OK, it's not new. New to me, but not new. It's actually relatively old. I haven't worked on the house much lately. I really wanted to get the porch complete but I ran out of good weather to slap a final coat of paint on everything. I had a very, very small window of opportunity to at least get the lattice up and painted, but work demands closed that window before I got around to painting it and now it looks like it'll be too cold to paint for the next few months so...it is what it is. If I do happen to get a random day where the temps rise above 50°F, I'll get it done. Due to historic district guidelines, I have to skirt the underside of the porch with lattice in a horizontal and vertical pattern, which is fine. I opted for plastic lattice because I know from experience how much of a nightmare wood lattice is once it starts to fall apart. Unfortunately, I let the rolled up lattice sit for months in the boxes you see under the porch and when it was finally time to cut it the stuff didn't really want to unroll. Long story short, I did manage to get the frame built and all 4 pieces of lattice cut to fit; now it's all disassembled and staying dry in the basement. And, I've got the lattice laying flat and sandwiched between sheets of plywood to flatten it out. The next time the weather cooperates - which won't be any time soon - I'll fire up the sprayer, paint the lattice and wood frame the same color as the posts, and get it all installed. More recently, I got all the Christmas stuff up which is always a bit of an adventure. This year I opted for stringing lighted garland along the cast iron fence and setting up a giant tree inside the house. The pic doesn't do it justice, but the tree I bought - and drug into the house, which is a young man's game - was 12' tall. Trees that big and heavy just aren't a lot of fun to wrestle with but because the house has 11' ceilings I refuse to buy a smaller tree. Sometimes my stubbornness lies in direct conflict with rationality. Back to the plane. My only living grandparent recently moved into an assisted living facility and the family is in the process of cleaning out his house so it can be sold. Some day I may dedicate a blog post or two to grandpa but for now, as it pertains to the plane, grandpa was always a bit of a "collector" and in recent years the collecting had started to border on hoarding. Any items the family members don't claim will get donated, or thrown out, or sold at an estate sale. My dad has the main floor of the house pretty well sorted, packaged up, and cleaned, but my interests are down in the basement which is still a total catastrophe. The basement was where grandpa had his office, and his little workshop, and his bathroom. Aside from the laundry area, the basement was sort of his territory. At one time, many, many years ago, I knew where grandpa kept all his cool stuff in the basement but now it's all buried under mountains of paper and random junk. Grandpa was always a bit of an artist and maker, the kinda guy that could sorta make anything out of anything, and without the aid of any big fancy tools. I'm sure that a childhood spent in an orphanage and not having a whole lot is where that resourcefulness and skillset began to develop. I didn't really go through much in the basement because without a dumpster on site it just doesn't make any sense to create more of a mess than the space already is. But I kinda rummaged through what remains of grandpa's workshop area and found the plane. At first I was happy to find it just because it was grandpa's; I didn't care how old or what brand it was. And even if I did care, I'm not enough of a bench plane aficionado to know what's what when it comes to what's desirable and what isn't. Once I had the plane in my hands, I instantly saw that it was a Stanley. I know enough to know that certain eras of old Stanley planes are sought after items, so that was kinda cool. There were a lot of other markings on the plane that caught my eye, even though I didn't know what they meant. So I went home with the plane and did some homework. As it turns out, I believe the plane is a Stanley 603c bedrock series "sweetheart" era smoothing plane and was made in either 1929 or 1930. I don't know that there's any way to discern which year exactly, but when I tell the story I'll go with 1930 -- that was the year grandpa was born. It's a pretty cool find. The bedrock series of Stanley planes were apparently more robust and easier to dial in that the regular Stanley planes, and the "c" in 603c indicates that it has a corrugated bottom, which may or may not make for more effective planing than a completely smooth-bottomed plane. Either way, I think the corrugation adds to its uniqueness. It's not perfect. The lever cap is broken, but I think I can find a period-correct replacement without a whole lot of trouble. And the rosewood handle is cracked, but that can be fixed and really, all the crack means is that the tool got used (or dropped) quite a bit. I'm OK with that. Any "builder" with tools that are all shiny and new is very, very suspect in my book. The old tools that I've accumulated over the years, in old car terms, are NOT trailer queens. They get used. The hand saw that once belonged to a great-grandpa, it gets used. My other grandpa, his hand tools that are now in my possession, they get used. This plane, it'll get used as well, once it's back in good working condition. The best part about having these old tools isn't that they may have some sort of monetary value or that they work a particular way, it's that they will forever serve as a reminder of the people that used them previously and provide a physical connection to them that I'm not eloquent enough to accurately put into words. But it's a super rad little plane, and every time I use it I'll think of grandpa. It's sort of amazing how what was once buried trash, given the passage of enough time, can sometimes turn into treasure. Well, maybe not literal treasure, but a pretty neat discovery. I recently unearthed this bottle... ...and wanted to find out more.
