Hearth Installation

Back in October we had to make a decision. Replace the thin firebrick veneer in our manufactured fireplace or consider replacing it. We like the fireplace but frankly, we were getting tired of it, while it looks pretty it burns  a lot of wood with minimal heat contribution to the house. Last winter neither of our heatpumps could really keep up with the temperatures outside, even on modestly cool days. We replaced the upstairs heat pump this spring at cost of about $5700 but we couldn't afford to pay the same for the downstairs unit. So we headed off to town and did some shopping around at a couple of stores.

It seemed that if we could find the make and model of the old fireplace we might be able to buy the proper firebrick sheets otherwise we needed to buy generic material and cut it down to size. Both stores we went to estimated approximately the same price for the material, not cheap but not super expensive. This would get the fireplace ready for another year (after getting the chimney cleaned of course) but we would still be at the same problem. Lots of wood burned, very little heat.

We explored the alternatives, based on our existing chimney and zero clearance manufactured fireplace our alternatives were:

1.  rip out the existing fireplace and chimney and put in a new chimney with proper chimney pipe for a wood burning stove and close in the existing openning and place stove in front. That was a pretty pricey option as the chimney alone with all its pieces etc added up to > $2000 and that didn't include a stove.
2. rip out the existing fireplace and put in a new one that was a bit more energy efficient. Still a substantial amount of money - perhaps the same amount as option #1 or even more depending on variables.
3. put in a chimney liner and route it out through the front of the fireplace and place a hearth heater type "insert" infront of the fireplace - approximately $3100 installed (liner, stove and installation).

Depending on which store we went to we got slightly differing opinions on option #3 with one suggesting that we could line the chimney and put a standard woodstove in front. In the end we chose option #3 with the Regency H2100 Hearth Heater purchased and installed by Wooden Sun in Charlottesville, VA.

I chose to take on the task of upgrading the hearth myself as I wanted to alter its appearance. The original was black slate and it really didn't look that great in my opinion. I wanted the hearth to match more of the stone work of the fireplace. I also assume that because the original fireplace was a zero clearance manufactured fireplace, the existing hearth only needed to be non-combustable as it was just black slate about 1" thick glued to the engineered hardwood floor with a ton of construction adhesive and then grouted. The H2100 Hearth heater specs stated that the floor protection must be R1.1 or greater. So my first step was to do a bit of research.

Turns out that stone itself has basically no R value, even ceramic tiles have a limited R value on their own. Concrete backer board actually seems to have slightly more R value then does 1" of stone, but still it also provided limited R values. In order to get the values needed without building a 12" thick hearth  I needed to start with a 1/2" Micore base. 1/2" Micore alone provides the full R value required for the hearth heater. Micore is a fairly soft material and is actually used as acoustic panels as well. You can get it in 4' x 8' sheets but its hard to come by locally. I wound up buying two 6' x 18" panels at ~$40 per panel.  All the sites I looked at on the Internet suggested that it wasn't adviseable to simply place stone directly ontop of the micore bur rather put 1/4" or 1/2" cement backerboard over the micore and then the stone. The combination would exceed the requirements by about R 0.2 or so which is actually a good thing - better too have more insulative value then not enough.

Chandra and I went out to Charles Luck Stone center  in Charlottesville and bought new flag stone - five 18" x 24" x 1" and two 24" x 24" x 1". We chose a light tan colored rock that was rough but seemed to match the colors in the stone veneer on our existing fireplace. We picked up the Micore panels from Wooden Sun and 1/2" cement backer board from Lowes as well as mortar, screws and some construction adhesive. With everything in place we got busy starting on Friday Oct 29th. We had to be completely done the project before the installation on Wednesday Nov 3rd. Lots of fun :-)

To get rid of the original hearth, I first tried to pry up the existing stone but that didn't work very well. The construction adhesive was so well attached to the engineered hardwood floor that prying it up resulted in the flooring coming up with it. While we wanted to go down to the oriented strand board subfloor, I didn't want to wreck the whole floor in the process.  Plan B involved getting out the circular saw, using my oldest and most worn out blade and setting it so that running the saw on top of the slate with the blade about 1/4" out from the stone it cut just deep enough to cut through the hardwood flooring but not the subfloor. Then it was a simple matter of popping up the stones with the flooring still attached.

