Cost me a dollar bill this morning...
   
Thumbscrew ( still with cosmoline on the threads)is marked as a Stanley Rule & Level  Co.  No.8

On the other side of that thumbscrew is a ORD DEPT USA....Ordinance Department United States Army...

That 2" wide chisel turned out to be sold as a Blue Grass  brand. 

Irwin #6 bit. the other 2 as a 1/2" and a 5/16" metal bit...

Was a decent morning...Stanley No.8 brace?

I assume not, but I thought I would ask. My current project is a cabinet storage bench for our mudroom. Our builder offered an "arrival center" which was completely and utterly pathetic, built on site by a trim carpenter who didn't care. The room has doorways on both sides - one to the house (door long since removed) and one to the garage. The room is 63 inches wide and about 24 inches deep on that side, so I wanted to do a 63" bench seat on top of a 63"x20"x18" cabinet. Obviously, the bigger the piece, the bigger the problem. My current plan is to remove the door casing, quarter round, and baseboard trim on both sides, which should give me 63 inches of clearance and let it slide in. I might need to remove one door hinge (that 3/8" protrusion might be a problem). This isn't a problem since the casing and trim are pretty beat up anyway.

I don't see any way around this, but I thought I would ask in case I'm somehow missing something. With the door casing the opening is only about 62", so I'm assuming removal is required.

I tend to be non-confrontational. 

Home improvement company I went under contract with in January, promised work done by end of March and would be "in and out in 4-5 days". (this "promise" was only verbal, unfortunately and was made by a project manager who suddenly left the company.)

The job is to demo a bathroom adjacent to the kitchen, containing two load bearing walls and install new LVL and steel post structure to open up the kitchen.  Just the demo and structure work.  This isn't just some guy, it's a medium sized local company been around for 10+ years or longer advertised all over the place. 

It's now almost the end of May. They finally started ~10 days ago. Coming and going as they please, very little communication with me about when to expect them. When they do actually say "we'll be here tomorrow" tends to be when they don't actually show up at all.   They have all been very friendly, so there's that. 

I told them not to worry about the kitchen hardwood floor as they demo'd since that's gotta be filled in and refinished anyway to join it with space they're opening up.  There's a side room that exits to the backyard they wanted to use for access out to the dumpster. I told them that room wasn't being refinished, asked them to protect the hardwood floors and be careful (that floor was just refinished last summer).  They said "we got your back, don't worry"...  They put down a layer of that thin painters plastic and went at it. 


Well, it's now got at least 6 small chips and gouges in it.  Not terrible, but annoying. 

Plumbers showed up to cap off plumbing below the floor as part of the contract.  They arrived and as they opened their van doors, I saw a cloud of smoke. They entered the house reeking of weed.  My house stunk of it even after they left.  I have no problem with weed, but showing up at a customer's house like that??  Friendly enough, took a few hours to get the job done and left, and I come to find they made a stupid mistake and had to come back and fix it. Stunk like skunks when they arrived back the next day as well.  Oh and by the way the plumbers left all kinds of scraps of PVC and PEX and wrappers and empty cement cans etc. all over the basement crawlspace where they were working rather than bagging it up and throwing it in the dumpster. 

Oh, and the dumpster which I paid for as part of the contract, one of their guys brought a pickup truck load of junk from some other job site afterhours and nearly filled it with somebody else's waste. 

It just seems like sloppy, careless, lack of communication..  

Is this just the way it is with contractors and builders?  I rarely hire people for stuff, but this job really required a crew. 

I suppose I just need to vent.

Does anyone here have any experience with using that new two-part expanding foam for setting fence posts?  I am going to be setting up a trellis to contain some raspberry bushes.  Envision three cross shaped posts in a row with cable through the cross pieces.  There will be some tension to get the cable tight and the bushes themselves will add pressure as they grow and lean on the cable.  I was going to put the fence posts 3' in the ground and 5' above ground.  I also am actually planning on 3 cross pieces at 2', 3.5' and one at the top at 5'.  My original thought was to just tamp dirt around them, but I saw that expanding foam stuff and wondered if it would work any better to avoid the eventual lean in the direction of the tension.  Thoughts?

Norm Abram is finally retiring. He was one of, if not THE most influential virtual mentors I and many other DIYers and woodworkers have had. He has instructed and inspired so many of us to believe that we can build a project ourselves (“Hey, I can do that!”) or even pick this up as a hobby. (The New Yankee Workshop ceased broadcasting in 2009 but Norm was still making appearances on the This Old House series.)  He will be missed. Thank you, Norm!



https://www.thisoldhouse.com/23126199/th...norm-abram

Create-A-Bed Deluxe vertical queen bed hardware.  Box opened to show contents, but nothing was ever removed.  This is brand-new.  Retails for $395.  Asking $275 shipped in continental US.
https://createabed.com/collections/all/p...-mechanism

Thanks for looking,
Thomas


           

I don't have a proper finishing booth so dust and bugs find their way on to my finish. 

Last coat is down but had dust nibs and several gnats. I hit it lightly with 600g and now it's smooth but there are scratches here and there

What further steps do I need to take for a smooth, satin finish?

13 segmented rings, 173 pieces. 8" wide x 10" tall

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We had our kitchen remodeled and the backsplash tiles have a raised border around the perimeter of each tile.  They correctly made cutouts for each electrical outlet, but the borders prevent the outlet covers from sitting flush across the recessed part of the tiles.  Other than using a Dremel to cut back the raised border on each offending tile, is there a better way to eliminate the gap between the covers and the recessed part of the tiles?

As part of my kitchen reno, I'm pulling out two load bearing walls that form a corner, opening up into a space which was an addition to the house back around 2005. Anyway, the ceiling in the newer space (2005) is ~6" higher than the ceiling in the existing kitchen (~1990).  To lower this section of ceiling, is it just a matter of adding some more 2by material to the joists and then adding some strapping for new drywall to bring it inline with the old? Do I have to remove all the drywall first or just locate the existing joists?