Dutch Oven

A few years ago we got a cast iron dutch oven from my parents.  It mostly has sat in our garage, but it comes in handy when when the scouts go camping.  They are going winter camping next week and will be taking it.  In preparation, a couple of weeks ago they used it to practice their dutch oven cooking.  It came home looking like this.

It obviously has seen better days.  It is getting rusty on the outside and inside, the black around the edges in the bottom of the pan is some unknown charred on food, that will not come off.  It is about 1/2 inch thick.  And they are supposed to cook their meals in this.  It needs some love.

I started looking online for how to re-season cast iron and came across Sheryl Canter's blog.  She appears to be a little obsessed with cast iron cookware, which is a good thing for me.  She did all the research and figured out the best oil to use to season cast iron and could explain why.  She also had great steps to follow.  For her it has been a journey, so I had to read a couple of different posts and the comments to get all the information.

Here is how I did it.

First I cleaned the dutch oven with Easy Off oven cleaner.  Heating it first then spraying it and enclosing it in a big garbage bag to set for several hours and one time over Sunday. 

 It took several applications as well as Trip scrubbing it and chipping away at that charred on gunk.  We still had a few spots that wouldn't come completely off, but I thought it was good enough.   

Next we rinsed really well and towel dried it.  

In trying to get some "black rust" we baked it in a 450* oven for 1 hour.  It still just looked like red rust on it. So then I tried to boil it in water to get the "black rust", but my canner wasn't big enough to submerge the whole thing and it didn't work out.

Instead, I tried a tip that I found in the comment section and rubbed the whole thing with a cut onion.  That worked the best of all to give it some blackness.

Then I baked it again at 450* for an hour.

I let it cool and rubbed it with organic, unfiltered flax seed oil (it was cheapest at Amazon.com) then wiped it all off with a clean rag.  You might be tempted to leave a thin layer of oil on the pan, but that will cause it to be sticky when it comes out of the oven.  Wipe it all off (there really is the right amount left on the pan).  It works!

I put the dutch oven and lid in the cold oven, upside down, brought the temp up to 500*.  

After 1 hour at 500*, I  turned the oven off and it let cool for 2 hours.  Don't open the oven.

Then I repeated the oil steps 5 more times over the next 2 days.

We did 2 coats a day.  When the oil heats up, it made all of our eyes hurt, so I would time it to bake it, then leave the house or go to bed for the cool down period.  That is why it took so long.

It was totally worth it though.  

It looks beautiful!  

I keep thinking I want other cast iron pieces to make look so nice.

Here are the before and after pictures.

If you need some flax oil to do your own, I have some and it will expire before I use it again.

(I know I could eat the flax oil myself, in fact I used to take a table spoon a day, but then I got pregnant with Ocean and I couldn't stomach it anymore and I still can't.  Yuck!)

Ballistae, Onagers and Trebuchets, Oh My!

Spring Break, Beaches, Sun or .......Catapults.  Yes, who needs the beach when you can build your own working models of ancient artillery?  With this book and the proper motivation, you can.

Rez and his friend decided that for the science fair they were going to experiment with which type of catapult shot the farthest.

I don't think they really thought about having to build said catapults.  

Luckily Rez has a mom that likes to build things and we had spring break, which is a good thing, because we worked on them every day, all week long.  Also, luckily that book had designs for each of the types they wanted to test.  Unluckily, I don't think the author actually had anyone build the catapults from his directions as they are printed, so you also had to use your noodle.  (You can not use a 1/2 inch bolt to attach anything to a dowel that is 1/2 inch in diameter.)

We started with the Ballista.  It is powered by torsion (twisted ropes).

Here it is without the strings attached.

And all set up ready to arm.  To shoot it, you pull the center block back and hold it with a hook and eye, add your ammunition, then release the hook.  The Ballista springs back to this position, shooting out your ammunition through a little hole in the front.

Next we made the Onager.  It is a traditional looking catapult, with an arm you pull back.  It is also powered by torsion (twisted ropes).  

I was smarter this time and glued it together, before nailing it.  This made for a more "squared" catapult.

I only had so many clamps, and so used large candles on the top to add some weight as it dried.

We also improvised on the "basket" that you put the ammunition in.  It called for a 2" fender washer that you then rounded with the ball end of a ball-peen hammer.  I could not find a 2" fender washer, nor do I have a ball-peen hammer.  We used an old cap from a baby food jar with a hole drilled in it.  It worked great.

