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.

 

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:



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.



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:



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.



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.

 

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!)