Genius at Work

First of all, we have the lovely hole in the masterbed room floor. The end of this board was completely eaten up with dry rot. Oddly enough, the boards to either side of it are fine. I can't figure out what about this board doomed it.


Since all our power tools were stollen a couple weeks ago, I gathered up all the tools I had left: a nail set, a set of three chisels, a file (for sharpening the chisels), a wood rasp, a hammer, a rubber mallet, a small square, two "C" clamps, a hand saw, and a lot of sandpaper.

I cut the rotten end of the board off using the chisels.

First, I went under the Queen and measured out from the main beam under the bedroom wall to the first floor joist. I went back the bedroom, measured out from the wall (adjusting to take the base board & wallboards into account), and marked the board. I squared the line up (with the square of course) and scored it with the chisel. Once I'd done that, I used the chisel cut out along the line. Cut towards the scored line, it'll give you a nice straight cut & it'll keep the chisel from cutting up past the line. Once you cut out to the bottom of the score mark, rescore and repeat the process. If I had power tools, I would have drilled a 1/2" hole with my drill and then used my jigsaw to cut it off.

I don't know if I was just nervous or the use of hand tools made me work slower, but I swear to God this was the straightest line I've ever cut in my entire life. It was magnificent.

Sorry for all the pictures of me. I know you just can't enough pictures of that goofy, Kraut-looking sonofabitch, but it seems a little excessive even to me. After I got the damn rot out, I sanded the cutline and used the sand paper & chisel to clean all the filth, gunk, and splinters of wood out of the neighboring boards' tongue and groove.

Now that the board was out, the new challenge was finding something to patch the hole with. First, I found a scrap of 2x4 and nailed it to the floor joist shown above. This gave me something to nail the new board into. As you might remember from some recent posts, we're starting to run out of wood. Kenny used the few floor boards we'd saved to patch the dinning room and living room floors. The only thing that I found was a scrap of wall board.

Wall board might seem like and odd choice, but it actually fits well. Aside from the framing, most of the Devil Queen is finished with 3/4 thick, five inch wide, tongue-in-groove boards. Floor boards were sanded smooth on their tops, the bead board was finished out with beads, and the wall boards were left semi rough. Also, the color of the wood is identical too.

The photo below is me cleaning my scrap board off. Unfortunately, it was full of wallpaper tacs and a few drywall nails. The nail holes are small and can be patched with wood putty. I'm hoping the blackish stains around some of the holes will sand out. If not, it's not too bad. They shouldn't be too noticable.

My wife caught me with the "genius look." I do my best thinking when my mind flat-lines. We use to have a fat Persian cat that always had an expression like that, it was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on four legs. And, he was terribly neurotic. For example, he was terrified of his own poo.
I measured the board, marked off the section I wanted, and I clamped it down to Kenny's work bench with the C-clamps. I cut along the line with the handsaw and sanded the cut smooth.

The trick was getting the new board into the hole. First, I cut off the bottom part of the groove. I tried wiggling the board in, but, since it had to slide under the baseboard and wallboards to fit, it wouldn't go. I could have used another 2x4 as a nailing block on that end, but I thought I would get a better fit if I could slide it all the way under the wall & baseboard. So, I cut off about 4 to 5 inches of the tongue on that end of the board. It worked better, but not enough to slide in. Then, I shaved the next 4 inches of the tongue down so it tapered as it got closer to the cut off portion of tongue. This worked. With help of the rubber mallet, I manage lock it into place.

Here you can see the patch as I face nail it into the nailing bock.