Week 76-80 - Cladding and Finishing Outside of Building

It’s been quite a while since my last blog entry, mainly because since I moved my workshop in last summer I have been rather busy being a furniture maker again and not a builder. I admit it has been very nice using my new workshop and seeing the bank balance going up rather than down for a change, but this place isn’t going to build itself, so we need to crack on....

And crack on we have: The external cladding and finishing touches to the front of the building are now complete, so I think it’s time we had ourselves a before and after photo. I admit this is rather self-indulgent of me, but it definitely helps with the motivation, and when you’ve been renovating a building for more than two and a half years and are still only about half way though, motivation is the name of the game! [Plus no one is forcing you to read this!]

 As you can see the cladding is now done and I am rather pleased with how it has turned out. Which is a good job to be honest, as I went full ‘designer wood nerd’ on this one. Not only did I refuse to put anything other than solid European Oak up, I then also compounded the situation by coming up with a design that used about 30% extra timber than it 'needed' too. All in all this meant the cladding cost easily twice as much and took probably three times as long to achieve than an off the shelve product would have done.

Still though, I think it’s worth it and all the friend and relatives that have seen it seem to agree. [at least to my face] Most importantly Sophie agrees, so we're all good.

The drive way has been freshly tarmacked, which is satisfyingly smooth and I have made a railing for the Juliet balcony into the gallery. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to get a bit of art-deco sunray in there.

The main workshop doors have had some frosting applied to stop everyone staring at me while I work at my bench so much [I felt a bit like a gold fish!] and I’ve made some rather cool little 'MOS Furniture' swing signs for either side. I have to admit I am a little overly proud of these - I’ve never had my logo up outside my previous workshops.

The main 'The Makers Mill' signage for the overall building will go flat on the cladding between the windows

Have also added a raised bed out of the last of the recycled slate from the building for a rather special little pear tree [his name is Perry] I planted this tree 3 years ago for my late grandad. It had outgrown its initial pot, so I thought he deserved a nice permanent one here.

The main 'public' entrance to the building has been paved in slate and I even had enough left over oak from the cladding to make a letter box

The underside of the staircase up to the flat has been clad and painted the rather bright lime from the middle door of the by-fold doors. Mainly because i think it’s cool - but also, I didn’t want to waste the left over paint!

This rather large pill of timber is all the oak planed up ready to be made into the cladding. While not an insignificant pile, still rather disappointingly small for its cost

Getting ready to start cladding the front of the building above the main doors. First job was to fit the window hoods

Cladding starting to go on. You can see that I clapped a straight edge across the bottom to line it up with, to make sure it ended with a nice straight line across the front of the doors

Full width of cladding nearly complete

Graeme out on the roof (though the Velux window) rigging up a safely line so I didn’t fall to my death while attaching the top rows of cladding. FYI - I didn’t

Windows, hoods and batons fitted to the residential staircase ready to start cladding

Cladding of the staircase about half done - nice collection of ladders I have aye? You can also see how indecisive I was being about what colour to paint to outside of the building. Although from comments made - there were one or two of the neighbours that thought I planned to go for a pure patchwork effect

Front door frame and door to the flat fitted and battened ready to be hidden in the cladding.

Sophie using our front doors for the first time: This was pretty exciting. In hindsight maybe I should have carried her over the threshold of this door! Or maybe this isn’t something we do in the gender neutral 21st century? Answers on a postcard please, as I do want to be down with the 21st century kids

Prepping the slates for steps up to the door

Gluing up the railing for the 2nd floor doors: Quite a complicated glue up actually, but there’s no one to blame apart from the idiot that didn’t just make a square jointed railing

Fitting the railing

I also fitted the flood gates in this period of work on the outside of the building. These are the last part of the flood defence’s for the building. This is a fairly straight forward job in theory, but it does require you to get the side and bottom channels accurate and level to within a millimetre or so at the worst. These sort of tolerances are not generally a problem, but achieving them in concrete is a lot harder than in wood, so it did require some patience.

(Above) Cutting the rebates and bore holes for the joining stanchions in front of the by fold doors

Fitted flood gates on all the external doors. My mother’s comment to this picture: "Looks like a chest of drawers"  - It makes me wonder what state her clothes are kept in!