Changing Brushes

An aspect that customers never see is the care and maintenance of my tools and the day to day running costs to keep all these tools working. 

The impact driver is an essential part of a modern carpenters tool kit

 My impact driver is an example of this. This week I've had to purchase two new batteries (coming in at over £50) and replace the brushes to keep it working.

Brushes worn out from lots of use!

The old worn brush on the left and what it should look like on the right

New brushes in place - no down time at a customers house now!

The constant maintenance, sharpening, repairing and updating kit takes lots of time and costs a lot of money every year. A modern and efficient carpenter has to have far more kit than any other trade in the building industry.

Changing Doors

This is a job I've been working on in the evenings and weekends for the last month or so. I've changed most of the doors in the house and the two front doors.

Before

After

 It's amazing the difference changing the front door and painting the windows has made to the front of the house. Certainly improved it's curl appeal!

I changed most of the internal doors for oak as well, and I made a couple on site for the cupboard under the stairs. Architrave and skirtings were also changed for oak in places as well. I treated them all with a coat of Osmo oil before leaving them. 

Hopefully all this work will make the house more appealing to potential customers.

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. 

A Pair Of Doors

Last Saturday I fitted a frame and hung a pair of doors on a building we'd been working on.

 When you get to fit the frame as well as the doors its normally makes the job easier, as any twist can be taken out with a small adjustment of the frame. These doors were made bang on so no adjustment needed.

Set up outside on a sunny day

Hinges cut nice and tightly on

The finished pair of doors

A nice job for a sunny day. 

Installing Guttering

A few weeks ago I fitted some white plastic guttering to a large set of out buildings we'd been working on. I was a little dubious as we'd normally fit black guttering to something like this but I think it really looks good and matches in with the house.

The white gutter looks good against the cladding

The front of the building

It took just over a day to get it all up. I tend to fit guttering level as it looks a lot better than having a heavy fall and so long as it's done right then it will run from the outlets as soon as the rain starts.

Cupboard Remodelling

This is a few days work from back in March remodelling a cupboard and creating a new one after a new fire place and flue had been fitted.

Boxing in the flue. I used fire board on the inside just "to be sure" even though the timbers were all outside the distances allowed to the flue

The other cupboard in the kitchen is above the fire place in the living room (if that makes sense...)

Simple MDF doors made on site to match what's already there

Boarded out, trim added and shelf fitted.

The finished cupboard

The othe cupboard finished. I also think that with this one I must hold some sort of record for the fastest hung door...

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. 

Felt And Battening

Although it's not a job you can see when the roof is completed it's one I really enjoy.

 Putting the felt and battens on a roof makes it waterproof and changes the building completely.

Don't look too closely at our "scaffolding".

These two long runns didn't take us too long to complete but it's a big impact for the customer. 

Fitting Coving

Back in February I had to help two painters fit some coving in an old house.

 It was a tricky job as the ceilings wasn't very straight and the one side had a huge dip in the middle making it so we had to "bend" the coving to fit.

 Earlier in the week I had to go back and do a couple of other jobs in the house and I got to see the finished room (we also over boarded the ceiling so it could be re plastered).

 

It looks really good and the large coving goes well with the high ceilings.

Trussed Roof

On Thursday a gang of 5 of us put on this trussed roof.

 There's something strangely satisfying about putting on a trussed roof. It goes on so fast and looks so good when it's done.

We had the whole roof on and braced up in a day. All the trusses were lifted up by hand. I can see why big building sites opt for trussed roofs rather than ones that are cut on which take much longer and involve a lot more thinking.