Making a table

I made a table on Sunday night.

It caused a rising tide of ohmygodIwon’tfinishintime by listing the tasks needed to satisfy building control – to get the warrant signed off – the materials I need to do those tasks and the time I estimate they’ll take.

The upshot is I’m paying Andrew (original builder and passive house guru) to make my application for amendments to the warrant, Patryk (local joiner and self-builder) to make and fit cupboard doors and drawers, and Aly (mason and all-rounder) to help me cast the external concrete sills needed at all the doors and sliding windows. That’s a start.

Chris W is returning this coming week – we were going to concentrate on the bamboo flooring in the living room but, as flooring is not something the building warrant is generally concerned with, we’ll start with the bamboo on the landing, where it’s important to match the level of the top tread of the stairs and the banisters. The highest fall has been protected by a sturdy but temporary rail and the rest left open so sheet materials, doors and shower screens could be carried upstairs more easily. As a limited area it seems a good place to start with the bamboo and the absence of banisters is no longer a day to day advantage (wait till we move beds!).

Meanwhile I continued fitting the kitchen shelves and the cupboard under the stairs; the first so the electricians can make connections for the under-shelf lights and the second so I can fit a handrail for the bottom flight of stairs.

I sat the top shelf on its brackets. It looked okay, but the dark grey brackets were distracting; I’ll paint them. The wall behind is nearly flat so the back of the shelf only needed planing in one spot to sit tight against it. I made the longer of the two lower shelves and the larch ledge to support the back and the far end of it. The shorter shelf will have to wait as I forgot to take it to be planed.

With the ledge screwed and glued to the wall I sat the lower shelf in place to find it was twisted. I wasn’t having that and with a couple of clamps and props persuaded it into a more acceptable attitude.

Before meeting Tash off the ferry in Oban I’d visited Highland Fasteners, the hardware emporium that closes at noon, and bought three threaded steel rods, a metre long, eight millimetre diameter, and a handful of nuts and washers to suit.

I’d originally intended to drill a hole for each metal rod between the front of each bracket and the edge of the shelf, but the space looked tight and it occurred to me that I could re-drill the front screw hole of each metal bracket and thread the rod through it. That would mean half as many holes in the shelf and, as well as suspending the bottom shelf, the rods and nuts could secure the top shelf to the brackets. I wasn’t sure if there was a good reason not to do this so let it mull over while I did other things.

If there was a good reason not to drill the bracket I couldn’t think of it and a decision had to be made. I took the brackets off the wall and drilled them. They weren’t as hard as I’d thought and drilling was easy. I painted them and put them back on the wall, drilled corresponding holes in the shelf and sat it back on the brackets. A plumb line through each hole showed me where I should drill the lower shelf.

The metal rods were easy to cut with a hacksaw and I made sure to screw a couple of nuts on the rod either side of where the cut would be, so that after cutting it and filling the cut end smooth I could unscrew the nut over it, straightening any threads I’d damaged. That makes it easier to put a nut back on.

Once I’d used thin stainless steel screws to fix the back of the lower shelf to its wall ledge I could do no more, other than touch up paintwork on the brackets, screws and wall.

Stairs and banisters: Nearly two years ago I bought and assembled the stairs (also with Patryk) but left the banisters off. Similarly I’d not built the understairs cupboard but now need the wall of the cupboard to support the handrail for the lower flight, which building control will want to see. So I thought about the structure, sketched it out and gradually started to build. After Tash and I agreed that the shelves in the Magic Room were lower priority, I was able to use one of the two sheets of plywood I’d bought to build them. This eighteen millimetre ply will let sturdy fixing be made for the handrail outside or shelves inside. Two surplus pieces of roof structure (so called ‘ladders’ to form a gable overhang which I never planned or wanted) had been lying beside the drive for three years. My son had used another to build the real ladder up to our sleeping platform. The timber still seemed sound and straight.

Using the straight factory edge of the plywood against the 33 x 95 timber from the ‘ladder’ I could make a straight and vertical corner to the cupboard and for extra strength I rebated the corner of the timber then glued and screwed the ply in tight. Between the lower stair string and the ply wall I screwed and glued a solid timber filler and on the string of the flight above and up the newel post I set a batten for the ply to sit against – everything was glued and screwed. Before glueing, I made the various components and just screwed them in place dry, making the few adjustments necessary before taking it apart and reassembling with glue.

I’d forgotten that I was going to paint the pieces before reassembling them with glue and before I knew what was happening there it was – a fully glued, unpainted understairs cupboard. The front, which is mostly door, can follow when I’ve done all that the warrant wants.

Banisters: Mindful of Chris’s imminent arrival next week I got out all the banister components that came with the stair kit and worked out what was what, trying to remember exactly what my plan had been. David and I had looked at this when he helped me finish the stair installation – two years ago.

Off duty: After work every day this week I’ve been going down to the rocky shore to swim with Tash. Sitting on the rocks, tingling from fifteen minutes in the clear water, I’ve felt as though I’m on holiday, reminded why we moved here. The loch has been calm and warm enough to walk into without too much procrastination or dithering as the waterline reaches the tops of your thighs. A gannet or two have been on patrol, flying purposefully this way or that and diving now and then, and one evening Tash pointed to a sea eagle overhead, flapping unusually fast, on its way somewhere, with intent. At home the bright yellow flowers of the dandelion-like autumn hawkbit have been overtaking those of yellow rattle, which is setting seed. Having remarked early in the week that we’d not heard a cuckoo here for a while, one called close to the house, loud but unseen. After some minor collapses we’ve amended the bird-table, adding new boughs to support the nut, seed and fat-ball feeders. On the expanding bird-table a male greenfinch has turned up twice on successive days. I can’t remember the last greenfinch that I saw, so this was a completely unexpected treat. Last week sometime, while Tash was out on the islands, the blue tit chicks fledged and left the nestbox. I didn’t see them go but now there’s a young family, parents still desperately feeding a couple of the more demanding, wing-shivering youngsters. The swallows meanwhile still swoop in and out of the overhang bringing food, circling nearby twice or three times before ducking in, presumably to hide the location from watchful predators. Sometimes one flies out with a chick’s white fecal sac in its beak, bright in the sun, dropping it at distance to hide the nest’s location.

While Tash bonfired weeds and shells, I started digging out rushes to add to the fire. My tools let me down. I need to find and pay for good quality, forged tools, not this inexpensive and shoddy toy stuff.

ANSWER: Last week’s mystery photo was on St Kilda, with Stac Lee in the (left) foreground.