Another non-bike project

[Sidecar Bob]

Small stuff right now, doing stuff that needs to be done before I start on the moulding. Pics later.

[Sidecar Bob]

So the up stairs had a handrail on each side but the down stairs only had one. As we age and our arthritis gets worse we appreciate that 2nd handrail more; I've been thinking about adding another on the down stairs for a few years so this was the time.
l could have just bought a piece of matching handrail but I'm cheap and couldn't make myself pay $9/foot for a piece of 1.25" x 1.75" pine (the same amount of wood as a 2x2) that's been milled to shape. I couldn't get a clear pine 2x2 so I bought two 1x2s, cut them to length and made myself a 2x2

19 - Handrail glue up.jpg

Then I got out the router and turned it into this. It doesn't match the others but it will do nicely

20 - Handrail routed.jpg

I primed all 4 railings primed and then gave them a good coat of oil based gloss white

22 - Handrails painted.jpg

I'd taken the closet door off while doing the floor so it made sense to paint it in the garage while I had the heat on too. I swear that original "white" paint on the doors & trim is getting more yellow every year.

23 - Painting door.jpg

I've been painting all the other stuff that I should have done before I laid the flooring too:
The frames for both doors and the freezer closet opening are done.
That closet door has 2 coats on one side and the other side will get the 2nd coat tomorrow.
I'm painting the door to the garage in place; It will get its 2nd coat on the side facing the landing tomorrow but I'll wait until it is warm enough to can leave it open until it dries before I do the side that faces the garage.
I had a a lot of the brown paint I did the kitchen cabinets with left over so we decided to use some of it up on the stairs. I primed the stringers and risers first and they should get the 2nd coat of brown tomorrow too.

[Sidecar Bob]

After the handrails dried for a few days I put them up and after that it was on to the moulding.

There's a ledge around the landing because the foundation is thicker than the wall that sits on it. We always used the ledge between the doors for stuff we'd need when going out so a few years ago I added a proper shelf, panelled below it and replaced the baseboard with something that went better with the panelling. When I was getting ready to plaster I looked at the white painted colonial stuff on the painted walls and the woodgrain stuff by the panelling and removed the white stuff with the 1/4 round.

Over the last few days I installed the new baseboard (with nice mitred returns), then the cove.

24 - Handrail (original).jpg

You can see & feel the difference but I actually like the one I made better

25 - Handrail (new).jpg

Some of you may have asked yourselves why I prefer to do the moulding the hard way, using a material that doesn't like power saws and air nailers. This stuff is waterproof, never needs to be painted, should be more durable and actually costs less (especially when they pay for the shipping). And besides, I'm a model builder and metal fabricator at heart so I thoroughly enjoyed spending almost half an hour carving this little guy.

26 - Small piece of cove (cut & fit).jpg

Which most people will never notice

27 - Small piece installed.jpg

28 - Moulding done.JPG

It was nice out today so I worked on getting the shelves ready for paint and getting them primed (I won't take pics of them until they are installed).

And that just leaves the stairs. I can't made a final decision until I can kick the car out of the garage more permanently and try a few experiments. It looks like its going to cool off again and we'll have at least a week if highs around freezing and probably some s**w (sorry about the 4 letter word) so I may have to work on other projects for a few weeks. Now if those seeds I started will germinate.....

[Sidecar Bob]

The car ended up outside for a couple more days so I got to do the experiment. I didn't take pics of the (rather crude) test setup but the principle is:
- Rout 2 dadoes in the back of the vinyl plank where the bends will be (I used a 1/2" straight bit and went about 1/2 way through),
- Clamp the plank between a form the same thickness as the stair noses and something flat
- Soften the bend areas with a heat gun, bend it around the form and clamp until it cools

29 - Stair nose experiment.JPG

It really was that easy. I think making jigs good enough that all 11 of the pieces I need come out the same may take almost as long as bending the pieces will.

