Almost done the tub surround

The tile is in and the plumbing is done. Grout, silicone and paint touch left.

I have been a very naughty blogger and haven't posted in a long time. I get busy at times and the last thing on my mind is the boring old internet. I have been renovating 2 houses in the past year. One was in preparation for sale and the other was in preparation to move into. Yes, I know, I just ended a sentence with a preposition. Sue me.

In any event, the new house had a bathroom upstairs that was a bit of a basketcase. Having already removed all of the knob and tube wiring, installed bamboo flooring throughout and painted the entire place, everything should have been wrapping up. The current budget did not have any contigency for anything in either the kitchen or the bathroom. There was a cracked acrylic tub surround and a tub faucet that dripped even though the shower was running. The tub itself had seen better days...

After hunting around deals here is the cost breakdown.

The 2 boxes of green 6x6  field tiles were found at the Habitat for Humanity restore at a cost of $30
The white field tiles were about $60 full retail at Home Depot.
The new American Standard faucet was about $120 and it might have been on sale.
The 2 part epoxy paint which a tub refinisher would charge $300-500 for was $35.
The best deal was the accent strip which usually sells for about $15 per sq. ft. was had for $0.66 because they only had 10 pieces left, which was just a little more than needed.
Thinset and mortar were another $50.
I had extra solder, flux, gas, sandpaper and leftover plumbing fixtures etc., plus all the tools to complete this little project.

So the entire bathtub surround project was around $300 of materials. Hmmm, how do I figure out what to charge?

Here are a few pics and will post when the final bead of silicone is laid.

André Jacob Roubo

I was surprised to find that the Wiki Article on André Jacob Roubo was so scant, given that he published, in his day, one of the masterworks of the state of woodworking in late 18th century France.

 To quote:
He wrote a highly influential complete treatise on woodworking that covers practically all the associated trades. This multi-volume work, L'Art du Menuisier (The Art of the Joiner), published between 1769 and 1774 by the Académie des Sciences, contains sections and illustrations on: building carpentry, furniture making, and precious woodworking (ébénisterie), carriage making, and garden woodworking.

I watched an online episode of the The Woodwright's Workshop recently, and am inspired to build Roy Underhill's ||Roubo inspired Workbench from the original engraving.

Having spent some time reading 18th century  treatises on lute music of the period, the examples show more and more details after some time seriously considering the proportions, ratio and methods.

I'll need to acquire a top for this stout workbench, and being inspired by a grandmother's "waste not, want not" Depression-era upbringing, I hope to demonstrate that buy builing a workbench such as this, might allow someone interted in the idea that the old techniques and practices, of understanding one of the basic "building blocks" are FAR more sustainable than our current practice of using  our available resources for fast and quick.

An invaluable resource on Japanese Architecture and Art

A great resource for explaining Japenese art and architecture.
Here ...

A couple of useful tools ...

On the left is a 16 inch Makita beam saw and on the right is a regular 7 1/4 inch blade sidewinder, circular saw. Although the pic saw is around 30 lbs or so, it is relatively easy to handle although a healthy fear and respect for it is always in order.

 


This is a Makita Chain mortiser which is basically a little plunging chainsaw used to create mortises in beams. 

The word of the day ...

Axometric Projection:
There is a good Wikipedia article explaining how a 2d planar model can be rotated along an axes to create a 3d representation. It was interesting to me that this is not how photography or our eyes work and it is one of the methods that MC Escher expoited in his drawings.




 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axonometric_projection

Some of the people I've worked with

Here are a  few of the people and companies I've had the pleasure of working with over the last few years

Woodenshoe Timberframes
Davidson Log and Timber Frame Homes
Arman Design
Spearhead Timberworks
College of the Rockies