Thursday 19 December 2013

Finishing the year?

Starting with a reminder about how nice the weather was in October (this picture was taken on the 7th October), here's the last bits of fencing that I made, and which, with a bit of luck, should keep the cows out for a bit. I found a better kind of wood treatment - at least, a less offensively coloured one. Whether it's effective we'll have to wait and see.

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I've now finished off the doors to my workshop. Previously they looked pretty much like this - though I have to say there is a certain charm about this decayed object:

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Now they are all finished, and I've also done an interior wooden case to reduce draughts, as well as having a bit of a go at repointing around the edges. I don't really like the rather startling white colour from the lime mortar, so I started experimenting with a bit of brownish dye. My first attempts used perhaps a bit too much, but it's probably better than the white. It would be visible round the middle door if you could see it.

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I've also been having a go at skirting boards around the house. Some places really did need to have them done - gaps like this:

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The hole is larger enough for a family of mice to come and go. The skirting board is described as "American Oak", and although it is very good wood - fine-grained and very hard - it's also very expensive, just under €10 a metre. Gulp.

Here's the finished version. I've also managed to do something about the "expansion" gap in the floorboards by the door, though what will happen when the wood expands and contracts I don't know.

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The main problem with longer sections of board was pushing them up against the walls while the glue sets. Regrettably, not all the walls were as straight as they might have been. Even plasterboard ones seem to bulge a bit at corners where they have been smoothed over the top of the corner reinforcements. In the picture above, I had to plane the back of the skirting board at each end to make it sit flat against the wall (that's better than trying to shave the plaster off). The mitres aren't quite as good as the pictures make them seem, but they are good enough.

Sometimes I was lucky, and I had a bit of heavy furniture to wedge against. Other times I found a way of clamping, but that was the exception. There are a few gaps at the top of the slirting boards in places, but these can be filled with a bit of white mastic, as they aren't more than about a quarter of an inch.

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It's odd how this picture shows up the way that the electrical conduit was chased out from the nearby plug point horizontally to the one on the other side of the room. I'm fairly sure that good practice in the UK says you don't do that.

Right now, after a coupkle of weeks of really good sunny weather, it's pouring with rain, so it's a good thing that the outdoor work is finished. I don't think I'll be doing much now before Christmas (except sitting in front of the fire - plenty of offcuts to burn!)


Tuesday 10 December 2013

Next door

The weather is still good - dry and sunny, so it was the right time to have a go at the next door in my workshop - this one:

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I think when we first arrived the door was held shut either with a heavy prop or a bit of string: the sliding bar (a bit of bent reinforcing rod) and its guides were an early improvement of my own. But although they are still fairly solid, the door is visibly falling apart.

The new one was a bit quicker to do than the first as I'd found it was easier to use the router table to make the lapped sections of the board, rather than the hand-held router, and that I could do the whole cut in one pass without tearing the wood excessively. So here it is:

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It's not yet entirely finshed. It will have an interior bolt too, so I can keep it shut from the inside when it's cold or wet. And I've put up an inner wooden casing, just glued to the stonework, to reduce draughts. I've used mastic round the edges to fill the gaps between the wood and the stone on the inside: I'll use a lime mortar on the outside for cosmetic purposes.

I hope eventually to put a third hinge on, but the upper hinge pintle is missing. I'll need to cut away a bit of stone before I can cement it in, as it needs to be in line with the other two, and the pin there previously (for the upper section of the door) wasn't - you might be able to see that the unused pin is about an inch to the left of line of the bottom ones.

Saturday 7 December 2013

Back to work

After a quiet summer (with the grandchildren - that kind of quiet) I've started to get my workshop a bit more comfortable, or at least a bit less draughty - and secure - for the winter.

The doors were very much on their last legs, despite some temporary repairs that I did - oooh - about six years ago. These are visible on the back of the open door. I appreciate that they have a well-used look about them, but practical? No.


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I thought I'd start with a door that I don't use very often, the one in the middle. It's normally got my table-mounted mitre-saw ("chop-saw") behind it so even when it's open it's not much use. But at present it does have one advantage: because the top of the stable door is missing, it lets in a lot of light. So the new doors will need to have some kind of glazing.

Here's the old door:

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About the only thing that can be said for it (apart from its rustic appearance) is that it can be opened and shut. But if you were able to see the hinges properly, it would be clear that they have been put on effectively back to front: the door should go right into the opening and be flush with outer side of the wall, not sit so that it is a little larger than the opening and touching the outside part of the wall at the edges.

I bought a quantity (about €200) of chestnut planks, 20mm thick and about 2m long, from the timber merchant in Aurillac. And I ordered some twinwall polycarbonate sheet cut to 50cm by 40cm: I didn't think actual glass would survive very long in a workshop. 

Et voila!

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The planks are lapped rather than tongued and grooved: they overlap about a centimetre so any shrinkage shouldn't let in the draughts too much. I've cut the bottom of the door to fit the v-shaped threshhold, but I might sometime level that up with cement and cut the door straight afterwards. The door is only held shut with wedges at the edge. I plan to make an interior doorcase to give a slightly more airtight fit, and that will take an interior bolt. This door doesn't need to be opened from the outside.

I've used a waterproofer on the timber, which has darkened it a little, and I'm pleased with the results. Now just the other two to do.


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