A Very Custom Cut

February 2, 2025

A big day for us – we got to cleaning up the space in front of the fireplace, and got an incredibly custom piece of plywood down.

First up: cleaning up some of the debris in the floor, between the joists.

Some of the thermal/sound insulation that we’ve been putting in between all the floor joists.

Insulation in, with a view of the custom work that Liz has done… bringing up the space in front of the fireplace flush with the floor joists. Really great work.

We had an 8×4 piece of plywood, that we wanted to use in this space. We tried a few different approaches (one involved folding a large piece of paper)… but ended up going with multiple pieces of cardboard.

We got several pieces cut and fitted to the space around the fireplace, and then taped all the pieces together. From here, we lifted the cardboard pieces and placed it on the 8×4 sheet of plywood.

With a 8×4 board to put in here, we just needed to take this template… and match it up to the appropriate place. Where Liz is looking, that marked the en of the board (at the 8′ point). We made sure the cardboard lined up with the end of the plywood board.

For width, we looked to that triangular piece on the right. And made sure the cardboard lined up with the side of the 8×4 plywood sheet.

Our first attempt, we realized some of the lengths were off. So we went back a few times and shortened the area near the top (where Liz is looking in the photo, above).

Once we were satisfied with the template, we just traced the outline on the plywood… and used a jigsaw to cut out the custom shape.

Side note: we purchased a jigsaw for the Garden Arbor project, and haven’t really broken it out much since. I’m not a super handy guy, but I love the fact that we nonchalantly realized we needed some custom plywood cuts, and went to grab our jigsaw from the basement like no big deal.

That seems like something a handy person would do, and that’s exactly what we did. But I still don’t think of us as handy.

The final, custom cut piece of 8×4 plywood, in place!

I’m sad to say… during the installation and dry fitting process, we ended up knocking into the brick/mortar of the fireplace and caused several bricks to come loose (you can see it in the bottom left). This means the work of refinishing the fireplace just got harder, but it made the act of installing this custom plywood much, much easier.

I’m happy to say we got this really custom cut in, and put down in a relatively short amount of time (all told). It was definitely one of the more complex tasks we’ve undertaken, and we did a pretty good job working together (without arguing too much).

Liz’s work with the Custom Nailer gave us a spot to screw into – as did all her work in prepping the space in front of the fireplace.

As much as I regret us damaging the fireplace brick on install, I’m delighted we were able to get this full board in place. We’re very close now to getting a first layer of plywood across the entire front office – quite exciting.