Sunday, 28 December 2014

6 bathroom pictures

It's sunny and it snowed, and it stayed, so there is enough light for even phone pictures.
The bathroom is not finished, but it is the most finished room in the house at the moment.

Tuesday, 23 December 2014

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.