This Odd House

This blog has been dormant for a while and is likely to remain inactive, but here are some updates for those devoted subscribers who followed along during the major renovations undertaken over a decade ago.

First, as noted in the photo above, the mansard roof shingles are being replaced.  It was determined early on that the flat roof needed replacement, but the shingles on the side, though worn and torn, were deemed adequate to keep off the rain.  This mansard roof is actually a constructed ornament attached to the exterior of a stucco building, not a real wall to the interior space, so even if it leaked, no damage would result. 

Second, this blog is changing hosts.  After years of being hosted as a subdomain of wordpress.com, it is now becoming a subdomain of my personal site, thorolson.com.  This post is likely to be its last, but the entire blog will remain online for your browsing pleasure, whether for reference, in case you want to look up how some renovation task was handled, or as in my case, enjoying the nostalgia in reviewing a significant time in my life (and maybe yours too)!

I want to thank my followers for their interest in this project and their wonderful and supportive comments.  And although there is no longer activity here at thisoddhouse, I invite you to follow my various other projects that I share at thorolson.com (you can find a subscribe button on the homepage).

Regards,
Torr Oslo, aka Thor Olson

I’m declaring completion on a modest revision to our floor plan, the conversion of an unused shower stall into a cedar closet. It has been over seven months since starting the project, and it would be entirely reasonable to ask how it could possibly take so long.

Well, apart from my excuses of being a novice, and only dedicating available weekends to the effort, there were other factors. In particular, This Odd House presented some unique challenges. I will try to list them without belaboring them.

The shower was off the master bedroom. It had been carved out of space that was originally a stairwell, a narrow area about 3-feet wide. It was deep, over eight feet, with the shower head at the far end. The former remodelers were fond of low ceilings and dropped it down to a little over six feet, for that cozy shower feeling I guess.

I had attempted earlier to repair and update the shower head and faucets, but it was still an awkward situation. To take a shower meant entering the stall and traveling to the far wall to turn on the faucets. It was impossible to do this without being in the initial blast of cold water. There were other showering options available in the house that didn’t involve a full body check of the water temperature, and so this facility fell out of favor. Eventually, the abandoned space started to be used for other purposes, like temporarily storing things. It eventually became the established storage location for things, a closet, if you will.

Meanwhile, we had noticed that some of our favorite, if not fashionable, woolen attire tended to olfactorily pre-announce themselves when we wore them in public gatherings. The mothball protection of their seasonal storage extended well beyond their storage and into the active social season. Our sartorial choices were being compromised.

A plan was made. We would convert the shower space into a cedar-lined closet, the cedar aromatics being effective against moth larvae without the naphthalene aftertaste. An access door would be made through an outer wall so one did not need to enter and exit through the bathroom. Residual space would be used for shelves to hold linens. It seemed straightforward.

It wasn’t. Here are the things I encountered while making this closet conversion.

1. The dropped ceiling. Above it was a dead space that had accumulated the construction debris of not just the original remodeling of years ago, but mine too! (from the kitchen renovation one floor up). Wood lathe and plaster, insulation, old ceiling tiles, abandoned wire and plumbing parts, it was all conveniently swept into this dark pit from above.
2. Removing the shower stall itself was relatively easy. Plastic and fiberglass and sheetrock. Removing the plywood ceiling involved “disassembling” it by cutting it into sections with a sawzall, avoiding the plumbing and wiring that was routed directly across it. I wasn’t fully successful, cutting through a support that had electrical lines running through its core (who would fabricate a hollow beam and run power through it?) It resulted in arcs and blown fuses that took days to figure out and repair.

3. The new closet door. It could have been simply an opening in the wall, but because the wall was originally part of a stairwell, it was load-bearing. I couldn’t just cut out the studs, I had to add studs and a header to redistribute the load.
4. At the location of the closet door, between the studs to be removed, there was a large electrical junction box, perhaps 15” square. It seemed to be a major distribution center for the power in the bedroom and bath. I had to relocate it.
5. The plumbing to the shower was, how do I say it, convoluted? In the end, I had to call a professional plumber to remove it without impacting the water flow to the rest of the house. We also discovered the water line to the outdoor faucet had no shutoff valve and was exposed to winter temperatures. The plumber’s comment to all this: “I’ve seen stupider”.

Of course some of my problems were self-inflicted. The new closet door was on a wall in our bedroom, a room with 10-foot ceilings. We had carefully mounted a mirror salvaged from another odd bathroom in the house (that got downsized), onto this wall. With no other place for the mirror, the plan was to put it on the door to the new closet.

