(no subject)
Oct. 22nd, 2017 03:29 pmI just finished framing in the window downstairs. A while back, we got a concrete company to come in and cut out a tiny window and install a window large enough for a person to exit through, thus converting our two bedroom house into a three bedroom house, woo hoo. The down side is that they did a pretty messy job cutting through the concrete/stucco and it had been sitting like a festering sore for a long time. N found some stucco repair material and filled in the major holes, but that still left raw concrete all around the window. Framing it in was complicated because the window frame was only about 14mm wide, but inset about 150mm from the front of the wall, so I needed to get some very wide but thin material that could stand up to exterior exposure (albeit somewhat sheltered: it's under the back awning.) I got some redwood, that I cut and mitered to fit. The complicated part was that the concrete sawing wasn't particularly perpendicular to the wall, so I had to fit the boards to the concrete by removing bits of the backs until they presented a nice rectilinear surround. The more complicated part was that for whatever reason, they cut the sill so it tilted somewhat towards the window. I need to have the sill tilted away from the window, so rainwater doesn't end up settling against the window. Even more fun, the bottom ledge of the window was maybe 14mm above the concrete cut, so I needed to have a sill, sloping downwards, with its highest point below the edge of the window so it can swing open, and its lowest point still above the concrete lip that's tilting the wrong way. I came to the conclusion that with an eight degree slant, using 12mm thick redwood, everything would work.
The top was pretty easy to cut, the sides were only tricky in that I had to match the reverse slant of the concrete, then use a backsaw and chisel to cut in the sill at its eight degree slope. Fitting the bottom was kinda awful. I'd misjudged my eight degrees, that was too much, so I had to plane off a large quantity of the front bottom edge of the sill to clear the concrete, and that left me with a horrible sliding block puzzle: the concrete tilts downwards so the side boards have to be put in place by tilting them in, but the sill won't slide into its slot because there's concrete in the way. If it were all assembled in place it would be perfect, but there's no way to get it assembled in place.
So I chiseled one slot wider, with a bevel, so I could load in one side piece, the sill, then put the other side piece diagonally into the window, raise that side of the sill, get it into the slot in the side piece, then push the side piece into place, and finally jam in the top piece like a keystone.
And after all that, once everything was in place the window wouldn't open because it hit the back edge of the sill, as the sill was touching the concrete and slightly bowed upwards.
I got to undo everything and hand-scrape the sill to fit. This is a technique I learned from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gfish and Neuro. Usually it's done to make a dead flat surface, but I used a variant to match two surfaces. I scrubbed the sill back and forth on the concrete, flipped it over, and chiseled out anything that had been marked by the concrete, then put it back in and scrubbed it again. After about 20 iterations of that, I have something that's flat, well-supported by the concrete (as it touches in about 15 spots), and clears the window.
Now it needs to be painted and have some silicone caulk applied.
Framed in:
Wood shavings everywhere:
I mostly used my Stanley #4 plane, aka the Stanley Sweetheart, and that damned vorpal wood chisel from the 1880's that wants to draw blood every time I get near it. It does an amazing job in redwood, let me tell you what. But I did have a chance to use my Stanley #8, a plane that is quite a bit longer than my forearm/hand. It removes a *lot* of wood per pass, a strip 35mm wide that is painfully hot when it comes off the blade, and the reason I rarely use it is that I'm not strong enough to use it to its full capability. It requires more power than I can provide.
But at least it's done.
The top was pretty easy to cut, the sides were only tricky in that I had to match the reverse slant of the concrete, then use a backsaw and chisel to cut in the sill at its eight degree slope. Fitting the bottom was kinda awful. I'd misjudged my eight degrees, that was too much, so I had to plane off a large quantity of the front bottom edge of the sill to clear the concrete, and that left me with a horrible sliding block puzzle: the concrete tilts downwards so the side boards have to be put in place by tilting them in, but the sill won't slide into its slot because there's concrete in the way. If it were all assembled in place it would be perfect, but there's no way to get it assembled in place.
So I chiseled one slot wider, with a bevel, so I could load in one side piece, the sill, then put the other side piece diagonally into the window, raise that side of the sill, get it into the slot in the side piece, then push the side piece into place, and finally jam in the top piece like a keystone.
And after all that, once everything was in place the window wouldn't open because it hit the back edge of the sill, as the sill was touching the concrete and slightly bowed upwards.
I got to undo everything and hand-scrape the sill to fit. This is a technique I learned from
gfish and Neuro. Usually it's done to make a dead flat surface, but I used a variant to match two surfaces. I scrubbed the sill back and forth on the concrete, flipped it over, and chiseled out anything that had been marked by the concrete, then put it back in and scrubbed it again. After about 20 iterations of that, I have something that's flat, well-supported by the concrete (as it touches in about 15 spots), and clears the window.Now it needs to be painted and have some silicone caulk applied.
Framed in:
Wood shavings everywhere:
I mostly used my Stanley #4 plane, aka the Stanley Sweetheart, and that damned vorpal wood chisel from the 1880's that wants to draw blood every time I get near it. It does an amazing job in redwood, let me tell you what. But I did have a chance to use my Stanley #8, a plane that is quite a bit longer than my forearm/hand. It removes a *lot* of wood per pass, a strip 35mm wide that is painfully hot when it comes off the blade, and the reason I rarely use it is that I'm not strong enough to use it to its full capability. It requires more power than I can provide.
But at least it's done.
