A short return

The return to St John was uneventful. What's better than that. The truck started right up, just a little air in the tire and I was good to go. With my friend Roger letting me park at his building I simply walk off the barge a couple of island blocks and I'm at the truck. It makes the red eye more than tolerable.

Nothing had moved into the shack while I was gone. Plug everything in and it's like I never left. Bringing fresh coffee and bread on my return, as I do, the next morning I'm not even sure I really left. For the next couple of days I simply chill and take inventory and put a punch list together for St Thomas. I need lumber, plaster and food.

The bathroom window takes shape. There will be no glass.
A stout wooden or metal grill with storm shutters when necessary.

Keeping it simple and strong, same as upstairs. 2x10's cut to fit for the 8" jams and 1x4 for the trim. Everything put up with Blue Climaseal Tapcons. Counter sink, tap hole in concrete, screw them home.

 





 

 

 

For the most part the four concrete openings were pretty square and true. The one headache, always, a wall was not plumb. It was out almost a full 3/4 inch top to bottom over the ten foot height. It gave me problems hanging the trim on the door below where said wall met an interior wall. If I didn't tell you about it you wouldn't see it, especially by distracting you by waving my hands as we talk! Other than that the lumber from MSI was pretty good. As usual, I hung it wet and let it dry, bolted in place. True, I have to sand it in place rather than on some saw horses but I avoid any twisted sisters--not to mention I don't have to set aside a drying area which only gets in the way. The place is already a mess.
 



 

 

 

 

At the risk of having some of you never talking to me again here's the shack in all its glory. Every five months, or so, I get a one month reprieve back in SF. It wasn't supposed to be for this long!
I could be sitting here instead if I hadn't got this crazy idea years ago. I do scratch my head sometimes.

Then I wake up and it is back to work.

Next up the doors, 8 footers. We're living large! Three per doorway for a grand 7' 1/2" opening on two sides of the bedroom. First up, the termite damage. The picture below was pretty much the standard in a few spots. The truth is, it was a miracle that they passed them up to eat all the pallets first. Also helping, perhaps the reason, was the very stiff plastic/cellophane wrapping reflected in the picture above. It is a credit to Jeldwen that these simple fir doors withstood being encapsulated in a container sized termite nest with ungodly temps and drenching humidity. Not one door suffered any noticeable damage. There was some minor stuff, more on that later.

This is why god invented wood putty

Years ago when I had grander plans, Jim Phillips a local builder recommended that I purchase a Porter Cable Hinge Jam Template kit when he heard I had purchased "slab" doors. I took his advice---THANK GOD. $250 well spent.

Without this kit there is no way I would have been able to accurately chisel out all the jams I needed.

I had a lot of jams to cut in. With the kit, shown above, you space out your jam templates connecting them all together with the adjustable rods. After routing out each jam you simply move the setup to each door and then ultimately to the door frame itself so that every hinge is perfectly aligned. There is no way, no way, I would have been able to pull this off on a triple bi-fold setup with 8' French doors.

Below is the mock up that I had to constantly refer to. It looks simple but it does get confusing as to what side of the door you are doing.

In reality there were four hinges not the three drawn in.

Of course there had to be some drama, nothing is allowed to go smoothly without first creating a little panic. My very inexpensive router that came with a table did not have the black "sub base" shown above. In fact Ryobi doesn't even sell one. My friend Steve loaned me one off an old Porter Cable that no longer worked. I screwed it to the plastic housing on mine. Without it I could not use the jam kit. It holds the center guide such that you don't chew thru the templates with the router bit.

Hard to believe. The helicopter above, at huge taxpayer expense spends days every year flying all over the island looking for weed plants. Several law enforcement agencies get involved driving around in black SUV's. Usual haul, 2 or 3 potted plants every year. You can't make up this kind of stupidity. Meanwhile when they catch the local police dealing cocaine in quantity they basically slap them on the wrist under the pretense that they "cooperated". The guy with the potted plant gets his life ruined. The police, they get to keep their pensions. WTF!