Then using a straight edge and skill saw, I carefully straightened the cut line between where the stone would end and the hardwood would begin making sure once again only to cut the hardwood and not the subfloor. Because the hearth heater sits in front of the fireplace opening, we also needed to extend the hearth out in front by another 20" or so in the middle where the stove would sit. We went out 24" based on our understanding of the clearances and went 48" wide to match the stone we bought. We probably could have gotten away with only 18" x 40" after seeing the stove installed. But its actually better to extend more in front and the sides then the minimum requirements. Again we simply used straightedge and skill saw to cut the flooring and then pried it up. We scrapped off any remaining construction adhesive and vacuumed up the dust and small stuff.

With the subfloor exposed we cut down the sheets of Micore to fit and then using construction adhesive and screws we attached it to the subfloor. We ran out of micore on the far left edge so I patched in using a piece of 1/2" cement board. Since this is well outside of the "heat" area and way outside the required 6" on either side of the stove I don't believe this constitutes any kind of problem.

With the micore in place I put down the 1/2" cement backer board and screwed it down. Then we laid out the stones and figured out the arrangement to best match color and texture. 

We had to trim the two end stones and then trim 4 of the stones to work around the veneer. I bought a DeWalt Diamond masonary blade for the skill saw. I was amazed at how easily it cut through the stone. I'll be honest, I've had the saw work harder cutting through oak boards then it took to cut the stone.
We set the stones in a 1/2" of mortor using a trowel with 1/2" x 1/2" notches. After it dried for 48hrs we grouted it and then let it sit another 36hrs before we sealed it. We got the sealer on and dried just in time for the installation. Not much time to spare waiting the required times between steps.

The final installation came out really nice. They closed off the front of the fireplace with  a piece of sheet metal. The stove is about 1-1/2" in front of the openning.  I still need to finish off the trim around the stone to hide the floor/stone line. Being the first time I've ever done stone work, I think this came out pretty nice.

We've been running it over the past month, mostly during the evenings and overnight to keep the heat pumps from kicking in. It really warms up the house amazingly well for such a small box. It heats the lower floor, especially the living room and kitchen but we have the fan on the air exchangers running to circulate the air into the rest of the house. Upstairs it gets up to 74 degrees in our bedroom and probably around 76 in the loft (directly above the living room). The stove came with a fan that circulates air around the outside of the firebox which really contributes to warming the air. I haven't seen an electric bill yet, but I'm guessing we'll see a decrease in it relative to last year. For the first time since we bought the house I can honestly say that it is actually warm on cool days.

Built In Wall Unit - Part V - Design Mistakes

Its been a busy week, as I balance work with pleasure. I've spent a lot of time working in Sketch-Up. I'm actually starting to get the hang of that program. To date I've only posted renderings that don't include the face frame. When I added the face frame I suddenly realized that I had made a major design snaffu.

When laying out the available space, I did not take into account that the face frame does not necessarily center itself over each vertical case side. In some cases, like in the middle where two cases butt up against each other, the face frame is centered perfectly over the side case. But when the case is an end case in the run, the face frame is aligned to the edge of the case and not centered. So when I place the frame on the cases, and started measuring the opennings I realized that I was totally hosed. Almost every case had a different openning width and almost every door in the lower case was a different size. Okay not quite there was some obviously pairing on of sizes and some symmetry between one side and the other.

Okay, having realized that 5 evenings of work in SketchUp was pretty much hosed, I took a step back. Basically in order to design it correctly I had to start with the face frame and layout the face frame with equa-distant spacing on the various opennings. With that complete, it was a simple process of moving the case sides and lower case partitions to their correct locations - either centered or aligned with the edge of the face frame as needed.

The end result was nice even opennings but with the face frame removed the sizes of the cases went from equal widths to varied widths. This means that a shelf from one of the middle cases cannot be used in the adjacent case. Each case will have its own set of shelves that are unique to it. Its a trade off - nice visually pleasing cases that look uniform in their opennings. Or uniformly sized cases that all have different sized opennings. I went for the visual layout.  The following 3 images give a feel for what the final case will look like.

