The south wall of the first floor after a cleaning.
It’s been one bonkers week since we closed on our purchase of the Anthe Building, which will become our new headquarters here in Covington, Ky. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, click here.)
This blog entry is a brief update on a shed-load of work. But before you read further, please take a moment to digest the following.
This project is being done to code by licensed and bonded professionals. We are following all applicable federal, state and local guidelines. If you feel compelled to make some comment like “that’s not safe,” “that’s not right” or “you should do this instead” know that the world will never see your wisdom. I’m going to delete it. The only thing worse than armchair woodworkers are armchair plumbers, electricians and general contractors. Thank you.
We have three big goals before June 1, which is when we plan to start fulfilling all orders from here. (Note, we are actually already fulfilling some orders from here at Willard Street, breaking in the shipping software and building new processes.)
Clean the first floor room and make it safe and appropriate as a climate-controlled fulfillment center.
Add the bits we need to make accept and send deliveries (a paved driveway and a rollup door).
Build an ADA-compliant bathroom and amenities for our two new fulfillment employees.
This week was all about No. 1. How do we remove 125 years of oil from the floors and walls? The answer: Dawn Degreaser. I have never worked with the stuff before, but it is amazing. The clean-up crew wets the surface with the degreaser at full strength. They wait 10 minutes. Then they scrub with a stiff-bristled brush (or an electric floor scrubber). The sludge is sucked up in a shop vacuum immediately and disposed of properly.
One 10-minute treatment of the walls gives you this before-and-after.
The difference is shocking. In one week we went from a room that reeked of oil to barely a wisp of smell. In fact, the degreaser is working so well that we think we can use the original floor with a few repairs and patches, instead of covering everything with a floating floor.
Also in the process, the carpentry crews have been dismantling the modern improvements made to the building (I have been helping a bit because I love this process of discovery). Also, the HVAC crew put in the three mini-split heads for the first floor.
And we are starting to draw and plan for No. 3 (the bathroom).
What about No. 2 (paving and a new rear door)? Glad you asked. Site-prep and pouring begin next week. Then the rollup door can be installed and the broken modern metal doors at the back can be removed and sent to the scrap yard.
— Christopher Schwarz
A small patch of floor treated with the degreaser and water. I never thought the floor could look this clean.
One of my earlier Gibson chairs. This one without a saddle.
Megan and I are now filming and editing a long-form video about how I build a Gibson chair, one of my favorite Irish chairs.
The video, which should be released late next week, will include a pdf of the full-size templates needed to build the chair, plus drawings for the simple jigs I use, plus a cutting list and sources for all the tools and equipment shown in the video.
The video will be $50 for the first 30 days it is on the market. After that it will be $75.
Gibson chairs look unusual to people at first. They are low and have a back that rakes at 25° – a shocking tilt angle. It might seem like a chair for sleeping, but I assure you it’s not. It sits very much like a comfortable comb-back chair. In fact, in Ireland, these are sometimes called “kitchen chairs” because they are used for eating in the kitchen.
My version of the Gibson is a little different than the originals (we hope to do a book dedicated to the chair sometime in the future). Like almost all traditional Irish chairs, Gibsons have a flat seat. The seat in this video will be saddled, both for looks and comfort. I don’t think the form really needs a saddle, but it does look like a more expensive chair.
I’ve also made a few other small alterations here and there to the chair that I explain in the video.
I’ve tried to make the construction process as accessible as possible. All the mortises are straight holes (no tapered joints), so you can use augers you already own. The tenons are made with plug/tenon cutters chucked in a cordless drill, which are cheap and easily available. (Or you can use a Power Tenon Cutter from Veritas, which I also show in the video.) There is no steambending. You don’t need a lathe or a shavehorse. Most of the work is at the bench or the band saw.
Like all our videos, this one will have no Digital Rights Management (DRM) nonsense. So you will be able to download the video and put them on any of your devices, including your phone, laptop and pad.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. The next video will be on building my hobbit chair. I’ve convinced myself that it is different enough than Bilbo’s and I won’t be thrown into the fires of Mordor, which are filled with lawyers.
The drop ceiling is out. Only the lighting remains. And the modern tile has been removed to expose the original yellow pine floor.
Not everyone has the money to afford one of the special products we’re offering to help fund the restoration of the Anthe Building, our new headquarters. And I’ll be honest: We are uneasy asking for help. It’s not in our nature.
But several readers have asked for a way to contribute directly, without having to purchase an item. Here are two ways. One, you can send money via PayPal to our PayPal account at paypal@lostartpress.com. Or you can contribute directly here. Honest, any amount helps. We are currently cleaning the walls with industrial Dawn and hot water. Even $20 buys us another bottle of purple Dawn and gets us another clean wall.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this point. It has made a big difference. Today the HVAC started to go in. And we have been removing the modern drop ceiling and floors in the storefront, which is where we will sell our books, tools and apparel.
The most recent batch of Huck weave towels we bought are terrible. They leave little blue strings behind. Not just a wee bit of lint. Big blue strings everywhere, like I wiped my project with Grover during the high shedding season for Muppets.
I first fell in like with Huck towels when Ty Black, who worked in my shop, brought in a bunch of surgical towels that his (now ex-) wife had brought home from her hospital job. They were listed as sterile. They were amazing. They were soft but had a pebbly finish that was great for rubbing out wax and other finishes. They absorbed lots of material. They were washable and reusable. And I never saw Grover fur stuck to every arris.
So I am issuing a warning about Huck towels. There are so many vendors out there. I cannot try every one of them, but I can fall back on what I know: sterile surgical towels.
The Grover towels at left.
Today I received a shipment of sterile surgical towels from Medline at Home. They were about the same price as other vendors. But here’s the difference. They are the real deal. They are in sterile packs. And they don’t leave strings behind.
So if you have been unimpressed with the Huck towels I’ve recommended in the past, I encourage you to give them another try from a medical vendor. If they are listed as sterile and come in sealed, sterile packs, they are the real thing (surgeons don’t like to leave blue strings inside their patients during surgery).
I apologize if y’all have been afflicted by the Hair-loss Grover towels.
