… to fit one tread of the stairs.
But then again there are several good reasons for that.
Firstly, it’s one of the larger stair treads and is on an angle. Furthermore, access is difficult and the tongue needed to be cut off the first piece and then sanded down to give it a professional appearance. I’m not going for half-measures here. And not only that, it needed to be cut in 7 different ways, with the use of a floating T-square and other geometric instruments.
The result wasn’t perfect, but where it missed, it would be covered over by plasterboard so it didn’t make much difference.
Next I cut the second piece, and that was an excellent job but … hang on … the levels are out. And it’s from the same plank of wood. But the tongue is off-centre and so I must have cut the second piece upside-down.
And so I recut a second piece and made sure that it was the right way up before I shaped it. And then took it upstairs and … hang on … the levels are still out. Dammit dammit dammit! It’s the first piece that I’ve cut upside down after all of the work that went into it and the time that it took!
And so I recut a first piece and learning from the errors of the first attempt, this one ended up pretty near perfect and it’s ever so impressive, even if by now it was lunchtime.
After lunch I cut the third piece, which was another good measure, and then for the fourth and final piece I had an offcut from the bathroom that was the correct basic length before shaping.
And having done that, this was when I realised that despite the wood of the bathroom being exactly the same as the rest of the wood, the tongue was too long. That therefore had to be cut down and filed.
Once all of that had been done, the whole tread needed to be properly aligned, screwed to a batten to keep it all in position, lifted off, taken to the workbench for trimming with the circular saw.
It was at this point that the battery in the circular saw went flat.
Once the battery was recharged and the tread trimmed off, I could put it back in position and nail it down, finally removing the batten.
So now you can see why it took most of the day to do all of that.
With 40 minutes left, I measured up and cut the first piece for the upper stair on the reverse angle. That involved nine cuts with all kinds of geometric equipment and also a hand-drawn angle as I couldn’t fit the floating T-square into the gap. And to the surprise of not only Yours Truly but everyone else reading these pages, that ended up millimetre-perfect. And the correct way up too. I just had to trim a little off so that I could swing it round the corner and into position, but the plasterboard will cover that gap.
So what’s going to hold me up tomorrow then?
In other news – we had one of those days where we had everything – except the Plague of Locusts. Wind gusting up to 67km/h, torrential rain, hailstorms. You name it, we had it. It’s like Passendaele 1917 outside here right now – most unpleasant.
And tonight, just as I was about to start eating my tea, Trixie phoned for a chat. I ended up with cold pasta and aubergine casserole, but as I have said so often before … "and you’ll say it so often again" – ed … what’s a little inconvenience when it comes to your friends? I value my friends higher than my stomach. But it’s amazing how often it happens, isn’t it?
