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N.Y. Times, 8/21

I wrote an article for the Sunday N.Y. Times Business section on 8/21/10 about the construction business. They even paid for it, which was a thrill. Not my choice of title, though. Here's the link - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/jobs/22pre.html?scp=1&sq=Eric%20Smith&st=cse

Floor Repair

This is a transition I created between a birch kitchen floor and a pine dining room floor in a 19th century house. The original transition was a thin oak threshold spanning a gap between the floors.

Stairway and handrail

I recently revisited a stairway I'd built for a finished attic several years ago. The stairs went from the first to third floor and there was very little headroom, so the treads and risers are only an inch thick. I strengthened them with purpleheart ribs mortised with brass dowels.

Valance

Colored glass beads are inset into holes in the maple valance so that light from the fixture over the sink shines through. The counter is soapstone. The crown molding is maple with a repeating pattern of circle, square, triangle in paduak, walnut and purpleheart, with a strip of cherry tying them together. The crown was conceived as a visual distraction from a sloping ceiling that was too low to be leveled.

Small bookshelf

Bookshelf made from baltic birch plywood, maple, walnut

Two desks

Baltic birch top and sides, paduak, poplar, cherry, marbles, recycled chair legs, unknown woods

Abstract floor designs

All these pieces were salvaged from the trash pile of a stone fabricating shop. The wood paneling is made from #1 common butternut.

Fireplace and tile floor

Purpleheart base, steel saddle between tile and wood floor, various stone tiles, sycamore, knotty cherry paneling, crushed green marbles, several woods whose names I've forgotten

Home improvement 2

How to replace a toilet

A toilet that doesn’t flush well can turn what should be pleasant personal time into a shaming, stressful experience. A plunger at the ready by the side of the toilet is of course a thoughtful touch in any bathroom, but all too often it’s an indication of deeper problems. Fortunately, replacing an old toilet is a straightforward procedure, and with common sense and a few basic hand tools almost anyone can do it.

The first step is to select a new toilet. Make a checklist of features you like, then ask friends and neighbors for recommendations. Check out consumer guides. Start paying attention to what’s out there (or, more accurately, under you). Look for quality. Too many homeowners just buy whatever’s on sale and then end up right back where they started, struggling to flush even insignificant movements.

Unpack the new toilet and inspect it as soon as you get home. If it’s defect-free strap on your tool belt, turn the water off and roll your sleeves up. Flush ‘old unreliable’ one last time and then sponge out any water left in the tank and bowl. Cram the sponge deeply down into the bowl to get all the water out. This may seem unpleasant but giving in to queasiness now will lead to disabling feelings of revulsion later, so plunge ahead.

Disconnect the water supply line from the underside of the toilet and look inside the tank. Two large bolts with rubber gaskets hold the tank to the back of the bowl, and to undo them you need to reach in the tank with a screwdriver and hold the bolts in place while loosening the corroded nuts under the water tank. This may sound hard, and in fact it is.

Next, remove the nuts holding the toilet bowl to the floor and yank the bowl up. Underneath you’ll see a dark hole with thick goo around the rim. This is the waste line, the portal to the main sewer or septic field. It will smell, so stuff a rag down into it quickly.

Scrape up the goo - the gummy remnants of the wax ring used to seal the joint between the bowl and the toilet flange. Wax rings are the last line of defense in the waste removal system, preventing flushage and odors from exploding out onto the bathroom floor. Scientists estimate that the average American family uses their toilet 32.6 times a day, and one could easily believe that the mess smeared on the floor under the old toilet was some dreadful residue of all that hard use. But it’s not. (Memory and imagination are a plumber’s worst enemies.) Still, there is some danger of sepsis (a potentially life-threatening medical problem) if you accidentally scratch your hand while scraping, since an open wound would create an easy pathway into your blood for toxic bacteria.

Frankly though, it’s the next step that rarely goes well for me. But I’m sure it will for you, and I don’t want to scare you away from this simple home improvement project by talking about every little problem that might occur.

However, if the floor and the surrounding joists under the toilet do turn out to be rotted from years of leaking - to take one common for-instance - simply remove all weakened subflooring and the finished tile floor resting on it (in some cases also the bathtub and vanity), install temporary support walls in the basement under the rotted joists, cut out the damaged sections, re-route any wiring, plumbing and heating running through the joists (bringing them up to code if necessary), jack up the floor with a hydraulic jack to correct any settling, splice on new joists, lay down new subflooring, retile and grout the floor, then reinstall the fixtures.

Presumably the main waste line running through the house and out to the street is in good shape, with no leaks or cracks of the kind that can secretly cause thousands of dollars in damages, but of course it’s difficult to know.

