Project: Somnolent High Ground (raised bed)

I haven't yet, no. This isn't a traditional stain though. I looked at those and soon learned that to get any sort of decent even coverage you'd need to sand, apply wood conditioner, wait long enough but not too long, apply stain, pray and then apply some sort of protective finish over the top. This stuff is more like an oil in that it soaks in a little bit but a bit like an epoxy in that it hardens in the surface of the wood. The desk will be done in the same stuff as well as the ladder. The desk is something like an ash veneer and the ladder is 30+ year old answers-on-a-postcard. I'll be honest, it's going to be somewhat suck it and see. If it turns out different tones on different woods (which I'd rather expect) then it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I'm more worried about how it'll interact with the green pressure-treatment to be honest. I'm hoping that it'll be dark enough that it'll hide the worst sins. Only one way to find out really :D
 
Another weekend at work :D

Steel plate turned up.




Marked it out, cut it and drilled the hole for the steel rod




Tapped the hole M10x1




Jam nut to tighten against the steel after the rod is threaded into the steel. Should stop it loosening or coming undone :eek:



Recess cut in the wood to take the steel. Don't want it on the surface where it could cause injury.




And installed. Jam nut is only placed there to show where it'll go.




We also started the ladder but I've not got finished pictures of it yet....partly because I've not finished it yet :D It already looks a lot better than it does in this in-progress picture though.



I had to wipe off the excess from the grooves with paper towel. I was using a gloved finger....but guess where the glove broke.
And that was Saturday.
 
Sunday.

Now the floating corner is all screwed together, it was time to get it hung. A nice stack of toolboxes and shims and we're level. Three screws at each corner and it would probably take its own weight...but lets not push our luck just yet :D




I put a laser plumb dot (the function of a cross laser that you didn't have a use for until now) from the floor, through the hole and onto the ceiling. Drilled the hole into the loft and stuck a rod through. Found it came out in the section full of lovely glass wool...because or course it did. It's close to a joist but still 90mm away. The plan is to get some more timber - I want structural graded stuff that's long enough to spread the load across three joists and thick enough that weight capacity isn't even a consideration....and this time, I want DRY!

So with everywhere that sells timber (at a reasonable price) closed for the day, I carried on with the battens and the slats.




There's 16 screws in each hardwood batten and 2 in each softwood slat. That should do it, right?! :D I did have fun with one screw in one end of a batten. Took me a little while to twig what was going on...but in the end, it turns out that screws just don't go into 6mm steel plate! :rolleyes::D
 
Got the steelwork done for the top of the rod yesterday. I reckon this should be overkill enough! :D



To be fair, most of that is just about spreading the load across a wider area rather than needing that much steel for strength. The smaller one is another jam nut.

I've got the hole drilled through the ceiling and a couple of 4x2's to go up in the loft. One will be for cross braces between the joists (as they're only 4"x1½") and the other will spread the weight across 5 joists. Probably over-thinking it....but better than the alternative!

LoftPlan.jpg


Right now, I've got the steel rod through the bed, threaded into the steel plate at the bottom (there was some swearing when it didn't quite line up!) and through the ceiling. Hoping to get it at least to the point I can hang it today....or maybe tomorrow :D
 
Got the steel rod all measured and marked up. Cut it to length and cut threads on it with a die. All went quite well... until I took the die back off and it chewed a number of the threads up as it went. Anything I did just made it worse and I just don't trust damaged, deformed and flakey threads for a safety critical use. I may be cavalier but I'm not (usually!) stupid. I checked for morbid interest and that's £25 worth of steel I just wrote off. Well, I can cut the ends off and use it again but not for this use. Fortunately I have a couple of backup pieces left over from the same previous project.

I think that the steel may have work-hardened or galled. That or the die isn't great. I could buy another die and have the same problem again so I've sworn for a bit and then set up the lathe to single point the thread. It's a faff as it involves changing all the gears (literally replacing the cogs on my lathe) and that means tidying up enough that I can open the door. All of which is why I (and many others) usually use a die instead but I've done a test thread on the offcut and it's a lot better.

All in, I think I'd probably have been further along if I'd just stayed in bed today...not that it was an option!
 
Yup...amongst the other things going on, of course.

This is the dodgy thread I wasn't happy to use:




This is the single-point cut version at the top of the rod. The same has been done for the shorter thread at the bottom. I've yet to mill a hex on the smaller round part so that I can put a socket on it and screw it into the plate in the bed in the room below.



Better, don't you think?!

Some more quick pics of things I've been doing in between.
The posts for the guard rails:



I did one of these because the support rod has to pass all the way through it so it needs to be slotted onto the rod before it's installed...and while doing one of them, I may as well do the other two.

