Old Post Office Belper

We're making good use of the rainy summer by working in our cellar at the Old Post Office. We're building some shelves/steps to give a safe standing for pots of flowers around the War Memorial in the Belper Market Square. The sloping ground is too uneven to stand pots on the ground. That's two large sheets (2.4 x 1.2m) of 9mm OSB sawn, glued and assembled into eight 1.2 metre long double step units, then primed and painted to withstand the weather. With added wood batten reinforcement there's approximately 32 metres of glued and pin-nailed (at 75mm centres) joints. They'll be ready before the July deadline, despite having to do some re-work following flood damage to the steps. The gray pieces of wood are the end plates for the steps hanging to dry after receiving a coat of aluminium wood primer. We've need to provide three coats of paint over 12 square metres. The white uprights are some of the steps painted in white undercoat, waiting for the topco...

I'm currently working to repair our garden gate at the Old Post Office. It is quite old, but in no way is it the original gate. As suggested by the Council, rather than replace the gate we're going to remove the rotten wood at the base of the gate and scarf in some replacement planks. If we were to replace the gate, we'd need to seek listed building planning consent as the gate and the wall is part of the Grade II listing. When the gate was built everything was measured in feet and inches so it is not possible to buy timber the same size as the original. So, I've bought oversize timber and I'm cutting and planing it down to the original  Imperial measurements. The existing planks are tongue and groove jointed, so using my wood router, and a matched pair of USA produced Router bits, I've also cut tongue and groove joints in the new wood to the same dimensions as the old ones. We'll have to align the new planks (12"x5"x1") to line up with old ...