Rez and his friend also added padding so it wasn't as loud and so they got a better angle on the catapult.

The Onager shot really well from off the steps.

The last catapult we built was a Trebuchet.  It is powered by a lever and a sling.

The model we built was for Ludgar, the War Wolf.  Back a long time ago the King of England went up against a Scottish castle.  He had 13 large catapults built in their view for the siege.  He put each one into use as soon as it was operational. The largest and last be built was Ludgar.  By the time it was operational, the Scotts had had enough.  They surrendered.  The King, though, had spent a lot of time and money on this grand machine and he wanted to see it in action.  The Queen had come out to see it also.  So, the King refused their surrender and ordered the Scotts back into their castle.  He then commenced to reduce the castle to rubble.  Only 30 Scotts survived.

Not a very nice King, I think.

The engineers who made Ludgar didn't leave any mechanical plans of it, there were only some pictures that our directions were based on, so our Ludgar did not work very well, but it looked nice.  We know that some trebuchets work really well.  The neighbor built one for his science fair project and it shot really far.  They boys wanted to use it for their trials, but it wasn't the same scale as their other catapults, so we built our own.

Here is Ludgar.

(and Rez's friend)

We had a little trouble getting the 6" pieces of wood cut with 30 degree angles on each end to make the triangles.  Our miter saw has a setting for 30 degrees, but it is 30 degrees from the center line, not from the  side edge that you hold the wood up to.  Trip is good at solving problems, so we figured out how to cut them.

We weighted the bottom with lots of metal washers and some lead fishing weights tucked inside.

Ocean is demonstrating how it works.  To shoot it, place an object in the sling, pull it all the way to the floor, and release.  The weight in the bottom pulls goes down and the throwing arm goes up, releasing the sling, shooting your object.

Rez discovered that the Ballista shoots nerf darts very well.  

He could run around shooting it like a cross bow.

He could even sight down the center for more accurate shooting. 

Finally after some fine-tuning, they were ready for their trials. 

Here they are lined up, ready to fire.

The Ballista (in the front) shot the farthest by far.  The way it is designed the ammunition shoots straight.  The marble we shot would fly out and skip across the ground like a stone skipping on the water.  It went up to 20 ft.  After the trials were done, Rez tightened the ropes more and got it to shoot up to 29 ft.

Hand Drills Are Not My Favorite Power Tool.

This week, I have been working on a project with Reuben and his friend, for their science fair project.  It has involved using lots of power tools.  While using the drill with a 1/2 inch bit, the drill jerked and hurt my finger.  The middle one that is now swollen.  I can't bend it all the way or straighten it out all the way either.

I do not like using hand drills with large drill bits.  This might be the result that this my second injury involving one, the first resulted in a trip the ER and hand surgery.

 (I think I need a drill press:)

Bathroom Saga

Our bathroom is almost done.

It has needed remodeling since we moved in about 4 years ago. 

At the time, we knew it had old tile on the floor that was broken and missing in spots, the floor around the toilet had been taken out and replaced, but with no tile on it.  The toilet was a piece of work.  It has leaked at different time.  At one point when it was leaking, I was trying to figure out were the leak was coming from and discovered that  the  wall behind the toilet was sopping wet behind the tiles and took out a 1 1/2 foot square of tile and plaster.  I'm not exactly sure where it was leaking at that point, but we replaced all the insides of the tank and put new bolts and washers to bolt the tank on.  That seemed to fix it.  Once it was the wax ring that needed replacing and it dripped sewage into the basement, we fixed that.  Then for about the last year, it has flooded the floor around the toilet every time the bowl filled with new water.  We don't know what was broken, but it would seep out from around the base of the toilet, run to the wall and drip down into the basement.  I had a bin down there to catch the water that was icky from running through the wood, though it was clean when it came out of the toilet.  That worked until Zelda got old enough to discover how fun it was to throw things into the water.  Luckily the basement still has a cement floor with a drain in it.