The following images show the dimesions of the case with and without face frame. It was a great learning experience discovering this in SketchUp vs. after cutting all the material . That would have been disastrous.

Built In Wall Unit - Part IV

Tonight I spent the evening playing in Google Sketchup 3D modelling a part of the room that the cases will be located in - including the outside wall, hall entry and ceiling. Part of this was done to start getting a better feel for any complications.

The first thing was to ensure based on my measurements that there will be a gap between the edge of the case and the wall. The door frame sticks out 3/4" and the face frame frame needs to be show its full reveal infront of the door frame. There is enough gap between the door frame and the case to allow the face frame to slide between the case and the door frame. The wall toes in at the top so the gap near the top will virtually disappear.

On this right case the face frame will overlap the shelf fronts by at least 3/4" (if 1-1/2" face frame) or 1-1/4" if 2" face frame. The face frame I think needs to be uniform across the entire cabinet. Because 2 cases butt against each other the minimum is 1-1/2". Where I'm slightly perplexed is how to deal with the scenario when there is but a single board on the edge. This happens in two places, the middle right cabinet where it meets the right most cabinet - remember right cabinet is 9-1/2" deep and the right middle is 12" deep.

And again on the left most edge of the last case:

Two thoughts come to mind:

1) just put the face frame on flush with the outside edge and let one side have a signicant overlap similar to the narrow case on the far right and ignore the fact that there is a marginal 1/4" overlap on the joints between two adjacent cases.

2) I could add a second board in the left most case so that it is double thick. There would still be an overlap that is deeper then the others but only by a 1/4" vs by 1".  Same goes for the right middle, but there one could double only for the visible part - front 3" and use spacers between the narrow and wide cases to fill in. Less wood wasted.

I've been searching high and low for examples in design books and on the web but thus far I've struck out.

If you can visualize it, this is what the case (minus face frames and cabinet doors, etc) would look in the space allocated for it.

Built In Wall Unit - Part III

Today was a day of planing and jointing one edge of the pine boards straight. Its too awkward to use my old Craftsman 6" jointer to joint the edge of these 10" and wider boards. So I had to resort to using a straightedge and router to joint one edge of the boards. I had to jump through some hoops to get the first board jointed as my straightedge was only 8' long and the boards 10'. After completing that I used the first board as the straightedge for router jointing the remaining 26 boards. It took pretty much the whole day to finish planing the last 10 boards and jointing on edge of all of the boards.

I still haven't planed all the boards to final thickness.. My focus was getting them cleaned up and then I'll take them to final thickness in a few days. I actually want to keep them thick while I do the glue-ups for the base cabinet. The base cabinet being 20" wide will require at least 2-3 boards edge glued. Once these boards have been glued up, I plan on planing them to final thickness using a friend's thickness sander. The sander will accommodate up to 24". Once I've established the final thickness for the boards for the base cabinet, I'll match the rest of the boards to that thickness. I was hoping to be a little thicker then 3/4" figuring it will give the bookcases a little more strength.

At the end of the day I got a pile of boards, planed flat and one edge jointed.

Built In Wall Unit - Part II

Tonight was back out to the garage and planing more of the rough pine lumber. Because I need the garage door open while doing it I have to quit around 9pm. When I can't work on the physical aspects of the project I've been working on the virtual aspects of the project - attempting to draw it in 3D using the free Google SketchUp. While I'm a long long ways from being any sort of expert with Google SketchUp - it takes me forever to do the simplest tasks.

Here are some of the exported images of what I'm building. There is still a long way to go and a lot of things to figure out. The entire project needs to have a face frame added to it. These would cover the joints where the units meet. Doors need to be added to the lower cabinet after the face frame is added and in the lower right case, there will be a grid of small drawers 3 columns x 4 rows.

By taking time and drawing it in 3D I'm hoping it will give me a chance to experiment with some of the joinery and design aspects before I start cutting things up.

