It's like starting over

Shed Slab

While it's been quiet on the blog front things have been happening at the Croft. In particular, work has started on the workshop.  Roy from Any Type excavations dug a wonderful hole in June only to have Dieter from Spaghetti Concreting fill it in a few days later.  The dimensions are about 10m x 10m plus a 1.5m veranda on the front (right side in the photo) a mud room on the eastern side (left side in the photo).   The steel frame is scheduled to arrive in August.

 

But wait there's more....



Stairs completed

Having completed the upstairs cupboards and plastering we decided it was finally time to oil the stairs.  The change is just amazing.  The photo of the half completed Harry Potter door below shows the transformation in progress.  Actually, that door was a great find.  We purchased it for $20 from a second hand dealer in Grenfell.  He had taken it from a building in George Street and dated it circa 1900.  It's cedar and was quite beaten up having been kicked in at some point.  



Harry Potter door

We've also completed the bathroom cupboard (below).  The mirror was a Grenfell recycling centre purchase and the carcass of the cupboard was originally a chest of drawers which we found sans drawers.  It now sports drawers that we made from some old cedar skirting board while the doors are resized cedar window frames.   


Bathroom

So in July we're planning and preparing for the shed build.  The 5,000 gallon tank pad is prepared and I've been reading up on steel frame construction... what could possibly go wrong?










 

Stairs (still)

Pine handrail and copper balusters

So, after a nice distraction we’re back to the main job – installing the hand rail and balusters on the staircase.  The pine hand rail we’re using came from a 100+ year old house and, would you believe, is just about the right length.  The balusters on the other hand took quite a lot of thinking.  One early idea  was to get our friends to make one baluster each and then install what was sure to be a random assortment.  But we figured we wanted to finish this decade and dismissed the idea.  We then looked around for off the rack solutions and scoured second hand building places.  But not much really grabbed us and the few that did must have been gold plated going on the price. 

 

The challenge has been to get something that:

• Fitted in with the overall “restored old house” ambience,
• Met the building regulations,
• Fell within the budget,
• Could be installed by us, and
• Had a warehouse, industrial feel.

We finally settled on 19mm copper pipe connected by brass plumbing fittings.  We’ve used the same approach to “hide” the electrical wiring and also, not surprisingly, for the actual plumbing.  Putting the pieces together is slow but giving me ample time to consider a few other outstanding problems.  Firstly, I need to find some non-slip nosing for the stairs that meets the regs but doesn’t look like it came from the Jetsons. There’s also an awkward bit on the landing that I’m not sure how a rail will work and, unfortunately, I’m in need of one more stair newel. 

Apart from that…. we’re close.

Skirting the subject

Rolex and a sample of our
 "new" skirting board

Every now and then an opportunity pops up that is just too good to miss.  One of those came our way the other day.  An advert on Gumtree caught my attention – “for sale, approximately 60 lineal metres of 240mm to 300mm wide Australian cedar skirting boards.  Varying lengths, denailed but requires stripping.”  A phone call revealed that they had been removed from a nursing home in Cremorne and were around 100 years old. 



The stairs and Rolex
(with his winter coat on)

The last time I saw anything vaguely resembling this was at the Grenfell tip.  There I stumbled across some french doors and 10 metres of very rough specimens in the building rubble – these are now part of our stair case.

 

By 5:00pm the next day, after a 613km round trip, 76 lineal metres of gold were stacked in our garage.  By my calculations that’s 5 metres more than I need to complete the upstairs’ bedroom.  And here I was thinking I could hang up my hot air gun for a while.

But is it art?

The staircase design allowed for a light on top of the landing newel.  The challenge though was to find something that was sympathetic with the recycled feel of the stairs and didn't cost an arm and a leg. There are some great lights around, but the ones we liked were either really expensive or shouted "I'm brand new" (or both).

So, I had a rummage through the useful box and assembled my newel light from the following components:

• dome interior light from a 1960's car,
• Copper and brass window sliders, circa 1940's,
• Timber offcuts from our LVLs (basically really thick plywood), and
• Scrap glass.

The result is about 11 inches tall and will bolt straight onto the top of the newel.  I think it has a certain, TARDIS meets steampunk feel to it - but is it art?

The Harry Potter suite is now open

If I was paid by the hour the Potter suite would need to charge Hilton rates!

Swinging the old cedar door from Grenfell took a couple of hours and reminded me just how much harder it is to rebate hinges into hardwood door frames.  The cedar door was like butter whereas the tallowwood took an age doing it the old fashioned way with a mallet and sharp chisel.

One hiccough I encountered was self inflicted - I had over sized the door by 22mm.  No big deal, except to maximise onsite time I’d mortised the old lock into the door while it was in the workshop.  To resize the door I had to deepen the mortise to accommodate the narrower stile.  

The weekend onsite was also an opportunity to check the kitchen bench measurements - no 22mm over sizing there -  they seem to be bang on. This is a good thing as I’ve already starting building the cabinets in the workshop.  Next week will be a slow week - I’m off to hang out with my Dad for a couple of days - but I’m sure the unfinished kitchen bench will still be waiting for me when I get back.

