Yak Shaving

Have you ever set out to do a task and discovered that in order to do it you needed to do some other task first?

And then had that same thing happen to the second task?

And the third task?

And ...

Pretty soon, in order to complete the first task, you're shaving a yak.

That's what happening here.  Although it looks like it, that's not actually yak hair.  It's wood shavings from that (formerly) square dowel.  It's my yak shaving for the task of finishing the attic.

See if you can follow along.
In order to insulate the attic, we had to have all the plumbing penetrations completed through the roof.

So we had to move the plumbing stack.

So we had to demolish the old master bath.

Which meant I didn't have a closet.

Which meant all my clothes are in laundry baskets scattered around the house.

Now, you might recall that we're on a couple of house tours soon.  Naturally we can't have laundry baskets full of clothes everywhere when people are touring the house.  So we started installing a closet in the old master bath space. (Don't worry this ties back into the attic again...)

Also as part of the attic, we looked at opening up the staircase to the attic.  Structurally that wasn't going to work at any reasonable price or timeline.

So the old cabinet in the hallway was removed to provide a more open feel in the back hall.

The cabinet was reassembled in the new closet.

And it needs to be painted.

So it needed to be prepped for painting.

And we noticed that a previous owner must have repaired some broken glass and used the wrong molding to hold the glass in place (see glass pane at the lower right).  Actually there are 5 panes that have suffered the same fate.  And they used the wrong molding (1/4-inch quarter round); it looks like cr*p and it going to bug me forever.

So I went looking for the right stuff.  No one has it, including Hiawatha Lumber.

So I have to fabricate it myself.  I start with a 3/8-inch square dowel; shaving it to a 1/4-inch by 3/8-inch quarter elliptical profile with simple hand tools and sanding it smooth.

It's going to cost $8 in materials and a little time.  I'm not sure why the previous repair was such a kludge; that material isn't significantly less expensive...

And once this yak is shaved, I can prime the moldings, install them, and keep painting.