning on coming out this Thursday as far as we know.  He will not be able to plumb the kitchen until after the countertops are in, but at least he might be able to get the gas hooked up so we can use the furnace and maybe even get the hot water heater installed!

As I said earlier, I got home from Phoenix about 8:00 o’clock Friday night and was sicker than a dog.  So having a few extra days to get ready for the trades to finish their work really did not upset me too much.

Saturday I had an easy day.  I drove up to Tucson and returned the extra wall tile from the bathrooms.  Then I picked up the door moulding they had shorted us on the original order.  That took most of the day, so I really did not do any building on Saturday.

Today, we also took it easy, doing only as much work as we had to do to get ready for the plumber.

First, I installed the drawer glides on the vanity in the master bathroom as I figured it would be easier to install them before permanently fixing the top on.  Then I got the top screwed down and got the whole assembly permanently attached to the wall.  Finally, I drilled the holes in the top for the sink and faucet.

Drilling the holes, while very easy to do, was an exercise in stress.  I really did not want to screw up and have to remake the top.  As it was, it went quickly and came out fine.

Then we went through the same process, with the same result, in the guest bathroom.

In mounting the guest vanity to the wall, we just put a bead of silicone on the edge of the top an pressed it into place.  I am not sure if that is going to be strong enough to hold it in place or not.  When we were leaving, I checked it, and it seemed to be pulling away from the wall a little bit.  I think we will add another bead of silicone between the top and the wall to fill in any gaps.  I hope that is good enough to pass inspection as I really do not want to have to drill holes in the floor.

When we got back to the rental house this afternoon, we discovered the furnace had quit working.  This is especially frustrating since tonight is forecast to be the coldest night of the year so far with lows in the teens.  Also, the fact that we went almost a month with no air conditioning last summer in the rental house has both of us pretty pissed at the landlord.  It will be nice to be out of this dump and permanently settled at M. T. Acres.

I keep thinking, wouldn’t it be ironic to have lived the first 49 years of my life in the snow and cold of Minnesota with no ill effects from the cold other than some frostbitten ears and cheeks, then die of hypothermia in my second winter in the Arizona desert?

Tina earned the title of “The Grout Queen” this week.

She started by grouting the base tiles around the floor of the guest bathroom.

Then she moved on to grouting all of the wall tiles in the guest bathroom.  I was really pleased how the grout hides all of the mistakes I made when laying the tile.

We are both really pleased with how it came out looking.

My primary focus this week was getting the wall tile up in the master bathroom.  I started by doing around the tub.

Like in the guest bath, we decided to put a trim line around the middle.  But this time we chose to use all glass tiles and they are quite a bit bigger than the glass tiles in guest bath.

These were a nightmare to install.  Like the mix of glass and granite in the guest bath, they need to be cut VERY carefully or the tiles shatter.  Plus, because they are all glass, they cannot be installed with the same thinset (mortar) as the ceramic.

The thinset for the glass is mixed with some kind of chemical, rather than water.  It is caustic as hell and burns any skin that it contacts.  Plus, it has a very short working time.  From the time I mixed it until when I had to have the tiles all set and the excess thinset cleaned up was only about 20 minutes.

So I had to make sure I had everything cut and fitted perfectly before I mixed the thinset.  I found cutting each piece and fitting it into place with blue tape worked about the best.

Once everything was exactly how I wanted it, I carefully took each piece down and made piles with everything in order.  Then I could mix the thinset, apply it and quickly set the tiles and clean up.

The chemical that is mixed with it also stinks to high Heaven.  It is the kind of smell that makes you nauseous for a day afterward.  All in all, it is a very unpleasant thing to work with.

But once that was all done and dried for an hour or so, I was able to move pretty quickly on the top half of the wall.

I was very proud of myself that I remembered to keep the tile pattern constant as I moved from the tile below the trim to the tiles above.

We let that dry for a day, then Tina grouted the tub.

The finished, grouted version really came out looking good.

Meanwhile, I continued tiling the shower in the master bath using the same crappy process of fitting the trim exactly before attempting to set any of it.  The shower also had the additional challenge of trying to not make too big of a mess on the finished floor.

But we got it done.

The shower actually went pretty quick once I got up above the trim.  I measured and cut the tiles, then Tina would mud them while I climbed the ladder and got into position to set them and clean up.  It was a physically brutal job, but it did go pretty quickly with the two of us.

We ran out of energy today to grout the shower.  So Tina will go over this coming Thursday to grout it.  I will be out of town all week on business.

Beyond that, we did a bunch of “busy work” this week. Tina finished some more mouldings and she got the last coat of varnish on the vanity top for the guest bath.  I got the island cabinet permanently positioned and glued in place in the kitchen.

