Trigger's bench got some arm rests

... and we're finished!

Before:



After:



And why did this take me nearly a whole week?

There are eighteen doors (and three drawers) which require eight steps (six for the drawers):
- remove door and knob,
- spray with degreaser, scrape off gunk, wash with soapy water and leave to dry,
- first coat all over with 1 part paint to 19 parts thinners to seal the surface a bit,
- drill additional holes for handles and counter-sink on the back (bolts were a bit too short),
- proper second coat on front,
- proper second coat on back,
- proper third coat on front,
- fit handles, re-fit door, faff about with hinges.

Including sticking up dust sheets so that I had somewhere to rest them while they dried, several trips to Screwfix, tea and fag breaks, and replacing two sets of hinges* which were completely knackered, it works out at about 1.5 hours per door and 1 hour per drawer, that's basically a full week's work.

* The new design Häfele hinges (£4.29 per pair) are brilliant. Once you've screwed the back plate to the side and popped the door on, you can adjust them for left/right and forward/backward (as on the previous design) but the new design has a third grub screw for up/down as well.

Another day and a half of proper work and we're done...

Bloody Hell, this is hard work...

DIY door knob gripe

I learned something new at the weekend, there's a good summary here:

Sprung v Unsprung Door Handles [for 'handles' read 'knobs']

Springs are required to get door handles to return to the horizontal after they have been pushed down. The spring can be located in the handles and or in the latch/lock. Most early handles were unsprung and most modern handles have springing.

You can tell if handles are sprung because they will return to the horizontal without being connected to the latch/lock. If you select unsprung handles then you need to make sure your lock/latch has a heavy duty spring, as this spring has to do all the work.

I had to replace three latches over the weekend which were either too stiff or too wobbly. Easy job, you might think, the old latches were standard size, buy three new ones and pop them in, refix the door knobs, sorted.

The first latch I replaced had old-style door knobs with no spring/return mechanism of their own (the latches have their own spring/return mechanism, so completely unnecessary). That was a ten minute job, line up the grub screws with a hole on the spindle, the new latch clicks into the existing strike plate nicely, job done.

Two of the three pairs of door knobs had their own spring/return mechanism, which were a bloody nightmare. It is nigh impossible to line up both knobs so their spring/return mechanism co-operates with the one in the latch, i.e. still very stiff to turn and you have to turn the knobs back again to get the latch to pop out.

Her Indoors complained that she still couldn't open the bedroom door without using both hands. She had a crack herself and after two or three hours she threw in the towel.

So I bought an unsprung pair from B&Q (the last one in stock), which works a treat and only needs the lightest touch to open and it clicks shut perfectly - provided you don't over-tighten the screws holding them in place (another twenty minutes of trial and error). If you over-tighten them, the mechanism jams or is it 'jambs' in this context?)

Which maniac decided to put springs in door handles/knobs? They are more expensive to make, a bugger to fit and don't work properly. What is the bloody point?

Trigger's bench

The weather's far too nice for intellectual effort so I did this instead:

"We choose to… do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard." (2)

Before. Well, just after I started and then remembered I hadn't done the before photo:


After. I made it from decking material, so hopefully reasonably water resistant. There is a diagonal plank on the back (from bottom hinge to opposite corner) to keep it square. Mrs W insisted on fitting the grille herself, which is why it was inside out and upside down:

"We choose to… do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard."

Today I have mostly been...

… removing a small jungle and a few last sad strips of rotting 'tar paper' from the roof of our shed and replacing it with two layers of 250 micron damp course. Let's see how long it lasts.






The gardening weather gods smiled on me, it was overcast but warmish, just right for this sort of job.