Tag: update

Mid-month Update – Jan 2016

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

We have a LOT going on around La Maison du Talley and I have had 12 texts and e-mails about different stuff, so here is an overall update:

  1. We have our garage permit!!  I did a victory dance when our contractor sent me the mail.
  2. Building is on hold for a bit though as we have an issue inside the house that has to be dealt with before ANYTHING else.  Looks like it will not be cheap, but it has to happen right now.
  3. The old garage will be clear as of tomorrow and ready for demo, but that has to wait on the house as well.  Dammit!
  4. Still don’t have an HVAC contractor for the house – 2 that can’t do the work until summer, one that won’t send a written quote, one in the running, one contractor that sent me a quote that is for almost the same amount as the entire garage build & double the next closest bid, and another that I am on the fence about – mixed reviews, but good pricing.
  5. We finally had the new hot tub cover delivered and it is fantastic: light, ridged, perfect color…  Stamps-With-Foot is stoked.
  6. Finished the movie (shot with a GoPro) about our cross country jeep trip, but YouTube blocked the audio because I used a snip-it of Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile, which is uber verboten.  I will edit it for sound this weekend – maybe some rockin’ blues and re-post with links.
  7. Sticking to my workout schedule and wrist is 90%+ healed from the break.  My gym has hung heavy bags and I want to start smackin’ them, but will wait for wrist to heal 100%.
  8. Still chubby 🙁
  9. Jeep is running great.  Front window seal is leaking a touch and need to unstick the odometer.  She will be getting an oil change and fluid check this weekend.
  10. The puppies/monsters are good, but they long for the Toulousian sunshine.
  11. I made three more bowls in pottery class and have decided to make matching food and water bowls for the puppies as my first project.
  12. My J-O-B is great.
  13. Really happy to be back in Seattle.
  14. Our furniture won’t be here until February.  Customs issues…
  15. Nana is good, her Seahawks are good. She wrangled 90 days of free HBO from Comcast, so she is happy.
  16. Stamps-With-Foot is happy to be going back to work.
  17. Looking forward to Date Night with my wife tonight at an awesome hole-in-wall Greek place in West Seattle.

Sorry for Being MIA…

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

I have been swamped for the last month and have not been posting. We have had friends and Family in, there have been trips for work and vacation, my J-O-B has me running in 6 directions – you name it. I will get my poop in group and post pictures from:

  1. A couple climbing trips
  2. My Son’s summer visit
  3. London
  4. Bespoke Shoe travails
  5. Hiking in France and Spain
  6. Barcelona
  7. Recent projects
  8. Stuff I am building
  9. Etc…

Thanks,

Matt

Kitchen Island – Update

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It has been almost a year since I built (with help from The Ruminator) Stamps-With-Foot a kitchen island and she has loved it (so I am told) and used the bejesus out of it.  I made a couple of additions and there are a a few observations:

  1. The wood I used as the base platform shelf was REALLY wet and I put 1/16″ spacing between the boards.  WAY too much.  I should have wedged them in as tight as possible because they have shrunk and now I have 1/8 gaps in a couple of places.  No big deal since it is tongue and groove, but I don’t like spacing that large.
  2. I installed an Arkansas Razorbacks bottle opener on one of the legs.  It was required.
  3. I had used a hunk of cherry tree trunk/firewood and turned it down as a lid/plug for the scrap hole.  I turned it too large since it was really wet and was bound to shrink/warp/crack.  My best guess is that it is done moving, so I put it back on the lathe and turned it down to size and changed the profile a little.
  4. The rolling pin is a great towel holder, but I should have/need to stop it from rolling – the towel slips off and onto the floor occasionally.
  5. I also originally finished the plug with walnut oil, but it gets handled a lot by wet hands and I had to oil it every couple of weeks.  This time I finished it with 3 coats outdoor polyurethane and then added a coat of wax.

 

Matt Talley Kitchen-Island-France-2014-1-262x300

Matt Talley - Projects 2015_03

Matt Talley - Projects 2015_02

Matt Talley Kitchen-Island-France-2014-2-300x263

Matt Talley - Projects 2015_29

Chinese Lathe Build Update – Pimp My Lathe Edition

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As mentioned in a previous post, I purchased a Chinese manufactured wood lathe shortly after moving to France. Putting it together and getting it running true was not a Herculean task, but it wasn’t a plug and play affair either. In addition to the initial setup, I have taken an hour here and there to make it bit more ridged and add some features that did not come stock, just to pimp it out a little:

