Splinter Repair

Did you know that SuperGlue (a.k.a. cyanoacrylate) works great on wood? I'm going to show you how I used it to repair a splinter in my moulding.

OOPS! When I nailed the lintel to the cap moulding, I didn't have it straight and on the last blow from the hammer it caused a splinter on the face of the moulding.

After I applied a liberal amount of glue to the splinter, I clamped it with firm pressure and let it sit for several hours.

Here you see the repair after the clamp is removed and the spot is sanded.

And here's the finished product. There's no sign of the boo-boo anywhere.

Spring Bronze Weatherstripping

I decided to go old-school and install "spring bronze" weatherstripping. If you've never heard of it you're not alone. The only place in town I could find it was Wink's Hardware (which, bye the way, you must check out if you live in Portland). It's basically a thin strip of bronze that you nail every 1-1/2" into the sash channels on the sides, top, and bottom.



After a little trial and error I found the best way to install it is to cut a piece to length, mark every 1-1/2" with a Sharpie, and then tack it in place using only the two end nails. Don't nail them in all the way at this point.

Decide at which end you're going to start and nail that one in all the way. Then start adding nails one at a time moving down the line. Since you only tacked the last nail in place, you can pull it out and re-position it if you start getting extra length in the strip as you add nails.

Before I installed the spring bronze my windows were sloppy and drafty. With the weatherstripping in place not only will it eliminate the draftiness, but the windows don't rattle when opened and they have a more finished feel to them.

Finding Your Center

Here's a technique for finding the center of an object whose overall length isn't easily divisible by 2. I'm using my kitchen window for this example.

Step 1: Estimate the total length
Measure your item and round up or down to the nearest length that you can easily divide by 2. My window is about 25 13/16" wide. I'll round that to 26", which gives me 13" when divided by 2.

Step 2: Measure from both ends
Take the number you got from step 1 and measure that far from one end. Make a mark. Repeat from the other end. You should now have two marks that are pretty close together.

Step 3: Eyeball it!
Yes, that's right, eyeball it! The two marks you made are equally distant from the center, and they should be less than 1" apart. You can eyeball the center with as much accuracy as you need for general finish work.

Marmoleum Installation: Part 1

I figured since I had the day off for the 4th, I may as well start installing the Marmoleum-Click tiles for the kitchen floor. I will use this post mainly to describe the layout process. I'll add a second part when the floor is done.

Step 1: Choosing your First Focal Point

When installing tile on the floor, whether it is ceramic, porcelain, or in this case Marmoleum, you need to plan the layout so the finished product looks nice. This especially true with a strong pattern like the checkerboard we have going in our kitchen.

For a typical square room, you should have two focal points; one for each dimension of the room (length and width). For our kitchen, the first and most important is the main entrance from the dining room. It is a 36" wide pass-through. If I had not considered this as a focal point, I would have started laying tiles against the cabinets on either the left or right side of the doorway, which would have left the pattern off-center in the doorway. That would not be nice to look at every time I walked into the kitchen!

Once I determined this would be my first focal point, I simply marked the center of the doorway on the floor. Since I am running full tiles down the middle (instead of having a seam in the middle), I measured a half-tile's width to one side and marked that as my reference seam. I setup my laser level on a tripod to mark this line.

Step 2: Choosing your Second Focal Point

Now that I chose the first focal point, I could have just started running full tiles centered in the doorway, but that would leave an off-center pattern somewhere else in the kitchen, in this case the sink. That means the next step is to find the center of the sink base. Since I centered a full tile in the doorway (instead of a seam), I also chose to center a full tile on the sink. I marke the center of the sink, and then placed a tile on the laser reference line from Step 1. The full sized light colored tile centered on the sink was the first to be laid. I then measured for the cut tile that goes behind it (leaving 3/8" gap per instructions). Starting at the center and the working my way back to the doorway will leave cut tiles at either end of the row.

Here you see me working my way from the center of the sink toward the door.