Making Pine Furniture

For the adventurous DIY home decorator, there is a very rewarding and fun hobby to indulge in: making your own furniture. The benefit of this hobby is that the furniture that you make is 100% your taste and exactly what you want in your house. It is also very satisfying to do some hard handiwork and to then live with the outcome of your own work. You can also take existing ideas and customise them to suit your needs and taste.

Before starting with hobby however, there are a few things that you need to take note of:

  • Firstly it is important to make sure that you have the correct tools with which to do the job. Depending on what you envision doing, the basics would be a decent handsaw, chisels, jigsaw, planes and a lathe. The rest is up to you. Remember that most timber places are willing to cut the wood into the lengths and sizes that you need for a minimal extra payment.

  • Look at the quality of the wood. Pine is a lovely, soft wood with natural grain markings and knots. Be careful of too many knots as this could weaken the wood. Also look out for knots that make holes in the wood. The knottier that pine furniture is, the better it looks.

  • Another consideration is the pattern that you want to use. Unless you have your own, unique pattern in mind, you can also find patterns in magazines, on the relevant websites or in books on woodwork.

  • Decide on the type of finishing that you want to put on the piece of furniture that you’re making. There is a variety of stains available and you need to choose the correct one for your environment and home. Remember to damp proof the wood first. If you want to use the wood’s natural colour, put on a decent, clear varnish that will protect the wood from liquid spills and heat.

Setting out to make the furniture, make sure that you have the correct dimensions and patterns ready before cutting the wood. Use a pencil and ruler to mark out the pieces that need to be cut and also draw the pattern on the wood so that you can easily cut and carve it out. Next you can choose to use either hand tools or power tools to do the cutting and the shaping for you. Remember that the furniture also needs to be sanded down. You can also use a power tool for this, but eventually you’re going to do the finer sanding work by hand.

Before applying the finish, make sure that there are no more rough spots on the pine furniture. When applying the damp proof and any stains, let each application dry thoroughly before applying the next coating. Make sure that everything is done undercover to ensure that no dust settles into the finish or that unexpected wind or rain interrupts the process. It may just ruin the finish and then you’ll need to redo it.

Once finished, put it into the room where it belongs and enjoy it for years to come.

Wood Floors: It's a Solid Choice

When deciding on the floors of the house that you’re building, or when re-flooring your current house, there are a myriad of options to consider. One of the options is to install solid wood flooring. However, this is not as simple as it sounds as there are a number of considerations to this option.

Wooden floors come in two different packages: solid wood flooring and engineered wooden flooring. There are distinctive differences between these two options, yet they both lead to beautiful wooden floors.

Solid wood flooring is manufactured from one, solid piece of wood and has a standard size of 5” (12.7 cm) wide and ¾” (1.9 cm) thick. The wood used for flooring is generally Red Oak Hardwood, White Oak Hardwood and Maple. Yet, depending on where you live and the timber available, there are many other kinds of Hardwood that can be used for solid wood flooring.

The wood can also be cut three styles: The commonly used flat-sawn style or two style, that look very similar because of the fact that there is only one side visible on the flooring: quarter-sawn and rift-sawn.

Often absorption strips are cut into the back of the wood to help prevent and reduce so-called cupping or buckling. Along with that the planks come with tongue and groove designs on the side to help fit the planks together during installation.

The final touch to installing solid wood floors is the way that they are fixed: Either with nails or with glue. Most floor specialists still prefer nails for wood floors to glue.

Looking at engineered floors, there are once again some considerations.

Firstly it is important to understand what engineered floors are. They are two layers of wood adhered to each other to form the plank that is used to make the floor: The top layer is called the lamella and the bottom layer is called the core. It is important to not confuse this kind of wood with floors that are laminated, veneered or made of vinyl. The laminated floor is merely an image of a wooden floor, while vinyl uses a veneer thin layer of wood with a core that consists of many different kinds of wood products (e.g. high density fibreboard). Vinyl, on the other hand, is merely plastic that has been made to look like wood.

Of course you then have to weigh up the pros and cons. Although not sold wood, engineered wood is easier to install. The installation techniques allow for easier maintenance and repair. The planks are installed without fastening the planks to each other which also makes for easier repair and replacement.

However, it is often more expensive than solid wood and the cheaper ranges often tend to be veneer rather than engineered wood.

Whichever one you choose, be sure that the choice is based on solid facts and your floor will be a lasting investment.