  1. The base is now sheathed in 1/2″ plywood, glued to the wood supports and screwed into the sheet metal legs.  It makes the base a LOT stiffer and clean-up is much faster.
  2. After 4 months of weekly run-time, I have had to replace a couple of set screws and re-tighten the short bed extension outboard of the head-stock. The clamp bolt holding the head stock shattered and caused me some grief.  Chinese bolt quality sucks.
  3. The bottom of the base was finished with 2″ thick scraps and I added a couple hundred pounds of pavers, gravel, and crushed brick to add even more stability.  It is not enough when I try to turn a 15″ hunk of cherry outboard,  It still wobbles and jumps around a bit.  There is just no way to make the sheet metal frame more ridged.
  4. On the French cleats above the lathe, I added a tool holder and chuck/drive center/tail center tool mount for convenience.
  5. I hung a long compact florescent over the work area and on the side there is an IKEA floor lamp/spot light that I can move about.  Scored it used for $8.00!
  6. A tool grinder the I picked up for about $45 is mounted are the end of the lathe on a small table for easy mid-project tool sharpening.
  7. The capacity is only 12″ and that is not the magic number.  16″ – 18″ would be perfect for the bowls and bases and platters that I am doing here.  If I added 2″ iron risers to the head and tail stocks, then it would give me a 16″ turning capacity (swing).  I have thought long and hard about doing it, but haven’t yet as it might be a complication that is more headache than useful AND I don’t want to put anymore time or money into the thing.  I just want it to work.
  8. I designed a steel bed extension – modeled it in 3D and everything, but I am not going to have it made… I would be trying to turn an under powered Hyundai into a V8 4X4 Toyota Truck.
  9. For tuning large objects with the head swiveled, I designed a sweet swing arm tool post as well.  I modeled it up too, and decided not to have it built for the same reasons.  I will use the tool post arm that came with the lathe with a wood post under for support when I turn bigger stuff outboard.
  10. This Lathe will get me by for the next couple of years and I will go over it and repair/replace any worn parts before we leave France to ensure the next owner has relatively trouble free tool, but This is my last “cheap” lathe.  I am going to plop down some funds and get a Robust, Vicmarc, a huge Powermatic, Oneway, Oliver, or a Stubby – Something with power, mass, lots of heavy cast iron and reliable parts that I don’t have to screw with.

 

IMG_3410 Lathe Chisel rack 2014 Lathe clean aug 2014

 

 

Another Cherry Bowl

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I spent another weekend afternoon playing on the lathe. I made a mate to the cherry bowl I turned last month – the other side of the tree trunk. It was a little smaller block of wood and I roughed it out a little quicker. I decided to keep this one instead of giving it away and use on the dining table for fruit and such. It colored up really nicely – a warm orange that will darken with age, but it has checked a little more than the first one – it hasn’t split and hopefully won’t – but there are a few fine cracks that have popped up here and there.

I started it out thinking it was going to be a different shape, but due to some spongy fruit-wood, it became more of a vertically sided bowl with a deep finger groove on the bottom. Like the last bowl (and most of my bowls and lids), I turned a little detail in the bottom of the bowl because I think that curiosity should be rewarded. The bowl is again finished off with my own mix of beeswax and walnut oil. I am going to let it dry for a few months and reapply.

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Kitchen Cabinet Work Update

/ Matt Talley

There was a flurry of activity to get our kitchen done before our move to France.  I got it 99% of the way – with serious help from Mr. Flood and my sweet wife.  It just needs a little paint on the overhead fridge pullouts, slight pull-out slide adjustment and the installation of the custom milled and matched cove molding.  That will all keep until we get back to Seattle though.  My mom will be able to cook in there just fine as-is.

I feel that the upper cookbook shelf ties the old and new sides together and adds that part of the overall kitchen that was missing.  The shelf also seems to lighten up the space a little as well.  The wine rack was put in specifically for my wife.  It started as a discussion in the breakfast nook one mid-morning, transitioned to a napkin sketch, and four hours later, the carcass was built, bottom brackets cut, and block top was in the clamps with the glue drying.  After the paint was on and top installed, my wife swooned.  It made me smile from ear to ear!

The paper towel holder was a bit of a conundrum.  With low upper cabinets, there was just no good spot either on the counter or under the cabinet.  I toyed around with a couple of ideas before I decided to mount the paper towels on the old ironing board (now spice cabinet) lower door.  I used some scrap popular and turned a section of oak down on the lathe for the rod.  It is inserted all the way through the shelf and both wedged and glued in place.  My grand kids will still be able to use that towel holder when they are my age.  yes, I over built something again…  On the brighter side, the paper town holder bracket, the small round shelf brackets, the cookbook shelf brackets, and the wine rack brackets all match, again marrying all the different kitchen elements together.

Almost as important to her as the wine rack was the trash and recycling can drawer.  After it was in and painted I caught her pulling it open and closing it over and over with a giggly smile.  The curves on the side match all the shelf brackets – I couldn’t help myself.

