Sunday, March 3, 2013

Putting a new toy to work

A couple of weeks ago we had friends over for dinner, and Amy was good enough to remember that I had mentioned wanting to get a sliding compound mitre saw.  She told me that she had seen one for sale, and I managed to get it over to the store on the last day it would be 40% off.

The following Saturday I spent another couple of hours pouring over my drawing of the panelled wall. Once I was confident I knew what we needed, we went over to Home Depot to grab the wood.  The next step was to find a nail gun, but I didn't want to buy one, so I had to wait until I could borrow one.


Yup, HUGE box...
she didn't like sitting up there,
not at all.
Looky all m'tools :)
One of GW's co-workers was kind enough to lend us their nail gun, so the saw came out, and while GW was out for lunch, I started measuring and cutting my pieces.

My first lesson of the day; I knew the saw blade would eat up some of the wood... I didn't realize it would eat up THAT much.  I'm glad I practiced on a spare piece first.  Always practice.



When GW got home, we put the bottom panel on first, and then the top on next.  We did the vertical parts for step two, as I'm sure I was either told to do it this way or read it somewhere. In the middle of doing this, we ran out of nails, so a quick trip to Home Hardware was in order.  By the end of our day, all the vertical pieces were up.  Yay!

The top and bottom 'caps'
Vertical pieces














On Sunday I picked up the tools again and got moving on the horizontal pieces.  There was definitely more measuring do to this time, as each piece is smaller.  I also changed the way I was measuring which helped A LOT.  I had been using the end of the measuring tape as my starting point, and by not using it on Sunday, I had a lot less trouble with the measurements.  It might work out fine for some people, but I guess not for me.

Horizontal bottom...
Horizontal top!














I didn't pick the wall pattern just to challenge my abilities.  I had to do it like that to account for the doorway which I wanted to be only one panel wide.  The trouble is, that our wall didn't divide nicely into 30" panels (the width of the door).  SO, creativity struck, and after spending hours drawing and redrawing the plan for this, I got it figured out.  It's actually made the spaces within the panels nice and big for the artwork we want to put up in the room.

Would I do this again?  Sure!  Here's some things I'd remember for next time though;

What made it easy?
- making a very detailed plan using excel, which allowed me to have the math there and also something visual
- getting the primed pieces of panelling to save me priming them before I put them on the wall
- borrowing a nail gun

The harder parts?
- not priming the wall before we put the panelling up.  I had read somewhere that I should do this, and then totally forgot.  Doh.  I also have to patch a hole.  Double Doh.
- in some of the cuts, I took off 1/8" too much.  In changing my measuring technique on Day 2, the problem was fixed.
- the amount of putty work I'm going to have to do (but it's part of the process whether I had been a master with the saw or not)

I have to do the door panels, trim, putty, baseboard, then paint the room and decorate!
It's coming along, eh?

4 comments:

  1. Wowwie! That looks awesome!! Very well done! Now, don't forget to do the horizontal pieces on your door, too.

    Can't wait to see the finished product!

    Trevor and I are also shopping for a 12" compound mitre saw for our baseboards in the kitchen... if we don't find one, might we borrow your new toy?

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    1. Merci! My mind is still working out the best way to do the horizontal door pieces - which parts should be attached where. Keep your eyes on Canadian Tire for the saw - that's where I got mine. But if you get stuck, I'm sure you could swing down and borrow this one sometime when I'm done with it.

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  2. Or you could borrow ours. There's no point in having three of them in the family.

    And yes! that looks VERY awesome! We have a room that could use the same treatment...

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    1. OH! You meant that for Sarah. I couldn't figure out what you were speaking of :-)

      Fear not, we'll get the farmhouse done soon! It was supper easy... except for what I noted above. Tee hee

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