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Wednesday, June 08, 2005 Here's a recent house project. I didn't have enough original woodwork to go around, so I took the best specimins I could find (not shown), and made a cast out of a special rubber casting material. I complain to Janice that she buys the bare minimum materials, and we end up in a bind, but this time I was the guilty party. I bought just enough material to coat the pieces, but the molds weren't thick enough to hold their shape, so I added plaster around it as a support. The results weren't perfect, but were certainly passable, and I doubt that visitors to my home will notice which are real and which are fake. I also under-bought on casting material. I decided to leave the containers unopened for a future (and smaller) project, and went to Lowe's for cheap, yet strong casting material. I bought ordinary fiberglass resin and fiberglass gloth. I mixed sawdust into the resin as a thickener (that's why it looks like wood in the picture), and brushed it into the mold. Then I added the cloth and more resin, then filled the bulk of the space with a pre-cut piece of plywood. I have been restoring a bedroom and bathroom for friends who are visiting this week, but I didn't get it finished on time. My albatross was the ceramic tile floor. I chose the most authentic looking tile I could afford, the little one-inch hexagon tiles, and installed them this weekend. The expert at the store said to be generous with the thin-set adhesive, and let the excess ooze up if it has to. Then, remove the excess only after it's dry, by scraping it. Well, she may not have understood what was involved when you use tiny tiles. There are literally thousands of grout lines, and while ony a fraction of them need to be scraped out, I spent 12 hours working on it Sunday. At the end of the day I saw that I was about half finished. I knew I had been beaten, so we decided we'd drop the restoration for now, and get the rest of the house ready for our guests. They can use our bathroom. Archives11/01/2001 - 12/01/2001 12/01/2001 - 01/01/2002 01/01/2002 - 02/01/2002 02/01/2002 - 03/01/2002 03/01/2002 - 04/01/2002 09/01/2002 - 10/01/2002 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 |