John & Ron finished up the fence on Friday. We changed the size on one of the double gates to give more clearance for our tractor, but the replacement hasn't arrived yet. We still have some fill to do on the North West corner of the property and around the North entrance, so that part of the fence will have to wait. The standard ornamental iron gate was only 33 inches wide, anything wider was considered "custom" and very expensive, so we took our standard gate to a fellow here in town who does ornamental iron work and had him enlarge it. He did a great job at a fair price.

While the fence was under construction, I only had to be involved with problems & decisions on placement & techniques, so I made door jams & hung doors whenever things went smoothly. I routed the hinge mortises freehand with good success on the first two doors. There was less setup time too, but I soon grew overconfident & botched one. Now I use a template & take my time. Some of the doors I got were hinged to open opposite from what we needed, so I did a bit of chisel work & moved the strip of edge wood over to the other side of the hinge mortise to make a RH door into a LH.

Lynna had 4 cabinet doors that open upward & needed handles. She taped them on to get just the right placement, then made a template so I could drill & fasten them.

I used some scraps of Fir to mock up a window trim style Lynna saw in a local restaurant & we like it, but I'm going to do another sample with wider trim & a larger corner block.

We've been busy getting set for our fencing project. Our neighbor John has been hurting for work. He's not totally idle, but had several projects cancelled and hasn't had any large, custom framing jobs for some time. We had two fencing bids that were pretty high, so asked John if he & Ron would be interested in a few days work. They agreed & we ordered the materials & powdercoating. We had some freakish cold weather with large amounts of hail & short snow flurries but Tuesday the weather improved & work began.

I was also thinking of how I would fabricate my door jams & wishing I hadn't left my old Dewalt radial arm saw behind when we moved from Olympia. It had a frozen motor & was always shakey at holding settings, but perfect for the rabbet cuts I needed at the top of each door jam. I had been watching our local Craigs list but found nothing but large industrial models, DeWalts like I had before & large numbers of Craftsman copies of the Dewalt that were even lower quality. Tuesday while the guys were drilling post holes, I checked out a 9" Delta RAS that sounded pretty good. Although 50-60 years old, it was a quality tool, only lightly used & it still had most of the original wooden table top. Some of its paint was beginning to fail, & a bit of superficial rust showed through but all the machined parts were clean, everything moved smoothly & he was only asking $45! It was much sturdier than my old Dewalt & had a really solid steel base so I grabbed it. Later in the day, I bought some antique Stanley levels from a retired teacher here in Stayton. The levels are brass & mahogany, dated 1896 & 1910. He had refinished them but decided they were to big for the bookshelf he was displaying them on. Two 28" & one 12" for $20, such a deal.

Early Sunday morning on March 1, I took the dogs out & saw our mail box had been involved in a hit & run. The heavy duty box performed well, sustaining only a dent & some scraped paint. We let it lay there while we attended church & I gathered everything up when we returned. Monday morning, I called the local police & they sent an officer out. He was a polite young man & is going to request surveillance around our house for a while. Later, I disassembled everything, hammered the steel base & top back close to their original shape & managed to smooth out the dent. I re-assembled everything & had the box back up before our mail came.

I met our next door neighbor & shared the details of our upcoming fence project. She is OK with us trimming back her trees along the property line to give the crew room to work.

Wednesday, we drove up to Sherwood (a SW Portland Suburb) to a place called "Building Material Recycle". Its a large warehouse & yard full of used , new & returned building supplies. He also has used tools & machinery at bargain prices but they sell very quickly. The place is similar to the Habitat for Humanity recycle store here in Salem but had much more variety and better quality goods. We found a few Fir raised panel doors for our closets but left them for pick up later as a heavy rain shower kept me from using our trailer & we had the dogs in the back of our Pacifica. He had some wood trim at good prices but not much in the quantity we needed. He showed us some 1x6 Fir that Lynna liked, but the good stuff was mixed with flawed pieces & had to be picked through, which would take a while for the quantity I need.

Friday was a clear day, so I took our trailer North to pick up our doors & we decided I would buy enough 1x6 to do all the window sills, possibly more if I could get a good price. He had offered the Fir at .90/ft for slight blems or 1.50/ft for tight grain cvg. I had been paying 1.90/ft for 1x6 Hemlock, so this was a good price & we needed 110 feet. After some back breaking work, I managed to sort out 13 good 8 footers, still needed to find another one & I could see a new, unopened load of 1x6 nearby. According to the shipping label, it contained 2456 lineal ft of random cuts 6', 8' & 10' 1x6. I opened the package & saw very tight grain on the ends. It appeared to be better quality than the pile I was working from. The owner was very busy with phone calls & customers, so it looked like haggle time. After a bit of back & forth, I offered $1200 for the entire bundle & he accepted. (.49/ft) Since I was now such a good customer, I asked how much he would take for the 13 boards I had sorted from the other pile? He said $40(.38/ft) & made another sale. I will have to rip some down to smaller dimension, but there should be enough wood to trim & wrap all our windows plus the remaining door jams & trim. We also found some baseboard Lynna likes at our local lumber yard for .98/ft.

