• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Mike's ext'n & renovation (solar panels)

As ever, nice.

It took me a minute or so to work out the symbols on the right spandrel, because somehow, as they larger ones were on the right, my head started to read from right to left!

Praps it's an age thing. :eusa-doh:
 
I've taken a couple of better photos of the carving in situ:

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If that confused you Malcolm, you can thank me now for not doing the date in Roman numerals, as I had long planned!! :)
 
Mike G":2hf1zeao said:
If that confused you Malcolm, you can thank me now for not doing the date in Roman numerals, as I had long planned!! :)
Click to expand...

I might have been able to Roman numerals better than gothic! :D What font is it?
 
Malc2098":3qknq2sy said:
......What font is it?
Click to expand...

I took a Gothic font ("English Towne"), and re-drew the lower case lettering into upper case. The upper case was way too complex to carve (well, never mind that, it was too complex to read). So it's really my own font.
 
Here's why I didn't do it Roman numerals. Given that this was my best attempt, you can maybe see why I gave up on the idea:

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The carvings are a really nice touch [emoji41]

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
 
They're well carved, Mike.

And I really like your Roman version. But that's just me.
 
Thanks Malcolm. Those letters are smaller than the ones on the other side, and closer together. It would have been a nightmare for me, with my skills and shortage of tools.
 
I've done the name over the front door. Again, relief carving, but this time with the background painted matt black.

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Yes, Lintel was the farming family who owned it for a couple of centuries.
 
Nice touch Mike and beautifully executed dude - love it. :eusa-clap:

:text-bravo:

The thought of marking out the work and then carving it, plus smelling the aromas of the oak is giving me woody withdrawals. 8-)
 
Thanks Paul!

One big job that has just been left and left has been the roof over the lounge. Any rumours that I got stuck up there a while back after accidentally kicking the ladder away are unsubstantiated by any photographic evidence, and as we know, without photos, it didn't happen. Anyway, quite a lot of work happened to get to the point in the next photo: the feather-edge boards around the widow, following on from fixing two steel hooks to make future scaffold access possible; gutters to the upper rooves; the old membrane and battens were stripped, new membrane fitted, and it was all rebattened; and finally, a fascia was fitted:

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The slating was easy, except for the area under the new boards, because trying to reach around the hidden corner, with almost nowhere to stand, and working left handed, was really hard. So, there are no work-in-progress photos until near the end, which is just to illustrate that the final stages of tiling a roof are awkward because you run out of space for materials and for yourself:

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Finished:

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These are a medium grade Spanish slate (250mm x 500mm), nailed on with aluminium slate nails. The grading thing is interesting (well, you know.. :) ).....Slate grade isn't about the quality of the material, at all. It is about the uniformity of the product. The top grade slates are all the same thickness, whereas the lower grade stuff will have a mixture of thick and thin.

Finally, the gutter. This gutter is going to have the water from the upper rooves fed into it, as well as from the small slate roof, so I opted for a deep profile rather than the more usual 4" half-round. This has a higher carrying capacity:

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Yes, Andy, it's about 6 inches to the side. I'm building a garden wall in due course, between the downpipe and the end of the house, hence the slightly odd-looking running outlet location.
 
Looking very good Mike (doing some catch up reading)

Door looks fantastic, you must be very chuffed.

Question (maybe I missed this somewhere in the past ...) why the dark tiles and not the same red as the rest of the house?
 
They're slates Phil, and they can be laid at a much lower pitch than clay tiles (22.5 degrees minimum, as compared with 35 minimum). Because of the bedroom window over that little roof, it had to be well under 35 degrees.
 
And here I was thinking that after I took a 6 month break, you'd be all done. :) Mike, the doors are fantastic, and the carving is really the icing on the cake.

Kirk
 
kirkpoore1":2qyqjsn3 said:
And here I was thinking that after I took a 6 month break, you'd be all done. :) Mike, the doors are fantastic, and the carving is really the icing on the cake.

Kirk
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Hi Kirk, nice to see you again. And yes, the pace has slowed as life returns to normal. All the rooms of the house are liveable and in service, and the pressure to get stuff done is thus diminished. I've lots of drawing work to catch up on, so don't have the time to button up the last jobs promptly. This thing could drift for a year or two yet!
 
Mike
I have just finished reading all 118 pages and I would like to say something that is either clever/funny or meaningful but to be honest words fail me.
Your dedication to your house and craft is impressive your home is a work of art.
I should say I have also enjoyed your writing style it was like I could hear you describing what you were doing as you had done it. I remember as an apprentice many years ago the blacksmith I worked with used to talk me through things in that way and even many years later I still use those skills.
The story would make a great book and I would buy it :)
Finally I would like to thank you on behalf of myself and all of those you have helped and given your time freely to help them build their dream workshops.
Keep up the good work.

Michael
 
Thanks Michael. Kind words.

You deserve a medal for ploughing through that lot!!
 