Fennerty had 7 children and several of them were prominently involved in the business, although given how frequently the elder Fennerty changed residences, per city directory records, from 1 simple flat to another, my guess is that the company wasn't all that profitable. In 1908 a fire destroyed the company's stable along with 500 cases of soda water; 2 horses perished in the fire and the company relocated a short time later to 14th and Clark. Fennerty died in 1915 in Mullanphy Hospital at the age of 59.
So there's a little history on the bottle...maybe next time I'll be lucky enough to find one that's still all there and in a little better shape. Regardless, this was a pretty cool find and I'm definitely gonna hang on to it.
I'm learning some valuable lessons with the porch build, namely that anything that is possible to paint before installation should be painted before installation. Trying to finish paint the thing - 4 different colors - and without moving the scaffolding all around the porch in 2 foot increments...zero fun. 0/10. Do not recommend. But I'm getting close, and ought to have it pretty well wrapped up by the end of the weekend. In other news...I'm going to start putting rehab vids on the 'Tube. I uploaded the intro video the other day... Let's start with the ceiling. A while back I got a full coat of paint - same color as the floor - rolled on 'er, but beaded material isn't real easy to roll. There are a few spots where I couldn't quite work any paint into the beaded areas, but that's fine because I was aiming for quick-and-dirty. I'll spray the final coat or two in a few weeks, and spraying the paint should eliminate the challenge of getting paint into the nooks and crannies. Then I started making the brackets, which is a process with what seems like about 7,000 steps. Their vertical dimension is 15" and the horizontal dimension is 12.25", which puts their diagonal width somewhere around 11.5". I could have reduced the dimensions a hair and cut the brackets out of 2x12s but 1, the perfectionist in me wouldn't allow for the reduction in dimensions just to make life easy and 2, I felt like using 2x12s as-is would have led to some nasty cupping and twisting down the road. So instead, I bought a couple 2x10s, ripped them into strips a little wider than 3", jointed and planed the strips, then glued them together into 12" wide blanks, making sure to alternate the grain direction to hopefully negate the potential cupping. While the blanks were clamped up and drying I cut out a template, which boiled down to tracing an original bracket onto a scrap of OSB I had laying around, then using a combination of tools - drill press, band saw, spindle sander, etc. - to get to the final shape. Once the blanks were dry enough to work with I started milling them, which required getting out even more tools. I planed the blanks flat and to a uniform thickness, cut them to rough shape with the band saw, then miter saw, and then table saw. I traced the template onto the roughed-out bracket blanks, then fired up the band saw and crossed my fingers. My bandsaw is serviceable, in that if I spend a silly amount of time getting everything dialed in as perfectly as humanly possible, and if I have a brand new blade that is 100% appropriate for the work I'm doing (blades come in all sorts of widths and tooth counts and tooth types), and if I get really lucky, everything may work out halfway decently. This time, I got lucky. The band saw, even if one cuts right on the line, leaves a pretty rough cut that has to be smoothed out on way or another, which made the spindle sander the real star of the show. I don't have a need to use that tool often but every now and then it comes in very, very handy. I still had to do a little hand-sanding and chisel out a few of the tight corners, but it wasn't much. The only reason I was working on the brackets the past couple weekends was because I was getting rained out and unable to work on the railing. The railing has NOT been a fun install. Because I'm in a historic district I have to use what's known around these parts as the "Soulard Handrail", which I suppose is sort of a historically accurate - in a generic sense - deck/porch railing. It's not a real complicated setup, but the bottom rail has an angled top and the top rail is kind of oval-shaped and has a dado (channel) that the balusters fit into. Combine that with wanting the railing to be level despite the porch floor being slightly and purposely pitched away from the house, as well as wanting to be able to hide my railing fasteners, and it gets a little tricky. Oh, and it all has to comply with modern code dimensions in terms of baluster spacing, railing height, etc. I started working at the southern end where the porch meets the house and once I got a good order of operations figured