Floored

A week on site meant progress - and more than double the progress with both Nette and I doing 8 to 5 every day.  The goal for the week was to lay 80 square metres of floor boards upstairs.  We didn't quite make the target, but we did get 60 metres laid in addition to planting and fencing 50 walnut trees that Nette had grown from seed.

Nette measuring up

The tongue and groove flooring from North Eden Timber was excellent.  The boards, random length mixed blondes, were outstanding quality with only 3 or 4 needing a couple of inches removed due to minor flaws, like a split tongue.

The nail gun - which is actually an air powered stapler - performed without a hitch.  I'll write a report on it later. 

During the week Nette must have done a million miles, measuring what was needed, then sifting through the pile downstairs to find the closest board, then carrying it outside to the drop saw, cutting it to length before bringing it back up stairs for me to glue and staple down.   I got off easy really - but what a team.

We'll head back in a couple of weeks to finish the job and plant some more trees.

A second flash

While winter days in Canberra are often sunny they are usually cold.  In contrast, this weekend on site it was jeans and T-shirt weather.  Installing the flashing on the northern veranda was the ideal job for this time of year and it went perfectly and in half the time it took to do the same job at the back.

So, now the front veranda is officially finished.   It has guttering, lights, flashing, paving and some hoof prints where a cow has walked across it.

Next job on the list is installing the upstairs flooring.  85 square meters of tongue and groove eucalypt floorboards, glued and secret nailed.   The big question now is whether to buy a cheap nailer or hirer a good one - the price is about the same.

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.