Today has been very productive. So productive in fact that I'm sitting here at 5pm writing when usually I would still be going for another hour or so. The reason? I've had a little help today from our friend Marcel. I will guarantee anyone who helps me out an honourable mention on this blog. What more of an incentive could anyone want? Marcel arrived a happy chappy:
Now, don't worry Manchester City fans, I did not borrow Sergio Aguero for the day. We made sure Marcel (and his girlfriend Carol) was well fed with breakfast (another perk of helping) before the real work began.
The first task was to start sanding down some of that nice wood I had reclaimed from the pallets. We split it so one of us did a coarse sand to take of the nasty bits, and the other finished of with a finer finish.
Before today I had considered leaving the wood as it was in its raw unsanded state, but decided against it. Whenever I have worked with wood in the past and I've finished the project (some of you may know the office desk I made for Marta from Facebook), I always like to be able to interact with the materials (maybe this comes from my other life of being a materials engineer). I like to run my hand along it and feel its character. I want this apartment exterior to be the same - for people to want to interact with it, which I think is more inviting if it's not full of potential splinters. Anyway, enough of the wood philosophy...here is what it looks like now:
The first task was to start sanding down some of that nice wood I had reclaimed from the pallets. We split it so one of us did a coarse sand to take of the nasty bits, and the other finished of with a finer finish.
Before today I had considered leaving the wood as it was in its raw unsanded state, but decided against it. Whenever I have worked with wood in the past and I've finished the project (some of you may know the office desk I made for Marta from Facebook), I always like to be able to interact with the materials (maybe this comes from my other life of being a materials engineer). I like to run my hand along it and feel its character. I want this apartment exterior to be the same - for people to want to interact with it, which I think is more inviting if it's not full of potential splinters. Anyway, enough of the wood philosophy...here is what it looks like now:
I hope you agree, full of character and beauty.
Marcel and I got a good production line going and managed to get through quite a few pieces of wood. Below on the right is what we managed to do and on the left is what is left to do - so plenty more to get through, but it's well worth it if you see the finished wood in the flesh (does that saying make sense here? Should it be when you see it in the wood?).
Marcel and I got a good production line going and managed to get through quite a few pieces of wood. Below on the right is what we managed to do and on the left is what is left to do - so plenty more to get through, but it's well worth it if you see the finished wood in the flesh (does that saying make sense here? Should it be when you see it in the wood?).
Doing the same thing for a long time gets a bit tedious, so we also tackled the struts that will be used to create the external insulation cavity and provide something upon which to attached the cladding. With the planks removed they were all left with nails sticking up, so we blitzed through all of them in about half an hour and hammered down all the nails flush. We counted that we had ended up with 75 of these. A rough calculation says that we need about 90:
The other thing we did was to lay out the reclaimed planks to see what we currently have in terms of area coverage. To cover the exterior we need about 35 square metres of wood (when you account for the holes for doors and windows that do not need coverage). We estimated that we currently have about 25 square metres, so another batch of pallets might be required (which would also give us the extra struts we need). Here is what it looks like laid out:
And the sanded bits:
Rather attractive I think (the wood and Marcel). So, how was Marcel feeling at the end of this productive day I hear you ask:
Tired, but still a happy chappy. He says he'll be back for more. Whilst the males were doing some seriously masculine work in the garage, the WAGs were busy inside too and we finished our day with a delicious slice of carrot and nut cake:
Keep a look out for more sanding soon!