We have officially begun a much larger project than we have immediate time or money to complete: The Basement! This weekend we began laying the 'groundwork' for many working weekends to come. Sarah kindly invited her father to join in on this expedition to build a subfloor across half of our basement. It's a good thing too, because Ralph is an excellent carpenter AND he knows how to speak convincingly to his daughter:
BUT, the real purpose of this post is to show the tooling that Ralph and I had to gather for the event. Cause every good project can be rated by the coolness of the tools required. I mean, check this out:
You know...for when you have to attach wood to concrete. Nothing like a little gun-powder to set the proper tone for a project! Yes, those are .22 caliber shells. Put a few hundred rounds through the gun this weekend. We even discussed a "safe" method of determining how far that puppy would shoot a nail through the air, but decided we maybe didn't NEED to know that bad.
Next were the planes. Ever set a straight board on an old concrete floor? The concrete was very wavy. Ralph invested in his "birthday present":
This little blue number saved us a lot of time and sweat. It's a power plane. Compared to the block plane on the right...well...actually...there's just no comparison. The power plane eliminated trips out to the table saw (which was staged in the garage), saved my poorly measured cuts (at least the longer ones), and made matching the floor a breeze. Hand planes still have a coolness factor, but were better put to use in fine-tuning than the mass-removal that the power plane accomplished.
Also, in the picture above is a lazer level. This tool truly saved our bacon. I'd already done a botched survey of the floor elevations, and if it hadn't been for that little orange box the new floor would have dips and bows to rival a motocross track. Thanks to Gene Geddes for lending that puppy out.
And finally a small collection of miscellaneous items that we used A LOT.
I'd say, based on this tooling (and judging by my expert level of carpentry) that this project rates at about 8.5 9.5 out of 10. (Adjusted for the level of precision we maintained because of good tooling.)
Upcoming: Subfloor - Time Lapse
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