Weekly Update 31
A late Merry Christmas to all of you! I hope you still enjoy some quiet days with friends and family. With this article, I want to wrap up the progress for 2019. I’m currently in France on vacation. Originally, I planned to stay and begin my master studies in February here. But I couldn’t finish the house. So I will go back for two weeks in January and complete all open tasks (hopefully…).
But on to the last two weeks which were dominated by the interior fitting. Namely stairs and a kitchen. After multiple iterations the final SketchUp plans were ready and I started to cut the plywood sheets. All visible parts will be birch and non-visible, constructional parts are poplar for weight reasons (poplar is 6.3kg/m2 while birch is 10.2kg/m2 at 15mm). Fronts are all 15mm even though this means a lot of weight. 15mm is the minimum standard thickness helping with concealed hinges, handles and warping. Also, the kitchen’s drawers need to be removed for transport anyway and the cabinet doors of the stairs can be demounted in the worst case.
Originally, I wanted to use an oil wax mixture to treat all the surfaces. After testing the mixture on the bathroom cabinet it turned out the ply darkens too much for my taste. The birch is not close to white anymore but has a yellowish stain. So I researched a bit and the only option to conserve the wood’s original color is varnish. I chose a water-based polyurethane varnish. I bought it at a wholesale and here you have to be careful about their price structure. The 750ml packaging should originally cost over 50€. Which is ridiculous. But what is even more ridiculous is that they gave me over 50% discount. So when you buy at wholesale be wary of their price structure. So now equipped with both — varnish and oil-wax mix — I decided to oil all non-visible parts and varnish all visible parts. That way, visible and used surfaces are protected and keep the original color. And the oiled parts keep their beneficial characteristic of absorbing and releasing moisture. Note that you have to be careful when you oil and varnish at the same time. Don’t put your oily fingers on the varnish side — you will get dark patches in the form of your fingers.
Then the quest for square assembling began. Measuring and getting 90-degree angles is 80% of the work. Overall this is quite a tricky process. First, you have to have a good plan in which order to assemble. Some parts are large, some screws need to go under the construction and when screwing down sometimes move themselves. Do it with two people — easier, more fun and better result. When a piece of furniture is done the fitting process starts inside the house. Only because the piece of furniture is square now doesn’t mean it will be square in its final position. This takes again some time as there are varying influencing factors. Is the floor level? Is the wood slightly bend? Where do I need to move the piece to get desired result? And sometimes nothing makes sense. At one part of the stairs I had 3 square angles and both sides were the same length. In theory, the fourth angle should be square as well. But it wasn’t. In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice they are different. It took me 1 hour to fit the bathroom cabinet and 2.5 hours for the stairs.