It was a 9-foot mirror. It needed a 9-foot door. Perhaps there are places to shop where doors of this size are available, but I was unable to find any. So I set about to commission a custom door. I found several sites online that offered custom doors, but every time I tried to order one, I found that this dimension exceeded their abilities. The local Home Depot would make a custom door, but only to 8-feet. I had to build my own.

In the end, I ordered an 8-foot door and then “spliced” a 6-inch header and footer to each end. After sanding and painting, it looks almost seamless. And the mirror covers the seams anyway.

This was supposed to be a winter project. I started on New Years Day. Now, finally, in August, I can declare completion (with some provisos, there is always a punch list).

My wool sweaters are now stored in a protective but not toxic environment and I look forward to wearing them with confidence next winter!

BEFORE.  The opening for the new closet door revealed a load-bearing wall and an electrical junction box.

I’m not sure this is up to code.

A hint of the plumbing and wiring labyrinth that had to be cleared.

A selfie in the nine-foot mirror mounted on the closet door!

I have written previously about the “runway lights” that graced the main stairway and provided a whimsical (if not outright comical) accent. Someone had taken the trouble to install and route the wiring to a series of colored lamps along the skirts of the stairway. I considered this to be one of those features that attracted me to This Odd House and I wanted to preserve it in some way.

The installation of the new treads and risers had required temporary removal of the runway lights in order to cut and fit the new pieces. Now that the stairs were (mostly) in place, I needed to restore the lighting. As usual, the inexpensive and easy solution, re-installing the Edison sockets and utilizing my renewed supply of specialty incandescent lamps, was rejected in favor of the modern way to do lighting: LEDs!

LED lighting has so many advantages over traditional lighting that it is just easier to list its only disadvantage: price. So in a project where the bulk costs of the major raw material (hardwood maple), far exceeds this one factor, it is easy to justify almost any LED lighting design.

I wanted to retain the “feel” of runway lights highlighting one’s traversal of the stairs, and to simultaneously convey the visual pleasure of color.  I could replace the individual colored lamps with equivalent LED bulbs, but I also considered LED strip lighting that would run a continuous path along the stairway. Once I found a “J-channel” molding that could house such a strip, the choice was obvious. I proceeded to design an LED replacement for the runway lights.

This choice brought new requirements however. I needed a power supply for LEDs: 12 volts DC, not 120 volts AC. If I wanted color, I needed the RGB strip, not the white strip. If I wanted to control the color, I needed an LED color controller module.

The requirements went on, but at this point I was committed. In the end, I was able to install the necessary power supplies and control components under one of the stairway treads. Motion sensors are positioned so that as you enter the stairway from either the top or bottom landings, the power switches to the LED strip lights, and you experience the personal attention of a light-guided path to the next level.

I still had the issue of what to do with the empty holes that had held the previous Edison lamps. I was about to cover them with blank coverplates, but Portia discovered that there are modern LED nightlights that had the exact same diameter. She brought some home from IKEA and I adapted them to their new role. The stairway is now lit with the calm glow of these lights until someone actively ascends or descends, at which time the new LED runway lights come to life to light the way.

Here are some recordings of the up and down experience:

Cut once. I need to make a variation on this aphorism. “Measure everything, order once.”

I had completed my mini-stairway, the training set of four steps at the upper section of This Odd Staircase. I had learned how to cut the treads and risers to fit the odd angles, to shape them to my custom design and to install them. I had great satisfaction that the concept would work, and I had a recipe for making the remaining dozen steps.

The upper stair section had treads and risers that were 35 inches wide, give or take half an inch. I had measured them carefully. I measured them more than twice. I had counted the all the steps. More than twice. I added an extra tread and riser, and making a last reconfirming check on the width, ordered the 36-inch stock material from Baird Brothers.

So you can imagine the sinking sensation when setting about to make the first of twelve steps on the main stair section, at finding that they were 39 inches wide, not 35!

And this is why the shipping weight was less than it should have been. If I had been thorough in my measurements, I would have ordered the right materials, coming to 425 pounds of wood, not 380.

I soon started pondering how to salvage this expensive error. Maybe I could add some decorative side elements to hide the fact that the treads were inadequate. A stair skirt of some sort. But realizing this would only complicate a project already over my head, and with some calming encouragement from Portia, I knew what needed to be done. Order the right stuff.

I will figure out how to return the wrong stuff (shipping expense makes this a problem), or find a local market for it, or some other use for it (I proposed making a high class stairway to the basement, but this was rejected).

It was a setback, expensive but not fatal. As Fred Brooks warned me: plan to throw away your first effort, you will know what to do on the second.

As mentioned, one becomes skilled by making mistakes. I recall advising my son that to become skilled at skiing (windsurfing, skate-boarding, roller-blading, break-dancing, whatever the current sport), one must fall a hundred times.

