This Old House Framing Article

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JbNormandog

JbNormandog

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Apr 8, 2004
Posts
3,751
Loc
NJ
I read yesterday in This Old House magazine about how expensive custom frame shops are. It went on to say that you can get the same results cheaper yourself.

They recomended buying the frame, mats and glass at the local craft or frame shop and then do it yourself. They then listed a mat cutter, miter saw hammers and clamps you will need to complete the job. They also linked to lineco website for tapes.

About 6-8 months ago they also ran an article about dental floss and how it is best to hang your pictures with because it will not mar your wall.

Would these same people recommend that we replace our own furnaces because we can cut out the plumbers? Or perhaps we can dig out our own foundations or raise the roof and not have to pay those overcharging contractors?

I think after anyone that actually tries it themselves they will see the value in what we do and the knowledge of how to treat artwork and come screaming into our shops to do it for them.

Can PFM run an article bashing roofers or carpenters please, I would love to send TOH a copy.

Bob
 
Gee, I'm closing tomorrow and going to our Great Lakes Chapter Meeting in Traverse City, MI to attend Nelson's Open House and educational seminars. Giving up my Saturday and only day of the week off (Sunday) and driving a total of 9 hours, paying a hotel bill... giving up time with my kids... getting my garden planted...

Dang it! If I had caught this article I could have saved all the time, trouble and expense of going and learned everything I need to know about custom framing with a little reading over a cocktail!

Darn!!!
 
I put this in the same category as people who do their own dental work.

:nuts:

We all know the nightmares of turning these tasks over to the ordinary person who isn't willing to invest.

Things like this remind me of hillybillys. No offense, because I know a few of them. I think I'd just laugh my guts out if I ever saw a frame hung up with dental floss.
 
This push to save money by DIY only means that 6 years from now when people have money and are tired of looking at the carp on their walls we are going to have to undo a lot of nightmare frame jobs!
 
Hopefully after their photos have faded or burned they will bring them to me for restoration.

It's easy work. I sit on my tail in AC/Heat. No cuts, no sweating, no back aches.

Did the the article advise corrugated cardboard? I'm hopeful.


I have had three this week stuck to the glass. Thanks Wally World!
 
BTW....

I didn't put this in warped because I want to forward this thread to them and they won't be ableto see it in warped.
 
I recall an episode of New Yankee Workshop with Norm Abrams. He made a frame as a project on the show. At the end of the show even he admitted that it was a lot harder project then he thought it was going to be.

BTW, his frame looked like carp.
 
FrameMakers said:
I recall an episode of New Yankee Workshop with Norm Abrams. He made a frame as a project on the show. At the end of the show even he admitted that it was a lot harder project then he thought it was going to be.

BTW, his frame looked like carp.
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I remember having a chuckle at that.:D

More to it than nailing four bits of wood together.:p

Two olde sayings.....

"There's nothing more alarming than ignorance in action".

"Things always look easy when someone else is doing them"

'nuff said.;)
 
I think I'll e-mail TOH and ask them to do an article on DIY electrical wiring using dental floss???think the'y get the message???
 
I don't think we should have to bash plumbers , contractors, Tailors after all they are just out there trying to make a living as we are.

I guess it would be wiser to maybe question the the wages of the people who write on which they know not. "You got how much to write your opinion?" lol
As well as the people who pay them to have them write (opinion) on which they know not. Writing an opinion should never be a paid for job yet some magizines & newspapers seem to eat it up..good research & long term working knowledge should be the cash cows.

Give me an expert in the field over an expert writer anyday.
Yes give me an expert framer who writes.
Vivian Kistler when are you going Syndicated?
Now that would be PR....
 
Norm also said in that episode that he now had respect for what picture framers did. He had similar comments when he tried to gild frames. BTY, he couldn't finish the gilding..... a professional gilder completed his projects for that show.
 
Tom Silva Master Carpenter made the dental floss comment.

He is an amazing craftsman and I was a bit shocked he would want waxed string over a wire.

Bob
 
Jerry Ervin said:
Hopefully after their photos have faded or burned they will bring them to me for restoration.

It's easy work. I sit on my tail in AC/Heat. No cuts, no sweating, no back aches.

Did the the article advise corrugated cardboard? I'm hopeful.


I have had three this week stuck to the glass. Thanks Wally World!
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I agree with Jerry! Again!

Too many good family heirlooms are gonna be ruined because of the DIY push by people who don't know what it all entails. Framing looks easy, because if you know what you're doing it looks effortless. If you don't know what you're doing, well it looks like me dancing. I got legs, and feet, and i can hear, so I must have rhythm, right? If I could dance then why do my kids tell me to wait in the car when I pick them up at their Middle School dances? ;)

So if I got a hammer and saw and glue and nails then why can't I make a Shaker Style Cabinet just like Norm's? I watched him do it and it was effortless. Oh, right, he knows what he's doing....

Hopefully yhe DIY crowd will stick with photos and kid drawings. I hate to see the needleworks from grandma stuck on tacky board, cut to fit a too small frame. The quilts that'll be shoved into the Peir 1 "shadowbox" pressboard frames. We'll be seeing those on Antiques Roadshow, "Oh in good comndition that would be a $300K desk, but someone Zip Stripped it and painted it yellow, I'll give you $50", only it'll be "That document was signed by Lincoln's VP Hamlin. rare find, had it been preserved properly it would be worth $xxK, but in that homemade frame, and faded i say put it on the wall and enjoy while it lasts. Because it's worthless historically now."
 
