Casa de las Ratas 5/3/2003

Casa de las Ratas Week 66

up to May 3, 2003

Manny shows off his "Las vegas" crown moulding technique.

Details details details...

Coming right along with all the finishing details.

Lots to show you. Lots of pictures on this page. Be patient and let 'em all load up.

Manny shows off what he and Martin call "Las Vegas" moudling technique. We wrap the crown moulding around the rounded corners with two 22 1/2 degree cuts.

All the crown moulding in the 1st bedroom's closet is installed.

The boyz did a killer job.

Jose Luis went in and puttied all the nail holes.

Martin moved on to start cutting the pieces for the window casing.

Ricky was removing the window hardware in order to paint the window surrounds.

We love our chop saw. This DeWalt is a great chopsaw.

We also love our router...

I used the router table to rout out a little bit of the baseboard moulding where the cast iron heater/AC vent was going to crash into it.
First I coped the moulding then measured where the crash was and then routed out a bit of the back of the moulding so it would fit right over the grille.

Like this.

Here's the cast iron grill in bedroom 3, the "Flamin' Hot Cheetos" room.

I also bought and installed some adjustable louvers for all these.

The louvers came silver and so I spray painted them with hammertone black paint so they don't show.

I also painted the ducting behind all these too.

The grills for both the bathrooms are nickel to match the fixtures that are going in here.

Hey wow! Check out that cool tile floor. I don't think I have showed you this yet. It's been under wraps...

How 'bout that shower pan tile? Way cool, eh?

Nice soap dish all installed.

And isn't this nice: we have a working light in the shower! There's also one for the bathtub but there's no bulb in there right now. No one is taking a bath yet.

In the second bedroom closet is the only window in the house that opens outwards. The previous casing had some built in blind or some weird stuff going on leaving a big void that we needed to fill.

Manny found a piece of 2 x 4 measuring a true 2" wide perfect to fill this void. We used the table saw to cut a special rabbet to fit up in there.

Most of the windows only have their primer coat on the inside so the guys have been taking them off one by one, painting the casing and painting the insides of the windows their final colors..

Here is Paco doing something with a window in the 1st bedroom.

Martin and Ricky put a window back in after it has been painted.

Gary Watson the electrician visited again to install more switches and outlets.

This is the laundry room fan and ceiling outlet, ready for some kind of light fixture. I need to pick out all the light fixtures.

I painted the bezel for the water hookup for the laundry and Gary installed the 220V drier power as well as the 120v outlets.

There is also a gas hookup here so either an electric or gas drier can be used.

I nailed and glued the pieces of the medicine cabinet I was working on last week together this week and did a rough fit here in the second bathroom.

But after watching all those DIY Woodworking shows, I might do this one over with some nicer joinery.

I drew out some plans and drafted out how I wanted the 1st Bathroom's (larger) medicine cabinet to be. It is sort of similar to a surface mount one I have in my other house. But this one will be built-in (recessed.)

I bought some oak at Home Depot and went to work on my table saw.

I bought a dado blade set and set to making some rabbets.

Here it is partially assembled to check the fit. You can see all my tight fitting dado's. Some are pretty tight. I need to recheck the square on my table saw before trying this again.

I have some nice chisels coming in by UPS so I can finish the blind dados for the center shelf support.

I am going to make some doors for it. More on this little project as it progresses.

Go back to week 1 at Casa de las Ratas

Week 2: more cleanup and roof replacement.

Week 3: the big dumpster comes and the hot mop boys will show up.

Week 4: fixing the valleys, new kitchen subfloor

Week 5: prepping the roof, framing in the kitchen, ripping out more floors...

Week 6: Replacing a ridge board, new tiles on the roof, more paint, why not?...

Week 7: Let's get the roof finished! And destroy more stuff inside!

Week 8 & 9: Final touches on roof, removing all the old hard conduit/black pipe, filling yet another roll-off dumpster.

Week 10 & 11: Rough plumbing finished, electrical started, more tools acquired, and a big header installed

Week 12: Kill that old rear bathroom, level the yard, cast some concrete.

Week 13: More electrical work, HVAC installation finished, get ready for drywall.