We knew the toilet and floor needed replacing and the wall behind needed patching, but we also wanted a new sink, bath tub, recessed medicine cabinet and turning the door around so it swung out.  We were planning on keeping the blue tile since it seemed to be in really good shape, that way we could keep the cost down a bit.  There was one wall of tile that we didn't want to keep, so I was going to take the tile off of that wall, clean it up (undiluted Simple Green worked wonders getting 50 year old glue off the backs of them) and use it to replace the tiles that would come off around the tub and the hole in the wall by the toilet.  

It  didn't work out that way.  When the contractor  opened the wall around the tub,  this is what he found

The wall was filled with moisture ant damage and rotten wood from leaks in the gutter and around the window.   The wall had to be completely rebuilt.

He also had to cut out some of the sub floor that was rotted away.

Since all the walls were open, we had all the plumbing updated as well.

It took a lot longer than we were planning, about 4 weeks total and that is our only bathroom, so we had the Honey Bucket in the driveway.  I appreciate indoor plumbing now.

 All that is left is us painting and putting up hardware, a little trim and a mirror.

(Oh, and getting our gutters fixed so they don't leak into the wall any more).

Here is the mostly finished project

We love our new bathroom!

By the way Russell Thomas of Evolve Construction did a fabulous job!

You can see by the picture.

Some of the things I loved were that he paid attention to the little details that make the project look really nice and when I didn't like the look of the lay of the tiles, he redid them how I wanted.  

His number is (206) 306-3433.

I Love Power Tools

I do.  I have so much fun with my miter saw and electric drill.  I recently got a dremmel.   We got our first power tools when we bought our first house.  My bother- in -law, tired of us borrowing his, I am sure, bought us a cordless drill.  That was fun.  When we fixed up our house to sell, we acquired more power tools.  A circular saw, a jig saw, a couple of sanders.  Then when we built our fence. 

 We bought a miter saw.  I love that saw.  We now have a new cordless drill, a corded drill, a reciprocating saw, a palm sander, a belt sander, as well as all the other tools listed above.  I have so much fun making things.  

Except last year, when we were finishing the pinewood derby cars.  All I can say is, don't hold a pinewood derby car in your hand while you are trying to drill a little weight out of it.

We ended up in the emergency room, with no feeling in my ring finger.  It turns out I had severed the nerve and had to have surgery to repair it.   I still love my power tools, just not pinewood derby cars.

The evil pinewood derby car.

This Old House

When we bought our house in the spring of 2008, it was advertised as a "well maintained old house."  I think to qualify for "maintained" you actually have to do some maintenance on it more recently then the 1970's.  The back yard was beautiful.  The house not so much.  They had, before we moved in, been forced to update most of the electrical (there had been a power surge and blew out everything = new appliances, electrical box and wiring) and they replaced most of the plumbing at the same time. To their credit there were gas appliances and it is well insulated.   (The gas was a big deal to me since we had just paid to have our old house converted from oil to gas and then had to move and never got to enjoy the full benefits of it.) 

But I don't know when the last time it was painted.  It has the original 1940's kitchen and bathroom with water damage in the floor/subfloor (this is next on our list).  It had 60 year old carpet over the "original" (water damaged) hard wood floors and had water/ moisture ant damage in the walls in the basement, rot in the front porch awning and a sagging roof and ceiling.  The chimney needs repair.  Some of the windows were aluminum frame, but most were the original wood windows and were painted shut or or only opened a few inches.  The front door would stick when in was humid (we live in Washington, so that is almost always), the back door had gaps around it.  You get the idea.  Some of this we knew before buying it, some we discovered after.  (You can't really open walls when you are inspecting before you buy.)

There were also these huge hedges all across the front.  The one on the left by the minivan was as big as our bathroom.  

Apri 2008

`

The first thing we did was get new windows in the bedrooms (fire safety you know). 

Then we started on the yard.  The big hedges/bushes had to go.  They took up so much space on our small lot.    My kids were very upset, they don't like change and I was destroying "habitat".  They also used to climb in the big hedge and use it for a fort.  Fortunately, they got over it quickly and found new places for their forts. 

Look at that, it looks like a different house already.  

April 2009

Then we spent a year building a fence across the front (there was already a fence in the back) and putting in stairs down to the driveway and building a rockery around them.  This is another story all on its own.  But now our kids can play outside and I don't have to worry about them wandering in the street.

Next on the list was paint the house.  We started looking for paint colors.  Trip liked to really see how the color was going to look and so would paint big swaths of color.  At one point the front looked like a patch work quilt.

