Thursday, November 17, 2011

Furniture Shop



Jacobson Construction is opening their furniture shop!

It has always been a dream of mine to build custom furniture.  I am happy to now offer this service to my clients.  The craft table above is designed for Oakville based artist Michelle DeVilliers.

The design is based on a bench for woodworking, albeit with rather large dimensions.  The top is 5 feet by 9 feet!  Below is plenty of storage for canvases, supplies, etc.  The entire table will also disassemble, as something this size will not easily fit through doors.

More to come.  This table will present some unique challenges...

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Fun in the Crawl Space

Argh!
My feet are cold!


Then maybe your crawl space is lacking a little insulation.
Here is one.  It does have some insulation, but not enough.  The biggest problem though, is some pesky vents in the outside walls.
Back when this house was built (1960), the code called for vents into the crawl space.  So in the summer you open the vents, and in the winter you close them.  But those vents are only 1/16" tin, so a "closed" vent isn't going to keep the cold out... at all.

So, let's seal up everything.



Start with the headers.  You can lose a lot of heat through these.
We put a layer of R14 batt insulation...


Followed by a layer of 2" extruded polystyrene.  Total R-value is 24.  The edges are sealed with spray-foam.


The walls are covered floor to ceiling with the same 2" insulation.  The seams are taped and all edges/joints are sealed up with spray-foam.  We are looking to make the space air-tight.

A nice rolling cart helps, too.  The space is only 4' high, so a seat with wheels and a tray help to get around without wrecking your knees.



Sometimes you have to get creative.  This is the valve for the exterior hose bib.  Can't cover that up.


And there it is.  Clean, dry, and warm.