The Joint Book

The radiator cover previously mentioned was built just before Christmas and most if it was done with mortise and tenon joinery. I cut the tenons with the table saw, but the mortises I did by hand, and it...took...forever. With Christmas coming up, I expressed to everyone my extreme displeasure at the time it took to cut mortises by hand. I also discovered that cutting them by hand requires a lot of blood. I have a few new scars in my left hand now that I've worked with razor sharp wood chisels. Imagine my complete and utter surprise when my parents were kind enough to give me a benchtop mortiser for Christmas.


What does a benchtop mortiser do? It is essentially a drill press that cuts square holes. With the new tool, I was obligated to build another radiator cover. I had to see if it was any faster than my previous method. What a difference. It more than halved the amount of time I spent making mortises. I still made some mistakes. After all, power tools don't necessarily guarantee better execution. They do guarantee faster execution though.

Here it is in situ. Some of it came out better than the original, some worse, but its certainly good enough for going in an upstairs bedroom.



There have been a few things that I needed to build these radiator covers; a table saw, a benchtop mortiser, a set of good wood chisels, a set of sharpening stones for said chisels, a good metal ruler (marked to 64ths), a sharp knife to mark the wood, and one small book I picked up by chance.

The Joint Book

Originally I picked up the book as a joke, expecting it to be about something else entirely, but after I looked at it I realized just how handy it would be. If you are going to be doing any wood working and are at a fairly beginner level (as I am), look at getting this book.

The Taunting

Several weeks ago I was having a particularly bad day (today isn't going much better), so I decided to head down to ye olde break room. The break room consists of two soda pop machines, one candy machine, one refrigerated machine and one coffee machine. All of these used to be vintage; but within the last few months our company changed to a new vending vendor. Now all the vending machines have shiny new lights, pleasing green and blue colors, the ability to take credit cards, and funny little antennas that communicate my junk food preferences to the agri-industrial, oligarchical overlords.

Prices have gone up too. My favorite (take note overlords) has always been the Reese's peanut butter cups, and they were a hefty $0.85 for two standard cups, when they were in stock. With the new vendor, the price is now $1.00. That's $0.50 per cup. At the risk of showing my age, I think it's criminal that the fun and enjoyment I used to get out of four video games is now distilled into a few seconds of questionable culinary pleasure.

I make this point only to underscore that it was a really bad day. Bad enough that I was willing to trade in 60 minutes of 1980's Rygar for a few seconds of potential happiness.

Of course it's obvious what happened. I did not get my Reese's peanut butter cup. After I put in my crisp dollar bill and punched in 156 (or whatever the code was), I watched the little screw mechanism spin to hopefully drop my packet of bliss to the bottom of the vending machine. The problem was that the new vendor had installed that specific screw, and only that screw, BACKWARDS. Right before my eyes, mocking me, as only a vending machine can, my little happiness bomb of sugar and fat slowly slipped...further...away.

Some days are just like that.

Radiator Covers

Winter tends to be a time of reflection and rest when it is too cold to work on anything outside the house. Usually I spend the winter reading. This winter though was unseasonably mild. Most of the winter had lows in the 20's and highs in the lower 30's. We had almost no snow to speak of. There were many days when winter here in the Midwest reminded me of the winter days we experienced in Cork, Ireland.

One nice thing was that it was warm enough to run out to the garage and cut lumber on the table saw in short bursts. This meant that I was able to finish a small interior project as a test. Ms. Huis and I have always liked radiator covers, and of course I've always thought that I could make something like that. This was the result.

This particular radiator cover is in the girls playroom, where any mistakes will be less likely to be noticed. Cost for each radiator runs between $100 and $200 when using standard red oak as a material. Cost to buy new runs $600 plus.

There happens to be 12 radiators in the house. Two are now done. With any luck, I can do a few more next winter. Of course I'd be a lot more productive if I'd heat my garage. One more project...

2011 In Summary

When we told our four year old today that tomorrow was the last day of the year and that it would be a new year in two days, she asked, "What does that mean?"

I could have said, "Well honey, it's a completely arbitrary day chosen out of the approximately 365 days it takes for our planet to go around the sun. It has achieved its significance solely through a long series of historical decisions made by people over thousands of years. People ascribe meaning to the day, when in fact there is absolutely nothing significant about it from a religious or astronomical perspective. Furthermore, not everyone in the world agrees that it is the beginning of a new year. Millions, maybe even billions, of people in the world don't believe that there is a new year in two days. They have chosen their own New Year."

Instead I said, "It's like the birthday for the world. It's the day the world turns another year older." That seems to have satisfied her.

For me, 2011 will be the year that I started to ignore the blog. I did succeed in posting at least once every month (February isn't really a month), but only just barely. I'm not sure if this is an indication of fewer and fewer projects completed, or if it reflects an increased level of comfort in leaving things the way they are.

So for the record, here's what 2011 brought the House of 42 Doors.

• Early winter of 2011 was snowy, with entirely too much time spent blowing and moving snow.
  
• We had an early melt and the promise of an early spring. Sadly old man winter came barreling in though, and pushed spring thaw out until early April.
  
• In mid-April we had tornado warnings and sirens. The girls ran to the basement while I watched the swirling clouds from my front porch.
  
• Spring involved the big project for the year - putting in the raised beds. It was significantly more time and money than I originally anticipated.
  
• The local factory finally sold to a demolition/recycling company. While there's not word if they are going to demolish all of it, demolition has started on some of it.
  
• I found out that we didn't have enough shingles to re-shingle our garage, even though we ordered them when we redid the roof on the house. Currently I have a promise from the roofer that he'll get me the additional 300 square feet of shingles. I owe him a call after the first to check on the status.
  