From the design you can see that its divided into 5 cases:

Bottom Case - 5 doors with moveable shelves behind them
Right case that is about 9.5" deep with fixed shelves on 10" centers and a lower 3x4 grid of drawers.
Middle right case, one fixed shelf (2nd shelf from bottom) and 3 moveable shelves.
Middle left case, while currently its drawn as a single fixed shelf, this case will have 2 fixed shelves with a a pair of doors with stain glass in them in front of the shelves
Far left case with a few moveable shelves. The case is attached only on the right side and to the wall behind.

Built In Wall Unit - Part I

I'm starting to embark on my next project - a built in wall unit that will include multiple bookshelves, a section of small drawers and a base cabinet. The project will be built out of Southern Yellow Pine. Last Friday I took a drive to Fishersville with a U-Haul trailer and picked up about 450 board feet of 10" and wider southern yellow pine boards for a $1.17 a board foot. The wood is a bit of a mix. There are some really clear boards and some that have a lot of knots. The goal is to use the clear boards for the shelves and cabinet top. The less then clear boards will be used for some of the smaller parts, and narrow strips, working around the knots. Where we can't work around the knots and the knots are still tight, I plan on using those boards either as shelves inside the cabinet or on the dividers inside the cabinet.

Currently I have boards stacked all over the garage. I started planing some tonight. Overall its amazing the grain and the look of the boards. However, the boards seem to be taking a major toll on my planer blades. I want to at least rough plane the boards before switching blades.

There are two headaches that have shown up. In the image below, you can see a few light grey streaks in the planed lumber. They appear to be discoloration in the actual wood itself. These don't show on all boards and some are on only one face of a board.

The other headache involves the grain structure on these boards. Where the grain forms a "circle" the planer is having a very difficult time. I'm experiencing tear out on either one side or the other side of the "circles". Sometimes the tear out is very light and can be sanded out, others are quite deep. I've left the boards at a fairly thick size, figuring that the best way to deal with the tear out issue is to use new blades. By using the older blades it should get rid of the worst issues such as dirt and "candied" resin that I think is probably dulling the existing knives.



Receptionist Desk - Part V

Thought I'd post some pictures of the completed desk. I finished it up several weeks ago.

Receptionist Desk Part IV

Its been over a month since my last post. A combination of a lot of overtime in July and then a lot of concentrated effort to get this desk done. But I'm finally closing in on the finish line on the desk. It seems like the last week or so has been a hard uphill battle. Last week it seemed like every night I had to make yet another trip to Lowes to get something or other. Perhaps sometimes its best to stop, sit down and think vs. running off right away :-(

This week has gone much smoother though a tad slower then I'd have liked. I had hoped to be putting on the second coat of polyurethane this evening but instead I just finished the first coat. My "helper" seems to have disappeared this evening - claiming exhaustion. She's been up the last two nights late helping me get the desk done. We were up till 1am last night staining and she went out there a couple of times today to wipe off any stain bleeding out of the pores. Oak is nasty that way, red more so then white oak, but they both will "swallow" up stain into their pores only to push it back out over the subsequent day or so.

I'm pretty much exhausted myself, so I'm going to post some pictures of the desk in various stages over the past three weeks and leave it at that.

Receptionist Desk - Part III - Initial Dry Fitting

Its been quite a while since I last made a post. In that time we've managed to finished milling up up all the rails and stiles and panels. Most of the rails and stiles were cut to length and the tongue and groove cut using a combination of tablesaw and/or router (curved rail on the sides). Yesterday and today gave me the opportunity to finish fitting all the panels and gave me to the opportunity to actually dry fit the desk together. For the first time I got to see what the finished desk will look like. There is still a long ways to go, especially since I only really get to work on it one day a week.

Keep in mind when looking at the picture that the only thing that is glued together right now is the 5 boards that make up the desk top. I have yet to trim the top to length and final width. The top surround sits on top of the desktop. Almost all of the rails and stiles are held together using 1/4" width by 3/8" deep tongue and grooves cut using a dado blade on the tablesaw. The grooves run from end to end on the rails and stiles and the tongues on the end of each rail were cut with a slightly wider setup on the tablesaw using a sacrificial fence on the tablesaw. Panels are all 1/4" solid oak resawn from wider stock. It was a bit of a challenge to get some of the 10" wide boards resawn in half on bandsaw - the 3/4 hp motor really is only designed for resawing up to 6".

