That takes the biscuit

I’ve been beavering away at the kitchen bench for a few weekends now and I think it’s coming together pretty well.  In fact, some friends popped by on Sunday and admired the “lovely sideboard” I was making – I was chuffed as I think that sounds much more upmarket than “kitchen bench”.

On the weekend I ran across a snag when I started to assemble the cupboard doors.  As with most of my construction the plan was to use size “20” biscuits on each joint.  Well, after cutting the first slot I realised a “20” was too wide and would show.  The smaller size 10 was a good fit, but of course I didn’t have enough for the four doors. (I have thousands of size 20 – but only the two size tens that came with the biscuit cutter when I bought it 10 years ago.)  So, decision time, a trip to the hardware shop, elapsed time 60 minutes, or......why not trim down a few size 20’s on the bandsaw, elapsed time 5 minutes.

OK, I have to admit that cutting biscuits on a bandsaw is pretty inefficient, but when the alternative is a trip to the shop and the loss of focus that brings, it seemed a reasonable approach – and it worked.

Next challenge – laminating the bench top using the leftover floorboards from the staircase.

Pretty flash eh?

It took some time, but the flashing on the back veranda is done.  No longer (hopefully) will the rain be able to drop between the veranda roof and house wall because it's now covered with some u-beaut flashing bent up by Steeline in Pambula.  The flashing comes up the wall about a foot to give a visual effect reminiscent of the lead flashing on 19C shearers' cottages.  As in the 1800's there's a practical aspect to this as the coverage will protect the wall from splash back from the roof above it. 

The aim is to avoid gutters and downpipes on the main roof (because it would be a pain to clean them).  But for this to work we need to protect the walls below, hence the flashing - which I'm sure was the very reason they have such wide flashing on old houses as well.

As today's building code doesn't permit lead flashing on roofs that harvest drinking water (which is just a fancy way of saying that the water runs into a tank) we opted for the modern alternative - folded zincalume.