woodstalker
Nordic Pine
Whilst in lockdown both Mrs Woodstalker and I are working from home, i have been at a desk in the spare room and she has been working at the dining table.
Now i have evicted her to finish surfacing it i needed to sort out an office space for her. She wanted a standing desk and selected a little knock at the top of the stairs to the basement which is an unused space with a little window giving a view down the garden.
I don't have much decent working material to hand but i did have some scaffold boards i had left from a different project in the garden. They had dried right out but two thirds were really badly twisted and i had three that were quite cupped to work with.
the brief from the "client" was not too lose too much of the character of the boards so i took the worst of the cup out to use on the top surface with my new planer/thicknesser and then flattened the bottom completely.
I joined the edges coming together and used a new biscuit joiner to help with the alignment before sanding it to 120 grit and getting after the joins with a cabinet scraper. I finished the top with the same Fiddes Antique Brown wax. Unfortunately the wood was very white to start with so the finish was quite yellow and there was no way to go back and add a stain (if i had one) to darken the wood first. So in the end i used some dark brown boot polish mixed with some thinners and more of the Fiddes wax as the next coat and this seemed to darken it enough for the client and buffed up quite nicely i think.
I was a bit worried about the radiator underneath causing the timber to move too much so i have added a couple of cross braces underneath and will see how it holds up.
I fixed it to the wall with a couple of horizontal timbers on the two walls and made a bracket for the hanging end rather than fashion some sort of spindly leg. So far it has not fallen off the wall and the client seems happy with it but she is threatening to get her paint brush out on the supports underneath. Certainly not a masterpiece but at the end of the day the client is happy which makes me happy.
Now i have evicted her to finish surfacing it i needed to sort out an office space for her. She wanted a standing desk and selected a little knock at the top of the stairs to the basement which is an unused space with a little window giving a view down the garden.
I don't have much decent working material to hand but i did have some scaffold boards i had left from a different project in the garden. They had dried right out but two thirds were really badly twisted and i had three that were quite cupped to work with.
the brief from the "client" was not too lose too much of the character of the boards so i took the worst of the cup out to use on the top surface with my new planer/thicknesser and then flattened the bottom completely.
I joined the edges coming together and used a new biscuit joiner to help with the alignment before sanding it to 120 grit and getting after the joins with a cabinet scraper. I finished the top with the same Fiddes Antique Brown wax. Unfortunately the wood was very white to start with so the finish was quite yellow and there was no way to go back and add a stain (if i had one) to darken the wood first. So in the end i used some dark brown boot polish mixed with some thinners and more of the Fiddes wax as the next coat and this seemed to darken it enough for the client and buffed up quite nicely i think.
I was a bit worried about the radiator underneath causing the timber to move too much so i have added a couple of cross braces underneath and will see how it holds up.
I fixed it to the wall with a couple of horizontal timbers on the two walls and made a bracket for the hanging end rather than fashion some sort of spindly leg. So far it has not fallen off the wall and the client seems happy with it but she is threatening to get her paint brush out on the supports underneath. Certainly not a masterpiece but at the end of the day the client is happy which makes me happy.