Finally, I got the guest bathroom put back together and ready for the plumber to come back and finish it off.  (Yes – I know very well how to do basic plumbing.  No – I am not going to do it because I want the plumber to come back and hook up all of the propane anyway.  Since I absolutely HATE doing plumbing, that is a problem I am happy to solve with my checkbook.)

But I did reinstall the toilet so we are back to being a “two-flusher” household.

The next 2 weeks should be pretty exciting at M.T. Acres.  We will be getting a lot of work done and we will not be the ones doing it for a change!  Next week, the electrician is supposed to come out and get the kitchen wiring topped off as well as getting all of the data line connected.  (Do not ask me about the data lines!  It is a requirement by the county that I have the entire house wired with Coax and Cat-5 even though I will not ever use either of them!  GRRR!!!)

The following week, they are coming to install the countertops and the plumber will be out to finish his part.  After the plumber is done, all we will need to do is a get load of propane and we will have actual hot water!  WOO HOO!!!

Now that the cabinets are all built, with the exception of doors and drawers, we are back to doing the miserable work of tiling.  At least this time it is wall tile which is MUCH less physically demanding than floor tile.

Tina is also into her busy season of finishing.  As I mentioned last week, we got most of the case moulding, but she also has to finish the last of the cabinets.

The vanity for the guest bathroom really came out good.  It has the full 4 coats of varnish on it.

The grain on the top is really starting to show well also.

As of this picture, Tina still has one more coat to do.

She also has been working on the moulding for the doors.

She is about 1/4 of the way through the skinny vertical pieces.  She is not doing the horizontal pieces until I cut them as there will be end grain that needs to be finished for each door and since we decided to do “cowboy” style moulding on the interior doors it is easier for Tina to finish them after I cut them.

The joinery for the mouldings looks really simple, but it is actually more difficult than doing a standard 45 degree mitre because any length on the side pieces that is off or any mitre that is off 90 degrees, even the slightest, shows up badly.  Even though it looks simple, this is a really tricky joint to get right.

Then you get into the “modified” cowboy joint…

I only got 3 sets of the vertical cowboy mouldings hung today.  Those suckers are a bugger to do!  Most mouldings are 1/8″ thick on the inside and 1/2″ thick on the outside.  So if you need to bend them to keep them straight, it is not a big deal.  Then moulding we are using are 5/8″ thick on both the inside and the outside, so they are a monster to bend.  It was not fun at all.

I also got all of the wall tile done in the guest bathroom.  I started with a bullnose that we are using instead of wood baseboard.

It is actually the same color as the floor tile.  I am not sure why it looks dark gray in the picture.

Then it was on to the walls.

The trim piece around the middle is actually a mix of granite and glass.  The tiles come on a sheet that is 12 X 14 inches.

These things are an absolute nightmare to cut!  First, they require a special blade for the wetsaw, which cost me $65.  Second, even with the special blade, the glass has a tendency to chip and the granite shatters.  The only way I found to be able to reliably cut them without them exploding and sending shrapnel all over is to wrap them in 2-3 layers of blue tape before cutting them.

Even then, I had to feed them into the wetsaw extremely slowly.  The trim strip you see in the photo is about 5 inches tall.  The fastest I was able to cut reliably was by taking over a minute to make each 5 inch cut.

I think Tina’s idea of changing the orientation of the tiles on the top and bottom of the trim line makes it look a lot more interesting.

Doing around the window was especially bothersome, partially because I forgot about it when we bought the tile and did not buy enough bullnose and partially because it was just a tedious task.

On Saturday, we went back to the tile store in Tucson and got the tile for the master bathroom.

These should at least go faster than the tiles in the guest bathroom since these tiles are 8 X 20 inches.  But you will also notice on the top of the pile is another box and a half of bloody glass trim tiles!  GRRR!!!

They do not make a bullnose in either of the tiles we are using for the walls, so we have to use an extruded aluminum piece called Schluter for the finished edge.

For whatever reason, I have a mental block on the name Schluter.  Unless it is written down in front of me, I cannot remember the name.

While we were in the tile store on Saturday, after we had picked out the 3 different tiles, the grout, the different thin-sets we need for each different tile, etc., I looked at the sales-gal and said, completely innocently: “Now we need to see what you have for wide sphincter”.

It took me a second to realize what I had said.  I felt terrible for the poor sales-gal.  She was about 24 or 25 and just stood there looking at me with her mouth agape and completely red faced.  Another salesman, who was assisting our sals-gal because she was new, was doubled over laughing.  Of course I apologized profusely and once they figured out what I was talking about we got our Schluter, tile and other stuff and left.