 

 

A genuine character that I had the pleasure of talking to on several occasions. He knew he had terminal cancer which we discussed at length--the psychological changes that naturally occur so the end is not so bad if you embrace it. He did.

 

http://newsofstjohn.com/2013/08/27/a-tribute-to-pirate-bill/ 

 



 

 

The plan--a pickled white wash finish with a low lustre marine varnish. A quick sand to remove some termite problems/stains and then get them done and up. After all, it is hurricane season, that's why I am working on the doors and not finishing the walls. I now have a semi finished interior that has to be protected. The white washing goes very fast compared to painting with its drying times. It ended up taking a couple of more coats than I anticipated. The fir was tripping orange as I applied the wash, not what I had in mind. In fact, we had originally hoped to just stain them for the Tuscany look but it was not to be. These doors were meant to be painted especially after aging in the containers.

When closed, as above, the door on the right acts like a single door. I haven't put the hardware on yet. The same arrangement with the three doors on the other side, not shown. My guess is most of the times the doors will be closed but you never know. The wild goats may have something to do with it.

 

 



 Some days, actually all days I have to pull over at the over look. It never gets old. The music was playing in the truck at the time. Youtube will probably flag it.

 

Our ship has come in. The kitchen, gutters, closets, storage items and even two leather couches! Several trips to Cruz Bay/Tropical shipping to load the truck. If you think carrying down plywood or travertine has its issues you should try leather couches! Its not the weight so much, it's getting your arms around the suckers.

 

the gutters

 

Thankfully I could break it down. Same drill as before, about fifty trips down the ramp etc. I cleaned out upstairs before starting the work downstairs and now it's packed again! You think you have a small galley kitchen until you see it in parts. Good grief. It literally took me an entire day to inventory the invoices. Then when I found something missing I had to do it all over again the next day to be sure. Yup, a base cabinet assembly was missing. Ikea was good about it. However they would only mail it to SF. We'll have to transship it on our dime. We'll talk about Ikea, it's all good, at a later date.

 

 

From the "smugglers' blues" files....

 

http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/dea-arrests-4-men-seizes-187-pounds-of-cocaine-on-st-thomas-1.1551397

 

 

 



With doors hung downstairs I jumped back upstairs and stated assembling the base cabinets in the time I had left before returning to SF. I bumped the upper cabinets off the wall so we could hide a microwave in one of them. We are not big fans of the hanging micro nor the cluttered counters look. Even if we were we really don't have the room. To keep it clean we are not even going to hang the uppers on the stove side--except above the frig.



Daddy screws up!

 





Look closely at the picture. Notice the wood inside the arch? Try to overlook that behemoth of a cabinet. The general plan/design was to frame out a refrig cabinet with a side panel separating it from the counter followed by the stove, basically the standard layout. But I f'ked up on my measurements when laying out the arch way back when. Actually the arch is exactly where it is supposed to be. The mistake was caused by the refrig dimensions I used. With the refrig deep inside a container when I built the arch I went online for its dimensions. Some how I used the width not including the door dimensions that were further down the stat sheet. Look, I never bought a refrig before. I had no clue there were two sets of dimensions. WTF.

 

I cannot convey how depressing it was, the refrig almost touched the opening of the arch. Plus if we were to have the enclosed refrig look the gi-normous cabinet above had to be bumped off the wall almost three inches. Trust me, if I had the money I would have given the refrig away and bought another "counter depth" one to replace it. That's how much I did not want to change the arch.

 

I knew everything was going too well!

 

The 2x8 boards you see above were the first leg in shrinking the opening to see how it would look. I do not want to see the refrig door when I walk through the front door. I have no idea how this is going to turn out. I'm getting on a plane. F'k it....

 

 

While they wait for the bus I'm driving to town to catch a ferry. This was a short stay, only a little over two months on island.