I drove the fully loaded trailer home very carefully, then spent a couple hours unloading & stacking everything in my basement shop. The wood is pretty nice looking & there were evenly balanced lots of 6', 8' & 10' with a few broken ended 7s & 9s . There is some clear but most have a few blems: knots, splits, checks or sap pockets. It has a consistent tight grain & is a good match to the Fir doors we already have. Only 4 boards were split end to end & 3 of those should glue back perfectly.

1. Just so everyone knows we're still alive, thought I'd update the blog now & add pictures later:
   
   We were pretty busy preparing for our February 10th moving day. The move went smoothly and we had three good workers from Bekins Cross Town movers. The foreman was a Ukrainian emmigrant, a very nice fellow who made sure everything was done very carefully so that we had no damage & no one got hurt. Since moving day, we have been slowly unpacking boxes, placing furniture, arranging our ISP and TV supplier.
   
   
   Lynna had arranged ahead of time with Willamette Broadband (WAVE)cable for a one day transition to shut-off service to our rental & begin at the new house. She arranged & confirmed a site evaluation several weeks ahead of time, then called to check progress & was told the site review took place & the hook-up day could proceed with no problems. Unfortunately, when the tech showed up last Friday, he quickly discovered the cable to our house had not been threaded through the buried conduit, sprayed some white paint arrows on the ground & told us he would turn in paperwork to schedule further work. I got to tell Lynna it would be another few weeks before we had TV or Internet. She made a few calls to cancel everything with Wave and scheduled an internet hookup through the local phone co. for last Monday(basically 24 hour service), with a satellite dish installation for this coming Tuesday. The internet hookup went as scheduled, with two good techs who quickly tapped into our prewired outlets and our dish & receiver arrived Wednesday.
   
   
   I did manage to install the cedar closet lining in one walk in closet and put up a new mailbox out front. Our mail lady came by ahead of time & picked out the exact spot for her most convenient drop off.
   
   
   I hooked up Lynna's washing machine and was nearly done with her dryer when I remembered it was set up for Propane and we have Natural Gas now. That's what happens when you don't use something for over a year. Sears had the conversion kit for only $28 but it would take a few weeks for the parts to arrive. Lynna didn't want to do without laundry for that long and the old set was 12 years old, so we bought her a new Maytag washer/dryer and I added the old set to things I need to sell.
   
   
   I put an ad on Craigslist Wednesday. Sold the Cabinet saw and Maytag washer/dryer set the next day & met two local fellows in the process. A Sublimity City Commissioner bought my saw & a Xerox tech was really pleased with the washer/dryer as their washer had just died. I got $600 for my saw & $350 for the washer/dryer set. Since I only paid $750 for the saw 15 years ago. So, aside from blades, my cost was only $10 per year of use. I had some responses but there were no takers for the old air compressor and my Bosch Mitre saw so far.....
2. A few days after our move, while we were driving to Salem, the car suddenly began making a lot of noise. We were going uphill at the time & it sounded like a manifold or exhaust gasket failure. I dropped the car off at Stayton Tire & Auto for Corey to check it out. Nothing as inexpensive as a gasket though, they found part of the EGR valve had blown out. The new part was $84, but the dealer had it in stock. Apparently this is something that can fail after 50,000 miles & the manual calls for replacement at that service. We just turned over 49,000 miles last week, so it was just a bit ahead of schedule......
3. I ran out of Cedar decking and had covered the remaining open framing with scraps of lumber. This was bugging me so John & I drove out to his brother's place in Scotts Mills to pick up 8 more 12 foot 2X6 boards. Tom wasn't there, so one of his crew helped us & ran the boards through their Powermatic 30" planer. Its a very impressive piece of equipment and made short work of my few boards. The helper said Tom had to attend a meeting at the local mill where they were announcing everyone was laid off. Tom had worked there since he was 19 years old. He still has his farm and sawmill operation but surely needed that regular pay check.

We have been very busy during the run up to our moving day on February 10th. Lynna has moved some utensils & pans into her new kitchen and we are transporting boxes up every day. Saturday we made a trip into Salem for shelving supplies and I picked up my saws from Western Tool. While I was unstrapping everything, John, my framer & next door neighbor, walked up to see if I needed help. I was using my tractor to unload everything but John is a former Collegiate wrestler & his strength made everything go smoothly. Soon the 500 pound saw was sitting in the shop. I had to make up a power cord, then re-installed/aligned the fence & extension table to get it operational & cut the shelving.

There was some 4.5 % mortgage money available, so we decided to recover a portion of the $$ we poured into our new home and did a 50 day lock. This has meant spending phone time with the County and our bank as Oregon enacted a standardized occupancy permit effective 4/1/2008. The Washington bank wants us to provide an OP but our permit was issued 1/3/2008 and the new law requires the County to use the prior process where they only provide a copy of the inspection record showing sign off on the final inspection. I worked through the bureaucracy and obtained statements explaining the intricacies of Oregon law and a "Certificate of Final Approval" which should satisfy the financial gnomes.

The Daly's finish coat dried to a semi-matte finish that Lynna likes so we didn't need any burnishing. I moved on to installing shelving in the pantry & linen closet. The pantry shelves are joined with a rabetted joint and I had to make a template for the odd shape of our Master Bath linen closet. The angled cuts on both ends match pretty well. Some of the other bedroom closets also have angled side walls that will require the same approach.