Some people were left confused by the correction to “The Anarchist’s Workbench” I posted yesterday. And I don’t blame you – the ideas of right and wrong, correct and incorrect were being juggled furiously in the entry.
So let’s start over.
Construction lumber is usually sold in a wetter state than furniture wood. I’ve bought about four metric tons of it in my time, and it seems to come in about 14 percent to 18 percent moisture content on average. That means that as the wood dries to your shop’s equilibrium moisture content, the board is going to move a bit on you.
When wood loses moisture, the bark side of the board (the outside of the tree) tends to cup. The heart side of the board (the inside of the tree) tends to bow out. See my drawing above.
If you need to laminate the construction lumber face to face – such as gluing up four layers to make a big workbench leg – you should use the above fact to your advantage.
I glue up my legs so the heart side of one board faces the bark side of its neighbor. That way as the boards dry, they will all move in unison and keep the joints closed. Like this:
If you flip one of the boards, so the heart side faces the heart side of its neighbor, the edges of the lamination tend to open up as the boards dry. Like this:
If you glue the bark side to the bark side of its neighbor, the interior of the lamination tends to open up.
I’ve seen this happen. I’ve never seen the joint fall apart because of it, but it ain’t pretty to look at.
I hope you will forgive me for yesterday’s confusion. In the coming days I’ll correct the free pdf.
Fig. 4-1. Moving fillister. This moving fillister has a brass depth stop that is adjusted with the knob on top, along with an adjustable fence upon which this plane is standing. The iron is skewed across the sole and has a nicker ahead of the cutting edge for shearing wood fibers while working across the grain.
The following is excerpted from “Mouldings in Practice,” by Matthew Sheldon Bickford. The book turns a set of complicated mouldings into a series of predictable rabbets and chamfers that guide your hollow and round planes to make anything – anything – that has been made in the past or that you can envision for your future projects. The expert instruction is accessible for even the beginning hand-tool woodworker. It uses more than 200 color illustrations and dozens of photos to explain how to lay out, prepare for and cut any moulding you can draw.
Hollows and rounds have no depth stops and no fences, and they have cutting edges that are difficult to maintain. So how do we guide these planes? Is it not a trial to keep them sharp? The solution to both questions is a rabbeting plane.
Rabbets, which are grooves along the edge of a board, along with chamfers (or bevels), are the basis for all mouldings when using hollows and rounds. These rabbets serve three purposes: creating chutes in which the planes travel, creating guides that serve to gauge your progress, and removing as much material as possible with an edge that’s easy to maintain and easy to guide.
Cut Rabbets with a Rabbet Plane. All the moulding profiles discussed in this book begin with a series of rabbets and/or chamfers. These two shapes define the final moulding profile. Therefore, accuracy is crucial. Much of your time making moulding is spent laying out the profiles and transferring those layouts onto the wood via rabbets. Only an efficient method of executing these steps will lead to success. There are many methods.
Ventures through the Internet, books or magazines will introduce you to many tools for cutting rabbets, including fenced rabbet planes, moving fillisters and plow planes. A rabbet plane with a fixed fence and fixed depth stop needs only to be pressed against the side of a board, held vertically and swiped until the plane’s depth stop bottoms out and the plane stops cutting. It produces one rabbet of a fixed width and depth along the edge of a board.
A moving fillister plane might seem more versatile than a fixed rabbet plane. You can, of course, create rabbets of any width by adjusting the tool’s fence. Its depth stop can also be adjusted so that the plane cuts rabbets of various depths. Limitations still exist.
Though the plow plane is slightly different than a moving fillister, it also has an adjustable fence with (usually) an adjustable depth stop. A plow plane, in conjunction with a chisel, can be used to aggressively remove material along the edge of a board. In addition, a plow can cut grooves in the center of a board, which is necessary for some mouldings.
A moving fillister and plow plane are very useful when creating single rabbets of equal depth and width in different boards. But they have shortcomings. Most profiles start with multiple rabbets of varying dimensions. Each time one rabbet is completed and the next is started, the fence and depth stop need to be changed. In addition, many of the mouldings involve chamfering a corner of a rabbet. When using fenced planes, it will be necessary to set up a second plane to execute this brief step.
A fence and depth stop predetermine the order in which rabbets must be cut. This predefined order is not always efficient. Finally, there are circumstances in larger profiles when the surfaces upon which the fence and depth stop register are lost as subsequent rabbets are added.
