The glass has been a pain

 
It seemed a harmless idea initially - to leadlight all the windows - but that was because we didn't realise it would require 1,146 pieces of glass and over 400 hours of cutting, grinding, soldering, puttying and polishing.  But, finally job done. We've completed the bathroom, loo, kitchen and lounge windows, the front and back doors, 5 fanlights, 4 internal doors and 5 pairs of French hens doors.  


French doors in progress.



Landing completed.



Front door and windows.

 

Front door and windows from outside.
(mmm - I forgot to include the lights in the count.)

Kitchen window and back door.





 

Benched....again

Oiling the benchtop

After a lot of fiddling and fine tuning I can finally announce that we are the proud parents of my first kitchen bench.  Joining the 3 benchtop components went better than expected as did levelling them - which I did using Dad's ancient Ryobi electric planer (it was actually made in Japan!).  But the most rewarding moment came while oiling the top.  It's probably the first time since the timber was milled over 100 years ago that the natural grain is again the star.

Next job - building a shed.

Well travelled

Kitchen

It is now a well travelled kitchen, having been broken into 6 components, loaded onto the trailer and driven several hundred kilometres to the farm on the weekend.  Did it fit in the trailer?  I’m glad you asked….and the answer is “almost”.  It all packed pretty well except for the long part of the bench top.  I could have pressed the point I suppose, but after so much work I decided to be patient and wait for next trip.

What with the tiling done, kitchen bench installation started and the stairs well on the way to completion - soon I won’t know what to do with myself.  Mind you I still havn’t tackled the plumbing, gyprocking, stair rail, bathroom ceiling, back veranda floor, upstairs’ floor sanding, linen press, slow combustion fire…..you get the idea.

All in all a great trip, especially so because my son-in-law came along to lend a hand.

Meals on wheels

After around 120 hours the kitchen cabinet is ready to install. This is a matter for great rejoicing for two reasons. Firstly, Pemberley will start to look more like a home than a workshop. Secondly, my workshop will look less like a granny flat.

The obvious question though is how do you move a 3.2 metre long cabinet? Well for once I planned ahead and built the bench as three components, the drawers, the sink section and the right hand cupboard. I’ll join these permanently once I’ve trundled it down to the farm on the trailer. The bench top is also made in three sections, the back third, which runs the full length, the front two thirds over the drawers and the section above the cupboard. I’ll glue it together on site and also oil what is just raw timber at the moment.

Will it all fit on the trailer or will I need to make two trips? I’ll let you know after the weekend.

Opera defeats workshop

An entire weekend away from the workshop - now that's just not normal.  But I had a higher calling as our daughter, Georgii, was dancing at the Sydney Opera House.  How could tools, shavings and sawdust compete with that?  Mind you it did give me a chance to go back over my notes and plans for the kitchen bench I'm currently working on.

At roughly 3 metres long and 700mm deep it has 10 drawers and 5 cupboard doors.  The benchtop is 25mm laminated tallow wood, left over from the stairs.  All visible timber is Tassie Oak, to match the windows, or recycled flooring like the stairs.  Behind the scenes cabinet work is garden variety framing pine.  Drawers are solid dressed pine with rebated MDF bases.

Even using second hand materials the cost, including the butler's sink, is $1,400 and 100 hours, with 20 hours still to go.  If I had paid new price for the recycled timber it would have added another $400 or so - but probably saved some 10 hours or so spent denailing, machining and generally trying to make things fit.

I'm pleased with some of the recycling I've done, including:

• A Metter's slow combustion stove door picked up in Sydney for $20.
• Solid polished brass hinges, circa 1880, from Glasgow.  A bargain at $20 for the lot.
• 4 singer sewing machine drawers, $5 each.  One was missing its fancy front so I carved a copy.
• Floorboard offcuts from my Dad's sawmill, $0. (Dad sold the mill 25 years ago, so these have been kicking around for a while).
• Butler's sink, handmade in India, $400 from eBay.

If nothing else it will be a unique kitchen - you have to love recycling.

That takes the biscuit

I’ve been beavering away at the kitchen bench for a few weekends now and I think it’s coming together pretty well.  In fact, some friends popped by on Sunday and admired the “lovely sideboard” I was making – I was chuffed as I think that sounds much more upmarket than “kitchen bench”.

On the weekend I ran across a snag when I started to assemble the cupboard doors.  As with most of my construction the plan was to use size “20” biscuits on each joint.  Well, after cutting the first slot I realised a “20” was too wide and would show.  The smaller size 10 was a good fit, but of course I didn’t have enough for the four doors. (I have thousands of size 20 – but only the two size tens that came with the biscuit cutter when I bought it 10 years ago.)  So, decision time, a trip to the hardware shop, elapsed time 60 minutes, or......why not trim down a few size 20’s on the bandsaw, elapsed time 5 minutes.

OK, I have to admit that cutting biscuits on a bandsaw is pretty inefficient, but when the alternative is a trip to the shop and the loss of focus that brings, it seemed a reasonable approach – and it worked.

Next challenge – laminating the bench top using the leftover floorboards from the staircase.