Needless to say, it has been a fun week at M.T. Acres.

Happy New Year Acrettes!

Part of the problem with “living” at a half-built house is the food.  Until last week, we were limited to what Tina could cook in a cheap microwave oven and a camp stove or barging in on our good friend Eve to use her kitchen.  But now that we have the Big Green Egg at M.T Acres, we can pretty much do anything.

And let me tell you, until you have had dinner rolls baked over mesquite charcoal, you have not lived!

Tina got the vanity for the master bathroom completely finished and it came out looking GREAT!

The photo does not show it very well, but the varnish on the quarter-sawn oak really makes the grain stand out.

Since the top is solid wood as well, Tina decided to do 6 coats of varnish on it to make sure it is well protected from the moisture.  She still has one coat to go, but it is looking outstanding too.  The picture of the top shows the grain a little better than the photo of the front of the cabinet.

For my part, I built the vanity for the guest bathroom.  We wanted it to look like an old farmhouse table rather than traditional cabinetry.  So we chose to build it from black walnut.  Since it really is more furniture than cabinetry, I used mortise and tenon joinery for the whole thing.

We were also really lucky to get ahold of some really nicely figured walnut for just under $5 per board foot.  Unfortunately, walnut is a wood that does not photograph well until it has a couple coats of varnish on it, so please take my word for it, the grain on this is really something special.

I started by cutting the legs as well as the stretchers.  I built a wide stretcher around the top so we have room to mount a toilet paper holder.  The narrower ones around the bottom will hold a shelf.

I stupidly cut the tenons on the stretchers before cutting the mortises in the legs.  More on that in a few minutes.

Then, I cut the tapers on the legs as well as cut the mortises and dry fit all of the parts to make sure everything fit perfectly.

So far, so good…

Tina bought 2 cloth boxes on Amazon to put towels, etc. under the vanity.  So we needed to build a shelf to hold the cloth boxes.  In keeping with the farmhouse style, I decided to make the shelf with slats.  So I planed down some stock to 1/2 inch thick and made 11 slats and carefully cut the mortises and tenons.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I like mortise and tenon joinery a LOT and I am pretty good at it.  And these were some of the best joints I have ever cut in my life.  They fit nice and tight. They were perfectly square.  The shoulders were nice and tight against the mortise.  So I rounded over all of the corners and glued it up.

I do not think I had ever glued 22 mortises in one glue session before, but we planned it well and worked fast and got it done.  Once the glue dried and I measured it out, everything was absolutely perfectly square and the correct dimensions.

Fortunately, before we did the last 2 glue ups, I decided to try one last dry fit of the legs and stretchers with the shelf.  We put everything together (without glue) and I quickly discovered the mortises on the legs were 1/8 inch too far apart!

When I build things in my woodshop, I do not work from a blueprint, but I do keep copious notes on every part I make.  I do all of my math on paper and I ALWAYS check it at least once.  So went back to my notes and checked the length of the slats against the length of the stretchers and the width of the legs.  I checked my math 3 different ways and it ALWAYS came out correct.

So, I started measuring parts.  The slats were correct.  The tenons on the front and back stretchers were correct.  The mortises on the legs were correct.  Then I discovered I had gone full-blown retard and cut the side stretchers 1/8 inch too long, even though I had written down the correct length on my cut list!

The problem was solved easy enough; trim away an 1/8 inch on the stretchers and recut the tenons, but sheesh what an idiot I was!

After getting a good dry fit on the whole thing, I glued up the two ends.

Then the rest of the body.

Lastly, I glued up the top.

Then, sanded and sanded and sanded.

I even had to “test” it with the sink.

The grain on this baby is so amazing that I believe once Tina gets done working her magic on it, it will look like you can put your hand right through it.

The moulding for all of the doors also came in this week.

The narrow ones will be the vertical pieces and the wide ones will go across the top.  Rather than doing a traditional miter on the corners, we are going to with more of a southwest style.

Tina got a good start sanding that down for finishing.

I have to say that I am not real happy with the mouldings.  I had to special order them so I could not pick out the individual pieces I wanted, rather I had to accept what they shipped.  In looking through the pile, several of them have knots (which might look kind of cool) and a lot of tool marks (which NEVER look cool).  Also, when I placed the order, I specifically told the salesman, I wanted 8 foot pieces.  When we picked them up, there were several that were 16 foot pieces (which I made them cut down) and several that were 9 or 10 feet.  If they measured by linear feet, rather than total pieces, I am going to end up short.

