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Right Angle Construction San Diego, 2280 Washington Street, san fransisco, CA (2026)

01/17/2024

Closing in on our relocation to Lemon Grove. At this point nearly all my tools are down here. In order to make things easier for keeping the garage organized, I erected one more twelve foot long shelf that was disassembled up north and reassembled down here. While organizing things, I found myself moving our bicycles around the room quite often, so I decided that I would construct a shelf up above the ceiling joist in the attic area to put them out of the way, but then it occurred to me that lifting a bicycle up a ladder and putting it on a platform would be a difficult and potentially dangerous task. That's when a light bulb went off in my head. I had an idea of making something akin to an attic ladder. essentially a door that pivots down from the ceiling, so we could hook both bicycles to this hatch and push it up into the ceiling with some sort of spring assist to make it effortless. As usual, the idea evolved in relation to the practical limitations of the space and the available hardware I could find at Home Depot or Harbor Freight. I went to Harbor Freight looking for pulleys or a block and tackle as a means of lifting the hinged door with a mechanical assist. Although Harbor Freight had a block and tackle in their online ad, they didn't have one in stock. This turned out to be a good thing, because while searching for it, I found a hand cranked winch with a turn crank and a reduction gear that would eliminate the need for tying off a rope. I purchase this item for thirty two dollars without a fully formed idea of how I was going to use it in the final design, but confident that I was heading in the right direction. Next I went to Home Depot where I picked up two pulleys and an eye bolt.

I started this project at three in the afternoon. Though I wasn't certain of the final design, I was confident of where I wanted the cable to descend. I figured out pretty quickly that the attic door was not going to work, so I switched to a cable lift that was more akin to an elevator. The cable would attach to a piece of plywood at its center point and the bicycles would be placed on top of this platform and raised into the ceiling for storage. By five PM, I was able to lift the two bicycles into the ceiling, but I was having trouble establishing the center of gravity between the two dissimilar bicycle frames. It finally occurred to me after several trial runs that the single connection of the cable to the bottom of the plywood was inherently unstable and the solution was simple. I just needed a second anchor point for the cable higher up so it couldn't tip forwards or backward so easily. The next morning, confident of this solution, I constructed a center stand between the two bicycles that provided the upper anchor point for the cable as well as an attachment point for each bike to the platform itself. It still required some fine tuning to find their center of gravity, but it ended with a system that worked. Now the access to the bikes is easy, but they're not encumbering any space below and their storage position doesn't prevent the garage door from closing. Mission accomplished. Money spent was about $100.

01/08/2024

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Just came back from an overseas trip to visit with my wife's family, my in laws, in Thailand. I'm starting the year with a serious case of jet lag, but that's why there's such a thing as coffee!

Looking forward to 2024 with all the challenges and opportunities that it affords as we begin to immerse ourselves into the fabric of the community that is San Diego. This is where I spent just over a decade in my youth attending school at Florence and later Grant Elementary schools, then lastly Roosevelt Jr. High before moving north to the Bay Area.

Balboa Park continues to be one of my favorite places to spend time with all it's beautiful Spanish and Mediterranean Architecture. This was one of my favorite hangouts as a kid which I could reach by pedaling my lemon yellow Schwinn Ten Speed bicycle up Bankers Hill and across the Spruce Street pedestrian bridge past the Seven Eleven at Spruce and 6th where I squandered many quarters blowing up asteroids on a newfangled thing called a "video game". While these are fond memories from my now distant youth, I'm looking forwards to making new ones in the coming year.

Best to All,
Kurtis

12/20/2023

Last post for today. I promise. I already have interior shots for this kitchen remodel, but before we could begin to remodel the kitchen, we had to address a serious structural issue. The plan called for extending the kitchen into an extension in the back. This is the kind that is typical of Victorian era homes in that it is single wall which is basically vertical T and G skinning a post and beam structure. Commonly these are used to enclose a back porch or stairway. In our case, a concrete contractor had poured a slab around this structure and in doing so, put the wood exterior siding below grade. This causes rot as water inevitably gets in between the concrete and the siding and starts to rot it out. I was able to get a glimpse of the issue from an open area below the floor and saw the tell tale signs of rot.

They employed an engineer and we put in a new linear footing and retaining wall on the two sides that were impacted. A beam was used on the open side. To make this project happen, we shored the back of the building up by through bolting our supports at the corners. We then cut the existing siding above grade. Excavated for the footing, formed it up, and poured the new foundation that would be above grade and then framed in the floor.

On the day we poured the concrete, a piece of slag got into the hopper and caused the pumper trucks first hose connection to burst open and pour concrete all over the street. It was a mess which the guy operating the pumper mostly cleaned up, but I had to make several subsequent efforts to detail it. These things happen.

