Fall is here

Fall is here yet again with shorter and colder days. In the past few months we’ve gotten more cladding in place, got all windows in place and we bought a huge old drawer cabinet for the local hardware store.

More cladding

When writing this post we’re roughly 60% finished with the exterior cladding. As with anything you’ve never done before, estimating time required to finish a project, has again proven hard to do. We will likely not be finished with the cladding until next spring. Even though it takes longer than expected we’re still very happy with the end result.

The west gable almost 100% finished, waiting for windows to be installed.

…scaffold ready to do some work.

…starting with the hard part, getting the cladding in place at it’s highest point.

As it’s getting colder every day now, burning the cladding takes longer and when applying the raw linseed oil it takes forever to dry up so there will likely not be a lot more work on this until the weather get’s better in spring.

The huge drawer cabinet

We’ve been buying a few tools and supplies from our local hardware store since we started building. The store has been run by the same family since 1921 but this year the current generation owner is retiring and there was no-one to take over the operation so they decided to close down.

We read a few articles online about them closing down where they also mentioned they had an old, very big, drawer cabinet that they could not keep as it was to big for them to house anywhere. We talked to them about about the cabinet and said we were interested in buying it.

The cabinet was apparently built in the 1890s.

The cabinet was the center piece in the old hardware store building but after being rebuilt in the 1980s the cabinet was moved to the back of the store.

After some thinking we decided to put in a bid for the cabinet. A bit to our surprise, we got the winning bid, and we now had to figure out how to get the huge cabinet into our workshop without breaking it. Being 5.5m long and 2.2m tall we could not move it on a regular car trailer.

We managed to find help and get the cabinet, which was is two parts, loaded onto a trailer made for excavators. It was just barely long enough for the cabinet to fit.

The just over 200 drawers we got loading into the largest car trailer we could rent.

It took about 1 hour to unload all 200+ drawers into the workshop. Do note the all sold wood construction and nice joinery.

…and finally the cabinet in the workshop. As the interior walls are not done yet, the cabinet was placed so that we had access to do so.

A few quick facts on the cabinet:

• Built around the 1890s
• 5.5m long, 2.2m tall and about 60cm deep
• Solid wood drawers and cabinet mainly built with classic wood joinery that, apparently, will last decades
• 204 drawers in 3 different sizes
• Most likely the last storage solution we’ll ever need in the workshop

New windows

When sketching the workshop we had the idea to not install regular windows that come with a frame but instead just buy the glass itself and install it directly into the frame of the house. We wanted to do this for a frameless look. However, after considering the effort and the custom framing we would need to build we went with the standard window solution instead.

We shopped around for a while but ended up buying the windows online at Klarfönster. They offered custom sizes and the color options we wanted with a very competitive price. The delivery took about 5 weeks. Unfortunately one of the larger fixed windows had been broken during transport so we had to wait anohter 5 weeks for a replacement window.

This window was clearly broken during transport.

The first window installed.

The view will be nice when using the sink in the workshop.

The windows on the second floor facing west. Nice sunsets expected.

All windows but one installed.

Closing thoughts

Even though it’s felt like we’ve not really made a lot of progress the list couple of months a few things have happened. Beyond the things mentioned above we’ve also ordered the large doors and we should have the final roof in place in the next few weeks.