Crossing the threshold

I have been laboring on the home for many hours most days, and still have a while to go yet. But, by God's provision and strength, much has been done.

The front of the house, which not long ago looked like this

 

now looks like this

and the chimney adapter has been put in, hopefully I can purchase the stove pipe to finish it this weekend.

I am trimming the doors and windows in rough-sawn cedar that comes from trees we cleared last summer. That is nice, to see the wood taken from the ground and used back on the property. I intend, Lord willing, to do a step-by-step on the milling process from log to lumber, soon. This is what the windows look like after they are trimmed out.

I put wide sills on them so Kara will have many places for things, and so I will have adequate resting space for my morning coffee mug. Few things are more useless and frustrating than narrow window sills.

The Lord provided 3 used exterior doors for a significant discount over new ones. The problem was, two of them were just doors, with no casings, and my past attempts at building casings and flush-fitting hinges were none too good. So I bought a chisel at Lowe’s, sharpened it till it would shave hair, milled some red oak logs down, and set to building casings. I will, hopefully post on that process, and have pics soon. I will say that my hinges turned out very well, almost professional. Now I am emboldened to try more.

Today I built and installed the threshold for my office door today. I started with the 2” thick oak plank seen here

and cut it to length, then beveled both sides to make a smoother transition.

The interior side has the slighter bevel, to allow the door to seal thoroughly. the board was too thick, so I used a table saw to remove as much material as possible, then went to my beloved new Stanley chisel for the rest.

With the slab thinned and cut to length, I installed it in the opening. (bonus: you get to see the custom hand-made casing!)

For all you fellow OCD-people out there…. yes, the one screw is off-center. It is my office door, and I don’t care.

One thing done, on to the next. I worked on the pantry walls, which I am paneling in 1/2” cedar. First, I cut the planks to width, putting a  15-degree bevel on both edges. This will enable a good fit, even though I would prefer to tongue&grove the edges, but don’t have the tools for that.

Here you can see the beveled edges

Thankfully, my log was long enough that the planks fit full-width across the closet, with no seams. I worked till I ran out of 1/2” cedar. Now I’ll have to find another good log.

So there is a house update, I will try to post another soon. Maybe later this week. Thanks for reading!

 

Ryan