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!

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!