Flooring hassle - hardwood to new vinyl and the threshold

I put in hardwood a while back throughout most of the house except the bathrooms and washroom.  I had planned on doing new vinyl in those shortly after but it has taken a lot longer to get to it than expected.  Anyways, I didn't install any threshold after doing the hardwood because I planned to redo the vinyl.  I just recently finished the new vinyl in the two bathrooms and ran into an issue with the threshold.  We bought some when we got our hardwood but we decided that the wood species and color don't look as nice as we want so I am looking elsewhere.  The problem is that most stores don't seem to carry appropriate molding.  What I ended up with out work for something like vinyl to tile or the thinner plank type flooring but not 3/4" hardwood.  To make it more interesting, I used thin luan under the new vinyl so the depth is maybe even less of a standard size.

So my solution is to take some molding that we like and modify as needed.  That meant that I must increase the thickness of it so that it rests flat on the hardwood which is higher than the  vinyl.  The profile of the molding on the vinyl side is pretty much a bunt vertical which we feel has too much of a toe stub potential so I am working to round it more.

Here is the starting point; too blunt on the side for the vinyl floor and too short to sit flat on the 3/4" hardwood.

  

So we get a piece of 36" long by 4" by 1/4" solid red oak to use to build up the threshold.

 

Measuring the thickness of the base portion which is on the vinyl floor side shows that I need something around 13/16" to keep the same dimension that touches the floor.  A quick cut on the table saw creates that.

A little bit of trial and error work shows that I need the new splice to be about 3/16" tall.  A careful run through the table saw against another piece of straight scrap wood results in the final splice piece.  You can see below (just a bit) that the splice is just slightly thinner than the original stock.

 And here you can see the piece glued to the bottom of the threshold.

I already knew I was going to need to take some height and bulk out of the tall side that sits on the vinyl floor.  I debated using my table saw to take off a diagonal piece of a reasonable size.  I have a pretty low quality saw (and fence).  I decided this would be my last pick if nothing else was reasonable.  My next idea is my router.  I really liked the idea but I had some trouble deciding what bit would be best.  I looked at the following router bits; 45° chamfer, thumb nail/table edge and  bowl/tray bits.

I really didn't want to do a 45° chamfer; it just seems too angular but tend to be pretty inexpensive.  I do have a smallish one and did a small test early on which didn't turn out all the well.  That check was me not trying overly hard versus the bit not able to do a good job.  For the table edge bit and bowl/tray bit - I didn't see them at the local box store but they were online.  I decided to try a local woodcraft store and they had a table edge bit - on sale it was under $60.  A quick side view against a sample I brought seemed promising.  The next hurdle was that a bit like this is too big to easily/safely use hand held and I didn't have router table.  I didn't want to spend the $230-250 for a low end table at Woodcraft - that seemed a little excessive for a somewhat impulse purchase.  I did some research and ended up with a Bosch RA1171 from a local "big box" store.  There were some bad reviews but it seemed like it was worth the chance.

The router table was assembled in 30-45 minutes or so.  I didn't level the plate at that time but did get my Porter Cable router mounted successfully.

Next hurdle is where do I use the router table?  It really  needs to sit on something.  I decided to build something.  About 3 hours later, I had a reasonable rolling base to mount it.  I had a good stock of spare wood to dig through and had two 2 1/2" wheels reclaimed from another old project.  I used two carriage bolts on the other end - head on the floor with a nut and washer on each side of the plywood bottom.  A couple reclaimed handles added to the side and I was now mobile/portable.

Here is the router table and the cart I slapped together.  I made a minor mistake in the cart - I didn't account for the height of the wheels and plywood top/bottom which resulted in the unit turning out a bit taller than desired.  I may take a bit out of the uprights at some point but it works for now.

Here is the side opposite the wheels where I used carraiage bolts for feet.  I had found and reused a similar method in a welding project I did.

After leveling the base, I did some test test cuts with the router on some scrap with the table edge bit and a chamfer bit.  It was somewhat promising but I was still concerned that I wasn't going to remove quite as much  bulk/height as I really wanted.

In the pic below, the left item is just some scrap I was testing on.  The middle piece is a chunk of unaltered original threshold.  The piece on the right is the modified threshold with a light use of the table edge bit.  I tried to prevent an excessive ridge at the top; you can see a small one on top which I will try to round over via either sanding or maybe some light use of a Dremel tool with a sanding bit or maybe a burr and some manual sanding.

I may go back and try a chamfer bit yet.  I am trying hard not to reduce the integrity of the molding but I think I still need to reduce the height by at least another 1/4" off the thick end.

I must say that this has turned into a lot more work (and expense) than my original "run down to the store and grab a piece of threshold" plan.


[2015/06/13] Finally finished the thresholds to the bathrooms.  It turned out ok but not quite as good as I hoped.  A bit of lack of time and patience right now.

Here is the final profile; I left it with a slight center depression. As is, it took a bit of dremel work with a sanding drum and a decent amount of hand sanding.  If I had a block plane it might have been a bit easier.  It was a little too easy to make a mistake with the dremel which then started a vicious cycle before deciding it was "good enough".

Here you can get an idea of how much material I removed.

And here is the finished installed product.  I cut out the door jamb fully on the left and only cut out a small part of protruding molding on the right.  In the bath shown, I did take my finish nailer and put in 4 or so nails.

Have a blessed day!
Scott

Toilet tank to bowl mounting - the better way

This post is for anyone that doesn't already have their toilet tank bolted via hardware directly on each side of the tank hole.  Seems many people rely solely on the clamping pressure between the bolt in the tank and the nut/washer under the bowl to prevent leaks at the bolts.  That works ok until someone leans hard against the tank (like children) and/or any gaskets lose some elasticity over time and loosen slightly.

So what do you do?

Put the bolt through the tank as normal (maybe with a rubber washer if your kit has one).  Directly under the tank, at a minimum, add a metal washer and nut.  At this point, with the tank flapper closed the tank should hold water without leaking while not attached to the bowl.  This may make future maintenance a bit easier depending on what you need to do. This doesn't prevent leaks at the tank to bowl hole when the flapper releases water but I have found that to be less of a problem normally.

If by chance, you get a new tank hardware kit and it doesn't have enough hardware included to do this; you can either try to reuse a nut/washer from your existing install or get something from your local hardware store.  I would recommend using stainless steel hardware if possible.

Here are a couple of pics to clarify; an inside tank and under tank image. In my original setup I didn't have rubber washers on the inside of the tank - I kind of prefer that setup but we will see how this works over time.

To mount the tank to the bowl itself; I used wing nuts under the tank which works ok but there is not much extra horizontal space to spare in my case so it may not work for all tanks.  They do

Here is the tank to bowl connection.

Wishing you a leak free throne!