Saturday, February 21, 2015

Floor: Finishing the Finishing

This has been a piece of work, and no mistake. But.. it's finishe
d now, and it's beautiful. I can start building the cabinets now, and putting together the solar system.

There is a concerted call being made around the world for individuals, endowments and corporations to divest from fossil fuel investments. In 2008 the banksters stole my mutual fund investments. Since then I have contributed to a mutual fund through one of my jobs. I am grateful that I am in a position in life where it is easy for me to make the decision to sell this investment in keeping with my beliefs. I have stopped making contributions and after the 6 month waiting period is up I will sell this
fund to help fund my solar investment. No Rent. No Bills. Crapitalism, KI$$ MY A$$!

Primed sub floor.
Cut away openings in the nose to allow future access to basement compartments. Both of these will be accessed through lift out shelves in the bottom of the cabinets.
 One opening is to the emergency brake away battery/wiring
 The other opening leads to the kitchen plumbing. Filters and pump.

There is a light in this compartment, for use as light if I need to look in there and see what's up, but also for heat in case of extreme cold, to keep my plumbing from freezing..

 Each piece of floor board was coated twice on all six sides with clear gloss polyurethane, sanded between each coat before final installation.


 There are some lightening bolts in my house! Under my feet!
 My friend Jimena Lloreda, a puppeteer from Puerto Rico sent me a long letter written on a chop stick!
 Before the sub-floor in the living room went down I used some old campaign yard signs to make screens to make sure that no critters will be able to move into the battery compartment via the vents in the exterior walls.
 I have been house-sitting for a friend, and used this time as the opportunity to do the final installation. The fumes from the polyurethane are intense, so my dog and I have been able to sleep in my friend's house and escape the smell. There is also a table saw here, and I was able to use the stacked dado blades to cut the recesses for the floor storage hatch frames.

 Many of them were hand chiseled though.
So, once pieces were done I brought them inside and got myself organized. I numbered each piece so I would know how to put it back together. Piles of 10's, 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's 70's and 80's.
 I ground wood shavings from the chiseling into dust in a coffee grinder, and then mixed that with fiber glass resin epoxy to fill in cracks and gaps in the floor, after all the pieces were fitted in on top of the sub-floor.
 In particular there was one mistake I had to fix.....in order to put the floor back together I numbered each piece. Piece 6 needed to have four hole made in it for the pump wiring to come up through..... but I mistook piece 9 for piece six and made the four holes in the wrong piece!!!! So, to fix it I found a busted handle of a shovel in the fields adjacent to where I am parked for now, and used it to make plugs for the holes. I filled in around the plugs with the epoxy/saw dust mix, and then went over that with the final coats of polyurethane.

 I also used the mix to fill in knot holes.

Meanwhile, outside I put the finish on the floor storage hatch lids.
 Finished Finishing.