Oak Trellis

Some oak trellis for a customer fitted during the end of August.

Fitted between brick piers 

The panels scribed in to the brickwork giving a really nice finish

The finished panels oiled up

Blending in well with the garden

I was really pleased with the way that these looked when they were fitted. They really worked well in the garden and the customer was really happy with them. 

Fitting An Oak Stairs With Winders

an interesting job this week where some of the guys I work with and myself fitted a flight of oak stairs in an old property.

Flight in place and starting to get glued and pegged together

Fitting the winding treads

You can never have too much glue when putting together a flight of stairs!

Glue blocks added to stop any squeaks!

Ready for some handrail and spindles

The finished item!

Landing upstairs 

 It took a little longer than we expected but they went in well and looked great when we were finished. I think it's a full year since the last time I fitted any stairs so it's good to keep the skills in my mind.

Floating Oak Mantle Piece

A picture heavy post sorry. This is our own mantle piece in our living room. It's been on my "to-do" list for quite some time! 

The top of our fire place looked like this all winter, so it was time to make it look a little better!

Plywood template made up the exact same size as the oak so holes could accurately be drilled and match up between the wall and the piece of oak

Fixing the template to the wall. Making sure it's level

The stainless steel threaded bar fixed into the wall. The holes behind are a couple of mm bigger to allow for the resin to fix the bar. 

Using a template in this way means that the bar will be in exactly the right place. I used the nut to make sure it was the right distance out from the wall.

The three pieces of threaded bar resined into the wall. The middle one is purely to locate the oak and to stop it from warping.

The underside of the two ends. The oak is then tighten to the wall making it very strong. This hole will eventually be filled with a Walnut plug for contrast (If you can't hide something then make a feature of it!)

A good spanner had to die to fix it though as a normal one wouldn't fit in the hole! 

The finished mantle piece

The mantle piece looks quite modern but, in my opinion, goes well with our fireplace, giving it a good mix of the traditional materials with the sharp lines of the rest the fireplace. 

10m Green Oak Conservatory

A larger than normal conservatory I'm sure you'll agree! 10m long using planned green oak, the majority of the frame was built in the workshop by the joiner and then we've erected it on site and cut the roof on.

 Trusses to support the purlins in the roof

 The hexagonal part of the frame - tricky to install!

 All the roof beams are exposed so we had to be accurate with our cuts otherwise they'd always show up. The valley wasn't even on a 45 degree angle so all the usual books and workings were no good to us!

 Another tricky detail dealing with the termination of the purlin into the valley. No detail provided by the architect so we had to make it up on site, we were quite pleased with the result

 The hips on the hexagonal section of roof proved to be tricky due to the angles.

But they look really good from underneath.

A really interesting project and not of a type we get to do very often. 

Oak Frame Repair

A good few days work on this old oak frame repair, not very easy going as a lot of hand work to get it back to somewhere I could work from.

A large crack that had started to rot due to it being filled with concrete and the wood not being able to breath

Taking the bad wood back to good. I decided that as the upright would need two splices as well it was best to replace it at the same time.

Splicing in the top piece

Some of the bottom section chiselled out - this took a lot of work!

The completed repair

The bottom joint.
 I made the pegs on site as well.

A picture showing how heavily scribed the bottom piece is - I made a template first and then it fitted pretty easily (well for oak anyway)

The repair fits in nicely as the rest of the frame has had work done to it in the past. Once this greys with age you won't be able to tell when this repair was done.

Picture showing the whole frame

The customer seemed really please with the job and I've another repair to do on the frame lower down once the scaffold is dropped.

Scribing Oak Skirting

I had to do some fairly difficult oak skirting last week. It had to be scribed both ways, into the floor and the wall by as much as an inch in places.

Showing how bad some of the walls were

With something like this I try to limit myself to being allowed to make three sets of cuts on each piece. One for the floor, one for the wall and then one just to make it a little tighter, all marked with a pair of compasses then cut with either a jigsaw or the electric plane and finished off by hand..

I can get it pretty tight in those cuts.

The scribe cut for the floor - a slight bow in it I'm sure you'd agree!

A bend in this wall made it really difficult as oak doesn't like to bend!

 The customer was really pleased with the result and it now means that the room can be finished. The pictures don't really show just how far out the floor was!

Pre Finished Oak Floor

Last week we laid a pre finished oak floor from Travis Perkins and to be honest I'm quite impressed with how it looks when it's down.

 This is the floating floor type, laid on a foam underlay with the tongue and groves all glued together. Lots of beams and doorways to go round and oak skirting and beads made out of the same stuff, at the customers request but unfortunately the longest length was only 4ft so lots of joints!

The customer seems really happy with it. My only concern would be how long this "high" finish will last compared to my usual oiled finish, but when you're having to pay for labour this pre finish makes it a lot cheaper rather than having to pay me for a couple of days to sand, stain and oil the floor. Also it means that the furniture didn't have to leave the room whilst we were laying it, we did one half then moved everything over and did the other.