• I also discovered that acorn flower is tasty, and a fantastic medium for mold. It's astounding how fast it gets moldy.
  
• I put in external outlets in the dormers and heat cabled in the gutters. The winter these last few months has been so mild, I've had no cause to use them yet.
  
• The dining room french doors are half finished. Only one more french door needs to be stripped and stained.
  
• I've almost finished my first radiator cover. Pictures forthcoming.
  

Really, its been a much quieter year. Next year is looking to be very busy though. We have two roofs to replace.

Here's wishing all of you a happy and safe New Year.

Vintage Hubbell Brass Light Switches

I have searched high and low online over the last four years for these light switches.

And I've had no success. My hope is that by putting up a few pictures, somebody out there there will find these and comment on them. As near as I can tell, these brass Hubbell light switches are original to the house. Harvey Hubbell designed these switches in the 1920's and was granted a patent around 1926.

I'm a little puzzled about the chronology though. Our house was built in 1921, so there is a chance that these switches were installed a few years after the house was finished. What I'd really like to do is get my hands on a Hubbell catalog from the 1920's in hopes of finding the first year these switches were sold.

When we bought our house, there were still about 10 functional in the house. The rest had been replaced by more modern toggle switches. When the house was re-wired in 2008, our electrician took out the remaining and replaced them with modern toggles. When he was done, I put back the functional ones in the public spaces of the house - the front entry, the living room and the dining room.

The problem is that the switches do break. They have one flaw in the design where metal fatigue causes a break after 90+ years. Two weeks ago, I lost the three way switch in the living room and now it's been replaced by a brown plastic toggle switch. It looks fine, but the brass ones look so much better. So I've decided to see if I can find replacements, or replacement parts.

Occasionally, unusual stuff shows up on E-bay, so that's probably my best bet for now. I did find these, as modern replacements, but they are still not quite the same. And using these are prohibitively expensive.

Here is a picture of the light switch outside of the wall. You can see that there is no visible screw or fastener for the plate.

The plate comes off by untwisting the round beveled ring around the switch. This screws onto the main switch and holds the plate in place.

The switch is screwed into an electrical box, similar to a modern switch. One difference though is the size of the switch. It's gargantuan compared to a modern switch. Also the wires are attached to screws on the front of the switch, so they have to be snaked around the switch to the front. One unfortunate side effect of all this is that there are live wires that are uncomfortably close to the brass metal plate that you touch when you turn on the light. When I installed the switches, I grounded the switch, to help with any stray current, but originally, they would not have been grounded.

Here is a picture of the internal switch. This is a three way switch.

And this is the switch itself. It seems rather clunky. The switch is a pivot point and there is a spring on the back half of the pivot. The switch offers resistance and a very loud "click" when the switch is thrown. As the bottom half of the pivot moves, it forces part of the teeter totter part on the right to move up or down and make contact as appropriate.

For many of the switches, I have all the parts and I might be able to solder them back together, but I'd have to be sure that the soldered joint was stronger than the original piece, otherwise it's just not worth it. So if anyone runs across switches like these and knows anything about them, please let me know.

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

It's hard to not anthropomorphize the House of 42 Doors. I often think of her as a beautiful, temperamental model who just happens to have an addiction to heroin, shopping and small furry animals. The last few weeks she's been acting up again.

It started after I had begun an improvement (presumably unappreciated). Every winter the gutters freeze up, causing varying degrees of ice dams to the house. We haven't had any leaks since the new roof, but I'm not willing to risk the roof, integrated gutters, soffits or beadboard that could all be affected by year after year of leaks.

So I decided to install two external outlets on the sides of the dormers that I could plug heat cable into. These in turn are controlled by a switch on the inside of the house. When the snow comes, I just flip a switch, the snow melts, runs down the gutters and I'm done. When the southern sun shines on the roof and melts the snow, causing it to run into the gutters and freeze, again the heat cable can come to the rescue.

In the time that I spent running the wire and getting it all hooked up, the house decided to give me three mice in the attic, a broken cold water faucet in the bathroom and a broken 1920's Hubbell light switch.

The light switch saddens me the most. They are irreplaceable.

Acorn Flour

A month has slipped by and every day that I look at my garage roof, it continues to look, well, the same. I've gotten in touch with the roofer that we bought the shingles from, and after explaining that according to my measurements, I was 256 square feet short, he suggested that he come out and measure it himself. After all, "I want to make sure we get you the correct amount. Too many shingles is no good either."

That may be true, but at least if I had too many, I could have started by now.

So for the last three weeks I've expected to see John climbing around my garage roof with tape measure in hand, trying to avoid the massive wasp next located in our inherited and defunct satellite dish. So far, I've been disappointed. I called today to remind him of the situation, but not surprisingly, he was not in the office.

I have other options of course. I did hunt down another distributor, but unfortunately, they are located just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. Hardly a hop, skip and a jump away.

In the meantime, we've been doing standard fall activities; tidying up the yard, washing windows and putting up storms, stowing the screens, chopping wood, etc. One new thing I added this year was acorn gathering. We have two very old (probably 250 to 300+ years) white oak trees in the back yard and this year was a bumper crop. Doing anything in the backyard in the last few weeks was dangerous. An acorn falling on your head, dropped from 40 to 60 feet hurts. A lot. Most of them have come down now, especially with the massive wind storms we've had in September.

I'd known for years that acorns were edible but never bothered to research. Thanks to Ye Olde Internet, I have made acorn flour. Acorn bread is quite tasty - earthy, nutty and mushroomy all at once. The smell of drying acorn slowly roasting in the oven is very pleasant.

The garden is winding down, and except for one very confused pea shoot, everything is dying and like us, preparing for winter.