2021 - What Did I do?

I haven't made a post in quite a while here, so here is something for all my fans, "the Bots" to read....

2021 was largely spent on a tractor project.  I rebuilt and heavily modified a rotary broom to fit onto the loader of my tractor and engineered a hydraulic drive system for it also.  Here is a quick summary of that.  I started in Jan 2021, and finally wrapped it up in early Nov, just before the snow.  It was a BIG project.

So here is the mess I started with. I bought it off a farmer in MN that had it several years "meaning to get to it one of these days" but decided that was never going to happen. The previous owner had done some sketchy modifications to it also.  I wasn't even sure it would run but the farmer said it supposedly did when he got it...but sitting for years now.

I won't go through everything but I needed to fab a mount to make it fit the standard skid steer mount on my tractor.  But first I needed to add a Mid-PTO to the tractor and extend it to the front for the pump to drive this.  The mid PTO is a kit, so I drained all the fluid (and changed it while I was there as it was close to due), added the PTO and then worked out a way to extend it to the front with some shafts and some modifications to the basic design Kubota uses for their snow blowers and brooms.

This is the frame that mounts under the tractor to bring the PTO drive to the front all painted and ready to install.  Since this was basically all custom built, there was a lot of engineering and head scratching involved.  It is fairly easy to install solo.

And in place under the tractor, before it was painted.  The first photo below shows where the pump mounts on the front (the big hole with the shaft inside it)

So with the drive system done, I turned attention to the sweeper itself.  I removed all the old hoses and parts, tested a few things and then did another round of head scratching to figure out how to mount it to the tractor.

Here was after it was mostly torn apart. I had to cut off some of the previous mods that were done and then rework it to fit a skid steer plate.

I bought a mount plate (they are a standard item) and started laying out how to attach the sweeper to it.

After figuring out how to set this up I was here, ready for welding:

Working through where to place the diverter (which runs the angle cylinder), Got some hoses and fittings as needed to help lay this out better too.

I machined up a mount for the check valve mount that bolts to the shroud of the broom and clamps the valve and hoses in place.

I also had to design and build a tank for the hydraulic fluid.  When i finished it, it didn't even leak! A miracle! It was a very odd shape, necessary to fit, and I had a metal fab shop cut and bend the parts for me as I did not have equipment capable of bending stuff that big or heavy.  Then i figured out a baffle and how to mount it, and did all the welding.

So now it finally comes together after painting

All new broom sections!

Main broom frame parts put together and mounted

And finally hoses in place and ready to go!

And finally a little bit of an action shot:

Desk and Second Home Office

 With so much working from home happening for the past year, and a clear indication it is going to continue at least to some significant degree, we needed a second home office.  The upstairs library was the place to do this, so I set about making a desk.  My wife wanted to buy some commercial thing made of crappy particle board for a few hundred bucks, but I have had enough of crappy Chinese furniture, so I said I would build a desk after I wrapped up the last door in my main floor batch. 

Started around the first of the year and installed it in early march, so 2 months or so.  I was not moving terribly fast...  But here it is. One bank of drawers, where the lowest one is set up for hanging folders.  A pull out fully adjustable tilt/lift/lower keyboard tray and a small shelf under the shorter end on the right side.

The whole thing is built modular so each panel is knock-down for easy moving.  The top is the biggest piece as it is all one, and the drawer case is a bit heavy too, but not too bad.  Wood is walnut/walnut plywood with a clear/amber water based polyurethane finish.  Top is laminate with walnut edging.

This cost more in materials than the crappy desk would have, complete, but it is very solid and will last a lifetime.  It is similar to the desk design she wanted to buy, tweaked a bit, of course, where necessary.  The long side is a bit longer to make it more useful, I added the keyboard tray and the short side is a little shorter.

During construction:

 

And finished and installed:

Fairly simple, very solid, not too heavy to move around as needed (on felt feet).

Next up is general maintenance work on cars and I am starting on a project to adapt a rotary broom to my tractor, mainly for snow but also clean-up of leaves and such.  Somewhere in there I will get back to doors for the lower level and upper level.

2020 - Corona virus and Doors

 Well, 2020 has been quite odd as we all know with Corona virus causing so many problems.  For me it meant I have been largely working from home most of the year, with some days spent in the office/lab from time to time.  My main goal this year with the house was to finish off the doors on the main level.  There were 6 left to go on the main floor.  I have previously finished and installed 6 doors, over the span of a few years.  The total for the entire house is 24 doors, so with the 6 done this year, I have reached the halfway point.  