April 2010.

Here is an up-close of two of the colors we were considering. 

By June, we had added a third color and a new front and back doors.  

On the old front door, the handle had come off the inside, and wouldn't stay on.  The door/handle/lock were such a way that I couldn't get a new door handle, so a new door it was.  For a while we had a rope to pull the door open, but you couldn't let it latch, or you would have to run around the house and open it from the outside.
 I love our new door. 

We settled on the red.  Over a year later, this is how far we had gotten.

July 2011

 

Plus we found this rotten wood on the front porch and the wood behind the gutter there, was rotted away leaving gaping holes letting rats have their run of the attic.  Yuck!  I didn't know how to fix this.

There was a lot of work on the house.  Here is one side after we had scraped it.

This is the back of the house and the back porch.  If you look closely, you can see that the bathroom window is broken.  It was like that when we moved in.  I had figured out how to replace 2 panes of glass in some of the wood frame windows (that the kids broke).  But I couldn't figure out how to fix the aluminum frame window.

 

By now it was August, at this rate, our house wouldn't get painted for another year or longer, and we would have no life, because we were always "painting".  We decided to call in the cavalry!

We have a friend that is a house painter, Blair Suddarth (206) 731-9140, so we asked him to come and give us a bid.  Walking around the house, showing him what we had done so far, we came across some of these other things that needed fixing, like the rotted wood, the window and a broken screen.  He said, "We can fix that if you want."  When there is other work, he teams up with Cliff Barrow of ACP Painting (206) 979-3387.  They have guys that can do everything.

  

"REALLY?" I said, my eyes getting wide.  "That would be so great!"  

I asked him about the hand rail.  We have a wrought iron hand rail down our front stairs that was broken in a couple of spots making, it unsafe.  Here you can see where it is completely detached.  If you were to grab a hold of that and put your weight on it, you would be down in the flower bed.  I knew I needed it fixing, but I had no idea who to call to fix wrought iron.

Now I do.  They could fix that too. 

Blair Suddarth came back with a very reasonable bid.  

 They started a couple of days later.

We had heard from some friends of ours whose house he had also painted that he was very detail oriented and that was our experience too.  They spent a good 3 days just prepping everything.   Scraping, sanding, grinding, filling and priming.  

Then came the body paint.  They sprayed and back brushed it all, twice.  They were also able to use the 10 gallons of paint we had purchased at Lowes, but was way too shiny.  And since it was so dark, Lowes wasn't able to get it in a different sheen.  It was supposed to be satin, but looked like semigloss.  Blair knew where to go to get the paint color matched perfectly in a flat and they mixed it all together making a nice soft sheen.

 

Here is is with the body colored.  I love the red!

 The painters started on the trim, while some others fixed the rotted wood, the hand rail, two broken screens to the crawl space and the window in the bathroom.   They even threw in painting the all the wrought iron.  

Everyone was great to work with.  When ever I noticed something, they were either already on top of it or happy to do it.  I noticed that one of the hand rails was still a little wobbly after they had fixed it.  Upon inspecting it, it was missing a screw into the cement.  They fixed it.  I wanted both panes of glass in the bathroom replaced instead of one.  They fixed it.  All of the workers who came to our house were respectful and friendly.  

I paid 1/3 down when they started and paid the rest after I had a final walk around.  The only thing added to the bill was for the extra pane of glass I asked them to replace that wasn't figured into the original bid and they did so many little extra things.

Luckily we had nice weather in September. 

Here is the finished house.  

Here are some of the details.  This is the place the rotted wood was.  They took it all out and replaced it.  

Here is the side I showed you above with only primer on it.

One of the screens they replaced

The back porch and back door they painted.

The window they replaced (it still has the old screen on it)

They even painted the outside of the vinyl windows, when I didn't like the white window frame with the trim.

I cannot say how pleased and happy we were with their work and their workers.

If you need some painting done, inside or out or have another project and you need an honest company, I don't hesitate to recommend them.  I asked Blair what all they do, and they have done strictly painting projects all the way up to remodels and everything in-between.  He told me about removing walls and putting in beams and crafting beautiful sturdy hand rails.
I can already think of a few more things I want to ask them about.

If you need some work done, call Blair Suddarth (206) 731-9140.  He will take care of you.

Here are the before and after shots once again.