Repeat Business

Theres nothing more satisfing than having a customer call you back to do more work. I got a call from a young family that I had done a mantle for some time ago. Here's that mantle, a modified version of the Sherwood.



They had a bunch of little trim details to finish up before thier new baby arrived. The neatest thing I did here was this little floor vent solution with the base.

Mantle Cap Installed

Heres the Cap for my detective customer installed. I ended up finishing up some baseboard for this fellow as well. He had been working on this family room remodel for a while and was almost done. When I offered to install his remaining missing mouldings, he was excited to finish up the job. I was happy to do it for him. I wish I would have got a close up of the base scribed into the stone, it was a pretty elaborate scribe.  It took quite a bit longer than I had budgeted time for, this seems to be an ongoing theme with my work, but we were both happy with the outcome. It took longer than expected (as usual) and it was getting late. Being the nice guy he is, he treated me to his culinary expertise with a fantastic duck meal. It was awesome.

Mantle Shelf

While I was making sawdust and priming and all that messy-ness. I thought I might as well bang out this little diddy of a mantle shelf for a Detective in the City. Don't want to be late on this one....

Finished Mantle (Montclair)

...and here's the finished product. All primed and ready to roll. Thank you for your business and have a nice day.

Mantle feet

So these are the feet those tiny pieces of moulding were for.

Big sanding blocks

I make these big sanding blocks out of scrap mdf by cutting the pieces just big enough to hold a half sheet of sandpaper glued to it. I use 3M Spray adhesive to hold it on. Works like a champ, spray both the paper and the mdf, let dry then wrap the paper around three sides of the block. They come in real handy for all kinds of stuff, like sanding the little nubs off these tiny pieces that like to fly out of the saw if you don't use the backer in the next post.

Cutting Small Moldings

Cutting small moulding short is really dangerous. The blade will grab it just as it cuts through and can hurl the little bugger like the pointed piece of wood scrapnel it is. I've seen them stick into walls. I finally figured a way to minizize the risk. Use a sacrificial backer to support the moulding. Duh. Only had to draw blood before figuring there had to be a better way.

Mantle Build

I've got a real simple full mantle going and thought I might post up the build process and a tip for working with small mouldings. The first thing you need to do on a build like this is create your cut list. If you don't know how to do that... well. I'm not going into it here. But these builds always start with a cut list that allows me to spend a little quality time with the tablesaw to produce all the parts to build the project. The first photo is all the cut parts for this one. The second shows the leg bodies assembled. Notice how one side is shorter than the other, this is so the mantle leg can overlap the ston of the mantle facing.

Shelf Painting Tip

I got a chance to work on the shelves for the media closet the other evening and realized I had a neat trick for painting stuff that requires painting more than one side at once. When you have something like these small sheves to paint, drive a few short screws through some scraps of wood to hold the part up off the work surface after you paint the first side. This holds the part up so the fresh wet paint doesn't get mucked up while you paint the other side. The fine points of the screws aren't the least bit noticable after the paint dries.

Robey Mantle

I got a call yesterday from a past customer that I did a mantle for a few months ago. Nancy is a professional color consultant that did a substantial remodel on her home and hired me to do her mantle. She has a wicked eye for detail and knew exactly what she wanted. Here it is. She was so happy with it, she asked me to design a cherry storage solution for her husbands den to feature a new flatscreen. Heres the mantle that got me the next job.

Lamp wires concealed

Here's what makes this mantle really special. Being as Nancy has that eye for detail she asked me to provide a solution for concealing the power wires for two Tiffiny style lamps into the mantle. The wires dropped out the bottom of the lamp and into holes in the mantle where there are recptiles for them to plug into. Not pictured are the finishing caps that fill the hole, they were drying at the time.

..and a timer.

The power cord goes down the mantle leg and plugs into this timer which is plugged into the wall. The mantle was built to bring the legs right up to the plug so everything would be nice and tight. I was really happy it all worked as intended....sometimes it doesn't.