I'll need to buy another box of the flooring but it is on sale again this week so that will come in about 1/3 what the pre-made stuff would cost.

[Rednaxs60]

Good looking work and job well done!

[Sidecar Bob]

My bike gear is often wet &/or covered with muddy road spray, which means I have to hang my jacket (& overpants when needed) have to hang where they can dry out. I've always hung the jacket on a coat hanger on an over the door hook on the closet door and the pants on a utility hook screwed to the door to the garage. I put the utility hook back but I replaced the over the door hook with a proper coat hook screwed to the closet door.

You saw the milk crate boot rack with the shoe rack on top in the before pics (post #22) and I said I'd be doing something about that. I didn't mention that I always put the gloves or mitts on the left side of the up stairs and the boot tray with my wet/dirty boots sat next to the closet door so it had to be moved to get into the closet.
I started by screwing the larger of the shelves to the top of the ledge in the corner where the milk crates &c used to be for the gloves &c and mounted the smaller one on brackets below. I disassembled & cleaned the shoe rack and then shortened the tubes that the shoes sit on by 5" so that it fits the shelf before I put it back together. I also added a screw hook in the wall so that it won't fall off the shelf.

I have a lot of ball caps, some that I keep for sentimental reasons and a few that I wear regularly. Most of them were crammed onto a 5 peg hat rack with the rest piled on top of the shoe rack. While I was planning this project I came across these 10 packs of ball cap hooks on the Aliexpress Pick 3 sale for about $2.70 so I ordered a couple of packs and moved the old hat rack to the laundry room for our gardening hats.
And yes, we're shopping for a narrower boot tray so it doesn't stick out so far when the door is open.

30 - Hats, shoe rack, boots.jpg

We picked up the other box of flooring today. Kay is going to have a procedure at a Toronto hospital next week so she's planning to drive to her Mum's on Monday and she's arranged a ride from there to the hospital on Tuesday morning and back to Mum's afterward. She will stay there until she's up to driving home (probably on the weekend). While she's away I'll set up to turn planks into nosing in the garage.

[Rat]

Don’t see an NGW hat in that collection

Gord

[Sidecar Bob]

Nor a CURD or Twisted Twins (CX500) one either (I do have patches for all 3 on my vest, though). In fact, the only club hat in that collection is the Canadian Sidecar Owners Club and it was a prize at a rally. Most of the hats there were gifts....

[Sidecar Bob]

Kay's procedure went well. They released her as soon as the anaesthetic wore off and she's with her Mum now.

Well, making stair nose didn't go as planned.
1) I started by cutting 2 spacers, pieces of flooring the right widths to locate the dadoes when running the router along something straight to use as a fence. After wasting time looking for straight pieces of wood long enough to use I noticed the pair of nice, straight aluminum square tubes I use when checking the setup of sidecar outfits leaning in the corner. D'oh!
2) Routing the 1st dado. With this spacer the workpiece is held against the 2nd aluminum tube so that it won't move away from the fence.
3) Routing the 2nd dado. With this narrower spacer a couple of blocks of 2x are needed between the workpiece and the 2nd tube.
4) Both dadoes routed.

31 - Routing for stair nose.jpg

1) The bending fixture is two pieces of 1x4 screwed together to make a form the same thickness as the stair treads and another 1x4 screwed to that with pieces of the plank between to produce a groove the correct depth to hold the workpiece for the 1st bend (as shown).
If you run the heat gun back & forth over the bend area long enough the vinyl eventually softens enough to bend.
2) Once the first bend is made heat the area of the 2nd bend until it will fold over the form .
3) More time, more heat, bending a bit more.
4) When it is folded all the way stop heating and clamp something flat against it until it cools.

