Making a Door Frame from 100-Year-Old Reclaimed Rafters | Old Stone Finca Restoration

Welcome back to the Finca. The sunshine's returned. Indeed, thank goodness. We're still working on this doorway and of course... We're not going to be able to buy a frame to fit this. You couldn't if you wanted to. It's a very odd size, the thickness of the walls, everything. So like with everything else around here we've got to make one so Andy's in the process of doing that. We've got some old hundred plus year old rafters from next door when they did the roof on that which have been gifted to us. They are old Twisted, bent, curved, bananas, very difficult to work with. It's free, the only cost is our time and money. Time and time, not money and time. So what we're going to do yet, we're going to try and get this frame in in this video and so let's go and have a look. So in the workshop we've managed to get two straight-ish legs for our sides and we cut the The rebate's out of this where the door's going to sit into. The next thing you want to look at is getting the header on. This is the piece that we're going to use and the plums have started straight away. So what we've got, if you can see that side there, it's quite a nice joint. This side, because this wood is twisted, it's all going to be, I've got a bit of a gap here. I was debating whether to plane this off this side but I think I'm just going to cut this at the same angle as that so we get a nice clean joint there. That's the first thing to do. So I've just scribed the angle here where I want to cut it. This is of course going to make this side shorter than that side but that's not a problem because we need to adjust the lengths anyway. We'll get to that in a bit but for now let's see if we get a nice clean joint across here. Nice tidy joint there now so that's phase one of probably a hundred complete. So I think the next job especially while the sun's shining is to get them all plane down and make them look like new. It's like a woodworm, the character I suppose. It's well gone, it's not going to do any damage. Right, so that was a bit sort of satisfactory. I'm going to look at the base, which is a bit more complicated. I'm going to cut it to fit inside. the frame here and then notch around for that i'm also going to cut out the rebate i'm not going to cut the rebate on the top i'm actually going to cheat and put an extra piece on but for the bottom i can and so i think the first thing you want to do is cut it to length it's also going to need a channel in this for the drain so any water that hits the door and runs down is going to run outside standard on any window system window or door system but the first thing i want to cut this I'm going to cut this to my length that will fit nicely. Inside here, I think I'm actually going to cheat on this side as well, rather than cut, notch this out, which won't give me a lot of height for my drainage channels to run through. I'm going to put a piece on inside, but first of all, I need to notch out and mark it off around this frame, even though that's working. So that'll fit inside there nicely. Yeah, that's worked. Same on this side. I'll probably cut these out with the jigsaw, I think. Easiest way. So we go, all right I'm hoping this is blade's gonna be long enough to go through this. Should just, if not I might have to plane it down first and then make just to make it a bit thinner, have a look. It's doing it. So I've been deliberating with the bottom. I think I'm going to do it the same way. I'm going to put this piece on the bottom. I've cut it to the right exact width that I need. What I need to do is just trim these back because this now makes my whole thing too long. The idea was originally to put this inside there. But these, every, the wood's not square at all and to get a cut to fit and look good on that side and that side and on the underneath which is the opposite face as well was proving a bit difficult. So I've changed plan B. This should work really nice, exactly the same as the top. So, if I pick it up in the morning and I'm running out of sunlight, running out of daylight, what I'm just going to do is cut these back and then get that in and then we can start putting it together. So what we need to do with this, it's a bit cupped so I'm going to plane this center bit off here so it's flat so it doesn't rock and so it's the right length because this edge is a perfect length but this is a millimeter or two too long so I'm going to plane that off flat and then I need to cut a channel all along the front here level with these rebates there for the water so if any water hits the door it'll run into that channel and then we make two holes through to the front so it'll run out. It's a proven technique it does work so I think first job though I'm going to plane I'm planing this front down and planing the the back down as well. So I'm just marking where I want this tunnel to go I'm going to draw a line across my two marks and try and router it out. That's all I've done, I've clamped myself a guide on so I can slide that along, that's the theory. It's a cut router, always cut left to right by the way, especially if you're cutting worktops, you don't want to chip