Mallet From A Pallet

[HiTemp]

Here's a little woodworking "persuader" I made the other day out of some free wood I accumulated from some old pallets. The handle is red oak, the outside faces of the head are white oak, and the center sections of the head are hard maple. Few bucks worth of lead fishing sinkers in the head to make it a dead blow, and I finished it with a clear minwax finish then sprayed it with a spar varnish. Has a few of the pallet nail holes visible, but I don't care. Gives the thing some character.

It's a hefty SOB. I think you could move a Buick with it, even if the emergency brake was on.



Started with these pieces:



Here's the rough fit up:



A little scroll saw work and lots of sanding for the handle:



Holes bored in the center head piece for the lead weights, gluing up the last side:



Some 10 degree bevel cuts to shape the head, a little chamfer of the edges, and here's everything glued up and sanded ready for finish



The completed mallet:



Another view showing the top of the head:

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Pretty slick. I should have had you do the molding on the trim for my moms bathroom the other day. I made some from pine 1x2, notched on one side for wainscot cap, and routed for looks on the other. My patience with wood is lacking, too bad you cant just weld it up when you screw up.

Many years ago I made a bathroom vanity from pallet oak, it was kind of a rustic Victorian kind of thing. We left it when we sold the house and I have regretted it since.

[HiTemp]

Well if you're going to paint it, I've found the best stuff for "welding" tough spots in wood is duct sealant. You can buy it by the tub, I paid around $12 for a tub, think it's about a quart size, at the big box store. I use it if the seams are too big for regular caulk to fill in.

WARNING: This stuff hardens like nobody's business. It's like JB Weld almost. Nice thing is, you can apply it with a putty knife or use a brush (that you intend to throw away) and really flow it into a mismatched seam. Be sure to wipe up any splatter or extra that gets applied because once it dries you'll use a sheet of sandpaper to remove a quarter size spot.

I just finished remodeling several rooms in my house including my bathroom. Laminate floors in the bedrooms and hallway, new paint top to bottom, new doors, closet doors, and trim all around.

This is what I used on the floors. Brazilian cherry laminate.  Lousy picture - cell phone special.  That's the new molding also.



The bathroom was quite a saga.  I ripped EVERYTHING out.  Old vanity, sink, cast iron tub, floor, walls, and ceiling.  Here it is stripped to the studs.



Looking back toward the door into the old bedroom that had become my plane storage room/drum room.



First thing I did was rough all the new electrical for a new light over the shower, new fan, outlets, etc. Then I tiled the floor with some porcelain tile, stopping just under where the lip of the new tub was going to be.



Next I installed the new tub and the surround, then put up the backer board on walls and ceiling extending out 8 inches past the tub's outer edge. Then using 12" tile and 3" end cap tiles, I tiled the walls and ceiling above the tub, tiled all around the edge of the surround and tub down to the floor with the end caps. Also put in a new overhead light above the tub/shower.





A better look at the tile up top


Next, the job I hated the most, drywall. Here;s some of that mess with a new holes in the ceiling for the new fan and a new HVAC register (had to move the old one)



Once all that was done, it was prime, paint, install the new flush, vanity, and sink. Here's what it looks like now


That irritating splotchy white line above the tile edge is because I ran out of the pewter colored caulk and that was the last seam. It's all hunky dory now, straight as a razor.




You guys probably think when I retired I'm just sitting around on my ass feeding birds and mowing my lawn all day.  Uh-uhh!  The boss has been driving me like a Hebrew slave doing all this house stuff.  I even thought of taking up ranching for a break except the only thing I know about cows I read here.


That pallet wood stuff is really taking off.  All the little boutiques and such around here have several pieces... tables, buffets, hutches, stools... all made from reclaimed lumber, much of it from pallets.  I have a stack of the stuff in my carport, I've been wanting to get to the mallet and then make a nice planter's bench for gardening, maybe some more bird houses.  Now that the hot weather is upon us and I can't stay out in the sun very long, I might get to that project now that the home renovations have calmed down a bit.

[Stetto, man...]

Temp, nice mallet. The bath looks good, but you didn't mention membrane over substrate before tile. That green clay Sheetrock isn't even code up here anymore, but membrane is. I just rebuilt a 2.5'X3.5' shower stall last winter.

