The Mechanical Doorbell, Part 2: Bash

One of our very first posts on The Urban Cottage was talking about our slightly fantastical doorbell, created from bits and pieces found around the house (follow the link for a reminder). This has been quite a talking point and provides us with much amusement when we open the door to a new visitor to be greeted with "is that your doorbell?! Please can I see it?".

The intention was always to expand this beyond it's initial "ding" to also include a "dong" but a couple of years later we ended up skipping that plan (for now) and instead went straight for "bash".

A very tired cymbal, looking for a new home, has been lined up next to the guitar. A short section of pipe left over from the bathroom is then carefully positioned to catch the marble as it speeds off the end of the original shute and directs it into the cymbal. 9 times out of 10 this then bounces and is caught in an old weaving shuttle.

All in all an excellent addition - not least because the previous incarnation was only just loud enough. If you were in a far corner of the house you were more likely to pick up the sound of a marble hitting the floor than you were the guitar. The cymbal certainly solves that problem!

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Oiling the Floor

One of the biggest projects we undertook while we were "off-air", was a transformation of our living room. I might have mentioned before that when we moved in we painted almost every wall in the place - but did little else, and now we're slowly working our way back through each room giving it a little more time, care and attention.

The living room for us is a place we spend much of our free time. It's somewhere for sitting with a laptop and planning our latest project, making music, doing crafty things and whipping up a blog post, and when all that's done it's also the place to relax and pop on the TV. The design of the house also means that this is the main thoroughfare - the only way of getting from the front door to the kitchen, conservatory and upstairs.

And it was a struggle. The furniture we'd brought with us from our previous house just didn't fit. Well, it fitted physically - but that was about it. The room isn't tiny (though by no means large), yet it felt cramped, crowded and messy. You had to zigzag your way around it all to get through the room, and more than a couple of extra people was a squish. After much debate we decided to go all out in getting this room sorted and that meant a couple of new bits of furniture.

(As we weren't thinking of blogging this we failed to take any "before" shots and as it turns out we've taken hardly any photos in this room over the years. To give you a small idea of what it was like here's the best of the bunch; a christmas photo of our decorated tree sitting in front of the piano, and a shot of us playing a card game on the floor with all the furniture pushed to the edges. Sorry if that's not much help!)

Changing our large three seater for a corner sofa, along with passing on our acoustic piano for a much more compact digital version allowed us to rethink how the room works with startling results. There's now a clear path from one side of the room to the other, space to pack in a few extra friends, and even some clear floor space for laying out that tangle of yarn that needs unpicking. The new piano is a marked improvement on the old one, inspiring much more regular playing even if we do still both have a definite fondness for the mechanics of a traditional instrument. More than anything, the room feels like it has doubled in size despite having almost as much stuff in it and that's all down to the change in layout.

Much much smaller piano, plus a clear path from the front door on the right to the kitchen on the left.
The understairs cupboard is more accessable and a new chair that can be both tucked
into a corner and pulled out into the main seating space.

But all of the above is a complete tangent - I was going to tell you about the floor!

There was one major flaw with the living room when we moved in (in our opinion anyway), and that was the cream carpet. I'm not adverse to using pale coloured carpets in the right place - but the highest traffic room of the house is definitely not that place. It constantly needed hoovering, and even then was never quite clean.  We were also starting to have problems with the chipboard underfloor having rather a lot of bounce to it. It either needed replacing or reinforcing before we found ourselves with a hole in the floor.

Our solution was to install an engineered oak floor, something solid that would wear well over many years as well as taking the pressure off the ageing chipboard. However, as we were fitting the planks into place we noticed that the finish on them was very uneven. There had been foam strips between the planks to stop them being damaged in transit and where the foam had been was much paler than the edges of the planks. After a few months of back and forward with the flooring company they agreed to send us enough of the hard wax oil they had used so that we could refinish the floor.

Uneven colouration can be seen around the edges of the central plank.

And so we found ourselves, just a short while after finishing the decoration of the room, emptying all of the furniture out again so that we could put a fresh layer of oil down. Fortunately, it has been completely worth the effort. The finish is much more even and the wood has a much warmer feel to it.

Transformation complete.

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Refitting the Bathroom 1. Getting Organised

When we bought our house there was one job that was most definitely on the hit list right from the start: completely redoing the bathroom. There are many reasons for doing this, not least that the bath has leaked so many times that we're not sure how stable the floor is anymore, The current shell suite has certainly seen better days, and has a nasty habit of encouraging water to pool rather than drain nicely. The current layout has no real storage and all sorts of box sections to hide pipes that feel fairly bodged together.

In short we're stripping the whole lot out and starting again. We want something that feels fresh and clean, has plenty of storage and has a more modern feel to it. The room is just under a 2m square so there isn't much space to play with however we've got a plan that we think makes good use of the room:

So that's lots of new cupboards and a worktop that runs round the room
with a countertop sink, along with new toilet, bath and shower.
Oh and sorry the whole thing is so blindingly bright!

