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!

Making A Wooden Cooker Hood

A customer wanted an unusual cooker hood for their kitchen extractor to go above the cooker.

 This is what he came up with!

Built out of ply, biscuit jointed together and bolted to the ceiling joists, this makes a bold statement in the kitchen but it looks good, even though I was quite sceptical as I made it!

Repairing An Old Door

Repaired an old door today.

Splicing in a lime block

After looking closely at the door I decided that it was lime, there are lime floor boarding the house so that's a clue and I could tell from the close even grain and the way it cut with the chisel. I did think at first it was elm but it was far too soft for that.

The corner had rotted away with woodworm so I chiseled this out and added a block off an old lime floorboard.

Gluing the block on

 

Carving the detail in.

 I then had to carry the moldings on across the new block. I did this with my carving chisels, it's good to use them as not much work calls out for them any more and luckily it's lime as its one of the best woods to carve. I was pleased with the finish and by the time it's oiled up it will look like a quality repair - not hidden from sight though as that's not being true to what you're doing to a three hundred year old door!

Hanging Doors With A Circular Saw

Although I'm ever the traditionalist I do like to try new methods of doing things and seeing what works well. I'm sure the traditional carpenters of "old" would have tried new things if it made their job easier and better.

 So yesterday I had a try at hanging two pairs of door using my festool circular saw and no plane (except to remove any saw marks at the end).

Ever since I brought this plunge saw/guide rail combo I've been thinking that it would be easy to hang certain types of doors with it. In practise I'd go as far as to say it was a brilliant way to hang the doors.

 First of all it's a good clean way to trim the tops and bottoms of the doors so they fit in the hole. Then it also worked really well to get the doors square in the opening, normally this can involve a fair bit of planing if something is out of square. All I had to do here was set the guide rail up and within a few minutes the door was cut perfectly straight.

As these were pairs of doors they needed quite a heavy leading edge, again this was easy done with the saw, just set it on the angle and zipped along the guide rail in a few passes, giving me a perfect leading edge down the length of the door.

Four doors hung!

I'm not sure how many doors I've hung over the years but these are the first ones I've done completely with a circular saw. Although the method would only work for certain types of doors, its a good and accurate way of fitting doors and I'll be trying it again in the future.

Anyone else done it this way?

Re-felting A Roof

Roofing in the rain is never much fun.

Luckily there's been a good team of us working on this roof and it's made the wet days go that little bit faster.

 The last couple of weeks we've been systematically stripping and re roofing a large roof in the village I grew up in. The house is a lovely old place, full of character and that character extends up into the roof!

The previous roofers (back in the '70s I'd guess) laid the felt over the battens - not your usual approach! All in all though the roof wasn't in a terrible state, we've had to add new valley boards to each valley and replace or repair a few rafters on each section of the roof before adding new felt and battens.

We've also been splicing the old fascia board and making new fancy barge board. It should all look pretty good when it's done.

Two Large Doors

Saturdays work involved hanging two large doors - 3ft 6in wide and 7ft high.

 Luckily they weren't glazed otherwise I'm fairly sure I wouldn't have been able to hang them on my own, as it was they were near the limit of what I could handle (they were 56mm thick as well).

 They were hung on parliment hinges and the doors were at the top of three steps. This meant that before I could hang each one I had to build myself a little platform to work off. With parliment hinges you have to be careful how you set them or it can all go horiblly wrong as you can work off the knuckle of the hinge like you can normally, luckily mine went on with no problems.

One door on and the other on the benches being cut and planed to size

By the end of the day I had both doors swinging and the locks drilled out, but by then I was loosing light and had to call it a day.

Little Kitchen Storage Solution

Today I built a little cupboard into a nook behind a kitchen. It wasn't a very deep space (about 220mm) but the customer wanted somewhere to store their wine glasses with their cook books on top.

It's a simple construction out of low cost 18mm MDF.

I first built the base and added the sides and divider, these were notched to accept the top supporting timber that holds it together and provided much need support for the shelf on top.

Kitchen hinges were used for the doors making it flush when all the doors are shut. 

Once painted I think this gives a very practical and low cost solution to utilising all the storage a space has to offer whilst still looking good.

Wooden Toy Kitchen

This is a post of a toy kitchen I made for my daughter for Christmas and I've previously posted it on my other blog here. So sorry if you've already seen it!

 A simple design with minimal materials needed. Just a sheet of ply, a metal mixing bowl, some hinges and an off cut of perspex. I think the hardest bit was deciding what size to build it - I didn't want it too small, so she grew out of it too soon, but I wanted her to be able to use it straight away.

In the end I got the size just right, with enough storage to house all her toy kitchen bits and bobs.  