JbNormandog said:
BTW....

I didn't put this in warped because I want to forward this thread to them and they won't be ableto see it in warped.
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Sorry Bob, but telling us to behave in public, brings out the "best" in us!

Maybe this thread should be warped so that "some of us" can be ouselves and the rest of us can be helpful.

I mean if someone told a homeowner to go to HD or Lowes and buy mass produced turned table legs to replace the wobbly ones under an antique table TOH would be up in arms at the destruction of history. Yet they have no problem telling their readers to forego expert advice in the displaying of and preservation of family artifacts? Many of us here have either become certified by our profession or have benefitted from our interaction with certified experts. How many homeowners are gonna have access to Rebecca and Hugh? And how many of them will know how to follow their advice?
 
Actually, TOH has never had a problem with destroying history. Some of the projects they have done over the years make old house preservationists weep at the way they have essentially gutted all the historical elements out of a building and replaced them with modern faux interpetations. If you want good info about restoring an old house, then Old House Journal and Old House Interiors, which are not affiliated with TOH or PBS, are the magazines to get. I subscribe to both.

I find the dental floss especially funny coming from Tom Silva. Most of his construction projects involve a belt and suspenders approach to fastening. He often uses both screws/nails and adhesive to hold them together. But for hanging something on the wall, he'd trust something as flimsy as floss.
 
Bob Doyle said:
Sorry Bob, but telling us to behave in public, brings out the "best" in us!

Maybe this thread should be warped so that "some of us" can be ouselves and the rest of us can be helpful.
Click to expand...


Bob,

I know better than to ask the G to behave. It was meant more to the mods to hopefully keep this public.



Bob
 
PaulSF said:
Does anyone have a link to the article?
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I looked for it online but no luck. I just got the magazine a few days ago.

It was a mini article and shared the page with a couple other DIY mentions.

Bob
 
Okay. I have 2 artists in the last week bringing in a bunch of frames with art to be inserted. I'm starting to feel like (what's the name of that place where you go in and frame it yourself?) Then we have the Marni article, and now This Old House???

I guess if this keeps up we need to look for a new job.
 
Now I know where my mother is getting her "do it herself" ideas.

She's my worst customer, by the way. Love her to death, but she won't set foot in here to have anything framed. She's forbid my stepfather to come in too, but it doesn't stop him. I usually have to steal stuff from their house to get it properly framed if he can't get it in here. I got my 88 year old grandmother addicted to museum glass, and my mother's never forgiven me for that one, because Nana used to ask her to get that nice protective glass she can't see.

But I digress like a William S. Bourroughs novel.

They'll learn eventually. They think they're saving money, and in the end, they're paying hundreds of dollars to get their heirlooms restored when they could have paid one hundred to conserve them in the first place.

Which is probably why Nana's been bypassing my mother lately and going to me directly for her frames.
 
JbNormandog said:
..... I want to forward this thread to them....
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I love this place but I would like to suggest you NOT send them a link to the Grumble

We have some smart and diplomatic people here but as a whole the Grumble is really, really bad at Public Relations.

A person from the outside might think we take our PR directions from the Hells Angles operating manual. :smileyshot22:

JMHO
Doug
 
We don't? :eek:

Now you tell us. :icon11:

BTW: Norm isn't a furniture maker... that's what he has "people" for. He's a carpenter... thats why he keeps wearing that stupid belt in the shop.... I keep waiting to hear about how the jointer grabbed his finish nail pouch and nailed his pouch so hes finished. :icon11:
 
JbNormandog said:
Would these same people recommend that we replace our own furnaces because we can cut out the plumbers? Or perhaps we can dig out our own foundations or raise the roof and not have to pay those overcharging contractors?


Bob
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Yes they would. That's their whole thing. Make your frame. Make your dresser. Make your kitchen cabinets. Make a new bathroom. Relevel your own house. You have to have seen the show, it's iconic.

Norm Abrams is fun to watch. He completes a project and uses a bunch of tools that would cost you thirty grand to assemble. But, he's fun to watch. Wait that's Yankee Workshop or something like that.... different show. Same idea.

Anyway, fun shows to watch.

Did they actually say to do it yourself because frames are too expensive otherwise? That would be a departure and it would be very disappointing. Usually they are into projects for the sake of doing the projects.
 
We've had the pleasure of re-doing plenty of framing jobs attempted by artists, photographers, DIYers. Frames that are falling apart, mats cut by hand (using a steak knife, apparently), glass that has been salvaged at flea markets and has 7 decades of crud on it. I just base my charges on our hourly rate. If the customer doesn't like it, they can take a second crack at it.
 
Has anyone noticed that Norm never has a shaving or a speck of sawdust on his floor? And all his tools are neatly to hand and very new looking?

Not like any woodworkers workshop I've ever been in.;)
 
Paul, I kind of get a lot of business from those shows. When people realize it's not as simple as the TV personalities have made it out to be, I get new customers.:p And yes, I do refer to them as TV personalities because my brother-in-law is a Cabinet Maker and his workshop is stocked like a Home Depot, only he know how to use them all beautifully.

Lori
 
I looked at it again this morning I think it was page 24 and it was the full page. (In an earlier post I thought it was a blurb)

They also recomeded to use Gorilla wood glue. I didn't know there was Gorilla wood glue.


Is this karma? I have rebuilt my house from the studs in and I do on occasion make my own furniture.


Bob
 
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