Mike, as usual following your progress and the wide spectrum of your skills, my respect for what you have achieved so far. From early days dismantling the old structures and not always in the knowing of exactly what to expect, you always had solid solutions, executed in quality of work and material. Never cutting corners. (That we know of.. :) )
It is good to see the house is becoming proper home now, tamed and upgraded in style with a good mix of saving and preserving some of the ancient efforts the previous inhabitants and builders had contributed.
One thing that runs through all like a silver string is your excellent planning upfront and how things matched and lined up in the end.
So with all these accolades, when you have time again, please update us here in SA what the progress/plans are on your braai (barbeque for your friends in England)! Hope one day I can do a lekker South African braai for you at your home.
Well done!! :obscene-drinkingcheers: :eusa-clap:
Carel.
 
Thank you Carel. Nice to hear from you again.

I had a little think about the braai a day or two back, funnily enough. There are some awkward bits of brickwork to do where the curved walls meet the sides, and I scratched my head a bit over those for a few minutes. It certainly won't be happening until next year......well, next spring at the earliest. But if you are actually in the UK before I finish building it there is of course a really good temporary BBQ made from an old compressor cylinder which will do perfectly well for some pap en sous, boerwors, and a chop or two. Of course, with the braai we have some decent beers, which is something you guys struggle with. ;)

You're always welcome.
 
Finally, after a 10 week wait, 4 keyed-alike sash locks arrived, and that triggered a bit of activity at the front door. First of all, we don't have a bell or a knocker.

That's a funny shaped piece of wood, Mike:

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The bell pull had to be mounted in an unorthodox way because of the arched braces for the porch canopy, with the top element being rotated 90 degrees from the lower piece. Hence the funny shaped piece of oak:

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The bell pull itself is a really nice bit of casting, but the screw thread used to join the two halves of the rod was appalling, and failed immediately. I welded it together instead:

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Three metres away, inside, is the bell. There are various pulleys in between:

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The awful stretchy nylon cord supplied with the bell will be replaced with some twisted wire cable (actually picture hanging wire) when that arrives.

Now, the lock/ latch. Firstly, the door is an inch thick boarded door, so a sash lock won't work in the ordinary way. A rim lock would be the usual answer, but the other three outer doors need a sash lock, and you can't get a sash lock and a rim lock on the same key without paying many hundreds of pounds so......

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I then glued that all up:

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Whilst the glue was drying, I decided I needed part of a wheelbarrow for the lock issue:

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The following day I cleaned up the lock box, then did some drilling etc:

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That's the woodwork done for the box. I set to with a file and hacksaw to sort out the metalwork:

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I found a collection of gorgeous square headed black screws:

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With a little box for the keep, it was time to screw that lot to the door (with the metalwork just resting in place):

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After a bit of tiffling to get everything working smoothly, I obtained some old engine oil from my friendly local garage:

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It wasn't really possible to take photos whilst using a blow-torch to get the metal glowing dull red, then plunging it repeatedly into the oil, burning off the excess, and repeating, but I did stop half-way through so that the before and after was obvious:

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Once cool, I wiped them off, and screwed them in place:

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Unfortunately those were all the screws I had, so I had to shorten some hand-made nails and use them at the ends of the straps:

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Ideally, I would have liked a big black doorknob (and separate escutcheon) rather than a monkey-tailed handle, but I couldn't find any big ones with a return spring in them, which was essential for this latch.
 
Oh, that's nice!

'Tiffling'; not a word I came across in Middlesex where I grew up, Buckinghamshire where I spent two careers and Devon where I spent the last one!

Now, faffing, fettling and jiggling I have come across.
 
The wheel barrow was retrieved from a friend's skip for the sole purpose of supplying scraps of steel. It's got a solid wheel, and holes in the bottom that golf balls would fall through.
 
I was only joshing Mike though I have a fondness for old metal wheelbarrows. I fished mine out of the River Wey back in 1970. It’s been outside ever since and still going strong, though it’s had a replacement wheel and tyre.

Rod
 
Rod":1c2geomn said:
I was only joshing Mike though I have a fondness for old metal wheelbarrows. I fished mine out of the River Wey back in 1970. It’s been outside ever since and still going strong, though it’s had a replacement wheel and tyre.

Rod
Click to expand...


Sounds a bit like Trigger's broom! :lol:
 
Yeah righto! :)

There is some actual woodturning here, but not by me. DaveL of this parish turned up some pegs for me many months ago from some of my scrap oak, and with the front doors now in use we need somewhere to hang coats and the dog leads. Here is one of Dave's pegs:

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The 16mm tenon needs to go into a hole in the porch frame, but I wanted it at an angle. Obviously this doesn't suit the square shoulders. I made up a jig to guide the spade bit, and drilled all the holes. I also drilled a hole in some scrap, and counterbored around it so I could knock the peg in far enough:

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Then each peg was fitted in and the shoulders re-cut to suit the slope:

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Finally, I bashed 15 of them into place, friction fit only:

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Huge thanks, Dave. We get there in the end!
 
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