New wine, old skin

The battered old door I’m resurrecting for the Harry Potter suite has a few issues, not the least being severe damage from being kicked in and some large gaps between stiles and rails where the antique cedar timber has shrunk. 

As I mentioned earlier, I needed to shorten the door by some 8 inches in order for it to fit the opening - so the question arises, what standard of fit am I aiming for when I rejoin the shortened style to the rail?

My antique conservation teacher, Anselm Fraser, maintained that such work should be to the same quality as the rest of the piece.  He’s right, because a perfect join between a style and rail on a repaired corner will stand out like a sore thumb when the other joints have large gaps. 

Further, Anselm would argue against dismantling and rebuilding an entire piece just to improve some gaps.  He contended that overtly “improving” a piece often detracted from its aged look and, indeed, its value.  Of course, if the whole thing is falling apart then one has no option but to improve.

The Bible reminds us that we shouldn’t put new wine into old skins, otherwise the wine will burst the skins (Matt 9:14-17) ruining them.  The analogy works just as well with antique conservation, a brand new repair on an old cedar door will only ruin the original piece.

Harry Potter Suite

This weekend I've been working on a door for the sizeable space under the landing, aptly named the “Harry Potter Suite”.  I picked up a stripped cedar door a couple of years ago from Grenfell for $20.  According to the bloke I bought it off, it came from one of the early buildings in the Main St, which would potentially date it from the late 1800's.  It's had a hard life especially where the lock was fitted, with the timber split right through.   Perhaps the door had been kicked in at some stage, maybe during an armed robbery by some bushranger like Ben Hall (or maybe the owner just forgot their keys - equally plausible but not nearly as exciting).

I’ve reduced the height of the door by about 8 inches by removing the bottom rail (otherwise known as the horizontal bit) and taking 8 inches from the side and centre stiles (the bits that run from top to bottom).  I then reassembled the door and, to be honest, you wouldn’t know that it’s been cut and shut.

I also need to make the door narrower by about 4 inches.  Ordinarily, I would take a third off each of the three stiles to keep it symmetrical.  But given the damage around the lock I’ve decided to take 2 inches from the outside stiles and leave the central one as is.  I’ll add a couple of across grain keys on the inside of the door for strength.  This would have been a common repair method when the door was made.

One nice aspect of this job has been the opportunity to use a hand plane from my Grandfather Woolner’s toolbox.  It took a little time to sharpen and tune, but it’s great to use.

Upwardly mobile

At last it is possible to get to the upstairs' rooms without climbing a ladder. This is real progress.  Not that the stairs are finished, there are still handrails, panelling, a door to the Harry Potter suite, moulding, skirting boards and non-slip strips.  All of which will require a few more days' effort, but the lion's share is done and they work.

As with the other steps and winders I've rounded the front edge of each tread on the second flight using my trusty Stanley hand plane.  I really think hand planes have a lot to offer when it comes to small jobs, they are quick to set up, make no noise and create minimal dust.  Plus, from my perspective, they give the slightly imperfect, hand made finish that I like.

During coffee breaks I measured up for the kitchen bench.  The plan is to build the kitchen in Canberra using some of the second hand timber I've picked up over the last couple of years and move it down when completed.  I'll put the drawing up when it's done.

Second flight

Nette and I spent most of the weekend working on the second flight of stairs.  It was a pretty steep learning curve for us.  Up until now the stairs have been similar to pieces of furniture, which is in our comfort zone.  So much so that the bottom flight is actually a chest of drawers and the landing is a cupboard. 

But which ever way we looked at it, the second flight could only be described as one thing - stairs.   So we delved into the world of stringers (the outside beams that hold up the stairs) and brackets (the middle beam under the stairs).   The result…we’re well on the way to completing our first, fully fledged flight of stairs.  The stringers we made up from left over floor LVLs.  The bracket is MGP (machine graded pine) made along the lines of a “peter post” and inspired by the stair section in my 4 volume edition of  “The Australian Carpenter and Joiner”.

Bet you can't guess what the most useful tool was this weekend.

Staring at stairs

There were two of us on site this weekend, me and my 82 year old Dad.  You can see the progress we made on the stairs, especially the landing wall, which is now panelled.  We did some of the fiddly bits where the main post, winders and treads meet too, which required some quite tricky compound mitres. 

Cutting the mitres was made a lot easier by Dad, who filled his Saturday sharpening my handsaws.  He spent a lot of time on one in particular which the brickie had used to cut some Timbercrete bricks.  Dad was less than impressed - that was no way to treat a Disston handsaw!

Dad and I probably had more coffee breaks than the award allows for - but the weekend wasn’t just about work.   Life’s all about choices isn’t it?  I think the work/coffee break balance we struck this weekend was a good choice.

First flight is in

The first flight of stairs is installed, complete with 11 drawers.  I've made a mental note that next time (next time?) that making such a unit in three sections would be better than two.  It nearly killed us moving it from the workshop onto the trailer and then into the house. 

Total time to build this flight of stairs....drum roll....59 hours including making the 12 "secret" drawers.  (They're not really a secret now I've told you!).  I should charge by the hour.

Next steps (excuse the pun): build the second flight; make the very first step, clad the landing wall and make a door for entry into the Harry Potter suite.