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.

Pretty flash eh?

It took some time, but the flashing on the back veranda is done.  No longer (hopefully) will the rain be able to drop between the veranda roof and house wall because it's now covered with some u-beaut flashing bent up by Steeline in Pambula.  The flashing comes up the wall about a foot to give a visual effect reminiscent of the lead flashing on 19C shearers' cottages.  As in the 1800's there's a practical aspect to this as the coverage will protect the wall from splash back from the roof above it. 

The aim is to avoid gutters and downpipes on the main roof (because it would be a pain to clean them).  But for this to work we need to protect the walls below, hence the flashing - which I'm sure was the very reason they have such wide flashing on old houses as well.

As today's building code doesn't permit lead flashing on roofs that harvest drinking water (which is just a fancy way of saying that the water runs into a tank) we opted for the modern alternative - folded zincalume.

Lights, Camera, Copper

The moment of truth came Friday afternoon when the electrician flicked the switch and.....it worked! 

I had run all the cables through the Timbercrete walls during construction and now, over two years later, the electrician had come to connect the power points, lights and switches.  Whilst I had checked, double checked, triple checked and labelled all my work a couple of weeks ago, it was still nerve racking watching as the trained professionals had to figure out how to actually make it work - which they did whilst maintaining a good sense of humour. 

Though, I have to say, he was a little unsure at first about my plan to run some of the wiring through exposed copper conduit.  We like it, it gives the idea of an old  house that was built before electricity and has subsequently been electrified.  I have no real excuse for the tap - except that it's cool.

We're really pleased with the bakelite style switches which we purchased from Pales in Style.  Dan provided faultless service and attention to detail - I'd recommend his company to anyone.

Our electrician, Greg Eastman, and his team Brad and Chris were great to work with and very patient and accommodating of my ideas.  If you need an electrician on the South Coast, you would be hard pressed to do better than Greg, Chris and Brad.

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.