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Toolfest!

Working on the final trim installation was doubly satisfying because we are doing some of the things necessary before we (finally!) move in upstairs AND we also used just about every tool in our arsenal…and a few rentals, too!

First, we had to pull out the trusty Bosch electric planer.

The problem was that the jambs were originally installed to fit plaster and lathe walls. Even though we used the thicker 5/8” type of drywall, the total thickness of each wall still wasn’t equal to the original walls. I know from some research that some people compensate for this by shimming out each wall stud before the drywall is installed, but that was a little beyond our skills (or planning abilities!) at the time.

Luckily, the electric plane accomplished the same outcome pretty easily. That was especially helpful because the walls didn’t end up being consistently straight. (Or, the original walls were less straight than the new walls.) Again, the plane helped forgive lots of errors.

Second, we pulled out the ever reliable DeWalt 12" miter saw.

Luckily, the way we reconfigured some of the rooms resulted in walls being slightly shorter, not longer. This meant that we could use all of the original trim lengths without coming up short.

For more precision cuts, my dad became familiar with the wonderful Fein Multi-Master.

With it, he helped us to take care of some similar fine adjustments to some of the trim lengths. The Multi-Master is something Jeannie found when researching tools to re-glaze our double-hung windows, but with its interchangeable blades it proved itself to be equally handy at other precision cuts.

Finally, the new tool to our little ‘trim party’ was a Passlode Cordless Nail Gun.

Put simply…this thing is awesome! After poking around the Home Depot rental center and air tool aisle, I decided that a rental was better than an outright purchase at this point. I wasn’t that familiar with the options, we don’t own an air compressor (yet!) and the cordless nail guns cost a pretty penny.

The 16-gauge Passlode was the only version they rented out, but it seemed to be a good fit for our use. The tool operates cordlessly with a combination of a rechargeable battery and a replaceable air cartridge. Unfortunately, given all that, the rental costs do add up…$30 for the tool (24 hrs), $20 for a 4-pack of cartridges and $11 for a thousand nails (2 ½”).

After I got the hang of it, though, it was definitely worth it. We got almost all of the trim installed in just a few hours. Compared to my experience manually installing the wainscoating in the master bathroom, I’m pretty sure it cut the install time in half.

As you can see, we’ve made some more good progress. Good thing, since the new mattress will be arriving on Tuesday!

That’s about enough writing for today, so we’ll wait and post some eye candy of the installed trim tomorrow...

Posted by aaron on September 25, 2005 at 4:33 PM (4)

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