 I started with the 2 doors in the entry area - the office and the coat closet, and then trimmed out the main front door at the same time.  Here is a shot of the entry way area with those doors completed.  On the far lower right you can see a sliver of the trim for the powder room door, which was previously done.  With these, the entry way is now basically complete, other than the baseboard trim.

Next up was the door to the toilet closet in the Master Bath, then the door to the Master Bedroom - which is different than the double doors to the Master Suite as it closes off only the bedroom itself, not the whole suite.  Then it wrapped up with the linen closet door in the Master Bath and finally the pocket door for the laundry room.  I also had one doorway in the Master suite hallway going back to the laundry room and Master Closet which is just a door frame trimmed out, with no door.  This work took from Mid-May all the way up to Dec 27 to wrap up.  With everything else going on in life, it takes roughly a month to make a door, install it and trim it out, so this does not go fast and sometimes other things get in the way and I make no door progress for a couple weeks or more.

Here are some photos of (most of) the rest of the main floor doors in the master suite:

This one is looking down the main master suite hallway, through the double doors.  Master BR first door on left, Master Bath 2nd door on left, then the open doorway with the laundry room door barely visible just past it on the left:

Looking from the other end of the hall. Laundry just visible on the right, followed by Master Bath, Master BR and the double doors barely visible at the far end. Looking through the open master bath door, you can see the linen closet door:

Master bath 1st on left, open doorway and laundry door open on left:

And then finally the pocket door to the laundry room, shown mostly closed:

Next up I am going to build a desk for the upstairs library area to make that a bit more usable as a study/work area, and then I have enough wood left to make probably 2 more doors in the lower level for the guest bedroom and the utility room.  I'd like those 2 to be from the same batch of wood as the guest bathroom (the very first door) as these 3 are all right next to each other, so I want them to look very close to each other.  By the time this is all done, that will probably bring me into Feb or early March.

After that I need to figure out a good source for more wood as there will still be 10 doors remaining to make.  And of course I still need to trim out windows and do baseboards. And there are still outside projects that need to be tackled sometime too.  It never ends... But main floor doors are now done!

Interior Stair Railings - Fall 2019- Winter 2020

The railings will be similar to the deck railings with the "prairie grass" theme, also in stainless steel like the deck railings.  They are made in sections for each flight and bolted together and screwed to the stairs/floor.  They start as a basic frame and then the "prairie grass" is added in as separate panels that are bolted in place.  This makes everything much more manageable to handle.

I made a wood jig to start out and help me keep everything in alignment and at the right heights.  Here is the jig with the first set of railing frame blanks clamped in place for marking the angles and places to cut.

The jig is just a piece of plywood with an upper and lower guide that locates the handrail and bottom rail correctly.  the end posts are set plumb in the correct spots and clamped to the rails to set everything up for marking.

The very top flight ends at a half-wall that required a bit of fancy footwork to maintain railing code...

And to make the returns where the railing comes back around to hit the next one in a continuous manner, I needed to get all sections set in place on the stairs but leave out one little piece at the top so I could cut the miters and loop it back around.  Here are the 4 frame sets tacked-up and ready for the test fitting.  The wood blocks are holding them in the right place to get this set up where the missing piece will go.

And then getting them fitted in place

And the returns tacked in place and the mounting bracket that attaches to the next section:

And making the panels.  These are the panels that go into the railing frames (2 per run):

And finally got everything finished, ran through electropolishing and installed:

Start to finish - all stair work including the woodwork and the metal railings took close to 7 months.  None of this moves quickly...

Interior finished stairs - Summer/Fall 2019

This is what I consider to be the last of the really big sub-projects.  There are still several significant woodworking projects like the built-ins for the master closet and mud room, but they are not of the same magnitude as this one.  Finished stairs are very complex and detail oriented and can take a ton of time as this case involves a bunch of woodworking for the treads and trim work, and then a bunch of metal working for the railings.

I have already got a start on it as I ordered stair parts in late June and began prepping the rough stairs for finish.  I have a friend who did high end stair work professionally for a number of years and is now a general contractor, so I asked him over for some beer in exchange for advice.  Very worth the time, and a nice opportunity to shoot the bull as well...

