On Menu 2 — Shelves

The only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys.  (Anonymous)

I'm greatly impressed by the variety of tools it takes to build a house.  At one end is the lowly pencil which Kyle and Dave use to indicate where a doorway or window opening should go and where a piece of wood or tile should be cut.  At the other are all sorts of devices, stationary or portable, modestly priced (a hand planer) or over the rainbow (a Bobcat), but all apparently necessary to do a job with speed and accuracy.  As you can see from the photos, at the moment my ground floor is a very well-equipped workshop.

Today Kyle focused on cutting oak boards for book shelving.  Here again, joining wood will be necessary in order to produce shelves of the desired depth (a little less than 12 inches).  Kyle takes a board, if necessary eliminates a part with a knot or other defect, cuts the two pieces to size, sands it, and uses a hand planer to produce two perfect edges for mating.  This takes a lot of work, but Kyle insists that this approach is much less expensive than having a mill turn out the same shelves.

 To make a book shelf, cut boards to size... 

 ...sand on the belt sander...

 ...and use the hand planer to provide a perfect edge.
And that's just the beginning!

Below is the door to the guest bedroom upstairs.  Look carefully and you will see daylight showing between the door and the jamb.  That's not supposed to happen!  Contractors like to use pre-hung doors because the door and jamb are made in a factory.  The assumption, given factory-style quality control, is that such a door will arrive at the construction site nearly perfect.  Well, that's the theory.  In fact, two of our doors came with jambs too large for their doors.  Kyle and Dave plan to shim out the hinges to move the door laterally and achieve a good fit.

 Daylight not wanted here!

Late yesterday Dave attached the doors to the sink base cabinet in the master bathroom.  It looks right pretty!

 What a difference a couple doors make!

Today I spent some time at Home Depot looking for bronze-colored track-and-clip sets for the bookshelves (didn't have), and at their selection of white wire shelving for the closets (a limited supply).  Tomorrow I'll do the water testing required by the county to determine if my well produces potable water. •••