Finally, clean up the mess and unpack the new toilet. You’re almost done!

The rest of the installation is simple enough and needs little explanation. Just repeat what you did to remove the old one, except in reverse. Consult the manufacturer’s directions if you become confused.

Incidentally, the first flush after you fill the new tank may seem sluggish, but this just means you forgot to remove that rag you stuffed into the waste line. Have a laugh – then drain and remove the new toilet, pull the rag out and reinstall everything.

Remember, though, to put a fresh wax ring on the bottom of the toilet every time you reinstall it. Without a perfectly sealed wax ring toxic sewer gas can vent out and silently fill your entire house while you sleep. And unfortunately under certain circumstances this can kill you.

CD shelf

Various hardwoods, metal, beads, knobs, marbles, rubber frog, stones, stained glass, and an old NYC subway token

End table

Ash, paduak, walnut, butternut, purpleheart, Lake Superior rocks, steel plate, colored wood filler.

Home improvement 1

Little friends underfoot - creating and preserving invertebrate habitat in your home

One of the long-accepted axioms of home ownership is that bugs simply do not belong in them. Every hardware store and home center has shelves full of lethal chemical weapons designed to annihilate anything that suffers the twin misfortunes of being born very small and wanting a nice place to live. It’s deeply engrained in our culture, an attitude learned almost as soon as we learn to walk. Somehow it just seems so natural to stomp on little things.

Thoughtful homeowners are starting to question this industry-encouraged campaign of extermination that we wage on our tiny fellow creatures. Some are even asking the question, “Why can’t people and bugs learn to coexist? Isn’t there room for everyone?”

Centipedes, spiders, ants, termites, cockroaches, beetles, silverfish, houseflies, mites - there’s a world full of fascinating insects anxious to share your home; a world packed with drama, with armies on the march, skillful predators and elusive prey, grazing herds, solitary dreamers, lightning fast runners and ace dive bombers - even loyal friends.

Consider the cockroach. Traditionally despised, squashed and poisoned at every opportunity, they are in fact easy-going and quite intelligent, with their own distinctive personalities, and not at all difficult to train. Because of their long history of conflict with humans, they tend to scatter when the light comes on, but once you show them that your intentions are friendly and that you have some tasty food to share they’ll actually come out from their hiding places when you call them. They’re happy in any warm, dark place, and they genuinely seem to like people’s company. With very little encouragement they will give back as much as they take.

Another favorite in our home are spiders. No special preparations are needed to attract them, although they appreciate a bit of a draft, and of course a steady supply of food. We leave our screens open in the warm months to attract tasty tidbits inside. Then, if our little arachnids become too abundant, we just close the screens.

There are ways to share your home with little creatures without feeling overrun. As with any animal, you need to be very clear about setting limits and boundaries. The who and what of mealtimes has to be firmly established. For instance, unless their appetites are properly channeled, termites and carpenter ants can cause quite a bit of inconvenience for owners of wood houses. One successful strategy for enjoying the company of these captivating social insects without losing your house entirely is to construct a floor level viewing chamber full of standard 2 x 4s, but lined on all sides with heavy gauge sheet metal and capped with thick plate glass for easy viewing. Set the plate glass in a tightly fitting steel channel welded to the sheet metal with an arc welder (welders can be rented, if you don’t have one on hand). Install a water source to keep the wood moist - a must for carpenter ants (although termites aren’t so fussy). I use lengths of 1/2” rigid PVC tubing with a 1/32” hole drilled into it about every foot, capped at one end, with a shutoff and a connection to the house water supply at the other end. Once a day I’ll briefly open the shutoff - just enough to dampen the wood. If you get the moisture just right, you’ll get some gorgeous fungi as an added bonus. You can also hook up a timer and servomechanism to the shutoff, so that the whole operation could be done automatically - consult a commercial greenhouse supplier for parts. A small, tightly sealed hatch is also a good idea for termites, so you can feed them fresh lumber when the original supply is gone.

Mr. G. H. of Abilene, Texas writes me about an interesting ant training experiment he’s been working on for the last five years. Every evening before bed he spreads refined sugar over his stomach, being careful to leave a thin trail of it from his bed to a known ant colony behind his baseboard. At first the ants were shy, but now when Mr. G. H. comes into his bedroom the workers rush out excitedly, aware that their snack is on it’s way. They have lost any fear of climbing up on him, and a bold few will even pluck small crumbs from his beard. The colony has grown quite large, and early this summer sent out a flight of queens inside the house - a sure sign of trust.

As we say in our house: Think before you thwack.

Constructivedisorder

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