Renovating

The Shed Saga

The ongoing saga of getting the shed set up. I'm just a month short of 2 years since we moved into our new house. During this time I put in a concrete floor in the shed and built a new rear wall. I've been slowly adding benches and storage. I think now the end is in sight. I'm gradually unpacking all my tools  and I can now find things. I managed to get a steel frame to put my drill press on. It is an open frame and I've been able to make a set of drawers to fit underneath. I have used melamine covered chipboard as It's a relatively cheap material and strong and easy to cut up on the table saw. I have connected it all with confirmat screws which hold the drawer and cupboard together much more strongly than chipboard screws. I had also built a 600 mm wide cupboard to fill a space in the shed but much to my horror the drawers would never run properly. I just assembled the drawers and discovered that I'd cut the base out of square. I have a Bosch GTS contractor saw which for the most part works well. But when you go beyond 33 cm width in cutting you have to rely on a secondary fence. I seem to be in the habit of forgetting to lock that secondary fence which means that the fence drifts while I'm cutting. This explained why I hadn't cut the basis of the two drawers very accurately. I was able to reuse the material from these two drawers in making the above mentioned cover to fit under the drill press stand. Along with remaking the out of [...]

The Ongoing Saga of the Workshop

 The ongoing saga of me trying to establish a new workshop at the new house. I've written about it previously on this blog. It's been nearly 10 months since we moved into the house and I thought that I would have been up and running long before this. I finally finished the rear wall. The rear wall is now both insulated and painted. The interior wall is lined with plywood as I did with the sidewall. I will varnish the wall before starting to hang things on it. All the wiring has been run for an excessive amount of power outlets, one of the outlets will have USB charging inbuilt. I've also pre-wired for a light above the bench with a switch just inside the door. The next phase will be painting the wall with varnish or should I say varnishing the wall. then I will commence building a bench across the back wall. I am thinking about putting some drawers under the bench to store things but making sure that the bench top overhangs so I can clamp things to the edge. I will also be fitting a bench vice. I'm hoping that this will be a practical and useful space because I don't really feel like rebuilding it after this. As always there are some photos attached to this post showing the progress so far. I'm hoping when I get the workshop up and running that I will do a collage of all the photos I've taken through the build. It's been too hard to try to video the progress because I've got too much stuff in the way. Every time I work in the shop I have to play a massive game [...]

The ongoing workshop build

We have now been in our new house for eight months. I had been hoping to sort out the workshop in a matter of weeks! Progress has been slow. The most recent progress has been the rear wall which had a roller door installed. This was completely useless for my purposes. The roller door was removed with the help of a a beam lift. This made it easy and safe for two people to remove. I sold it quickly for $200 it was off my hands in two days. I managed to source a second hand window for the rear wall of the workshop. It had been subjected to lots of paint in various colours. Paint stripper and some scrubbing revealed an original brown. I painted the window with some etch primer and a topcoat of enamel in a grey colour called monument. The window now matches the other windows on the house. I purchased a solid wood as an access door for the rear wall of the workshop. The door I bought was apparently from a hospital and needs some fettling to make it fit the door is about the right width but is nearly 2500 mm high. The most common door size in Australia is 820 wide and 2040 high. Nothing a track can handle. I was lucky with the cladding as my brother had some lying around his property doesn't exactly match the house but will end up the same colour so all is good. I think that the whole wall will blend in once it has nice coat of paint. Then there is wiring and cladding on the inside.. https://youtube.com/shorts/BbN_9nskg3o?feature=share

Back Bench

I have been thinking about the bench that will go against the back wall. Luckily I have a reasonable supply of timber that I can construct a solid wok bench with a vice for woodworking. I will be using some hardware salvaged from the old workshop. At this stage the plan is to have three powerpoints across the wall just above the bench. One of the powerpoints will incorporate a couple of USB ports for charging things. I also have the idea to put a powerpoint under the bench for a shop vac. The main light in the garage has a switch located at the other end of the workshop. It is too much hassle to rewire it as a two way switch. The simpler solution is to put a light over the work bench with a switch just inside the back door. I have drawn a simple mud map of my thinking which is as close as I get to construction diagrams. The Back Wall

Major 8 Radiogram Repair

We have in our possession a Major 8 radiogram which was originally purchased by my in-laws around 1960s. It hasn't been used for years and kept largely for sentimental reasons. When I first saw it a very modern (for its day) stereo cassette player had been patched in not sure how but it worked. I have not been able to find any information online about this or any other radiogram. I did find a website that that does repairs Resurrection Radiograms. They hadn't heard of a Major 8 either. They did however suggest that it could be a rebranded Astor 8. I visited another website bakeliteradio it lists the Astor brand but doesn't really help my cause. The radiogram is now part of history as cassette players, 8 track cartridges and compact disks. The radio still works but it only has AM as this unit predates FM radio and there is little call for short wave theses days. So there it sits the AM band works but doesn't cover the full bandwidth that is available today. I can tune in some stations the sound is a bit crackly befitting such an on old radio. Sadly the turntable is no longer functional too hared to fix. The cabinet is made from veneered plywood which needed repair. That however is a story for another post. Major 8 RadiogramMajor 8 tuning on light