Fig. 4-2. Plow plane. This plow plane also has a brass depth stop, this time on the opposite side of the iron, that is adjusted with the brass knob on top. The plane is leaning upon its fence, which is adjusted by the wedged arms protruding through the plane’s body. When using my plow to make rabbets, I use only the thinnest iron. That iron allows for the most aggressive cut.
The Simple Rabbet Plane. For mouldings, an unfenced rabbet plane is ideal for the craftsman looking to use fewer planes. The simple rabbet plane has no depth stop and no fence. Therefore, each time a new rabbet with new dimensions in a new place along the board is needed, nothing needs to be adjusted. Despite this lack of guides, it is possible to be as accurate with this plane as you are with any gauge line made by a marking gauge.
Rabbet planes with no fence or depth stop excel at making mouldings because almost all profiles require multiple rabbets of varying dimensions.
A rabbet plane that is 7/8″ wide will cut rabbets as wide as the plane’s sole and as narrow as you want or need. There are few limitations to this plane. Contrary to common belief, at times you will wish for a plane that is slightly more narrow, 5/8″, but rarely for one that is wider. Among other things, a smaller plane will let you see inside the escapement when adding a small chamfer in a tight area. This narrow plane also allows these facets to be added in tighter spaces while keeping the sharp corners of the tool away from the surrounding facets. Additionally, the individual rabbets you need to cut are rarely wider than 7/8″, even for the large, complex mouldings.
I prefer a rabbet plane of this width, 7/8″, because I like to use approximately half of the plane’s sole in normal circumstances. I am able to comfortably reach under the plane and use my fingers as a fence against the edge of a board which, as you will see, is vital. If you have large hands, a narrow rabbet of 5/8″ will likely suit you better because you will use less of your fingertips. Many people simply prefer a narrower plane for this type of work because it is easier to recognize the vertical axis when holding a thin, tall plane body.
Rabbet: Setup & Use. When setting the iron of a rabbet plane it is important that the iron’s cutting edge be parallel to the sole. Additionally, it is vital that the iron’s side projects very slightly from the side of the rabbet plane’s body where the cut occurs. If the iron’s side is instead flush to the side of the plane it will be impossible for the plane to cut down into the wood vertically. The side of the iron must not be sharpened; if the side of the iron is sharp, it will scrape the vertical portion of the rabbet, or fillet. This will increase the rabbet’s width with each subsequent pass and can potentially clog the plane.
Holding an unfenced rabbet plane with no depth stop might seem intimidating. It is not necessarily obvious how it works. Some woodworkers think it is an inaccurate tool and has the singular use of cleaning up surfaces that were created by other planes. Perhaps you have read how some woodworkers attach a batten, or auxiliary fence, to the work for the rabbet to follow. This works, but it is another unnecessary step that consumes time and effort in some situations, and is useless in others. When working with a simple rabbet plane, here are the basic steps to follow.
Step 1: Mark the size of the rabbet with a marking gauge along the board’s face, edge and two ends.
Fig. 4-3. Tilting a rabbet plane. My fore and middle finger, located in front of the cutting edge, help lead the plane down the length of the stock. Pressure is applied from the top of the plane toward your body, the sole and cutting edge. Do not apply this force away from your body against the side of the plane. This second method may result in the iron’s side scraping the far side of the gauge line and slightly widening the rabbet prior to starting.
Step 2: Pinch the plane with your thumb leading on top and your forefingers along the bottom. Hold the plane at an angle with its corner pressed into your gauge line. The plane will want to stay in that line. Use your fingers as a fence and take two passes. The plane’s corner will want to stay in the gauge line; your fingers will help it.
Fig. 4-4. Tip the plane substantially. The closer it is to 45°, the easier it will be for it to stay in the gauge line.
You have created a “V.” That “V” will give some slight room for error in the following step. The more rabbets you cut, the less you will use this second step.
Figs. 4-5 & 4-6. Holding square. The fore and middle fingers of my leading hand are guiding the plane while my trailing hand applies most of the forward force. Be certain to hold the plane square, which is gauged by the existence of a full-width shaving.
Step 3: Hold the plane vertically (see Figs. 4-5 and 4-6). Keep the plane pinched in the same manner with your leading hand. This is the more difficult step because your fingers are now the only guide. Start taking passes and keep the corner of the plane and iron that are on the escapement side of the plane inside of your “V.” If you miss, try to miss toward the edge closest to you. (I do not watch the corner of the iron during this phase. I sight down the side of the plane’s body and watch the edge of the body in front of the iron. A pencil line drawn in the “V” will help the novice.)
