Sad post: cutting furniture up

I feel tempted to title this post: "Picture dump 2". No much time or energy for much else...

Not that I've been taking many pictures: it is too dark. With the Solstice behind us, perhaps this will change soon.

The house is still a mess, lots of boxes everywhere. I hear this is normal...
Let's see what I find in the memory card...

Ah, yes. I butchered the Art Deco sideboard to have access to plugs in the wall behind. Router, external drive etc live now inside. I kept the piece I cut out, I tried to do as little damage as possible, but...

Aand, had to cut up even more furniture. The cupboard/library/whatever Pim inherited from his granddad was 5 metres long. There is no such wall in this house.

It is made up of 5 elements, but the "seat" was made up of 3 elements (2, 2, 1), and the only 1 metre element is an edge element, so we had to cut one of the 2 metre "seat" pieces in two. The entire thing is oak, except for the pieces were they could get away with some early type of particle board with a thick veneer, like the "seat", and most everything except the doors and drawer fronts.

I managed to cut a straight line, and then filed a camber on the edge as the other pieces had (sorta, they're a little convex, but you can't tell the difference). A little walnut dye and a little wax and you really can't tell. I don't have any good pictures, this is the darkest room in the house...

The join is between the first and second elements visible in this pic.
Do not confuse with the black cable lying there ;)

Gratuitous cat photo in the relevant piece of furniture

So, the leftover element went upstairs next to my side of the bed.

Due to the way the legs were made (one leg in between two elements) we had a conundrum with this orphaned piece. Had to hack some more I'm afraid... I removed the back leg and some extra pieces of wood that were in the way, didn't install the only front leg left over, and just installed a new set of 4 legs that we bought in the hardware store (turned beech), I dyed them to match and protected them with shellac.

There is space on the left of it, where I want to build some storage and a hanging bar for clothes that need airing and so on.

As can be seen in the previous pics, this element is bare on both sides, and there's even a hole over the seat/drawer section. I'll have to cover this up somehow.

Looking ok from the front ;)

And, to end on a brighter note, a piece of furniture I did not have to hack into:

Bad lightning

I got this table off eBay for 25 euro, in 2007. The top was damaged because someone put a hot pot on it. I started fixing it up back then, but it's been covered up for years, after a monumental fuck up*. All this time I thought it was cherry, but now I got a better look at it I realise it is mahogany... I found an older image:

Back in 2007. You can see the crop circle if you squint.

I found about the fuck up in my old Livejournal. Ugh. Back then I didn't even finish sanding off the gunk since my sciatica was very bad. Just covered the table up until now... Here's a post about the first "restoration" steps, and here about the fuck up. Do not mix sawdust with wood glue to fill gaps, kids! :(

Now I've only sanded, oiled a bit and shellac-ed. I was aiming to fill the gaps with the shellac, but they may be too deep. We'll see. Looking good so far. Darker, more red than the previous finish, because of the oil I believe. It has a great depth now so I am happy about that.

Moving and stuff

I haven’t been posting in a while… we moved in! that took all our time and energy, and then some.

Everything is still a mess… but some things also advanced since I last posted. I should have taken a picture of the attic before we filled it with stuff, but alas that did not happen. I think. Will check the camera. I think I could not catch it with daylight, which is often a concern in winter at this latitude.

This is the best I could find, when I was painting the front rooms' mouldings

So the attic got finished (paint on the walls and beams, floor placing and finishing, including baseboard), well, sorta, still have to install a wall lamp on the corner.

Living rooms #1 and #2* (AKA front rooms) got painted, the floor scrubbed (and scrubbed again). We have not installed the mouldings yet (see photo above), we bought them and I painted them a cream colour, and they’re back in the box. We will probably wait until things have settled a bit to put more cables along the edge, like speakers and such, which we are not sure where to put yet. Once the furniture is in place it’ll be easier to decide. We hope.

Moving big furniture in through the window

The “kitchen”, which will eventually be living room #3 (you could say it is just one long, narrow living room*) is sorta cleaned up and the ceiling is still opened up with all the cabling visible. Not finished up with this so it’ll stay like that for a bit. Now the entire surface is full of boxes, homeless kitchen stuff and the dining room table!

Big mess in... not so little kitchen

Now every single room is filled with partially mounted furniture and boxes upon boxes of stuff (SO MUCH stuff! I have way too many hobbies and... probably plan to add more).

* #1 is street-side and has a nice arched window. It still has a mantlepiece and we plan to install a gas fireplace in the future. Here comes nice art-deco furniture and probably my antique desk and the treadle sewing machine. And some seats. Right now it is stuffed with two huge-ass sofas, the TV, the art deco furniture and three coffee tables (two small ones under the TV). It will stay so until we make a new kitchen in the back building.

Mid-move, it is even more stuffed now

#2 is separated from #1 by an arch (formerly with double or triple glass doors, now partially disappeared, we found some remnants in the attic). It is narrower than #1 (the hall adjacent widens for the staircase). Here we will put lots of large cupboards and bookshelves. We toyed with calling it library but it is too pretentious. Not much more will fit. Now you can barely pass through.

Started to put up cupboards

#3, originally, and still now, a kitchen, is separated from #2 by double glass doors. Very damaged by a dog in the past. I half-heartedly fixed them a bit some time ago, still work to do and unfortunately due to the heavy damage they will have to be painted (on the #3 side). I will use black. The door that goes to the back building, future laundry and kitchen, will also need to be fixed and painted on the #3 side. The floor in all three livings is coloured terrazzo tiles with motifs, the motif in the kitchen is quite nice.

We still have to put up some kitchen cabinets we had temporarily taken down.
They were already here when we bought the house, and look like they have
been recycled from elsewhere at least once.

This temporary kitchen is still better than the “kitchen” we previously had in our apartment (one story another house from the 30’s, larger -our story was 100 square metres- but barely fixed, let’s not talk about the “bathroom”).

We have started putting stuff together, I will try to take some better pictures tomorrow (Saturday) with daylight. We also have to finish cleaning up our old apartment so we may not have much time left.

Inherited oil painting, I love it

Loki