Its taken quite a bit of effort (and several years of stopping and starting) to get all our thoughts pinned down but we're finally there and at the end of last week we put in an order for most of the parts we're going to need. Joe's hoping to achieve most of it himself, with me as a sidekick (and a little bit of wiring from the electrician). Did I mention that this is the only bathroom - and only toilet - in the house so everything needs to stay fairly functional throughout the refit? Watch this space!

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A Tale of Two Tables: 6. Spit and Polish

Here begins the final post in the table saga. It has been a long time coming - the project has taken 18 months from conception to completion but it is done. The observant amongst you will notice that these photos are all of the large table - the small table was finished in the gloom of the evenings. Enough waffle, onto the details! 

We liberally applied a belt sander to take out the slight ridges left after biscuit jointing the top. In a heatwave this was warm work. My hands were turned black with a combination of oak dust and sweat! To get a super smooth finish on the top we then ran over it all with a random orbital sander and 180 then 240 grit paper. 

One smooth, dusty table top.

To get the finish we wanted required several finished, all of which could have been used in their own right. The frame was also a slightly different finish from the top - just to keep things complicated (actually for different wear characteristics but I shall come to that). For the top and frame we applied two coats of Danish oil to bring out the grain somewhat and accelerate the ageing. It should continue to age and mellow further but we are impatient and didn't want to wait 30 years.

Coat two of Danish oil goes on.

The Danish oil will protect the wood to a certain extent but we wanted a very durable surface for the top, one that will stand up to the abuses of many years. There will be many who will gasp when I say what we did next but it should allow us to use and love the table rather than handle it with kid gloves. We basted the top in waterproof gloss varnish. Heinous crime as that is, it provides the waterproof barrier to allow us to not worry when someone spills a glass of wine over it. But it isn't a nice finish. In order to take a final finish of beeswax (which we also applied to the frame) we used wire wool to take the top down to a matt finish. This should allow us to know when we need to add more beeswax as the table will become matt. There is something rather odd about sanding down a layer of finish!

Wire wool applied with the mounds of dust to clean.

The beeswax layer came next to bring it up to its full shine. This was a most rewarding layer to add!

Jenny applies the finishing touches to the polish.

One finished top.

For those of you who didn't see it earlier - this is what the finish does to spilt water. Nicely repellent.

Water pooling on the table top.

With the top and frame finished the final job of joining the two remained. This is an important stage to plan - as I mentioned in the first table post the wood will keep moving, for many years to come. If the top is simply screwed to the frame it will probably warp and crack. It needs to be able to expand and contract, notably across the grain (the width of our table). There are many methods of attaching a top to allow this, primarily falling either into a category of a widened screw hole or a lip / grove combination on the fitting. 

I decided to take a simplified approach to the traditional tongued block and groove on the frame by using a half glued biscuit joint. I glued the biscuit into blocks and put matching groves in the frame. In the middle of the width a block is screwed to the frame and attached to the top with a single screw to provide a center for expansion / contraction. 

Everything was piloted and countersunk at this point as driving screws into oak is not an easy thing to do. This is exacerbated by the fact I have used brass screws to prevent it reacting with the oak over time. These are not as strong as steel screws and are also slot heads rather than plus or posi, giving a poorer grip and greater liability to get graunched. Steel and oak react over time, producing a black iron oxide. This then gets worse with atmospheric sulphur by producing sulphuric acid! Not great in a table that I would like to outlive me. Hence brass screws.

Cutting the blocks.

Block sat beside its groove awaiting fitting.

Blocks being fitted. Note the smaller screw block in the center.

 And finally, a finished table!

Finished table.

Christening the table.

Previously: 5. It's got legs

Or read the whole series from the beginning: 1. Grand Designs

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The Mechanical Doorbell, Part One: Ding

I have been scheming this doorbell for quite a while. As you may know I scheme quite a bit. This one has finally come to fruition for one reason: I decided to scrap the plan to buy the expensive bits and decided to build the whole thing with stuff we have stashed around the house. 

This doorbell handle releases a marble that rolls down a run, making a noise on the way. The first half is completed - enough to get it to chime! 

The bell pull is an old road bike brake, pulling a tensioned chord to the marble release. 

The release mechanism is an angled hole drilled in a block of scrap wood. It is held under tension by a bundle of elastic bands, all mounted on a bit of old Ikea desk. Enamelled copper wire provides the feed mechanism and stabilises the release.

From here part of a toy marble run (yes I know, definitely cheating) transfers the marble over to the rest of the bell.

When I say bell, I really mean acoustic bass guitar. It had been gathering dust in the back of a cupboard for too many months. No modifications have been made to the guitar - it hangs from the bracket (a pair of old shelf supports) and everything else is suspended around it.