This will disguise the hole in the ceiling that has grown a little larger (25mm diameter) than I'd originally intended. The rod was 0.4° from the vertical and that doesn't sound a lot but over a metre it equates to a few mm at least. This might be lessened with the single-pointed thread which should be perfectly concentric....we shall see! The other possibility is that the recess cut into the wood for the steep plate, wasn't perfectly flat relative to gravity, only to the edge face of the wood which was still in as-supplied condition. This seems far more likely to be honest. Either way, this should hide my failings and I can probably get a bit of soft wrap in the hole to stop a draft coming through. One thing I found is that the rod cannot be allowed to touch the plasterboard. If it does, when you walk across the room, it rubs against it and sounds for all the world like someone's walking across the floor above you. It might stop when the column of boxes is removed as that ought to isolate it from the floor...but not touching the plasterboard is preferable anyway.

 
Ok, some decent progress now. First, the ceiling grommet installed. I've got the rod installed too but there are better pics of that.




Next, the stained ladder that I only got a half-finished terrible picture of. This, a 95% finished terrible picture for you :D



Still needs cutting down to length but I've been waiting for the real-world final height of the bed rather than doing it off-plan. Also needs some hooks made but I've not got round to that yet.

So I spent the morning making up angle braces. The support in the loft is a 2x4 standing on edge; because it's strongest in the direction it needs to hold the weight that way. Thing is it could then tip over...well, it couldn't because there's a steel rod passing through the middle of it but you don't want it wobbling and trying to fall over :D
So these should brace it against that. Counterbored for the screws so I didn't have to use foot-long screws....a bit much even for me!
The straight bits at the bottom are cross-braces to go between the joists. Partly to add strength and partly to supply a more stable surface for the beam to sit on. The joists are positioned at somewhat random spacing and are a bit twisted so it's not a flat surface. I know they're strong enough to support the load because the middle of the loft is boarded and that's taking my weight plus the usual hoarding of 'stuff' that accumulates in a loft. I left the beam at full length to spread the weight across as many joists as possible. It's not like it's going to be in the way under there.




Cross-braces, beam and angle braces installed with the rod passing through all of them.




The steel plate is cut from the same piece I made the angle plate for the bottom of the bed so it's 6mm thick. It's largely something for the flange nut to bear against (so it doesn't just dig in) and to spread the weight over a larger area....which is also why the flange nut is so over-sized. Jam nut on the top just stops it from loosening.




The joy of working in the loft is that the insulation up there - courtesy of a 90's or 00's 'Insulate your home for free' job the previous owners took up - is glass wool. Originally it had been just thrown over the top of the boarded area as well. I disposed of that because it meant you couldn't use it for storage. This stuff if you disturb it, gives off particles of glass tiny enough to float on the air...and be breathed in. I've done it once (unknowingly) and you end up almost literally coughing up a lung. That's why I've invested in looking like Artyom for the entire time I will disturb it. It's possible some or even all of this stuff predates the glass wool and isn't as evil....but I'm not taking the risk, hot and drippy though it is.




So with the rod in place and half a guard rail up, it seemed like a good time load-test it. Tested and approved!



We also got my weight as close to the floating corner as possible and then my son's as well. Not even a suggestion of a creak. Happy with that.
Last guard rail post to do today and the ladder. Rather than chisel the bottom of the slot in the posts square to match the guard rails, I routed the bottom of the guard rail round to match the slot. The top edges have just had a much smaller round-over to remove the sharp edge. I'm undecided as to what to do with the top of the slots. I could leave them as-is or I could do a 3D printed cap for the top - which I fear might look naff - or just some wooden inserts to fill the top of the slot. I think I'm leaning towards that last option...especially as it wouldn't require removing the support rod to thread something over it! *facepalm*
 
@SpellowHouse Thanks, that was certainly the intention :D I think I take after my dad in that he wouldn't use an inch screw when a 6" was a possibility.... except I'll use a dozen of them to make sure!

@pastymuncher Cheers, nice of you to say.

Got the last post in today and then the guard rail slotted in. A bit of blending (sandpaper mostly) between the posts and the horizontal timbers and then on to the ladder.
I cut the top down in situ; leant it at the right angle and used a Japanese saw run flush with the top of the timber as a guide. Couldn't think of a better way to do it as anything else would have meant disassembling the ladder to make compound cuts (it's something like 4° off vertical side to side and 20° front to back). Then I made a vertical cut on each so that a flat hits the timber and not a point. All this will make more sense when I post the pics....but my back is making it quite clear that moving would be bad and beer would be good!

Unpacked the new mini universal bender. Quickly found why they have a poor rep: the tolerances are looser than a politician's morals...so getting a straight bend is a challenge. Getting a bent bend of a specific angle is neigh impossible...so I ended up doing it vaguely in the right direction and then tweaking it with pliers while held in the vise. Bit of filing to get rid of the sharp corners, couple of holes (a modicum of swearing) and I've screwed it on the ladder. Needs to come off again and be sanded because it's black steel and where it was bent the mill scale is coming off so it leaves your hands black if you touch it. A job for another day though!
 
