Short day today, but quite productive.
We finished painting the ceiling even though the temperature was a degree or so lower than recommended. There are a few places where we didn't sand the filler as much as we should have, and it most certainly would not do for a dining room or lounge, but this is a workshop and it is absolutely fine for that. we have got too much paint on the Unistrut, but the painting itself is not patchy. It's fine.
It was colder and brighter today and the wind got up. My nicely-fitting man-door started to blow about quite severely, so I've screwed a piece of wood over it and wedged it shut. Sorry, I didn't tke a photo and it is dark now.
Talking of the man-door, I had another go at that top brace, and if I got a bit more forceful with it, I found that it did start to budge It was just stapled in place, but levering it out pulled the staples right through the cladding slats. Still, at least it is actually doing something now, and by the time I have finished it will be invisible anyway. Sorry, no picture of that either. I'll try to do better tomorrow.
Actually I'm inclined to replace them both. They are ex-1", which is thinner than the depth from inside of frame to the cladding. I want to fill the door with insulation and apply an internal skin. Not sure what yet. But that would be a lot easier if the frame and the bracing were all in the same plane.
Now I know that I've not said much about the outside, because I've had to put right a lousy decision I made at the outset. I've fallen foul of fire regs, and whilst I do have a fix, it needs to be done when the temp is consistently above 10 degrees C, so realistically that means the spring. So the shiplap has to come off the sides and back, but the membrane and laths can stay, so we have finished off the membrane so that the OSB is better protected for the winter.
Hey, I have a picture!
We've not put up any more laths, because they are on 2ft centres over the studs, and the cladding we shall use is 2.4m rather than 8ft (that old chestnut again), so we may have to jiggle the laths. No point in putting them up only to have to move them again.
So Ray is off for Christmas now, but I'm hoping that my mate Akram is coming some time this weekend. Saturday is cold but Sunday is forecast to be mild again, so we should get at least some of the walls done.
I also want to set my P/T up again. I've bought some wood for the window frames and I've been given a nice piece of mahogany to use as the cill for the double doors. I can make it match the cill on the man-door. The P/T is filthy, and the exposed steel parts are a bit rusty, but I've already cleaned up the cutter block, and the knives themselves just wiped clean and seem quite sharp still. I'm pleasantly surprised. I just wish I'd cleaned them
in situ rather than taking them out. I've got to set them up again!
The man-door fitted beautifully a couple of days ago, but now it is swollen and rather tight. Not tight enough to stop it flying about in the wind, obviously, but it is not the same as it was. I plan to fit the hardware tomorrow so that it can't blow about.
As we finished early today, I went to the paint shop for some paint for the doors. They did not have the base for the colour I wanted. It turns out that the reason for this is that the code for the product is wrong in the database, so that any store that tries to order it gets told it is out of stock. It is only because the store attendant searched for alternatives that he found that someone had transposed two letters of the code in his entry on the computer!
A bit more tomorrow, all being well.