A customer called me to finish off the stairs at their home.
The Old Wool barn at Talskiddy near St Columb was originally almost derelict when the present owners took it upon them selves to bring this wonderful building back to its original condition and honestly they have done such a wonderful job – the photos that my customer has shown me are amazing and show the rebuild from start to finish
The only thing not finished by the builders for some reason was the oak stair case finishing and this was where i have been called in to help
I had to remove the beer crate, pieces of floor tiles and timber offcuts supporting the lower stairs and fit a new supporting drop leg and several oak fillets scribed to the walls to finish the gaps between the stair sides and the wall, also to make an oak blanking panel to fill the gap underneath the landing so the owners could store various items underneath and turn this otherwise useless space into a useable area, this also needed to be removable
I used magnetic fixings to secure the panel in place and fitted a really nice cup handle to the face of the panel
In making the panel i used oak which i salvaged from Trevose house near Padstow during its re vamp in 2010 where a lot of the oak panelling, door linings and trims were literally ripped out and thrown into a skip by the builders who obviously didn’t see its beauty or value
This house was built in 1935 and all the oak used during this time was top quality quarter sawn oak which is now at least 80 years old, quarter sawn oak has beautiful medullary rays which is only achieved by this way of sawing timber
I had to machine the timber to the required dimensions and it was a real pleasure knowing its former history, the stability of timber of this age is amazing, it has had a chance to let all of the stresses out and remains totally stable which was perfect for this job
I used Titebond 3 ultimate wood glue to glue the pieces together and sanded them well to get a good finish, trimmed them to size with the track saw and guide rail and then they were ready for finishing
I then had to colour match it to the existing timbers of the stairs so i did some experimentation on scraps of timber until both the customer and i were happy with the result
I used sikkens filter 7 plus in light oak which seemed to match exactly
The end results meant the area was now complete and the best bit – a very happy customer !
