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.