You can see the uselessness of green rock that isn't sealed with a membrane. The previous owner did this job with his own drunk two little shithooks...

Even the stud and opposing wallboard couldn't escape this nutcase's ineptitude...

Adhesive of choice? carpet adhesive and Liquid Nails, the only Thinset was on the two sides and back wall, only three feet up from the floor...

And I spent a couple days mitigating mold before replacing stud work and refacing with DenShield.

I can't find the pics of the membrane application. Should have been with these, but with my luck got deleted in my phone...Here is my final product, done right and absolutely waterproof (yes, I hired a guy to cut tile).

[HiTemp]

Wow, Stetto, you sure breathed some life back into that bathroom. I did have some small bits of mold present on one plate and a few inches of the lower studs on one wall (right wall looking at the floor tile picture). I used Moldex to clean what I could (didn't take much off) and another application to treat what was there before doing anything to the walls.

The DuraRock I bought for under the tile has one face that is coated in a fiberglass kind of stuff that acts as a membrane, the other surface feels like cement. My tile expert told me that so long as I put that fiberglass facing out and used thinset and tape on all my joints, that would provide a moisture seal. Seeing as it is only about 15" or so above the surround and on the ceiling, I wasn't too worried about it. What I replaced was 4" square tile stuck directly to primed drywall all the way from tub to about 6 ft high and that didn't get penetrated, I'm not too concerned about that top tile.

I'm not sure what you mean about Green Day sheetrock. The green sheetrock I got is a treated anti-mold sheetrock that is used just about everywhere down here in bathrooms and kitchens because the high humidity leads to less evaporation of surface water. I put it up then every inch of drywall got two coats of KILZ primer, then the two coats of color. I also consider that the old bathroom had no exhaust fan at all before but now has a fairly decent one and better flow of AC with the new ducting and register. It's certainly cut the humidity WAY down in there, so I'm not too concerned about mold or penetration problems. That's one of the reasons I didn't want to go with a full tub-to-ceiling tile job but took the easy way out and bought a surround instead.

What I've found is that when using the shower I don't get very much moisture at all on the tiles above. I expected the steam to put a good layer of water on them in use but that hasn't really happened much at all. The grout is sealed and has to be resealed every two years, but it's an easy job with spray sealer. Hopefully it will hold up.

I like your choice of tile color very much and that's a great job with the small tile trim and insets. Wish i had the patience and skill to try something that demanding.

My next patience-tester is going to be removing a popcorn ceiling in my kitchen-dining room area when we've built up enough money to tackle that part of the house. That's the last area of the house to be done and the most expensive. That ceiling is the thing I dread about it the most because it's been up forever and God only knows how many coats of paint are on it. I'm sure it ain't coming off with a 14" straight knife which is how I've taken them down before. Might be easier to just hire someone for that part.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Nice. I bet grouting overhead is fun as heck right?

How funny, we redid our bathroom here as well this spring, not down to the studs, but new wainscot over the plaster that had come off in chunks with the pink plastic tile when we moved in and redid it, and I just slapped up paneling to get by...20 years ago, new vinyl flooring, cabinet and sink and light fixtures. Kind of a bad pic but you get the idea, our bathroom is small thank goodness. The kitchen is next so I hear.

Not near as fancy as yours are.





Both Moms house in Lyman and ours were built in '26' to '27', hers was the town managers house. The sugar factory that built the town to start with built a row of fancy houses for the management and everyone else lived in small portable barracks style buildings until the other houses could be built for workers and their families, part of her now living room at one time was an office. After the town grew and got a real municipal building, and after the factory shut down in the 60s it had another family in it for many years, and when the old folks eventually died, it sat open for a couple years and their kids sold it to my brother in law, who gutted the kitchen, left it open for another 5 or more years and then decided he didn't have time to redo it all and ended up selling it to us.

Sometime along the way they decided to update the look with the olive green carpet and wood paneling, and in the bathroom built a concealment around the old clawfoot tub and used the same pink plastic tile we had, they must have had a sale on that stuff or something.