32 - Bending for stair nose.jpg

The first two cracked right through during the first bend. I attributed this to trying to bend it before it was soft enough and maybe the dadoes weren't quite deep enough to soften enough when trying to heat something 5 times as long as the test piece.
The pics above show the third one. Its dadoes are about 30% deeper. I thought the 1st bend was OK and I only opened a tiny spot on the 2nd (this after waving the heat gun over it for more than an hour on high - enough to raise the temperature in the garage a couple of degrees). But when I removed it from the fixture the 1st bend was cracked too badly to use.

That's enough time & material wasted. Unless someone has a better idea I'm going to have to spend the money on the aluminum nosing whether I want to or not.

[Whiskerfish]

So difficult to get plastics to the malleable state without cooking it. I ruined several pieces of plexiglass making windshields years back before I ordered one from Gustafsson.

[Sidecar Bob]

I bought a bucket of flooring cement to attach the LVP to the stairs but it has to cure overnight so I had to find a way to hold the planks onto the risers. I initially thought I'd nail the top edges and tack down cleats to hold the bottom edges in place until the cement cures but then I'd have to countersink the nail heads and fill them.
After some thought I decided the answer was to put spacers under the nails so I could pull them after the glue cures and only have small empty holes to fill. But what to make the spacers from? I don't have any tubing that small, or washers either for that matter.....

Then it hit me:

33 - Nail spacers 1.jpg

They go in far enough to hold the planks firmly against the wood but I can pull them easily after the adhesive has cured overnight and either re-use them or put the pop rivets back together.

34- Nail spacers 2.jpg

Most of the risers are done; I'll probably do the rest in the next couple of days but I'm not in a hurry because I can't do the treads until I get the nosing (might be a couple of weeks)

35 - Stair risers.jpg

I've narrowed it down to 2 types of nosing, one pre-formed vinyl and the other extruded aluminum.
The vinyl is supposed to match the flooring, except that the flooring comes in 2 thicknesses and the website doesn't say which one it matches. And it doesn't say how thick a stair it is made to cover. I sent them questions but I don't have answers yet. It is at a major Canadian chain that has a store 1/2 hour from here and on the edge of town so I could bring it home in the sidecar without having to drive with it sticking out behind in traffic.

The aluminum has a sort of groove or track in the top that the plank goes into and it is anodized brown (maybe the edges of the stairs might be easier to see?) I think I'd prefer it but the only place I can find it is Home Depot and they won't deliver it here. Their locations are all at least an hour away and well into built up areas so it would definitely have to wait until Kay feels like driving to get it, and possibly until I can go with when she goes to her Mum's.
She's home now and recovering but I don't want to push things.

[Whiskerfish]

Needed some cleco's They come in so handy some times. Kind of like a temporary rivet that is removable.

[Sidecar Bob]

Yeah, I know about Cleco fasteners but I've never needed them enough to get them. And if I had them they would probably be 1/8" size but the holes from this are only 1/16".
Anyway, contrary to what most people do I'm planning to install moulding around the sides & back of each tread (we like the look and maybe it will help prevent dirt from filtering into the space below) so the holes near the bottom will be covered by that and the ones near the tops won't be too noticeable under the overhang once filled.

[Sidecar Bob]

I love my wife but she is very strong willed and a classic example of why nurses often make the worst patients. Our daughters came home on the weekend and she insisted on driving the one who lives farthest away home yesterday. There was no stopping her so I went along to make sure she was OK (we were both pretty beat by the time we got home).

Turns out there's a HD store a few blocks from the daughter's place

36 - Aluminum nosing.jpg

The part that covers the edge of the steps is pretty deep so I probably didn't need to worry about hiding nails near the tops of the risers.

[Sidecar Bob]

37 - Excerpt from nosing instructions.jpg

I used flooring adhesive instead of construction adhesive but I don't think that will make much difference. There are no holes for the nails and trying to drive a nail through one of the offcuts just bent the nail so I drilled holes that are a close fit on the 1.5" spiral nails (4 per nose).

I did every other step so that I could get back upstairs when I was done.

38 - Noses & treads part 1.jpg