So to sort this out better, I created a rough CAD model in my spare time.  Here is an overview of the stairs, with only the upper sections fully drawn.  I didn't bother with the lower sections as they are basically the same.  I also didn't try to put in the "grass" that will be in the panels as it wasn't worth the time in CAD. I just wanted to see how it would lay out and where to put break points, etc.

One of the first things discussed was that I needed an additional guard railing behind the fireplace as the space was over part of the stairs and still accessible somewhat.  See below.

So the plan is to add a short section of railing to guard that area like the outline shown below, behind the big brown block that represents the fireplace. Just a simple straight section about 3-1/2' long.

So I got started on that while waiting for stair parts.  The first thing I realized was that I really need the feet where the railings mount to the stairs first. With things like this, it generally makes the most sense to batch them all together at once.  I counted up 15, so I made 16 to have a spare.  I set up and cut parts, then drilled holes, countersunk for the screw heads and then deburred the backsides, so those are ready to go.  Should be no need to set that back up again.  Now I can focus on making railing frames.

Got that one section made and installed behind the fireplace.  This way I could move the handrail over to that side to have something to grab onto temporarily while working on the stairs.  I just clamped some wood blocks around it with screws at the top.  Very solid

So let's make some stairs!  I started with the lower level set as there is outside access on both levels, making it less painful to get around the construction.  First stop - the skirt boards (wide trim pieces) on the "closed" side of the stairs - the part against the drywall.  This board gets pre-finished after it is cut and fitted before installation.  You can see where I pulled out the temporary treads for clearance here.

Next step - the "open" skirt board and then risers (the vertical parts).  The open riser is the single most complex part of the whole stair assembly as it needs to be mitered for each riser, and they all have to match up perfectly.  Below you see the open skirt in place and all the risers set.  The treads you see are still temporary just to allow places to stand/sit to work on it.

Starting work on the finished treads.  The treads come with the return molding already installed from the shop.  Those are the moldings/nosings that wrap around the edge of the open skirt board

And the first flight all completed and glued/screwed in.

Since every flight goes about the same, I won't duplicate them all, but the next one had one big complication in that the open skirt board had to also cover this big triangle in the stair framing. this required a challenging glue-up of extra wood onto the skirt.

And the first 2 flights completed.  The next 3 photos show views of that, after finish is done.  Very hard to get good shots of something like this as the space to take a photo is so constrained that it is hard to see it like you can in person.

Next, I worked on the upper 2 flights, once our daughter was back at college (her BR is upstairs, and this is the only access).  It would have been best to start from the top as gravity tends to ruin things below you that you have already finished, but that was not workable here, so I just need to be extra careful working on the upper flights.

It took 12 weeks total, start to finish, but all the woodwork for the stairs is now done.  I won't deal with touching up paint or anything else until the railings are all complete and I am done banging into things.  Here's a couple shots of the upper flights, which are the ones you will see all the time.  Railings will be covered in the next post.

Spring and summer 2019 - finishing screen porches

I kind of have two things going on at once this warm season.  I'm wrapping up the screen porch and screened balcony from last fall and also starting in on the the finished stairs (separate post).  The finished stairs are a big project.  But getting the screen porches finished is another big milestone in making the house more livable.

So I started this year by making the frames for the upper screens.  Last year, I finished off all the main railings which was the far more time-consuming part, but was unable to get the whole thing wrapped up due it getting to be late in the year and the weather turned winter pretty early this time.  Well the frames for the upper screens are very simple.  There is no "grass" that needs to be done in the field of the panel, so it is really just a frame from angle iron.  I had all the stock prepped from last year, so it was really just measuring for each frame, doing final cutting, and welding them together.  It only took a week or two in reality (with other distractions in there of course).  Then I took them in for electropolishing and they turned them around very fast - 2 days.  So final install of those is now complete.  Pics below.  Now we just need screens...

They really don't look like much from the inside as they are just frames around the opening.  Here is a close-up so you can see the frame on top of the cap rail of the lower railings, perhaps... Lots of touch up paint TBD...

So the next big step is screens.  I was originally thinking about making my own screens, but this is a task best suited to someone already set up for it, so I am going to farm out the screens.  I am currently in the process of getting some contractors to visit the site and quote the project.  It looks lke there are several outfits in the region that do this as their primary job, so hopefully it will work out.  Drilling into Stainless Steel is not easy, so I am glad to farm that out...

More to come this summer...