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catsittingstillI have been undertaking a fairly major house cleaning because I’m having family over for a summer visit in July, and there’s nothing like knowing your parent is coming to make you look around at all those chores and household repairs you’ve been meaning to get to later and realize that later is now.
Last week’s major project was cleaning out the wood shop, which really hadn’t been done for three or four years, but now it is cleaned out; several generations of bug dirt have been swept up and thrown out, lots of things have been put back in their places, some have been given new places and 2 contractor bags worth of garbage and enough wood and plywood scraps to build 2 desks and a treehouse have been thrown away. I only have so much room for wood scrap storage and Choices Were Made.
The up side of this is that I have repaired the piece of loose trim next to the back door that had been annoying me since we moved in 10 years ago, and repaired the back of the kitchen cabinet, which was a bit of a production, because it turns out they’d been nailing the pretty veneer and the trim into nothing but the 1/8th inch plywood that covered the back of those cabinets. No wonder that didn’t hold; they might as well have been nailing into cardboard. So I had to get a piece of real wood back there, and ended up using hot glue to stick it back there well enough that I could drill through the thin plywood from the other side, and then put in real wood screws. There are 7 #8 wood screws in the veneer and another 3 in the trim—they will show but they are brass and I think they look nice enough. I’m pretty sure this repair will hold.
Last week’s major project was cleaning out the wood shop, which really hadn’t been done for three or four years, but now it is cleaned out; several generations of bug dirt have been swept up and thrown out, lots of things have been put back in their places, some have been given new places and 2 contractor bags worth of garbage and enough wood and plywood scraps to build 2 desks and a treehouse have been thrown away. I only have so much room for wood scrap storage and Choices Were Made.
The up side of this is that I have repaired the piece of loose trim next to the back door that had been annoying me since we moved in 10 years ago, and repaired the back of the kitchen cabinet, which was a bit of a production, because it turns out they’d been nailing the pretty veneer and the trim into nothing but the 1/8th inch plywood that covered the back of those cabinets. No wonder that didn’t hold; they might as well have been nailing into cardboard. So I had to get a piece of real wood back there, and ended up using hot glue to stick it back there well enough that I could drill through the thin plywood from the other side, and then put in real wood screws. There are 7 #8 wood screws in the veneer and another 3 in the trim—they will show but they are brass and I think they look nice enough. I’m pretty sure this repair will hold.
And this morning I spent a couple of hours repairing a kitchen chair where the rail had come loose from the leg it was bracing. I cleaned out the old glue as well as I could, painted both parts with epoxy, mixed some silica into the epoxy to improve gap filling, glopped a bunch in the hole and pressed the rail back into place. It will need a couple of days to cure to full strength and then we will see if it can take being sat on.
However I really need to get to the actual “clean the living room” part of this week’s program; it is Wednesday already.