Be certain that the plane you’re holding is vertical. A full-width shaving should be ejected at all times. After only a few passes, the fillet of the rabbet will be developed to the extent that your fenced fingers will be less necessary. At this stage you can become less careful and more aggressive by increasing your speed. Wispy shavings that flutter in the air are fun, but not here.
Your progress then should be closely monitored in two ways. First, make certain that the plane is being held vertically by comparing the floor of the rabbet with the previously marked gauge lines on the two ends of the work. Second, measure the depth of the rabbet against the gauge line running along the board’s edge. Take abbreviated passes along areas with high spots. The goal is to make one full-width, perpendicular shaving that removes the gauge line in its entirety on your final pass.
Figs. 4-7 & 4-8. Horizontal work. Hold the rabbet plane horizontal to clean up the vertical fillet. Clean-up will be necessary if you wandered from the gauge line at any stage or if the vertical fillet is a finished surface to appear in the final profile. Be aware that, depending on the season the rabbet plane was made and the season that it currently is (or the age of the plane) the iron may protrude too heavily on this opposite side or not at all. This can affect the results if several passes are necessary.
Step 4: If at any stage the plane was held out of vertical for several passes, or if the plane strayed from the gauge line, the vertical fillet along the back of the rabbet will not be perpendicular to the rabbet’s floor. To fix this, tip the plane on its face to clean the fillet.
As discussed, there are several ways to make a rabbet. This is a simple method when dealing with square stock because it involves one plane from start to finish. Other methods involve multiple planes and/or other tools such as chisels.
A metal shoulder plane, along with many other planes that have an iron that projects to the edge, can perform this task. This is not ideal, however, because they are heavy and do not easily eject their shavings.
In this way, a wooden rabbet plane is a luxury. Its tall body helps you find vertical easily. Its light weight allows you to be aggressive. Its escapement grants you speed. Its lack of a depth stop and fence allow you to cut the next rabbet with no adjustments. A simple rabbet plane can cut rabbets of any width less than their own – a 1/16″-wide rabbet is easily executed with a 7/8″-wide rabbet plane. When a corner needs to be chamfered, and roughly a third of your corners will, you don’t need to find a new plane and set it up.
Adding a chamfer with a rabbet plane is also a straightforward process. Your fingers will again serve as a fence. Progress will be gauged by sight. Look at the surrounding facets. Not only should the chamfer be of a uniform width, but the adjoining horizontal and vertical surfaces need to be uniform. Hold the plane at the desired angle and stop at the desired depth.
Fig. 4-9. Chamfering. Again, my fore and middle fingers are guiding the plane. When possible, I allow my trailing fingers to fall upon the workpiece. This will help gauge uniformity.
Fig. 4-10. Even shavings and results. Your goal when creating a chamfer is uniformity. All care, however, should not be paid toward this goal because efficiency is also warranted. Work for consistency, but do not demand it. The length of the hollow plane to follow will overcome moderate variations. The width of the plane’s sole in relation to the chamfer will overcome slight facets. Watch the surrounding horizontal and vertical facets. If these features look uniform from afar they are perfect for this step. Do not reach for your double square.
Note: Using a plane on its corner for the first few passes will eventually cause problems. A significant amount of wear will occur on the single point that runs in the gauge line. In time this edge will become slightly rounded and will not sit in a gauge line. Many antique planes show evidence of re-establishing that corner lost to wear. Some soles have been planed back so much that they approach the tool’s escapement; sometimes the face has been planed off to re-establish the sharp corner.
Fig. 4-11. Boxed corner. The boxing on this rabbet plane will help that corner of the plane remain sharp longer. It will not, of course, help the opposite, unboxed edge. The unboxed edge is used less often, but it is still used.
The solution? “Boxing” a corner of a rabbet plane is recommended if you use a rabbet on its edge. Boxing is where you inlay a wear-resistant species, such as boxwood, into the corner of the tool. This reduces that wear and the inevitable loss of that corner.
A table saw or other power tool is also an economical method for creating rabbets. When creating a large profile I often opt for this method. Getting rabbets close on a table saw then fine-tuning them with a rabbet plane is an efficient way to work. The main problem I have when using a table saw is that, after multiple passes, it will often turn a long, straight piece of thin wood into a long, bowed piece of wood that will become difficult to hold and then work. It is also dangerous to run many profiles to completion on power tools because the final product often has a triangular cross section.