them. There you go, if you can make that out, very nice too, well done Andy. All we've got to do now is make some holes through from here to the front on an angle, so any water that hits the door will run down there into that tunnel and go outside. That's not going to be easy either, so that's just about perfect. So all I've got to do now is try and find the angle and I'm probably going to put a line on the side or something that I can work to. But yeah, it's gonna happen, that's it. Let's have a look. Right, let's get some measuring out. It's a fraction high but it won't matter, I'll still do the job. Okay, one more go. There we go, we've got three nice drainage holes in amongst all the woodworm, it's absolutely amazing. You can't even see it when you look at the wood until you're planing it down and it's all inside. Absolutely incredible but it's character, it's staying that way. Just make sure there's plenty of oil on it out when we oil it just to soak right into that. So yeah, it's ready to go together now I think. I've just marked all these pieces up, I think we're going to give them a serious coat of oil. Before we put it back together in view of the woodworm and stuff inside. So make sure it's all completely sealed so nothing in the future can affect it. Well that's the plan. Look how wobbly they are. That's what we're up against. It's all allowed for though. It's all going to be good. Well it's dried off look at that how beautiful is that look at that old grain with the wood worm on this side with lovely colours in it absolutely beautiful you don't get wood like this anymore so now um it's dry enough to put together right so um we're going to screw it together we've got it squared to the table i'm going to do this side first i'm just going to countersink these with a big bit because the screws are the woods are very thick So we're just going to countersink them in a little bit and then I'm going to drill all the way through now through this top piece so that the screw doesn't bite on that so it pulls them nice and tight. This wood is so hard, the reason for doing that is because when it goes in that much of the screw probably it will bite up against the threads so we want this to flow freely through this top bit So I'll just pull into that, about there. Pull it nice and tight, so let's get them in, do this corner first, making sure we don't move it, put it back in a minute. That's absolutely beautiful, there we go. Perfect perfect lovely joint right we'll get the other three sides done same way. So we've just squared it up to square it up measure across your corners I've measured across the inside corners where the door is going to be so the door is going to be square because this wood is all varying thicknesses and things I'm just going to put some diagonal braces on it just to hold it exactly where we want it and when we move it so and then we'll fit it With these braces in place, pack it all but if they get it all nice and then we can take the braces off and it shouldn't move that's the theory. I might need a hammer and a couple of nails. Tip make sure that your braces don't stick out beyond your frame because it could interfere with your wall. There we go looks nice doesn't it exciting we have a door frame just got to get it installed now make the door. And just before we bring it in we know we're gonna have to take this bottom thing out it's just It's just rubbish basically, probably all gypsum, like a gypsum crete, if that exists. I'm going to do this. Probably possibly going to have to take these signs off as well, but I think we're just going to get this out first, in fact I may as well get that off at the same time, and have a look, just to make sure that it's going to fit. Tilly's uh helping but it's it's a shame actually they actually look like they're stones but we don't think that they were, yeah, don't think it out it's easy enough and we're going to put a nice lime creek base down here stone there, right, it looks like the old footing so i'll get that off and get these sides off and that one that one of them will carry on see if it fits Well, nearly fits. Once we've got an idea of this we can then start looking at the stonework. Go past the acros, oh dear it had to fit didn't it. Something like that. So where this is touching our lintel there I'm going to stick a screw in it. It's pretty pretty good and we've wedged it up in a bit of places. We've got one screw in here and then we'll be able to just make the final adjustments without worry of it moving. I'm going to countersink this into here again because we're going to be sticking another piece over the front we don't need to hide the screws or anything just got to get and make sure I get it where it's touching. I'm going to go for there. Not easy. It's in. Messing them out. It's definitely it's always this level it's square in every direction. I'm ready for an ice cold beer. Absolutely. So on that note we're going to call it a video, thank you so much for watching, thank you to all our subscribers and if you've got this far and you haven't already subscribed please consider doing so, it's free and it helps us out enormously. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.