Fortunately, the profile of the moulding is simple enough I can make a few extra pieces if we need them.  But I sure do not like this idea of “take what we give you”.

This coming week, I am going to step back from the woodworking for a while to get the wall tile up in the bathrooms.  That and a few minor clean up things (making doors for the furnace closet, etc.) are the last that we need to do to get ready for the final “move-in” inspection.

The plumber and electrician still have quite a bit to do, but they needed me to be done building cabinets to do their part.  So we are cocked, locked and ready to rock on that front now!

We picked up the wall tiles and trim for the guest bathroom on the same day we got the mouldings.  So I will start those tomorrow.  We are still arguing out the details of what we want in the master bathroom, so we have not yet purchased those.

Finally, we took a walk around our land a few days ago and discovered that we have a true Arizona Christmas tree!

It is a mesquite.  And the wild gourds, which are growing everywhere, grow up the trunk and out the branches.  The gourds hang down like Christmas ornaments.

There are even a couple that are hanging down 2-3 feet!

From Tina and I to all of you, have a Happy and Blessed 2018!

Merry Christmas Acre-Heads!

I am sorry I have not posted for a while.  Life has been very busy lately.  I had a scheduled business trip to New York City, followed immediately by an unscheduled trip to Wilmington, Delaware.  Then my mom ended up in hospital for a couple days (she is on the mend now) and of course working on M. T. Acres.

Since my last post, Tina got the last of the painting done, except for some touch-up of course.

She also got the last coats of varnish on the base cabinets in the kitchen.  We also got all of the cabinets permanently mounted in the kitchen.

We got the countertops ordered for the kitchen.  They came out and measured for them a week or so ago.  We ended up getting the top-of-the-line Cambria quartz countertops for less than half what I expected to pay for them!

The company that is making them is a mom and pop operation out of Tucson and are extremely easy to work with.  They should be calling us this week to schedule installation.

Once the countertops are done, we will be able to get the plumber back to hook up all of the gas appliances as well as the furnace and hot water heater.

We are also trying to get the electrician back to install Tina’s double ovens and finish off the electrical work.  That, however, is proving to be more difficult.  The electrician came out and looked over what needed to be done and gave us a shopping list of the parts he wanted us to get (LED lights for the cabinets, doorbell kit, etc.).  However, getting him to come back to actually do the work is proving to be difficult.  If we cannot get a firm commitment from him within the next few days, I may have to find somebody else.

I continued work on the vanity for the master bathroom.  The joinery for it turned out to be more challenging than I expected because I wanted it to look more like an old fashioned sideboard rather than traditional cabinetry.

I started with the legs and face pieces.  Only two of the legs were identical so I had to be careful to make sure I was cutting the correct joinery on each piece.  I was very pleased with myself that I did not make any mistakes.

The face pieces are joined to the legs using a mortise and tenon joint which is extremely strong and one of favorite joints to cut.

Once I got all of the joinery rough cut to size, I made a jig to cut the angles on the legs.

Then I glued up the subassemblies for the face frames and spent some quality time with a shoulder plane doing a final fitting of the tenons into the mortises.

Finally, I was able to start gluing the front of the cabinet together.

Once the front was partially assembled, I cut and machined the pieces for the sides, bottom and back.  Then I glued the whole thing together.

Once the center was glued and perfectly square, I just repeated the process for each side.

The final product came out looking pretty good I think.

We decided to make a wooden top for the vanity so it looks more like a piece of furniture rather than a cabinet.  So that meant edge gluing the top.  Edge gluing quarter sawn oak is a pain in the neck because quarter sawn oak tends to have a lot of knots and imperfections due to how it is milled from the tree.  Finding several pieces that are free of knots and moderately straight for more than 6 feet was a task.

Once it was glued, it was just a matter of cutting it to final size, then sanding and sanding and sanding.  But the final result really does look pretty good.

I discovered that my travel points from some hotels and airlines can be used to make purchases on Amazon.  So Tina used my points from Hilton Hotels to buy all of the plumbing fixtures for the bathrooms.  She got this sink for the master bathroom.

After she got all the stuff we need to complete both bathrooms (except for tile), I still had enough Hilton points to get a new miter saw and cart for free!

Next, I need to figure out if I can do the same thing with my Marriott and Holiday Inn points.

We also got the moulding ordered for all of the doors.  Finding red oak moulding in Arizona turned out to be a tougher job than we imagined.  Very few places stock it and the ones that do, charge an arm and a leg for it.  As an example, very poor quality red oak moulding at Homie Depot is going for over $4 per foot!

We did find a place that could order it for us at about $2 per foot (which is still expensive).  Hopefully it should be in this week.

