Weather Delay

Well today may be my only chance to work on the vardo for a while but this happened on Tuesday -

The forecast says it will be 51 degrees or 11 Fahrenheit today which means it'd be nice enough to work but uber wet from the melt.  I need a place indoors to work on my large scale projects.

Adam and I were at the Habitat for Humanity Outlet on Monday, donating a massive conference table I hauled out of the basement I'm finishing and Adam stumbled on this old, decorative iron fence in the yard.

There are four of these iron designs loose and in good shape.  I'm going to pick them up today.  The plan is to paint them and use them somewhere on the project, they're perfect for the aesthetic we're trying to achieve.  They remind me of the intricacy of the drays old vardos are built on.

Sarah-Leith came up with another appointment for the interior.  She'd like to incorporate a couple of antique, silver-gilded and tarnished glass mirror panels.  Not only would they be beautiful, they be handy in sorting out playa "looks."  I tried to find an example but google returned mostly distributors of faux tarnished mirrors.  Some of them look really nice, different than the crap with gold marble-like veins that was mad popular in 70's swank hotels.  I stumbled on a couple of instructables on producing your own antiqued mirrors.  I may give it a shot, see how it turns out.  Otherwise, I may order a few panels from one of the distributors and integrate them into the panel door to the closet, giving us a full length mirror.  Plus, a modern glass will better withstand the rigours of highway travel.

Below is a picture of clear-finished African mahogany.  Two inch tongue & groove panels of this stuff will make up the panels of the door, the front and back wall and porch eaves.

'Twill be luxurious!  Also, I forgot to take pics but I started four-squaring the white oak and cutting out the individual stiles and rails for the doors.  I've yet to post a pic of my specific door, I'll try to do that soon.  There's a picture of a very similar door a couple posts back.  That one's a three part door, mine is four.  The resident door guru, Neil, wasn't in the shop last night but I talked with Todd who makes his living as a pipe organ restorer and has lots of prior experience in doors.  He gave me TONS of good ideas.  He showed me joinery for panel doors that can all be cut on the table saw, which will save tons of time and he passed on a design he's used on stable doors in the past that essentially "stacks" the four doors and will allow me to lock the whole setup with one bolt. 

So, the left and right doors meet in the middle, naturally.  Likewise, the top two doors and bottom doors meet at about waist level.  Where the doors meet, some will overlap the others in the above configuration.  The left doors will close over the right doors and the top doors over the bottom doors, which means a single bolt in the top left door will bolt the whole thing closed.  When shut, the doors will all look precisely the same size and the 3/4" stop-plate built into the edge of the "under-lapping" doors will make for a great spot to install proper weather-stripping.  So the whole door will be air (and dust) tight.




The only problem with Todd's advice?  I bought my lumber before talking with him and didn't account for half of my stiles and rails being 3/4" wider.  The material I bought would have allowed me to cut the pieces out two-wide but now I'll need to get some more white oak.

That's all for now, more to come!