To catch the marble a plastic scoop is made from an old water bottle, upturned and supported by a length of wire coat hanger.

This then feeds into a section of bamboo sushi mat (used once for making felt) that directs the marble onwards.

And that is it for phase one. A single "ding". Keep an eye out for part two!

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A Tale of Two Tables: 5. It's Got Legs

A solid base is key to the functionality of any table. A lovely top will be ruined by an uneven, twisted base or one with legs in the wrong place. For our small table we went for four legs in a square, 20" apart leaving an 8" overhang outside the frame. Traditionally the cross pieces would be mortice and tenon joined into the legs. This is a fiddly process but if done right is immensely strong. We do not poses the skill of years of practice at mortice and tenon joints so ours would neither be accurate nor straight! I am very grateful however for the research of John D Wagner who showed that biscuit joints can be stronger than mortice and tenon or other methods. Although the research was limited it provides some armour to fight those traditionalists who think biscuits are no use in structural elements.

Enough design - onto the doing. As we were biscuit jointing all we needed were square legs and straight ends to the cross pieces. As the legs were already square that left us with cutting the cross pieces to length in a square manner. This was another job for the router to try and get the ends square and allow millimetre precision. If you had a decent table saw you may be able to use it instead but there are only a few power tools in our garage!

Having cut the ends we then used a curved bit for the router to round the underside of the bar. The biscuit jointer then came out again to put the slot in for the biscuits. We aligned this slightly off centre to ensure the biscuit didn't show at the bottom (I am sure this probably sacrifices a little strength but it only came out the top a fraction).

With the frame cut, rounded and slotted the attention shifted to the legs. We needed to choose the outside faces, check for any cracks or deformities where the biscuits would need to sit and mark which end to remove the waste from (in a straight manner). Lacking a power saw this was a time for hand tools. The router would not have the depth to cut this one. I used a tenon saw for better control of the cut, the 2 1/2" legs just fitting on the blade. 

To ensure the legs were all absolutely even we strapped them all together with a large quantity of elastic bands (many of which we snapped in the process) and sanded the ends flush. Two slots per leg later we were ready to sand all the parts of the frame and glue it.

To assemble we glued the legs into pairs, let that dry enough to hold itself, and then brought the whole frame together. A webbing clamp held it all together and we used the sash clamp on the diagonal to apply very slight pressure to pull it all square.

Previously: 4. Starting at the Top
Next: 6. Spit and Polish

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A Tale of Two Tables: 4. Starting at the Top

Constructing the table top is a simple theory. Stick several wide planks together. Our table top is based on seven 6" planks, being cut to a square once joined. Rather than just butt the planks up against each other we wanted to join them with a stronger joint. To get a stronger joint you need a larger surface area of the planks in contact with each other. Traditionally that would mean tongue and grove, dovetail or something similar but these methods all require careful joinery with expensive router bits. With 24' of join to make I didn't fancy attempting dovetails! Conveniently there is a modern alternative that provides a reliable joint almost as strong as a well made traditional joint - a biscuit joint.

A biscuit joint is made with a pointed oval biscuit of compressed beech that fits into a cut slot on either side. This reinforces the joint be adding glued surfaces deeper into the join. A biscuit jointer cuts a 4mm high curved slot and is precise, repeatable and fast. A specialist bit of kit but very handy for all manner of things (as you will discover as the project progresses).

Before we even started cutting we laid out all our planks and clamped them to allow us to mark up the square, align the planks and position the biscuits. The outside two planks had alternate double biscuits to add extra strength where it overhangs the frame. all the others had single biscuits.

Having cut all the joints we did a dry run, slotting it all together with biscuits. Fortunately the biscuits resolved the slight bowing that a few of the planks were showing. When clamped it all fitted together well (clamps on alternate sides to prevent curving the top). From here it was time to glue. We took care to glue all the surfaces that would be in contact, including the biscuits. The glueing was also done in stages, few planks at a time and then letting it dry for a while. This was because even with three of us gluing we wouldn't manage to get everything glued and together before it had started to set - the weather was against us!

 To try and ensure a good pressure across the length of the table we used a ratchet strap to hold the centre of the table once it had been clamped, allowing us to move the clamps nearer the end. Note all the blocks of scrap wood to prevent the clamps damaging the surface.

Once dried we then clamped up the ends for cutting. A stress relief cut was made with the router to a depth of 8mm on the reverse, 1cm behind the final edge. This was to ensure the waste wood didn't splinter off with the table top. When cut from the top to a depth of 18-20mm from the top surface the ends gently cracked off, allowing easy trimming of the remaining waste wood. A block of scrap wood was clamped to the outside to try and prevent the edge being splintered by the router. Once cut it was ready for finishing but that is for another post!

Previously: 3. A Twist in the Tale

Next: 5. It's Got Legs.

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