While I have never heard much about it in the modeling press, Buzz Wilson--a long-time friend of mine--and I tend to think modelers are uniformly horrible when it comes to working around the house.
A few years ago Buzz's father-in-law died and Buzz tasked himself with the clean-up, spiff-it-up assignments required to prep the departed's house for sale.
The biggest challenge? Pulling back not inches but some 15 to 20 feet when evaluating the results of his work.Instead, he spent a lot of what might otherwise be viewed as quality time in getting molding to fit as nicely as capstrips. The application of silicone sealer around the shower stall to be a perfect fillet. Exterior weather seal around windows, ditto. The transition from kitchen flooring to wood flooring in the hall to be imperceptible to the touch. Gaps between doors, door frames and flooring to be even around the entire door.
As an aside, at the time Rush was recovering from a kitchen fire that was nasty enough in and of itself, could have been disastrous. Buzz and I wondered how it could be that Howard--a notoriously slow and fastidious builder, to the point of being a legend here in the NW--was doing the remodeling, floor to ceiling.
We also wondered, for example, how many days he would spend getting the flooring to fit perfectly around the kitchen cabinets, abutting the walls. Yes, these same joints being covered with molding at a later stage. And the flooring itself requiring some room for expansion around the perimeter, not an optional deal, especially here in the NW.
But such was idle speculation, especially as neither Buzz nor myself can possibly lay claim to being only marginally more efficient than Howard when working on home projects.
A couple months ago I got caught in this trap, helping a neighbor get his home ready for sale. This was made even worse by his insistence on doing the job(s) on the cheap.
He showed up with a spray outfit, two five-gallon containers of paint, numerous bulk-buy packs of good ol' 3M blue tape in the two-inch width. Of the three, only the latter impressed me whatsoever.
"We're going to mask off everything and then just spray the walls and ceilings."
"That won't work. We have to roll big areas, brush the trim. Trust me on this."
It was one of the deals where I really did not want to be correct.
But I was. I taped him into a bedroom. When he came out about an hour later the look on his face was the definition of total defeat.
"I told you it wouldn't work. Sounds like a good idea. It just doesn't work in existing construction. Especially when one's wife has been allowed to sponge-paint the walls in a splotchy pattern of blue and white."
"Well, duh..."
"Here's a list of painting tools we need. Right away, from what I can see. Don't buy the cheapest stuff you can find."
Did I say cheap? Expenses were an issue, the house having been rented--to White Trash, it turned out, whether or not they were "up-scale" White Trash--an unpaid bill of $28K weighing heavily.
The decision was made to continue with the same brand and color of paint, albeit with the liberal use of primer.
At one point we needed more paint, but I didn't want to get two five-gallon buckets as we might inadvertently open both, meaning neither could be returned for credit.
"Oh, I don't know. We need at least another five gallons, I'm not so sure about 10 gallons. How much does it cost?
"Twenty-five bucks."
"Hmmmm, I hate to take the risk in not being able to use $125.00 worth of paint."
"It's $25.00 for a five-gallon bucket."
"Oh. That explains a couple things."
Hey, I'm not the painter in my household. I do the heavy lifting, all the fitting together of stuff, but Cheri paints. The paint she buys runs around $28.00 a gallon...
"Better get two five-gallon buckets. Any paint left over we can use to paint your wife's van. Sponge-paint highlights, of course."
Anyway, it was a difficult experience. Even with lots of primer the cheap paint would not cover very well. There are few things more annoying than applying lots and lots of primer, a full coat of paint, standing back and then deciding another coat of paint is required.
This not made any easier by me being a modeler.
"Abe, look at this: If you line up just exactly right with the light from that window, see how the molding wanders all over the place? We can fix that."
And so we did. He pulled the shades, eliminating the light source.
By the time we got to the lower areas of the house, somehow I was not surprised to find the molding around the doors had been installed back'ards. You know how molding transitions from a thick cross-section away from the framing and then tapers toward the door? Not here, the result of Abe finishing this room.
I didn't even mention something that looked fine to Abe, was glaringly incorrect to my eye. And of course the miter joints were nothing short of atrocious, looking as if they had been cut with a hand-held hacksaw. I had no idea spackling compound could bridge such a gap. And of course long-term it cannot...
So Christmas is close, I decided to make three flower boxes for family. Off to Local Hardware for 1-buh-8-buh-8 cedar.
Dimensioned lumber but with the desired "rough" cut to one side, smoother on the other.
While I was gathering materials I was planning. Counter-bore for sinking the heads of screws, hardwood plugs for same. Maybe a nice wrap-around strip of hemlock trim at the belt line. As luck would have it, the table-mounted router is at my house, not my son's place, so the only question was whether or not the more prominent edges were to rounded in piece work or as an assembly.
In other words, I was planning to make flower boxes for decks and patios as any modeler would do: To furniture-making standards.
A direct result of that old-timey, needlessly dumbed-up, totally misguided B.O.M. rule! There's room in this hobby for everyone, or so we are told, although the past few months, a couple lawsuits and the supporters of said legal actions have given me pause in this regard. And what about the guys whose best effort resembles something along
Of course all of my plans came apart. And just to illustrate the depths of the problem, it was not until the act of first-shot, and temporary, assembly took place.
With the sides pre-drilled, all of the holes spaced from the ends of the wood just perfectly, spaced vertically to the same standards, I positioned an end plate, ready to screw it to a side piece.
As I was struggling to get the first couple pieces lined up to the same standards used in fitting the horizontal stabilizer to an Impact--and I overstate the case only very slightly--I was struck by the following thoughts:
"Wait a minute, stupid! These are flower boxes! They will spend all of their time outside on decks! They are supposed to be rustic! You've got the wood rough-side-out, just to add to the rustic look! And now you've got a tri-square, a framing square, four big-assed clamps and your perfectly flat building table all being pressed into service when a squint of the eye and pulling the trigger on the Makita is better, not worse!
And what's the deal with smoothing the edges of intentionally rough wood by shooting all the pieces through the router??!! That's going to look very confused, as if two different people made these things..."
Truly, it was a shocking experience. I actually had to take a couple steps back, looking at the first assembly, completely reconsidering not the project as being worthwhile or not, but much of the planned detail work as worthless foof and fluff.
Most of which was incorporated to feed my ego, to place my flower boxes leagues ahead of those whacked together by short, brown people making $0.46 an hour, sold by the truck load down at the same outlet from which I purchased (semi-)raw materials.
But today I have recovered. Work continues apace, the only modeling item to be incorporated being some high-quality System Three epoxy, originally developed for the assembly of wooden boats.
The only real care to be taken during final assembly will be keeping the epoxy from flowing to visible surfaces as that would prevent the cedar from again in a uniform manner.
And if the results look as if I have dumbed-down my woodworking skills, if I fit a motor and wings to one of these things and am awarded zero points during appearance judging?
So be it.
Dan
This page was updated April 13, 2006