I wasn’t really eager to make that many mistakes in my foray into woodworking. Fortunately, today, the internet provides a way to learn just about everything about anything. You-Tube in particular has an overabundance of tutorial videos on any tool, any technique, any material you might have an interest in. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are awful. Maybe it is my background in photography and exposure to the motion picture industry, but I find most of the amateur how-to videos to have bad light, bad sound, bad camera work, and bad scripting. I would be happier to simply read the transcript and bypass the miserable minutes watching a home video by someone who, I am sure knows what he is talking about, but just can’t portray it on camera. It generates an appreciation for professional teachers. I have heard it said “those who can’t do, teach”, but the converse may also be true.

With the internet as a resource, and querying my woodworker friends, I learned a number of interesting things (at least to me):

• Make a template of the stair tread shape from hardboard; the router bit has a ball bearing guide that can follow it perfectly.
• Double-sided masking tape adheres the template to the wood. Masking tape comes double sided, who knew?
• Use a router bit with a 3/8” shank for stability and safety. This caused me to buy a new router that could accommodate that size.
• One of the most useful tools for cutting each tread to its unique place was a digital protractor. Measure the angle, set the miter saw to that number, and cut! (But get the direction right). A friend of mine acquired a “Stair Wizard”, but this was more expense than I was willing to go for.
• Hard maple is hard! To screw (or even nail) requires a pilot hole, or the screw may split the wood. For this purpose there are “tapered drill bits” which provide a guide hole that accepts the screw, and even makes a countersink for it.
• Don’t make a perfect fit. Wood expands and contracts. Allow some breathing room. Here was a license for tolerating cutting errors!

I acquired these lessons as I worked on the small upper stair section involving four steps. I created a design that utilized “floating” treads (not anchored by glue or fasteners). I made a shallow notch (a rabbet cut) into the bottom of the next higher riser that was exactly the thickness of the tread. The tread would fit into that slot and then rest on the stringer. Remember, I am making the treads with an exaggerated overhang over its next lower riser, and I didn’t want the tread to flip up when it was stepped on. The rabbet notch prevented it.

But the tread also needed to be stable front to back. To this end I decided that it could be secured by “pins” to the next lower riser. I found out that ¼” dowel pins are commonly used in cabinetry woodworking. I acquired some, and a tool to help me drill the holes into the matching wood pieces.

There is a challenge to making pinned joints. I can drill a hole and place a pin on one part; how do you know where to drill the receiving hole on the other? My natural inclination is to try and measure with extreme accuracy. But I have been consistently disappointed with this approach. The tools, tolerances and material characteristics just don’t seem to support this technique.

But I recalled a past experience where I had recruited some friends to help me with installing sheet rock. One of them, Dave, was quite experienced (I knew this of course when I invited him), and when we needed to cut holes to match the electrical outlets, I started to make my precision measurements from the edge and bottom. Dave politely offered an alternative, and pulled out from his pocket a tube of lipstick, which he liberally applied to the edges of the outlet box. We then pressed the sheet of drywall momentarily into position, and then dropped it back down to find the exact location of the outlet marked in Passion Pink on the backside of the panel.

I applied that lesson to locate the matching holes for the tread pins.

You may be able to see the hole in the bottom side of the tread (lifted slightly up) that will mate with the (lipstick tinted) pin sticking up from the riser on which it rests.

Over a two month period I was finally able to replace four of the old treads and risers and see if the concept would actually work. It did!

The top four steps from the landing to the second floor were the training ground where I learned the methods for making and installing custom treads and risers.

There was however, an unanticipated side effect. Making carefully planned cuts in wood works well on paper, but the material and tools are not conducive to this level of precision, at least not at my skill level. The stairs worked, but they were noisy! The small tolerances needed to fit into rabbet notches and alignment pins resulted in a “clattering” sound when traversing the steps. Wood upon wood, at 200 lb impulse loading.

I don’t know anyone who considers the use of shims to be a point of pride. Most of us think of them as the solution to something defective, like that wobbling table at the cheap restaurant that needs a matchbook wedged beneath its foot. I’ve even heard of the concept of “software shims” to try and make one piece of computer code properly connect with another. It was discussed with a distinct disdain.

But sometimes this is just exactly the right solution. And I think this is one of those times. I saw an abundance of wooden shims underlying the old staircase, between stringers, treads, risers, and flooring. I will now apply a new type of shim, a thin rubber tape to cushion the impact of the tread against riser and make every step a firm and silent experience.

I happened to have a surplus roll of EPDM rubber tape from the roofing replacement. It was 1/16” and had adhesive backing. I cut it into 1” strips and applied to each tread, carefully noting the high and low points of the fit and applying the rubber where it was needed.

Some steps were a bit fussy, but that is the character of This Odd House.