Yeah... but during lockdown? Getting a sheet or two is a REAL pain... never mind mudding, etc. Never mind to do it properly would require proper electrical work, and some rj45 and coax splicing. And some new studding. It would have been a TON more work than what I opted for.
And so it begins... This is 180 feet of grade L "Blue" (medium duty) copper pipe. As I mentioned here, https://www.theidiotboard.com/threads/rant-rave-thread.6/page-1100#post-650803, I have ANOTHER broken PLASTIC pipe under my house. So I'm just going to bypass all of the pipes under the house/ lot, and run a new copper line around all of the concrete. This is just the beginning, wait for updates. One last thing to mention: When checking out at Home Depot, we got the DUMBEST employee yet. This woman didn't know her ass from a hole in the ground, didn't know the protocol for large orders, and just seemed to have a tenuous grasp on reality in general. And remember people (I'm never going to shut up about this): HOME DEPOT WOULD NEVER HIRE ME. That pisses me off a lot more than it should.
Have fun with that! I recommend having a fire extinguisher on hand if you’re sweating copper anywhere near the wood on your house. Shit can catch on fire pretty easily when all you’re focused on is the copper.
No wood around, all I'm dealing with is concrete... THICK AS FUCK CONCRETE. Thanks for the warning though, I'll show y'all some pictures tomorrow.
Years ago I watched a house 2 doors down burn to the ground because a pro plumber caught the lath backing on the inside wall on fire... it was an old building, lath and plaster... dried as fuck lath... it just snaked up the inside of the walls straight to the attic and it was over in minutes. Dude tried to throw water on it, but because it was climbing, couldn't reach it... and he went to the truck to get the extinguisher and couldn't get back in the house because it was already too late. If he had the extinguisher there he would have had a better shot at spraying it up inside the wall to get at the fire. It was a lesson I took to heart. Needless to say, I have fire extinguishers all over the shop, and even under the drivers seat of my vehicles.
You can get a special flame resistant carbon mat that you can cut to size and either staple, tape, or press into place (like between ceiling joists) that will prevent the torch from hitting any wood while you're sweating the pipe. My dad and I used one a while ago and it worked great. We did have an extinguisher right there in case, though.
Finally got the flooring in. Pretty happy with it. All that is left is milling up and installing some baseboards. I made the flooring out of hickory, and the baseboards will be a curly maple with a simple chamfer and roundover on the top. Simple, but should fit the motif quite nicely.
Interesting, I can't recall seeing unpainted base boards outside of 80's "oak everything" homes. Can't wait for the pics!
All the baseboards in the house now are typical primer white... I'll be using some Danish Oil on the baseboards, and might try something a little darker for a stain... but yeah, it'll be interesting...
The corner and the baseboard area will be covered with some hardwood (that's why they're not painted yet). That's also why I was extremely lazy with my painting... so I minimized the amount of cutting I had to do.
The interesting thing right now is that the type of wood I want to buy is STUPID cheap, compared to the shit they carry in Home Despot or other big box stores. I'm able to take a huge rough sawn log (like 8" thick), and then resaw it and mill it down to whatever dimensions I want. Being Ontario, we have a shit ton of that raw lumber available, so it's way, way cheaper than buying dimensional stuff. It's only a matter of time and equipment, and I have plenty of both.
I should mention that I bought all the wood I need for this project a year ago... but am also steadily buying more as it comes available, and am storing it in my garage as it dries out. Needless to say I have all the hardwood I need for the next few major projects. One thing I'm really looking forward to is replacing the window and door jams. I want to make custom casings out of black walnut and mahogany for this room... and then make a custom black walnut door to replace the shitty hollow core POS from Home Despot. As much as this has taken a long time, it's a pretty fun project that I'm excited to work on.
This is the test run I did for the process. Ignore the shit mitre, but this is the same stock, with the dimensions and profile I’ve settled on.
Sanded to 80 grit with the drum sander, slight hand sand to knock the corners down, then a single application of natural Watco Danish Oil.
The crazy part is that the maple I'm using is almost considered scrap around my parts... it's constantly being pulled from people's yards as part of tree trimming or dead trees, etc, so rough cut slabs of it are dirt cheap. As long as you have the time and equipment to mill it down yourself, you're gold.
I wish maple was abundant around here. Or around here. Only fancy wood around here is fir or birch. We have tons of cedar but that is so soft you dont make much out of that.