Rabbet plane use begets rabbet plane use. The more you use a rabbet plane and the more comfortable you become with one, the less you will opt for the table saw. You will gravitate toward efficiency and effectiveness, which a rabbet plane allows.
Fig. 4-12. With the table saw. An errant pass across the table saw, with the blade raised too high, can quickly change the final profile drastically. Do not bother with 1/100ths on the saw. Do not feel like every rabbet on a single piece needs to be executed in this fashion because you’re already there. The risk of an extra rabbet can easily outweigh the reward of saving the three minutes it will take to do it by hand.
This last point will bring up the argument, “If efficiency and effectiveness are the goal, why not stay with a router in the first place?” I can create most profiles three days faster than a router user, unless he pays for overnight delivery of his specialized tooling (in which case I will only beat him by 24 hours). But I digress.
There are so many things that I admire about my spouse, Lucy, that I could easily double the size of this blog by starting a list of them. We’ve been married 29 years, have raised two fiercely intelligent women and I still love spending every waking moment with her.
One of the thousand bonds that we share has been our dedication to front-line work. Neither of us ever wanted to move into management and have remained front-line writers throughout our careers.
Lucy has been a professional journalist at several daily newspapers, a weekly business newspaper and – most recently – as a TV reporter at WCPO-TV here in Cincinnati. While many journalists burn out after about a decade of covering this miserable world, Lucy has been on the front lines for more than 31 years, covering everything from the Kentucky Legislature to crime to difficult issues of homelessness and race.
And this month, Lucy starts a new job as the host of “Cincinnati Edition” on WVXU-FM, our local National Public Radio affiliate in Cincinnati. It’s the perfect job for her. She has been an NPR nerd as long as I’ve known her, and has been a huge booster for WVXU ever since we moved to the Cincinnati area in 1996.
This new position keeps her on the front lines – she’ll have a show five times a week that focuses on local news. And yet it will allow her to use her vast perspective on the city to help listeners make sense of the news. Lucy was born here, grew up here and has long been a fiercely independent journalist. She can get almost any Democrat, Republican or Charterite on the phone for an interview with ease because she has a reputation for fairness, thoughtfulness and (this is odd for a journalist) kindness.
I can’t wait to see what she is going to do.
Why am I telling you this? Because if it weren’t for this woman, we wouldn’t have Lost Art Press. John and I call her “madame president” – and mean it. She packed boxes, sold books and – most of all – said “quit your job” when I wanted to leave Popular Woodworking Magazine and do this stupidness.
So today this blog is for Lucy, who has made the lives of thousands of people – including me – better.
Your biggest fan,
Christopher Schwarz
P.S. You can read the “official” story of Lucy’s new job here.
P.P.S. Don’t bother leaving a nasty comment about journalists or NPR. No one will see it.
Wrong Photo Original caption: On the left, the parts aren’t arranged ideally. That top board should be flipped 180°. On the right is a leg that is glued up ideally.
On page 228 of “The Anarchist’s Workbench,” I printed the wrong photo. In the wrong photo (shown above), the boards in the left leg are oriented correctly to accommodate cupping and bowing of the wood. However, the caption says the boards are oriented incorrectly.
Here is how the photo should look (it’s corrected with the help of Photoshop).
Right Photo Original caption: On the left, the parts aren’t arranged ideally. That top board should be flipped 180°. On the right is a leg that is glued up ideally.
The error occurred because my head sometimes experiences what I call “vapor lock.” (Though I am sure there’s a real term for this problem.) When I took this photo in 2020, I realized that I had the boards oriented wrong. So I flipped the top board and retook the photo.
Then I reminded myself all day to delete the wrong photo. Delete the wrong photo. Delete the wrong photo.
At the end of the day, I deleted the other photo. My head was convinced right was wrong and wrong was right. And my hallucination lasted through the editing process.
Mark just retired from a career as a carpenter and general contractor, so what better way to commemorate the transition than by turning our own home into a construction site with a full-blown remodel of our bathroom?
