Hope everyone had a wonderful Father’s Day! I sure did! Lisa and I slept in until 730, which for parents of a 16 month old is NICE! We caught an early mass at our local parish and then Lisa cooked me breakfast. She made me eggs over easy with a side of scrapple.
If you’ve never had scrapple before, I highly recommend it. I think I need to do an entire post on this stuff, especially for my friends that aren’t located in the Philadelphia region. It’s pretty much the scraps of a pig ground up with some corn meal. It’s sliced and served fried. It’s slightly salty with a crunchy exterior and a soft interior texture that isn’t overwhelmingly meaty. Very greasy and very bad for you… like all good breakfast meat should be. It’s kind of an acquired taste, but it’s not a jarring flavor that would immediately turn you away. People in Philly generally love it or hate it.
What else did we get done this weekend? We finished our last section of wall framing for the raised panel wainscoting. I’m really excited to be done this portion of the project and will be starting the router table this week. Lisa is also doing a small painting project and she’ll be posting on that later this week.
If you want to learn how to scribe, this is the post for you.
This last wall section didn’t go down without a fight, so I thought I’d share with you the technique I used to get it installed. There were two main challenges that needed to be dealt with for this wall. First, the wall is just shy of 10 feet long and I can’t bring up anything longer than 8 feet from the basement due to the way the stairs turn. So, right off the bat, I need to make two sections. This stinks because I like to assemble the entire structure in the basement to make sure it goes together okay. Then I have to disassemble it to bring it up, then reassemble it again and install it. The second major obstacle is the adjoining wall isn’t square, it’s angled away. None of the other walls were that out of whack, but this one was off enough that I can’t just fill in any gaps with caulk.
Since I was too busy (irritated) to take any photos, I made some quick illustrations in MS Paint to explain the process. If you ever do anything similar to this project, even like a beadboard, this technique will come in handy. Even with new houses, there are always some walls that just aren’t as straight as you’d like them. This is usually a bigger problem in older houses.
Before I started constructing each wall section, I measured it. In the case of this wall, I measured from the paneling I added near the window to the door opening for the kitchen. I measured in three places, at the top, middle and bottom of the wall. If each measured length is within about an 1/8″ of the others, you’re probably fine and don’t need to make any corrections. Anything over that and you need to compensate.
In this particular instance, the wall was 3/8″ longer on the top than the bottom. That looks something like this… it’s exaggerated for effect.
Stinks right? So how do you correct that? Well, I think there are a few ways to do it, but I like the scribing method the best. All you need is a basic compass, like the one for drawings circles in art or geometry class. Thought that would be the last time you used one? Nope, I keep one around just for these reasons… and for drawing circles. To start, build the panel section to the longest measurement you took. Then you can butt it up against the crooked wall, make sure you level it and then re-measure the gap. Sometimes, having the piece there leveled out can affect the gap. So, after I did this, I still had a 3/8″ gap. I then took my compass and set the distance between the needle and the pencil to the width of the gap, 3/8.” Starting at the floor, I ran the compass along the end of the panel all the way to the top with the needle on the crooked wall and the pen or pencil on the new section. That basically ‘scribes’ the profile of the crooked wall onto the new section… see the drawing below. The red line is from the compass.
With the panel section marked with a line, I can basically cut along that line with a circular saw or a jigsaw. Once the line is cut, the new wall section can be slid right into the crooked wall and it there won’t be much of a gap at all. It’s a pretty clever solution to a difficult problem (I can call it clever since I didn’t invent it). It works really well on wavy walls too, nut just crooked walls. It’s a good trick to keep in your back pocket.
Here’s how that wall section turned out…
And here’s that joint that was out of square until we scribed it… still not perfect, but much, much better than it was before.
If that wasn’t enough trouble, I also managed to cut one of my bottom boards too short!! Luckily, I think I can get away with screwing in an extension piece. Plus, if you look closely, you can see two pocket holes that I plugged (Kreg also makes plugs). I had to flip the board over when I was making the panels and I didn’t feel like spending another twenty some bucks for a whole new board. If I was staining this, I’d be screwed. Since I’m painting it though, I can add some wood putty, sand it and I’m good to go!
So glad that’s over!
How was your Father’s Day? Eat any good food? Ever have scrapple? Do you own a compass for circles or for maps or both?