Everything was pretty ratty and old so once we ripped out the enclosure, we were surprised to find an old clawfoot in great shape. Unfortunately the idiots chopped a hole in the oak floor for access to the pipes and glued VA tile down on it as well. What a job to scrape that stuff up. Did I mention I hate remodeling? I just finished her bathroom last weekend mostly, just have to set the tub is all. After that is just the usual get out the green carpet and paint etc. I suspect the oak floors are in good shape underneath.

[HiTemp]

That's hilarious 3 of us were redoing bathrooms and it never came up in conversation til now. Is that a Zen thing or are we somehow being effected by ProBoards subliminal advertising?? Queue up the Twilight Zone music.

Good job on your remodel, Honcho. I really like that vanity top with the rectangular sink. That's what I wanted to put in ours but we went with the smaller round sink because it leaves more room for the Admiral's cosmeteticals and such which can take up quite a bit or real estate atop a vanity. All my stuff fits in a drawer except for a toothbrush up top in the holder.

I have another bathroom to do yet, probably get to it in the fall. This one is smaller than the one I've done. It will get the same tile floor and all new walls and electical, tub, vanity, sink. The ceiling is going to stay since it's in good shape and I don't want to mess with it. Yeah, the overhead grouting wasn't bad at all but laying the tile was a beech. I basically screwed support boards to the wall about a foot below the ceiling, then cut boards to span the length. I had a 10" thick piece of fairly firm styrofoam and a bunch of plywood squares to use as shims. I'd grout the back of the tile then set it in place, level it out with the shims, then tap it sideways/front-to-back to get it square with the lines. I wasn't in any rush so I only set one tile every 4 hours or so in order to give it plenty of time to set up. So far, none have come crashing down on me.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

We weren't going to replace the sink right away, the old one was the faux marble and was cracked in the bottom, but not so much it leaked, just looked bad. As we were picking out the floor and wainscot, we walked through the sink and vanity diplays at Menards, and were put off by the price, this one was on the shelf in the low rent section and on sale for 80 bucks, so it came home. Once I started to try and install it we saw why it was on sale, they never finished the bottom of the drain hole, it was angled and rough. But the angle grinder with sanding disk made a relatively easy and quick fix and it worked out OK.

Nothing in here is fancy, but its better than the half demo'ed half left over decor we have lived with. We have been trying to focus on things like replacing windows and now siding and roof instead of getting the inside fancy. Heck with all the dogs and me, it never stays fancy or clean long anyway.

[Stetto, man...]

Our old place is slowly becoming all Menards. I have so many issues with quality & lack of user friendliness, but it's what we got. 12 months no interest is a motivator too.

[HiTemp]

I purchased most of my stuff from both Blue and Orange big box stores because they give me a 10% (military) discount on everything. But when I was buying the lumber, just for the heck of it I stopped at this lumber yard right close by and checked the prices there. No discount but the prices were much better even without it. An 8ft 2x4 at Lowes runs a few cents over 3 bucks.. so it's about $2.75 with my discount. The lumber yard sells them for $2.60 and starts volume pricing at 5 boards. Whenever I buy hardware now, I buy it there if I can. Instead of paying $2.99 for a bag of 12 3/8" washers at the big box, I get a heaping handful of them paid by the weight at the lumber yard. The guy who usually waits on me always tosses a few extra in the bag whenever I buy nails, screws, bolts, etc. Another time I was buying 10 1/4" Tee nuts... they were a quarter each. He saw me counting them out and just reached in the bin and grabbed about 15 or so, put them in the little plastic bag and wrote $1.99 on it. That's 15 PLUS the 8 or so I already had counted out. Never can tell what you'll get from that guy.

There's another builder's supply place not too far away and they have the best prices on sheet goods, drywall, etc. Only thing is it's hard to get in and out of there because so many local contractors buy from there it's like a sea of trucks and trailers out by where you pull in to load up. But you can save a few bucks if you're patient.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

I wish our local yards were competetive. Some lumber like 16' 2x6 they are a buck 50 or more per board higher. And on stuff like steel roofing they are a good 20- 25% more. But they must still sell, they recently built a big new fancy building in a new location in town and bought other yards in other smaller towns.