 

She loved it when she unwrapped it and started cooking on it straight away - I ate so much toy food and drank that many fake cups of tea I could barely move on Christmas day!

Hope you all had a good Christmas!

Funky Cupboard Doors

I fitted some cupboard doors that I made today. I was quite impressed with how they look.

 This is a simple set of three MDF doors, hung with kitchen hinges. The doors have lines scored across them that are 3mm deep, painted grey to contrast the white finish, each individual door has one line picked out in a different colour and some of the lines pass through two or three of the doors to tie them together.

What the doors are hiding

I think these look a little bit more like art than simple cupboard doors and I'm pleased with how they came out (I didn't do the painting).

This shows that a low cost material with a bit of time spent on it can give a great finish.

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.

Tetris Style Shelves

Sorry I've not posted on this blog for a few weeks (I've been busy having more children!) So it's meant I've slowed down on the work front a little bit.

I have, however, just completed this shelving unit for a friend/customer and I'm rather pleased with the result.

The brief was to make up blocks in tetris style shapes and have a unit where all the blocks could be rearranged if you wanted to. Unusually I worked with the customer on this project and we got on like a house on fire.

The first step was to construct the bottom storage unit that would support all the blocks. We made sure this was really strong as there was to be a fair bit of weight above it.

The first blocks we made were in MDF. Once we made a few we decided that achieving a good finish was going to be a problem so we decided to switch our material to WBP ply, leaving the cut edges exposed.

The first unit we made like this looked good so we set up a mini production line

We made a total of 14 blocks, all joined together with biscuit joints and a PU glue

Starting to stack the blocks in the unit. They were all made with the measurement 265mm as the standard "unit" size, so that it's completely interchangeable

Brian using a homemade beeswax polish to finish the shelves. This picture gives a good idea of how big the units are.

The completed unit with storage cupboards underneath

The completed unit

Completely interchangeable and a really good fit

Three sets of cupboards under the tertis blocks make really useful storage. These doors will be painted white.

We made the doors and hung them on kitchen hinges so it gives a clean finish when they're all shut

Some interesting patterns

I'm lucky in my job that I enjoy what I do, but when I get a project like this I enjoy it even more. I've built some amazing things over the years but this is pretty near the top of the list!

I've still got a few more projects to do in this house so watch this space!

Walnut Drawer Dividers

Not many photos to show from the week but I did make some walnut drawer dividers (I didn't make the drawer)

They were all halving jointed together and then given a few coats of liquid bees wax before adding the blaize to the bottom. All cut by had with a tenon saw (it was raining outside and it was just as quick by hand.).

Finishing An Oak Floor

I remember pricing an oak floor, over a year ago now, and the customer said to me not to bother pricing in for staining and oiling the floor, they'd do that themselves. I cringed, as this can really make or break a floor. It's a shame to spent a lot of money on the oak and then skimp on the last bit.

 

 Last week I laid an oak floor, so all this week I've been juggling my week around sanding, staining and oiling it. Once the glue had gone off I filled all the deep knots, then spent a morning sanding all the filler off and any planer marks from the supplier (there were plenty). I sanded it to 120 grit as this is all that's needed for flooring.
I then spent quite a while cleaning it, making sure that there was no dust what so ever in the room before I set about staining it down to a medium oak colour.
The stain involved putting it on with a brush and then removing the excess with a rag (wax on wax off) and as the room was bigger than one pot would do, I emptied both pots into a container and mixed together so there would be no difference in colour tone.

This then took a day to dry before I set about oiling it. It took around two hours to apply the first coat of hard wax oil and this then took 24 hours to go off, I did set a large fan to blow over it to decrease the drying time.
I sanded lightly back between coats, hoovered it all again and applied the second (and last) coat of hard wax oil. I fitted the skirting in there yesterday and I'm really please with the finish. The floor has a warm even tone and is smooth to the touch. More pictures to follow!

Making Box gutters

This week I had to make up two sections of large box gutters to waterproof an area of a barn we're converting.

The roof used to run down into a wall with vertical cladding that had normal guttering at the bottom. This was fine when it was just a barn as the water could run down onto the floor and not cause any problems.
As we're now doing them up it need to be water proof. We stripped off the cladding and the first four or five runs of slates so we could see what we were working with.
I then started at the lowest point and made the first step. A 1.4m run of ply that had a good fall on it. I then worked my way back to the other end of the roof creating each 1.4m run of gutter with a 50mm step between each level Each bit has to be fully supported and built in such a way to take the lead.


Working on the roof

 Bert the plumber then leaded these for me and we set about lapping the felt back over it to make it waterproof before we put the slates back on.

One stretch of leaded gutter

I've now got to reinstall the cladding and repair a section of oak frame that I exposed due to a high level of rot/woodworm on one joint.