Back with pics :D

The last guard rail post. 10mm rod extending down 73mm into the timber (half way) and 190mm up into the post. Figured this would be something that might get pulled on coming up the ladder so it needs to be sturdy. The smaller one is 6mm and just prevents the post spinning. I had intended to glue the posts down as well....but the friction seems to be enough to be honest. The rails are friction-fit (both on width and length) too so they can be removed if necessary. I can always come back with some glue or brad nails if needs be.




Ladder cut to length




And hooks done.




And finally :D



Only thing to do on the bed now is paint it black like the ladder. Not quite such a rush on that one though. Wardrobe has to be moved, desk go in, network sockets moved to the diagonally opposite corner (because, obviously! :rolleyes: ) and pictures put up. Still work to do but this has definitely broken the back of it...and me!
I'll be back with more pics once it's black and for the desk. Once it looks like the 3D model, then it'll be done :D Oh, and corner trunking and USB extension is on order because his reading lamp is USB....because who doesn't have USB at hand for a reading lamp?! Just going to run it up as far as the corner nearest the ladder. It'd be easy to tuck under the mattress...but a pain every time the sheet needs to be changed. I can run the power up the trunking for the RGBW LED strip that's going under the bed too....because it clearly needs more 'cool factor' :D
 
964rs said:
Have you tried that stain on a scrap piece of wood yet.
Stain tends to work a lot better on hardwood than pine and those samples look like hardwood.
Click to expand...

Well, I think I now know who's done this sort of thing before! We stained the desk and it didn't take particularly evenly or on a lot of the wood. I sanded it before applying the stain to take off anything that might be on it already but I didn't dare sand too far as it's only veneered. So how do you like the history of every cup that's ever been placed on the desk? None of these were visible before staining, they're just an artefact of differential absorption.




So we did as 964rs's had suggested a while ago and tested each type of wood. Clockwise from bottom left we have: Guard rail post, tanalised C24 (frame) untouched, guard rail, tanalised C24 that's been planed.



The guard rail is fine. The untouched C24 would only have been on the timbers against the walls so aren't going to be stained anyway. This is the one I thought wouldn't work as I figured it may not absorb where the green treatment has already been absorbed. Wrong, it works the best of all of them. Oddly when you plane it back (and leave it for a couple of weeks), it doesn't absorb as well. The darker bit is where the stain wasn't wiped off to see if leaving it on longer would help...it didn't. The guard rail is hopeless. As the palest of the woods, I thought it would take best...also wrong.


So we took the black Cuprinol Garden Shades we'd used recently and (after testing that it would go over the stained part) painted the desk to salvage it.



Looks a lot better but even a few days later it's not wet, but it definitely has a bit of tackiness to it. We'll see how much of a problem that is over time.

There were four network points put in this room when we moved in and rewired. Obviously these are as far away as possible from where we now need them :rolleyes: So up came the carpet and the floorboards and I've moved two of them from the corner under the bed to the corner under the desk. One I'd previously purloined to run the ceiling-mounted wifi so there's one left in the original location. A tape measure made an excellent pull tape in the void under the floorboards so I only had to remove one long one and two short bits. I didn't want to even try cutting a box into the wall - didn't have the spare sanity and didn't need the noise or mess - so I've surface mounted it instead. Did find that just to make life 'interesting' the orange had faded over the last decade and now looks rather mistakably like brown. No prizes...!




And so I believe these are now the final pictures of the completed project. No doubt I'll be proved wrong....even typing this I've just remembered that there's some 8mm thick adhesive-backed neoprene strip to line the underneath of the floating timbers. This is to reduce the future incidence of concussion that I may have acquired on a couple of occasions during the latter parts of the project.








Lighting is RGBW and will 'dance' to the music...if you must. He's just turned 12 so I figure it 'must' on occasion. :D
 
I was hoping i was going to be wrong about the stain when the ladder came out well.
At least you managed to sort it out a different way and get it looking great.
He is a very lucky boy.
 
964rs said:
I was hoping i was going to be wrong about the stain when the ladder came out well.
At least you managed to sort it out a different way and get it looking great.
He is a very lucky boy.
Click to expand...
No offence but I was hoping you were wrong too! :D
A panic application of paint wasn't in the plan but time pressure and readily at hand. It looked good on a test piece. We'll see on the tackiness; either it'll settle of I'll have to go over it with something to seal it or sand it back and try something else. Given it's a veneer glued to an MDF base, I think anything that needs to be absorbed is going to be out so it'll need to be a surface coating. Fingers crossed it'll just settle though!

Cheers all. It's been exhausting just tidying up, let alone doing it. Luckily it's the season for a break. Hope you all have a good one.
 
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