Basement Bathroom

There was a Pittsburgh toilet in a wooden stall in the basement. I removed the most of stall and the old toilet. I then installed new water supply lines for a sink, framed a room around the toilet waste line and new plumbing, and hung drywall. The old cracked single-pane window was replaced with frosted glass blocks. A slightly-raised floor was installed to accommodate a waste line for a new sink and to provide a level floor above the old cracked concrete basement floor. I installed wiring for a new light fixture, then hung the fixture on the new ceiling. I installed the new sink and cabinet, then painted the bathroom in a floral pattern to match the sink and cabinet. Last I installed the woodwork – a new doorframe, windoe frame baseboards, and molding around the ceiling, all stained in red oak – and hung the door.





Painted Patterns

I’ve been doing a lot of painting lately. The following are some pictures of some of the more elaborate paint jobs I’ve done.

A painted border in a living room.

A diamond pattern in an entryway and continued up the staircase.

A bathroom with vertical stripes and stamped flowers.

Radiator Covers

These are a pair of wooden radiator covers that I stripped and restained. They were pretty beat up, and the customer wanted them sanded down and stained to match her furniture. The old finish was sanded off, the wood was sanded smooth, then espresso-colored stain was applied, followed by three coats of satin polyurethane. The metal mesh was then spray-painted to match the newly-stained wood.

In addition to refacing existing radiator covers, I’ve also built new radiator covers for customers concerned about their kids touching the hot radiators and/or who wanted to hide their radiators.

Sanding off the old finish. The radiator cover in the foreground hasn’t been worked on yet, and still has its old beat-up finish.

  

  

A radiator cover with most of the old finish removed.

The radiator covers with the all of the old finish removed and ready for staining.

The radiator covers finished in the customer’s house.

Garage Door Facelift

This was a big job. The old paint was cracked and peeling, and had to be removed. Three cans of paint stripper and many hours of scraping later, the doors were finally ready to be painted. First a coat of primer, then brown paint on the frames, green paint on the panels, some new hardware, and now the doors are looking great!

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Cracked and peeling paint

The doors after being scraped and all gaps and holes filled with caulk

With white primer, the doors look clean and new

The frames are painted brown and the panels green

Painting is complete and new handles and locks are installed

Chair Repair Video

The following is a short video illustrating a chair repair I did recently.

Passover Project

Below are some pictures of matzah holder I built for Pesach(Passover). I designed it around a square ke’arahI had to hold square machine matzos. The front has double doors through with the matzah can be placed on the three shelves inside, and I carved the sides and back with depictions of a lamb for the pesach offering, three square matzos, and a horseradish for marror. It’s made from red oak panels.

Closet Rollout

This is a piece I’m building to make use of a deep, narrow closet. The closet is six feet deep and only two feet wide. It has a hanger bar running from the front to back, but the customer wants to be able to use it to store more than just hanging clothes. Simply stacking boxes in the closet is impractical, as the only way to get to boxes in the back would be to empty the closet. The solution is this rollout, which allows the entire stack of boxes to be pulled out of the closet at once.

 The rollout is designed around a set of 1’x1’x8” storage boxes the customer has. The boxes sit on 2x3s and are kept aligned by a frame made of 1x2s. It rolls on 2” casters attached to its underside. A pull bar about a foot from the top allows the rollout to be easily maneuvered.

Materials and labor - which includes accessing the problem, coming up with a solution, designing the piece, building the rollout, and assembling it at the customer’s home – comes to $150.

[Rollout was designed using Google Sketchup]


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Update 02/23/11

Some pictures of the finished rollout in front of the closet it was designed for.