Stair Trim-- partial finale.

Well, it's been a while and I have been quite remiss on updating the blog. Lots has happened.
For one, we are still undecided as to whether our next endeavor should be an arc or not. There's two of us, the two cats, and then there's the 40 days and nights of rain we've been getting in the region.

Needless to say, it hasn't been much of a Spring, and any moment the sun pokes its head out, I try to get something planted in the garden before I sink into the mud.

The weeds are absolutely thriving. We're nearing an all out man v. weed war here.

The good news is that when it's not raining, I can yank out the 16' trim boards out of the house and into the yard so I can work on the trim for our lovely 1st floor stair trim.

I started planning this last year, but never got up the courage to tackle it. See previous head scratcher here.

I originally thought I would have to use some sort of a large compass to draw the uneven stair treads onto the 16' trim board, then cut it out. I even built a compass out of dowel rods and wing nut screws. Turns out that was an exercise in futility.

Who says I don't get any exercise any more, eh?

















Nah, I started out the old fashioned way.

I put it off for a year.

















I started taking measurements.. enough to realize that this wasn't going to work for me. None of the steps were even enough to even think of a template. Non starter.

So I decided just to make ONE step, then see how OFF it was from step to step. AT least that would give me a general idea of how much I needed to tweak the layout.

















After cutting out a general template that 'mostly' fit all of the steps, I nailed a16 footer to the wall to make sure it wouldn't move, then used the template, a straight edge and a level to mark the horizontal tread level and the nose of the step. Once I had these marks, I could adjust the template to get a pretty good generalization.

















We decided to have a 2" relief of the trim (measuring 2 inches in from the top edge at a 45* angle). This determined where the nose edge and tread marks were made.

Then the cutting.

















I cut out the steps rather gingerly. I'd rather cut away too little and have to pare the cuts down than to remove too much. (BTW, on one step I did cut away too much, but I've got a nifty trick to fix it.)

















So after the cuts were made - yes, I cut these in the dining room. Did I mention about the whole rain/arc thing?--

















There was one step that was just... well, WRONG. No matter of pushing, nudging or persuasion was going to work.

So, yay for Bondo!!! I measured the gap, mixed the Bondo, pressed it up against the form with a straight edge, and taped it in place while it cured. Once it was cured, I glued it in place, sanded it down and painted it.

You'd never know it if I didn't point it out.

















, so now everything's in place, but because we wanted that 2" relief on the top edge, we now have these triangular nooks/holes at the base of each stair. (you can sort of see this on the bottom step of the following picture.)

















Easy fix. Bought a sheet of 1/4" thick MDF, cut it into 4" strips, then routered slight bullnose edge onto each side of the 4" strips, then painted them white. Two coats, minimum.

When they dried, I made diagonal cuts back and forth so each triangle I cut was usable in the corners of the stair, with a long bullnosed hypotenuse.

N.B.: not all of the triangles were right angles. I started cutting them all the same and then realized how foolish that was. I used one right angled piece as a template, setting it in each step to check the fit, then cur a whole bunch of 92-96* angled triangles for the uneven steps.





















Then when it was time to nail everything in place, I cut a small square of MDF out of the trim board scraps, and placed the 1" cut square in the hole, then nailed the covers in place. Viola.

But, before that final step, there was the issue of how to cut the angles at the top of the stairs and the bottom.

I did a lot of research and never got a really good answer, so I made one up myself.

First of all, I had left a little room at the top of the 16' trim board to play with. I used a straight edge to extend a line from the top edge out past the end of the board. Then I pulled it out of the way and placed a trim board along the floor in the hallway where it would necessarily intersect with the stair trim.

I drew a line out from the top of that board until it intersected with the line from the trim. I then marked it with blue tape. I then drew a line with a straight edge from the TOP edge of the blue tape intersection top the bottom edge of the blue tape, and then extended the line down to the floor. That was my bisect line.

















Then I eyeballed what looked to be a good wedge size for a transition piece, and measured out equally from the bisect line, then drew a line from each measurement down to the center bisect line at the floor. I traced this on to a piece of paper, then transferred it to a piece of floor trim, cut it out and used THAT piece to draw my cuts on the floor trim board as well as the stair trim board.

















Then nail into place, caulk and paint.

Oh yeah, remove tape. Heh heh.

















At the bottom of the stairs, I took a slightly different approach, but used the same blue tape. Once the base of the stair trim was cut so that the long 16' board could fit into place, all I needed to do was figure out where the horizontal board would intersect, then cut both boards at the intersection. This time, no filler piece is needed.

















































This one was a lot easier than the top. But now it's done!!

