out for installation, I got after it. I was feeling pretty good about my work but something was off. It took me a couple days of looking at it but it just didn't look right. So I pulled out the city-provided handrail detail and, sure enough, what I'd built was incorrect. Modern code calls for a maximum of 4" between balusters. That's the spacing I used, and the spacing that didn't seem right. As it turns out, the "Soulard Handrail" has balusters that are 4" on center, or 4" from the center of one baluster to the center of the next. Because the balusters are 1.75" wide, that means a spacing that's 2.25". My spacing was off, so I removed the balusters I'd already installed and redid them. Once I got the baluster spacing corrected I continued working my way around the porch. Yesterday I called a time out on the railing install so I could get a couple brackets put up. I still have a little work to do on a couple of them, but I really couldn't wait to see how they'd look on the porch. I threw a couple coats of paint - same color as the soffit, fascia, and some day, railing - on 2 I had completed and thought through the installation. Like everything else, the install is simple but not without a number of steps. The primary challenge is finding good spots to drive screws; with so many little curves and details, options are limited. And, my little 7' step ladder is about 1 step short of allowing for comfortable working conditions at the height the brackets are at but it's doable. That's where things stand. I got rained out today, otherwise I'd have finished the railing. Hopefully, after work this week, I'll be able to finish milling the rest of the brackets and installing the last sections of handrail. Then...lattice around the open area beneath the porch, and paint. Lots and lots and lots of paint. She's getting close. I've been saying that for a while now, but I'm running out of things to do in an effort to put off dealing with the railing. This weekend I got the tongue and groove beadboard ceiling installation finished up, painted the perimeter real quick, and got it trimmed out with quarter round. There's still more painting to do on that front, but otherwise...railing time. I wanted to throw some paint on the ceiling before calling it a day on Saturday, but the dogs wanted to check out the porch progress so instead we wrapped up the evening by just hanging out on the dusty porch floor. Roscoe would be right up on the edge like Freckles if he weren't so old and in poor health. He pretty much has to use his front half to drag his back half around; any time he can lay down to take some weight off his back legs, he's all about it. I think he'll like the porch when it's all done and cleaned up. I know Freckles will -- it'll give her a whole new vantage point for squirrel-watching. Speaking of the dogs, weekend porch progress is usually hampered a bit by meal-prepping for the dogs. I know that probably sounds ridiculous to anybody who 1, doesn't have dogs or 2, has dogs but feeds them "dog food". Roscoe and Freckles do get regular ol' dog food, Merrick stuff, but they get a pretty fair amount of "people food" too. I've always shared food with Roscoe but the older he gets the more thought and effort I put into cooking him food aimed at addressing his health situation(s). Joint strength and pain management/mitigation, really. This weekend I fired up a new recipe, something with zucchini. Apparently zucchini is pretty good for arthritic dogs, but Roscoe's gotten picky in his old age and meat and eggs are the only thing I can really count on him eating. Freckles, on the other hand, is a little food vacuum. She eats her food, every last little piece, then scavenges around Roscoe's bowl to eat anything he spits out. The recipe was something like
So far Roscoe's eating the stuff, which makes me happy. I don't know that it'll have any real effect but the deal he and I worked out is that as long as he keeps waking up each day, I'll keep trying to turn back the clock. Back to the porch. Today, Sunday, I got a little paint up and knocked out the quarter round. It shouldn't have taken me all day but I put in a little yard time with Freckles and some of the quarter round took me a few cuts to get just right. One post required a coped 135° joint, another post required me to miter a couple pieces of trim at 67.5° each, not a gimme cut on a standard miter saw. But the trim is up and honestly, I really like it. Kinda wish I wasn't going to paint it the same color as the ceiling and make it totally blend in, but no part of me wants to paint it a standalone color. I'll probably get the rest of the ceiling painted Monday after work, and then...the railing work really begins. |
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April 2024
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