The sides are tongue and grooved to the front using a matched tongue and groove set from Sommerfeld. I was actually quite surprised how well the router bits work together. It is one thing to watch them demonstrate the router bits at shows and talk about having them matched length so that you can switch out one bit with the other without needing to adjust height. My Porter Cable router needed 5 of those rubber grommets that Sommerfeld uses below the router bit to let them bottom out. They only provided 2 grommets with the set so I had to go over to Lowes and buy 4 more. Unfortunately Lowes didn't have 1/2" grommets so I had to borrow the pen turning mandrel and put the 9/16" OD grommets and sand them down to 1/2". But after getting them working, it was a very fast setup and amazing results. I'm actually quite happy with the set. I could have perhaps used them to to all the tongue and groove work but honestly they are more designed to join cabinet sides to fronts and are designed to run offset vs. centered on the workpiece.  Plus they only cut 1/4" deep grooves while I wanted a deeper tongue and groove for the rails and stiles and panels.

As can be seen from the last picture I still need to setup for the drawers on the left and the wide keyboard drawer below the main part of the desktop. The botom will have a "baseboard" around it to hide the gap that is currently visible at the bottom.  I hope to put in the framing for the drawers over a couple of evenings this week. And cut and plane the sides for the drawers. I'll have to do some glueup on that sides for the file drawer on the bottom left. I also need to cut the "counter top" that will sit on that top "skirt". The wood is all planed and ready for the counter top, it just needs to be cut to length.

Lots of finishing details as well. But at least its starting to look like a desk. That's all for today.

Receptionist Desk Part II - Milling the rough lumber

It has been awhile since I've done a post. I had to work a significant amount of overtime at work and the amount of time I had available to putter out in the garage was significantly reduced. A couple of weeks ago, my sons and I started sorting through our stock pile of wood. Since the desk has a great deal of narrow and reasonably short pieces we decided to begin by utilizing some of the less desireable boards in the pile. By desireable I mean that these pieces had a lot of defects that would prevent longer and wider pieces from being utilized but would yield a good number of decent pieces for the rails and stiles required to build this desk.

We spent awhile sorting through the boards and estimating the various cuts to try and see what we can come up with. We chose a couple of really clear boards for the counter top around the top and a couple of boards that looked really clean for the desktop.

Over the past couple of Saturdays we've been working through the cut list and jointing and planing the boards required leaving them slightly oversized in all 3 dimensions to allow for some tension release. Tonight Johannes and I finished cutting them to width and thickness. I had hoped to use 7/8" thick material but a few stubborn boards would not cleanup until we reached 3/4". There are quite a few boards that are showing significant rayflake so the desk should really turn out very nicely.

We also began working on the desktop. We began with 4 boards approximately 9" to 9.5" in width. After jointing and trimming the outside edges and removing most of the sapwood and as many defects as possible, we were left with a 33" wide top. The final top is supposed to be about 32" in width. We will lose a bit more as we cut the glue joints. So the final dimension will probably be reduced to closer to the final dimension of 32".

The hardest part about working with rough lumber is that there are times that you can't really see all the defects until after you begin to plane the lumber. I chose two boards that had clearly come from the same tree in hopes that they would match up in color and characteristics. The tree must have had a mineral streak or discoloration in the wood. I wound up with a bookmatched dark streak in two of the boards. You can see the defect in the upper right of the image. The other dark areas especially in the foreground of the image are the result of the beginning of a crotch in the tree. There are a couple of other defects, one knot near the top center of the image and one in the foreground left. The foreground left will be removed when we trim the top to length (its a few inches over length right now). The other is removeable only if I narrow the desktop by an extra inch. The other option is to leave it, perhaps fill it with epoxy to level it to the desktop. I've done this a few times - once on my daughter's pencil post bed and again on the sofa.

Well that's it for tonight.