This potential marriage breaker domestic disruption has been a long time coming. It was prompted by our recognition that as we, along with many of our family members and friends, have reached the stage of life characterized by the occasional discount on a cup of bad coffee or condescendingly raised voice from pharmacy staff, it would be advisable to replace our high-rimmed, impossible-to-make-presentable clawfoot tub that I bought from a pile outside an antique store in 2004 with something less likely to cause us to trip and fall. What finally set our wheels in motion was the Hallelujah Chorus of stepping into the newly completed bathroom of our clients Nick Detrich and Kathleen Benson, who tiled their walls in seafoam green – a shade that, while not for everyone, proved the perfect evocation of 1930s camp for me (and luckily, for Mark as well). They’d ordered too much field tile and were hoping to sell it. We were happy to oblige.
The actual color is somewhere between how it appears here and how it looks on the Heritage Tile site at the “seafoam green” link above.
From the start, we agreed on most of the details. A built-in cast-iron tub, an exhaust fan that’s quieter and more effective than the cheap-motel-circa-1972 model we currently have and a wall-hung basin with intact enamel. The tall shallow cabinet I built years ago with a salvaged door and hardware will stay, as will the shuttered window-like opening that lets light in through the laundry room.
Don’t look closely. I haven’t cleaned properly for a while. We’ll reroute the floor vent through the cabinet barely visible here at right. I kept extra flooring for patches in just this kind of situation.
Then there’s the floor. I wanted to keep the black-and-white checkerboard of 12”-square commercial-grade vinyl composition tile that I installed when I first moved in, inspired by a room that Sharon Fugate and Peggy Shepherd had finished in their eclectic home-furnishings store, Grant St [sic.], in the early 1990s.
Mark wanted ceramic tile or unglazed porcelain mosaic. “It’s the highest-quality finish,” he insisted. “It’s thicker and more durable.” Exactly what I would have told customers 20 years ago. And considering that we’re tiling the walls up to about 5’, he said, we should also do away with the baseboard so that moisture condensing on the vertical surfaces wouldn’t drip down onto the square top edge. Hmm, I thought. I have never seen water pool on the baseboard, other than just behind the clawfoot tub, where the wall sometimes gets sprayed when certain tall people (one in particular) take a shower – and that condition will be eradicated when we install a built-in tub.
The wall-mounted basin, along with the tub and light fixture seen here, came from the former Foursquare Antiques in Bloomington, Ind. The sconce still has its price, “$15,” in china pencil script, written by our artist friend Margie Van Auken, who worked at the store.
The idea of a tiled floor didn’t feel right to me for this house. It’s a funky house built and finished on a shoestring budget. The funkiness is its charm, and I know the story behind nearly every house part, from the salvaged sink that lacks a mixer faucet to the gate I made to keep our dog in the mudroom and the lamp my maternal grandma made from an antique hand-cranked coffee grinder. I have never been concerned about using the “highest quality” offerings just because they’re widely considered superior; I don’t want to live in a house where my surroundings are dictated by other people’s often-uncritical judgments. I have always worked with budgetary constraints – at $1 per square foot for a commercial-grade flooring product, my VCT tile reflects a necessarily skinflint period of my history that I have no desire to forget. I feel more at home when surrounded by things that hold meaning for me.
I said it was funky. Simple bookshelves hold paintings by our friend Chris Blackwood, a clock that belonged to Mark’s grandparents, binoculars (for visitors to the birdbath outside) and an increasingly outdated globe for locating countries. The dirigible by the window is one of Jonas’s creations, made from telephone wire (is that still a thing?) when he was little; it even has a pilot compartment on the underside, though the purple pilot has disappeared.
Ceramic and porcelain tile floors are hard. From a purely sensual perspective, I find them unwelcoming, though I have installed plenty of them in rooms where they were period-appropriate. Tiled floors are also cold. If we lived in a tropical climate I might value this characteristic, but we live in a place that has winter. Of course we could address the cold with under-floor heating, but that, too, strikes me as luxurious overkill, at least for our home. So you’re cold when you get out of the shower – dry off and put some clothes on. A little discomfort is good for us; it reminds us we’re alive. For our house, installing under-floor heating as a way to make tile more palatable also seemed a bit like the logic of building houses so tight and well insulated that you need a heat recovery ventilation unit to bring in fresh air. At some point, from a cradle to grave perspective, the efficiency arguably becomes inefficient.
Also, I like the bathroom baseboard, even if its interruption of the transition between a tiled wall and floor may not be typical in contemporary high-end bathroom construction. Does it work? Do we like it? Is it easy to keep clean? The answers to these and similar questions matter more to me than some industry stamp of approval, not least when I remind myself that such stamps appear on many cabinets made with ½” MDF carcases held together with staples and hot-melt glue.
