Floors stairs and strife and then some goats

As usual last night about 11 pm I decided to make the first floor landing floor covering. Why oh why do I NOT work during the day? 

I chose this sheet of veneer wood for it's grain. I have quite a stock of different veneers to be able to play around with flooring without having to go find some. 

 I cut it into strips which was not without difficulty as the cut seems always to want to follow the grain and not the ruler. I ended up by using the table saw and even then it was not that easy. I realised that the best thing was to sandwich the wood between two layers of heavy paper to prevent chipping. It's also possible to glue the veneer to a paper base to stabilise and strengthen it.

 Here is my small surface with joints and pin holes for nail effects. I stained it using dark oak, then dirtied up the corners and edges and then varnished with mat varnish. After that I used fine wire wool then waxed it up with antique wax. I rather like the effect and the colour matches the bannisters quite well despite being different woods. I decided to glue the 'planks' to a thin kraft card base Template which made everything easier.

 A quick test with the landing bookcase, so far so good.

 FINALLY a wall is up !! halleluja !!! at last a wall! The tiled floor section is glued on squiff by almost 3.5 mm so care must be taken to modify as I go on. Again working late at night!

 The back of the wall. I reinforced the bottom to take the screws as it's NOT a good idea to screw into MDF wood alone as its really friable. I had a lot of trouble countersinking the screw heads and ended up using a much bigger drill bit to cut into the base by a couple of millimetres. At first I screwed the screws in too tight which made the wall slope in slightly but some de-screwing worked. I chose to NOT glue this wall in place so I could dissasemble if needed before its final installation.

 A quick 'installation' as a test. I had enormous trouble assembling it as one piece of ceiling trim was 5 mm too long and it took some bad language to sort it out and then lots of tea and toast and strawberry jam. 

 I like the way the light plays here on the floor.

Oh yes the spindles are done ! Tricky tricky but done. There are very slight discrepancies in the spindles but as it's only seen front on, no one will ever see the stairs in profile. It turned out that my spindle wood strips were not all absolutely the same section, off by very little.

 A quick test with the second flight clamped on. I still need to patinate this section before I go any further. After this flight there will be two more as there are three floors and four landings. Seemed a good idea at the time.

 I like this play of light, I hope that the finished landing will look as good.

I did this test for the drawing room floor with another wood. I don't like the grain of this veneer and each lozange which is in reality in two parts looks too 'chunky'. 

Other tests will be done.

 This was my inspiration for the above test. 

I couldn't resist showing you our neighbours little goats born a couple of weeks ago. 

This is the mummy, the darker goat to the right just gave birth to two more little ones but they tend to stay inside for the moment. They rush to see me everytime I go out the door, maybe the apples in my pocket have something to do with it! Gorgeous little creatures but oh so destructive in a garden, more the pity.