12/20/2023

This is a kitchen we did down the peninsula. In addition to the kitchen we had a vanity to set and some cabinets in the office. The home owner wanted a U shaped desk that would have no visible supports, or more precisely, no brackets extending out of the walls. So I designed a custom frame on my computer and then made a template from plywood and brought this to a welder fabricator. The finished frame was powder coated to keep it from rusting and later a translucent counter material was installed on top. The frame itself was lagged to the walls with spacers to hold it slightly off the drywall. Again, I started with a drawing and got two bids on the project.

On this install, the upper cabinets over the eating counter were attached to the ceiling. We constructed a temporary support to get them in position and blocked the ceiling to be sure we had something solid to attach to in case the joists didn't line up as we'd prefer.

The tile backsplash was sheet metal mosaics. This was a condo and we used a hand truck to bring up our tools. My tile saw is an MK and just at the limit of what I can lift by myself, but a great tool once it's set up and in place. I set in a large plastic tub and surround this with a plastic sheeting enclosure in order to prevent water from getting on the floor. Since this is a wet saw, it makes a heck of mess, so it can't be used indoors without this setup.

12/20/2023

This is a job that we did a few years back right here on the peninsula. A customer called us back after we installed his kitchen cabinets to install two sets of French doors that were custom made to fit his two garage door openings. He thought it was a one day job, but i made it clear to him that this would take longer. Each door is 42 inches wide and has a mechanical weatherstrip that is routed into the bottom rail that drops down when the door is in the closed position. This meant that we couldn't cut the door bottom if the opening was not high enough or if the door's external sweep prevented it from opening fully because it would drag against the ground. Because of the great weight of each door, you'll note that there are three hinges offset near the top to handle this and prevent them from sagging. The upper hinges on doors always carry more of the load.

I caught up with this costumer recently at a coffee shop and he told me that both sets were still working fine. I was glad to hear it. All in all, it turned into a three day project when you include modifying the opening, setting the doors, and installing and adjusting the hardware. Just hanging each door on its hinges required two people to prevent damaging them. It's very easy to set one down and chip or blunt an edge.

With French doors, you have to be mindful that the doors meet nicely in the middle. The middle gap should be parallel, and both doors should be in plane. This can difficult if the opening is out of whack. It's also important that adjacent units are at the same elevation on top, so they don't look misaligned. Getting all these things right takes time.

12/20/2023

This was a deck that we designed and constructed for a customer in San Francisco. They recently had their house remodeled and were not happy with their experience with their GC, so they brought us in to finish this detail that was necessary for getting their job signed off. It included a stairway down to the side yard.

12/20/2023

This was a small, but important project. This customer asked me to come in and demolish the granite tile countertops in his kitchen so he could upgrade to Quartzite. While doing so, we routed in flat metal bars to the plywood substrate to support the overhang on the island. But the overhang was too long for the depth of the base cabinets and proved to be unstable. The solution was to add a couple of legs in the corners of the overhang. We made these using threaded rods and covering them with mitered pieces of oak to give them the look of wooden post legs. The reason for this was to make it easier to fine tune their adjustment.

12/19/2023

At our residence in San Francisco, I did a cheap remodel on our bathroom. The tile design might not be to everyone's taste, but this was my attempt at an Art Deco design. The vintage of the home is Victorian. I did the whole project for around $2500. The pedestal sink was salvage as was the toilet. The tub was original.

12/19/2023

In addition to kitchens and decks, we've also done bathrooms. I do tile, but did not do the tile on this project. Every job starts with demolition. Since I often work alone, I cut the cast iron bathtub in half to get it out of there with a hand truck.

11/30/2023

Yet another design build from Right Angle. For this project, the customer asked us to build them a ground level deck just outside their back door. The existing configuration was a concreted patio area with a stairway cut in leading down to allow a tradesman's alley and access to the front. In order to expand usable area, they wanted a hatch to cover the stair opening that could be opened to access the stairs as needed. I ended up using two hatches because I became concerned about the weight of opening one large one. It proved to be a prudent decision. Both homeowners tested the access doors and had no difficulty opening them.

We put a guard rail around what was left of the opening to the alley below so no one would accidentally take a swan dive off of the deck.

11/29/2023

One job we did which was mostly an interior paint job. Not a typical project as a GC,, but this was during the great recession, and I wasn't about to refuse work that was close to home and within my skill set. The customer asked me to make doors to enclose some cubicles used for storage. It gives the space a less cluttered appearance. We all have stuff we need to hang onto but don't want sitting out in the open.

11/29/2023

I'm not a flooring contractor, but I have done floors including engineered flooring, vinyl flooring, tile flooring, tongue and groove prefinished blind nailed flooring, oak though nailed strip flooring and most frequently, laminate click lock flooring. That last one is increasingly popular because it's easy to install and today's imitation wood finishes are pretty realistic.

As a child who grew up in the seventies, imitation wood was terrible in those days. Today, the laminate flooring has grain in it. Not just the two dimensional kind, but the actual texture. It's also the most dent resistant flooring with a very hard durable finish. Because it is floating floor system, it requires an expansion gap around the perimeter and can sometimes feel a little springy under your feet.

Right Angle Construction San Diego

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