Treating myself .....

and occasionally the woodwork, with a coat of linseed oil.

The internet reveals a large number of available wood treatments, at various prices. At the top end of the market and if you are looking for something "natural", you'll find a number of enthusiasts for "Danish Oil". Looking further, it turns out that the manufacturers of Danish Oil never tell you the precise mix of ingredients. Those that say what it contains sometimes admit that it is (mostly) linseed oil. If it also has tung oil in it (and that appears to be expensive) you can be fairly sure it doesn't have much. So I've been using a simple mix suggested by the local carpenter: 2/3rds linseed oil, 1/3 turps, and a small spoonful of a drying agent. The turps makes it penetrate better, and the drying agent .... er ... helps it dry. I have trademarked this subtle blend of a natural oils and rare gums as "Denish Oil", and its main users find that it really is very effective. And compared with most "Danish" oils, it's dirt cheap, which really clinches it.

Here's the bedroom door, after treatment:



It has brought out the grain very nicely. The one curious effect is that it leaves newly planed wood almost its original colour, but if applied to wood that has been exposed to the air for a few years the final colour is very dark. In the case of old oak, almost black.

I've also been oiling the staircase: it has a wonderful shiny polished surface now. I am not sure if this a good idea. If it isn't I'll let you know.

At work outside

Each door seems to take about three days to do (not full days, obviously, there's a boredom factor to be worked in somewhere), and I've just done day 2 of the final door. I set up what I hope will be a temporary workshop in the hangar. Originally this was an open-sided barn used for carts and other agricultural machinery - now it's the garage for the cars and where I keep the old timber.

In this picture I am using the router. The door planks need to overlap so there aren't any visible cracks through the door, so I put a right-angled notch into the edge, making it L-shaped there. And the next plank has an L the other way up.



What's stacked at the back is (about a quarter of) the original floor of the barn - I'd hoped to be able to re-use some of this wood, but it is in quite poor condition, so it may end up as firewood. But I've used quite a bit of it to make a temporary foor where I'm working - it's reasonably level, unlike the earth floor of the hangar.

The picture below shows how I'm sharing the workshop with the cars. I've clamped down the board which I'm working on by using an ingenious arrangement of flexible boards (cheap cladding) and small clamps like large clothespegs. It isn't possible to use a proper clamp (even if the ones I have were in working order), as they foul the router. They are just a bit too big for it to pass over the top.



Today I got as far as assembling the boards - the edges have to be planed straight by hand, as none of the boards was quite true - and cutting them roughly to length. I will then cut them exactly when the door is finally assembled.

Here's what will shortly be the bathroom door:



The middle cross-piece is sitting loose on top, not yet positioned, but it's clamped together using heavy boards to bring the surfaces as level as possible.

And the last picture shows the cross-piece held firmly in place (but not really clamped) ready for the screws to go in. That was about as far as I got -



I think you can see that these are good oak boards. You can also see the over-sized T-square I bought last week. It helps to get the cross-piece reasonably level before it's screwed on, but as the ends of the boards are not yet level there's no other way to do it. This is the voice of experience - the cross-pieces on the shower room door are visibly not quite level. I call it a program of continuous quality improvement. So by the time I've finished I'll have learnt how to do it properly, by making all the mistakes one by one.

lift the latch .... and come in

This is the beta test version of the latch on the bedroom door - it includes a doorhandle. The other side of the door has the more normal type...



I've not yet filled the screw holes, so there's still a little more work to be done before I start making the last of the interior doors. But after that, it will be time for boiling oil again.

The sunny autumn has finally given way to thunderstorms and a lot of rain. Good thing I'm working indoors.

Him indoors

I did these two doors - not the one in the middle - over the last few days. I haven't yet treated them so at present there's a delicate smell of oak which will shortly be replaced by a strong smell of linseed oil. It's nice to have a door for the shower room - this morning I'd left it open and found inside the shower there was one of the cats with most of a (small) rabbit and a certain amount of blood and fur. Fortunately it all cleaned up nicely. I'm not sure whether to encourage the cat to eat what it has killed in there - better than on the stairs from the point of washing away the bloodstains - or try to persuade it to eat outside.



This is the big door for the bedroom, in place. It's a good fit too, and I didn't need to do a lot of adjusting. Just the same, I had it on and off its hinges at least six times.



This is the view from inside the bedroom, and you'll notice I haven't yet made the catch for the door. Tonight, to keep the cats out, it'll be wedged shut...




This is a close-up of the catch in the shower room. The filled screw holes show up much more with the camera flash than they do in normal lighting - in daylight they hardly show at all.



I've extended the top of the guide by about a centimeter, with the idea of providing something to pull the door with. It would save putting a handle on the inside of the door. In fact the one centimeter extension isn't quite enough, and for the bedroom door I'll make it a little bigger. If we don't like it it will be very easy to cut it off.

Heavy doors

I've been working on the interior doors. I bought a half-cubic meter of seasoned oak planks, mostly just over 2 meters long and between 15 and 30 centimeters wide (but all about 3cm thick). These were from M Clot, who used to run a sawmill in Maurs until a few years ago, and who, having retired, is selling off the old stock. It's good stuff, though there are some woodworm holes.

I'm gradually getting better - or, if not actually better - more systematic at doing the doors. They are a fairly simple pattern, but just the same they are heavy. The biggest one, nearly a meter wide, is not quite too heavy for me to lift, but the combination of weight and size mean that I can't carry it any distance at all. So I've been moving it around on a sack barrow:



It goes without saying that the wooden door won't go through the outside glass door on the barrow: it's too wide, and you can't wheel it in sideways (not by yourself, anyway). So the last bit was dragged along the floor.

It's surprising how often it has to go back to the workshop. I'm not yet good enough to make it fit the aperture first time (though this one came very close), so I make it a little over size, put it in the doorway, and then pencil round it and cut it down to size. Then it has to go back to have the hinges put on in the right places. There's a fair amount of sanding annd planing to fit, too. In this case, as it is so heavy, I've bought bigger hinges, and I just hope the door itself is strong enough to support its own weight. We'll see tomorrow. I'll put some pictures up then showing a bit more detail.

Getting plastered

In fact, rendered, but almost as messy.

I've had a first ever go at putting a roughcast lime render onto a wall. I rather hope it is a wall no-one will ever look at (and maybe a second coat will even things out a bit). But the render is still there this evening.

Here's how it looks:



It's a purely sand/lime mix, approximately 2:1, and it's mixed reasonably wet. I applied it by flicking it off the trowel, which I know is the approved manner. I have a feeling I should have tried to level the surface at some point before it was completely dry, but I was so pleased seeing it stuck to the wall that I didn't. I couldn't face the prospect of seeing it all slide off. When you flick it on, it's surprising how often successive plops end up in exactly the same place, giving a very amateurish peaks and valleys effect. I hope that with more experience I'll be able to throw it where I want it. Trouble is, if you don't throw it hard enough it falls off (and too hard, it bounces off), and there's a trade-off between speed and accuracy.

I ran out of lime, so tomorrow I'll get some more and try to finish this wall and start the next. I am fairly sure you are supposed to do something clever at the edges, so I'll try to work out what that is before I start next time.

But what the hell, it looks a lot better than concrete blocks!