Oh cr@p--- now it's on to the second floor stair trim going up to the third floor.

It never ends, does it?

Just how combustable is foam anyway?

Ok, so after some web surfing it seems I'm not as insane as DH thought I was. Either that, or I'm in good company.

I found this example of a foam fireplace insert online, along with an entire field of architectural foam products. Expensive, but very very cool.

This little guy here was selling for $630. A little over budget if you ask me.

A few links I've found woith some very cool aspects are www.foamsupply.com and www.foamdesigncenter.com for starters, but there are myriad others.

I guess the place to start off with on the fireplace is the beginning....




















Oh yes, how godawful that was. The fake brick trim, the crappy wood moulding stapled to the wall. Gives me the ugh-shivers just thinking about it.

That and the carpeting. ew.

The the accidental discovery of the brick arch under forty pounds of plaster is what started this all off. Who knows what we'd have there now if it weren't for my overzealous demolition.














I *thought* and I use that word cautiously now, considering the mess I'm in now.... that I wanted a fireplace similar to the one designed below. Just a simple two-column sides with a horizontal cap piece across the top.















Unfortunately, I've been seeing these go for about $300 on the low end to over $2000 locally for wood mantles, and frankly, they just wouldn't fit right.

Even the historically accurate ones I've found pulled from homes in the area just don't look right. I mean, it seems a shame to put this much effort into rebuilding this home from the inside out and end up putting this on the fireplace:




















I think these above were for sale for $100 each. Instead, we bought two nine foot high flat foam columns, cut them in half to fit in the car, and added a six window sill foam trim for the horizontal piece.

Here are the leftovers from the cuts made to fit the height under the sill. We had to cut a middle section out of each of the pieces. The column pieces are on the left, the sill is to the right, and the bottom footer was waaay too tall, so I cut off a good 5" off of the bottom and scribed the base to fit around the uneven brick and wood flooring it was to sit on.

We realized very quickly that the sill was not level. They are built for exterior trim, and hence slope outwards to drain rainwater off. We'd have to shim up the final cap piece and cover the gap with trim.

I was going to need to attach a 5' long board across the top of the fireplace to attach the foam sill to. I also cut out 2 smaller blocks with the profile of the sill for each end of the sill to extend back to the wall. I just took the middle piece of sill I'd cut out from the middle and drew the outline on a piece of paper, cut it out and laid it over a 2x6, drew the outline and cut. There's a picture down here somewhere.

We decided on leaving a 1/2" of drywall to the left and right of the foam columns to give the impression of more depth, but there was a bigger problem that needed addressing first.

The inside gap to the brick face from the foam was over 3", and the foam column extended in past the drywall by an easy 6". We'd need to build a brace for the inside of the columns.

I plumbed up the columns and attached them with a few screws to the drywall behind, then marked a line on the brick where the foam would need support. I thencut eight 4" pieces of scrap 2x4 and drilled holes in the center of each.

Then I placed the 2x4 blocks on the brick, next to a 2x6 on it's side which was edged up to the line I'd drawn. This was the line I couldn't cross, or it would muck up the trim that I'd need to use to cover all this mess up.

I then found the center of a brick and drilled a hole through the pre-drilled block. Once the holes were drilled, I put construction adhesive on the backside of the pre-drilled block and tapconned it to the brick face. I did this four times on each side; one each at the top and bottom, one midway up the base, and one very specifically where the two cut pieces of the column would meet in the middle, near the top.

Once these eight blocks were in place, I measured the gap at each location, cut a 2x6 to fit the gap and nailgunned the supporting 2x6 pieces to the attached 2x4 blocks to make an 'L-bracket' behind the columns.














Here you can see clearly where the cuts were made and how the foam is attached to the wall, as well as the small detailed wood cut on the side. (The window sill trim is about half the thickness of the columns, it needed to be padded.)

Next, I screwed the insides of the foam columns to the L-brackets





















Then came the bondo.

OK, these foam things are not meant to be cut apart and reassembled. They are not even, not exacting, and not even close to matching up. There was some serious sanding needed to get the top and bottom pieces to match up.














But once the screw holes were filled, and the connecting gaps filled and sanded, as well as matching up the side of the sill with the wood cut outs behind, then I needed to cap it off with a piece of poplar.

After routing out a decorative trim on three of the sides of the poplar cap, it was time to shim it out to level to accommodate for the slope from the sill. We nailed the 1x6 poplar board down in the back (closest to the wall) to the 2x6 horizontal board I attached the sill to. Then we levelled out the cap and put shims in.