A chair and mirror from a pair of now-shuttered antique stores in town, shop-made stair rail and house trim, a hickory floor I laid on my hands and knees. The framed photograph on the wall is by Kristen Clement, and the tile below was a gift from our stone-carver friend Amy Brier.
Vinyl composition tile is by definition synthetic – a product of the plastics industry.[i] At a prima facie level, this inclines me to view it with disapproval; it certainly raises all sorts of questions, from which chemical constituents went into its production to the possibility of toxic off-gassing over time.[ii] By comparison, the 1” hexagonal porcelain ceramic tile mosaic we’ve been considering seems more traditional, and so (in theory), safer – it was used in many a late-19th-century bathroom floor, at least in higher-end residences. (The majority of homes occupied by “working people” in that era did not have indoor plumbing.) I thought back to some recent news reports about cases of silicosis among workers in the composite stone countertop industry; even though ceramic and porcelain tile seem closer than VCT to their naturally occurring components, the dust from decanting, mixing and applying the cement and grout, as well as that produced by cutting tile, presents its own dangers to health. And when you’re talking about the industry that mass-produces ceramic and porcelain tile, you’re in the world of heavy materials that have to be mined and transported, often internationally, then processed with complex equipment at temperatures only achieved with significant carbon inputs, coloring additives, glazes and more – in other words, a highly energy- and resource-intensive product in its own right. So much for any “green” advantage, at least insofar as I can make out.
As for durability, while the 1’ x 2’ sheets of mosaic we were thinking of using are somewhat thicker than VCT, the latter is far denser than the resilient sheet flooring most people associate with vinyl; that’s how VCT came to be the flooring of choice for grocery stores around the country during the 20th century (even if acres of the stuff are now being scraped up in favor of an unapologetically bare, polished concrete floor). When properly installed, VCT will last for decades.
Our bedroom is furnished mostly with stuff we’ve made or had for years, such as the chest of drawers, once painted, that I bought from a shop in the English town of Reading circa 1982, a mirror frame and sloped-top box I made decades ago, homemade curtains and a Siamese cat that my paternal grandma gave to my parents when they got married. The mobile is by Karina Steele.
“But tile is more waterproof,” said Mark, invoking a common belief. Really, though? Water can’t get through 1/8”-thick VCT. Granted, there are joints where water could in principle penetrate to the underlayment and subfloor. Then again, there are many more potentially permeable joints in a floor made with the 1” porcelain hexagonal mosaic we were considering. Sure, if we installed a waterproof membrane beneath it, the tile floor would be waterproof in a meaningful way – as long as the membrane remained intact. But we use a bath mat when we step out, and how often does a sink in our house overflow or a toilet go bonkers and leak all over the floor? Neither has happened in the 17 years since the house’s construction, and with the two of us aging tradespeople who regularly clean out the gutters, mop up spills, and keep things reasonably well maintained, neither is very likely. Besides, should we design every feature of our homes with a view to its ability to survive a rare and potentially devastating scenario? I’m not talking about basics such as anchoring a structure to keep it on its foundation in an earthquake zone, or bracing it to resist high winds; this is a matter of interior finishes.
You can answer that for yourself, but my answer is no. In aesthetic terms, to make one room of our house State Of The Art would be an affront to the spirit of the entire place. It would also be a concession to dogma – “tile is better because harder, more permanent, more expensive” – the kind of prejudice I think it’s important to make my customers aware of on principle (because you know a friend or relative is going to ask them why they chose what they did, regardless of what they did), but that I don’t think should be the ultimate deciders.
And the VCT floor is already there, in perfectly good shape. Why rip it out and send those materials to the landfill?
For decades, the ethos in the building trade has been “tear out what’s there and upgrade” – more luxury, more comfort, more image-conscious “curation.” Maybe I have just been around for enough years that I recognize the motivations underlying so many real estate and construction industry recommendations, which too often boil down to “buy more.” My life and home have been shaped as powerfully by what I’ve rejected as what I’ve embraced. Mark is persuaded. (It helped that keeping the current floor will mean spending significantly less money.)
[i] Although the word “synthetic” is commonly used to connote poor quality, it simply means that something made by putting constituents together. Strictly speaking, few things we live with, wear, or eat are not synthetic.
[ii] I should add that there was no discernible smell to this flooring, even when it was new. It’s a different product from sheet vinyl flooring.