Needing to Catch Up…

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I have been out of pocket the last couple of months and just haven’t found the time to post anything. Home repairs/maintenance, a really long sleepless trip to China for my J-O-B, local elections, the presidential election, deadlines and long hours at work, laziness, etc… have claimed all my waking hours.

I am spending the weekend with my lovely wife getting the house and yard ready for winter, drinking coffee, unclogging drains, and wading into my long neglected to-read piles of books beside the bed and in my office. I will take a couple of hours and finish some long ago started posts, organize some pictures and work on drivenoutside a little. I have some AMAZING pictures from China, a hysterical Brodie-related story to share, a few shop projects complete, some nice shots of our fall garden harvest, a long overdue trip report from a summer trip with The Ruminator, 7-8 videos highlighting thing that are hand crafted and a couple that are just beyond words that I will post.

Hot tub installation and emergency preparedness

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I bought my sweet wife a hot tub for our wedding anniversary. We had been looking for a while for just the right used tub, but most that were out there on Craigslist and the Inter-Webs were utter crap or cost almost as much as a new one. We found a machinist who wanted to sell his immaculately maintained soaker so he could put in a lux outdoor kitchen. It is an older tub, but he had all the maintenance records on it, the interior looked brand new, it worked great, and we paid about what it would have taken for him to have it hauled to the dump. I hired three giant Pacific islanders to deliver it – money well spent – then dug the trench for the electric and ran the wiring almost right away. I then made five trips to Home Depot and bought 2,450 pounds of gravel and sand to make a base – my back ached for a week from carring and packing it all into a solid foundation.  The the hot-tub movers were absent on installation day, so I used my big monkey-brain and with the help of my nephew, I moved the tub into place with rollers, planks, a lever, and wedges.   It is within 1/2 inch of where I planned it on paper and is almost dead level – 1/8″ up on the west side.

Due to my homeowner’s insurance restrictions, I was not allowed to wire into my main panel – it voids my fire coverage (yours probably says the same thing…), so I hired three successive electricians to tie it all in (one showed up high, the second was a complete no show, the third finally doing the needed work). While the third and final electrician was there and since I was paying for his time, I had him install a generator transfer switch, an exterior generator plug and a grounded exterior outlet.   I reasoned that when the power goes out, I can crank the generator and we will still have the fridge, lights, TV/DVD, and heat as long as we have gas.

Stamps-With-Foot LOVES the tub. Given to her own devices, she will sit in it all day like a Japanese snow monkey. It was great when the snow storm hit us this year in January.   We sat in the tub with snow piled all around, reflecting the city lights off its white surface.   I will build a deck over our existing concrete pad, from the house to the tub this spring, which will make her doubly happy.

November 2013 Update:

The tub ran like the German rail system for over 2.75 years. The water was always perfect, the heater and pump worked just like they were supposed to. I had a plastic fitting crack while switching filters that cost me $250 to have replaced, but that was it for maintenance. We ran the tub year around, turning the heat off in the summer for a nice cool soak on hot nights/afternoons. In the preparation for the move to France, I winterized it by shocking the water with chemical treatment, then I drained it completely. I vacuumed out all the lines as best I could – any water left should grow mold due to the shock treatment. I built a 2X4 platform and put the cover on it so that any accumulated snow or rain wouldn’t cause a cave in, before shrink-wrapping and tarping the whole thing to keep out any and all errant moisture. The cover has had it, and we will get a new one when we return to Seattle in a couple of years. My hope is that the tub springs back to working order and we have more trouble-free years together.

I refuse to facebook

/ Matt Talley

My lovely little wife drug me into MySpace kicking and screaming. I made a profile, started collecting friends, heard from some kids I went to Jr. high with (still great guys), a couple of old girlfriends stopped by, I posted some pictures, I blogged a little, collected more friends, posted more pictures, spent hours looking at buddy’s and perfect stranger’s pages, etc… It all got to be too much. I have so much other stuff going on that I had to stop logging on. I am not sure the last time I checked my profile, but I haven’t added anything in 3 years or so. I have left my profile up just because, but I am pondering the decision to delete it as it seems that MySpace has become the denizen of pedophiles.

Now the pressure is on to “Facebook.” Somehow a noun has become an verb while I wasn’t watching, but I digress… I have fought the Facebook wave for the last three years. My wife has a page, my daughter has a page (I check up on her there) the ladies at work have pages and speak of being one another’s “Facebook-Friend” and ask if I will be one too… Really? Isn’t working with me and seeing me 9+ hours a day 5-6 days a week enough? I don’t particularly want my coworkers to see what my wife, daughter or deranged climbing buds might post on my Facebook page. In this age of information, I think that I would like to keep my private life just that. If I want to share something, I will blog about it – I like having complete control of the content and any comments that might come from the three people that follow my online musings – for the record, my wife isn’t on of them. She gets enough of my sardonic wit from sharing a life with me…

Nope, no Facebook for me.