Repairs Repairs Nothing but Repairs

I keep thinking I'm going to make little creative projects but I never seem to shake off repairing things. Currently I have been fixing a garden seat which had a broken slat. The likely culprit is the dog. Then I discovered that it had a rotten back rest. This meant that I had to remake part of the backrest. In reality the repair is worth more than the bench. But management wanted it preserved as it was a gift from our son. I'm am also fixing an old radiogram so that it can be sold. The problem with this is that the veneer on the cabinet is lifting. It is so damaged that it could probably be thrown out. However it belonged to my inlaws so my wife wants it fixed and sold. Im not even sure that any of the electrics work anymore. The record player hasn't been used in years and the radio frequencies are no longer in use. I'm not game to plug it in as it might blow a fuse!The unit predates FM radio and we won't evenmention DAB+. Then there is a chair waiting renovation , another ready to re-upholster (since 2019) and a dining table that could be refinished for sale. Somewhere in the middle I made a stand for a prot barrel sadly not my port barrel. So it's all repairs at the moment and we are downsizing. Garden Seat Back Garden Seat BackPort BarellRadiogramRadiogram VeneerChair FrameAssembled Chair FrameWaiting to be finishedRepairs Repairs

Upgrades to the A’van

Upgrades to the van We have a A'Van Cruiseliner campervan which I seem to be endlessly upgrading or modifying. The photos in the attached gallery show the installation of an Ikea fold down table and a shelf above the sink. We found that the original table takes up too much space inside the van particularly when its cold and we spend in the van. I have of course kept the original table. I fitted the new Ikea table in such a way that if I decide to reverse the fitting you wouldn't notice. Although the table would benefit from having the right front corner as you look at lopped of. We have been away a couple of times with the additions in place and all seems to work well. most recently oy the Eyre Peninsula.

By |July 23rd, 2021|Categories: Renovating|0 Comments

Old Chairs to Repair

I purchased a couple of old chairs online for $15 each, The woman I bought them from said optimistically that old chairs only needed a quick sand and the vinyl was still good. This was an optimistic assessment of the old chairs. I have started the lengthy process of dismantling one the old chairs so I can repair both. This involves carefully taking the covers off so that you have a pattern for the new material. I have made a short video  of the process thus far. The extensive rotting of some parts has requires a bit of repair. I'm confident I will get a good outcome.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El_pOjWCtS4&t=3s

Parquetry flooring

  What fun patching parquetry flooring. I took a small feature wall out ,not my idea but it's gone. This left a gap in the parquetry flooring. I was lucky in being able to find an exact replacement. The parquetry is Tasmanian Blue gum. I thought that pulling up a strip leaving a straight edged gap was all I needed to do. Turns out each row of three blocks has to be fitted individually. 21 rows in total. What a pain luckily I have a substantial Disk sander to speed up the process. Still takes time as each strip needs to be measured and sanded to size. Following this lots of trips to the sander to sneak up on the required size. The cat likes to help.    

By |August 31st, 2018|Categories: Renovating|Tags: |0 Comments

A Family Restoration – Kitchen Table

This is a family restoration the piece in question belonged to my wife's grandmother. I twas most likely a dressing table or a washstand. There is evidence on the top that something was screwed to it in the past. Grandma used it as a kitchen table (which is what I will refer to it as) and bench which means the top took a beating.  Other than that the piece was in reasonably good condition. There were no manufacturer's marks which makes dating the piece difficult. Im no expert but it looks Edwardian to me  so it must be over 100 years old. Kitchen table The kitchen table was finished with shellac so I washed it with methylated spirits and steel wool. The top was the most damaged and I used a cabinet scraper to remove most os the finish. This exposed the old screw holes so I ended up sandins the whole top. Sanding removed some water damage but left the timber looking brand new. I didn't touch the edges other than a light sand. I needed to fill some old screw holes and decided to use wooden plugs. The timber was difficult to identify. In the end I used some red pine as the  grain and colour were close to the original. After more sanding I stained the top with a mahogany stain to bring it closer to the rest of the kitchen table. I applied several coats of shellac to the top and then followed up with three coats to the entire piece. I sanded lightly between coats leaving the final coat. After a week or so I applied beeswax which brought a nice finish. The only other challenge were two of [...]

Go to Top