In the meantime, we got most of the base moulding installed in the laundry room (except around the doors), and got the washer and dryer installed.

That is a BIG deal since we can now leave clothes at M. T. Acres rather than having to schlep them back and forth from the rental house!

Finally, we started moving some “comfort” items over from the rental house.  Tina brought a bunch of cooking stuff and some more comfortable lawn chairs.  Of course, I brought my Big Green Egg!

It has been getting a little cooler, especially in the evenings.  There was even a little snow in the upper elevations on the mountains.

So we tested out the wood stove.  It works great.  Last night, it heated up the house so much, it was uncomfortably warm.

So from Tina and I to all of you, Merry Christmas and have prosperous and blessed New Year!

Our rental house is located in a little town of around 5000 people and is located about 35 miles from M.T. Acres.  Every year, after Halloween the population more than doubles due to all of the snowbirds with their stupid RVs coming in.

I should be thankful for the snowbirds because they keep the cost of living dirt cheap.  But they drive me absolutely crazy!  Most of them can barely drive a car, let alone a 50 foot motorhome.

Our one little grocery store is built to support about 5000 people.  When we get double that, there is no good time to go buy food.  Plus these idiot snowbirds see other idiot snowbirds while shopping and they have to stop and block the aisle while they carry on a long drawn out conversation, even if their motorhomes are parked right next to each other at the RV park!

Plus, I am pretty sure most of the snowbirds must be Democrats because all they do is take up a lot of space and do not provide anything useful.

Thus, even though I am getting pretty tired from the build, I was thrilled to be able to get away from the RV chaos and enjoy the peace and quiet of M.T. Acres this week.

I began by building the face frames for the base cabinets in the kitchen.  I decided to do these a little different.  Rather than building separate face frames for each cabinet, I decided to make adjoining cabinets share a single face frame.  Once the countertops are installed, it will make them look all one big cabinet.

These types of face frames are a little trickier (and slower) to build because they have to be glued up in steps.  But the end result is worth the pain.

With this particular face frame, I made the frame for the corner cabinet separately.

Then I built the face frames for the sink cabinet and end cabinet.

Once the face frames were good and dry, we glued them onto the cabinets.  That was very messy process because it requires a LOT of glue, which tends to run and drip.  But with the help of several clamps and few finishing nails, we got everything set perfectly.

The sink and end cabinets were much easier because we had so many more drawer glides that worked well as reference points for where the frame needed to go.

Tina also got the big oven cabinet that I built last weekend finished.  So we were able to get that into place.

The propane tank is not yet hooked up so even though we have air conditioning, we cannot yet heat the place with the furnace.  So we decided to get the wood stove installed.  That turned out to be more of a job than either of us anticipated.

The stove pipes have to be double walled due to the proximity of the living room walls.  The outer pipe is just sheet steel but the inner pipe is stainless.  That means they are A – heavy and B – VERY expensive – over $50 per foot!

There is an adapter piece that goes on the stove and another that goes on the ceiling box.  Those were both time consuming to install properly, but not terribly difficult.

The first pipe we installed was a 2 foot section coming down from the ceiling box.  The pipe weighs about 30 pounds, which does not sound like much.  But since we only have one ladder tall enough to reach the ceiling, trying to hold a 30 pound pipe in place with one arm and drill and screw the pipe with the other, while swaying around on the top of a ladder was just not working.

Tina must have been married to me for too long, because this time she did the 3rd world engineering and came up with a great idea that solved the problem!  We screwed a bucket to the end of a 2×4.  Then I was able to position the pipe exactly where I needed it and she could hold it for me, allowing me to use 2 hands for installing the screws!

Once we go that done, the rest went pretty quick.

Finally, I was able to get started on the vanity for the master bath.  I am making from quartersawn White Oak rather than the rift-sawn Red Oak we used in the kitchen.  Also, because it is going to look more like a piece of furniture rather than a cabinet, the layouts for cutting it are a little tricky.

I was able to figure out most of the dimensions and get the main parts cut.  But until driving back to rental house this afternoon, I was still trying to work out how the joinery will work.

I think I have most of it figured out now.  Normally when I build cabinets, I start from the back and build towards the face frame.  With this one however, I am going to build the face frame and legs first, then build the cabinet to fit the face.

Tina also got started varnishing the face frames in the kitchen base cabinets.

Lastly, we had the electrician come by today and look at what he needs to do to get the ovens and range hood installed.  Also, there are several switches and outlets that still need to be hooked up as well as getting the Cat-5 and Coax hooked up so we can pass the final inspection.  So, hopefully within the next few weeks he can get that done.  And we are going to start looking for somebody to do the countertops.