Once all the shims were in place, we marked them, pulled them out, wrapped them in tape, and cut them back on the table saw. I didn't want to take any chances of snapping them off in place, or accidentally cutting the foam with a blade.

Then we pushed a lot of the construction adhesive into the gap, replaced the shim bundles into their places, and brad nailed the cap down into the shims.

The I found a spare piece of quarter round trim lying around and cut it to fit and brad nailed that in too.

Now I'm off to Home Depot to find another length of quarter round so I can finish the sides. :-)














Oh, and a quick word on bondo that sets up faster than you can spread it smoothly: *&$%#@!$!.

Thank you.














Oh, and just in case the brad nails didn't hold down the cap through the shims into the foam, we put books on top until the glue dries.

If you came here from the Hooked On Houses Blog party, here's your way back:

Hooked On Houses

If not, check it out anyway. She's got a free giveaway link this week.

Making your own 1/2" round door & window trim

I neglected to post what we did for the exterior windows a few months back. Since we're just about ready to apply this new trick to the exterior doors, I figured I'd back up a little bit and fill in the gaps.

Here's what the original (a.k.a. old and battered) trim looked like. A 1" 1/2 round to which the shutter pins were attached.

We noticed the trim missing from a couple of exterior windows; I guess they had rotted away when the shutters were removed long long ago. It wasn't a big deal, I mean we overlooked it for a year, so what the heck. The problem lied in what to replace it with.










And this one (the 'back window') is without the 1" 1/2 round trim.

I wanted trim.

So we looked for it.

And looked. Nothing at HD or Lowes, nor the local lumber yards.

We found that we could special order the 1" 1/2 round wood trim from a lumber yard about an hour away for about $10/foot.

Ouch. Not in the budget, particularly since this was NOT even discovered as a 'want' until later on. We'd be needing about 16' for each window at a cost of $160/window.

Time to improvise.



What we DID find at Home Depot was 1" 1/4 round plastic PVC trim. I figured, we'd lie them on a flat surface, glue them together with Loctite Power Grab, use zip ties to hold them together overnight and viola! 1/2 rounds that will NEVER rot.

So that's exactly what we did. And it cost about 50 cents per foot, well... $1/foot if you add both sides together.

The next day, after cutting the zip ties off of the lengths of plastic, they needed sanded where the glue squeezed out and I couldn't wipe off the excess under the ties. No problem.

Then we set off to cut them to 45 degree angles in the corners, cut all three pieces to make sure they fit together, then used industrial glue and nails to set the pieces in place.

Hint: When sawing the angles, do it outside. The plastic melting smell reeks.

Here's the first one with the trim installed on the right side of the window. This is the kitchen window.

Here's where it got tricky:

After all of the PVC 1/2 rounds were installed, it looked great, but there was still the 'channel' in the center of the two 1/4 round pieces where they were glued together. It wasn't going to look right if we just painted them over, we'd have to fill the gap, which was kinda the plan along the way... it just didn't work out the way we planned.

We decided to use caulk to fill the channel, smooth it out to a perfect invisible round, then paint it.

Caulk would just not work. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many hours I put into the endeavor, I could not get the caulk to lie smoothly. I had DH try it himself when he was absolutely incredulous that I (me, the caulk queen of windows) couldn't make it work.

Much to his chagrin, he couldn't either. It was WEIRD.

So we gave up on caulk and decided to do a 180.

"Why make it perfect? If it looks perfect, it won't match the rest of the exterior. Let's make it look OLD instead. "

So what's going to look imperfect, but hold onto the PVC, and perhaps even be sandable so we can make it as smooth as we want? Wood epoxy. Specifically, Minwax^® High Performance Wood Filler. It's a 2-part epoxy you mix together and apply quickly. It sets up very fast, so if you're using it for the first time, use small batches.


We mixed it and spread it on the channel, not too smoothly, but enough to cover the channel and make the PVC look like older wood. I made a small inverse-spatula to spread on the wood filler (see drawing.) by tracing the outline of the PVC 1/2 round onto a piece of plastic (I think from the lid of a cat litter container) then cut out the curve smoothly. I used this to smooth out the filler onto the installed PVC right over top of the round.

After 30 minutes, we sanded it, then it was ready to caulk the sides and prime for paint.






Here's the final outcome: (back window)




















Both of these two windows were done (below), the one on the left was the door we bricked in and made into a window, the one on the right is the one I call the 'back window' above).

We have plans to trim out our exterior doors the same way.