Another garden table

I've been waiting for some local oak to build this table. It arrive yesterday, so today I built the table.

It's green English oak from a tree that came from a field about 4 miles away. It had fallen down and was milled locally to the sizes I requested.

There's a few finishing touches to complete, but essentially it is done.

==

Lunchtime build

I'm taking advantage of working at home during the Covid-19 isolation.

I made a shoe rack, mainly to store the bike helmets but it also tidies up some shoes and boots.

Done before work and lunch times, over two days. The second day was oiling and drying time.

==

Shelves

I've made a couple of box style shelves.

One for the kitchen, to put the wifi and Sonos on.

The other is in the study, to house the speakers used with the Xbox.

==

Furniture move... the hard way

In order to move an antique chest of drawers from our attic, one flight down, to our spare bedroom, I had to take it apart... again!

It was not designed to come apart and this is the second time I've had to do it because of our tight stairs.

This time, when putting it back together, I made some minor design changes to make any future disassembly a bit easier. In the process I was able to make it even stronger.

The main repair work was not the reassembly but was fixing the drawer runners. In some places they had worn completely through the timber. It was not in any state to use on a daily basis.

The only thing I could think of to use was some form of filler. I had P38 epoxy car bodywork filler in the shed, so that's what I tried. Nothing tricky to the job. Mix up lots of it, fill the worn grooves, sand and when dry cover in a bit of floor varnish. The P38 is relatively soft, a bit like timber, so my hope is the hard varnish will help it to last longer. So far the drawers have run fairly easily.

After some sanding, a bit of stain and some clear varnish, the end result looks very nice in the bedroom.

==

Odd shape table

Our new sofa arrived yesterday and after we re-arranged the living room we were left without enough places to put our cups of tea on. In our house, that's a problem that needs a quick solution.

As I had done before I made a small side table out of off-cuts of oak I had in the shed.

One bit of timber was a convenient angle to fit the triangle between the sofa and the arm chair.

The design was made up on the fly based on the few bits of oak I had.

The top, front leg and lower shelf are all cut from the same misshapen plank.

Being late autumn and a bit cold we have the range lit and so the kitchen is very warm. So warm that the varnish dried much quicker than normal. I was able to get both coats on in the same afternoon and it was dry enough to use that same evening!

==

Courtyard

Shelley has turned a shady neglected corner in to a lovely courtyard.

All in a day, including a trip in Fender to collect the gravel.

It needed some chairs and a table that would not sink in to the gravel.

I made these from some old scaffold boards that Shelley had recently been given.

I also added a planter from some of the off cuts.