The Joys of Old Houses

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thick_mike

Wood Shortener
Joined
21 Aug 2011
Messages
826
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Location
Wing, Bucks
My house was obviously built before the right angle was invented. We had the whole house surveyed and apparently there’s one right angle hidden in a built in wardrobe in my son’s room. I’m building a drawer unit for shoes in the hallway, so I thought I’d use a method I’ve always wanted to try because it’s so ingenious, to wit, the ticking stick.

This is the space...

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you need to make a ticking stick, which can be any random shape with a pointy end. You put a board in place in the space you want to fit, and place your stick with the pointy end in the corner.
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Then draw round the stick, tracing the shaped onto the board.

When you have marked each corner, you place the board onto the sheet you want to cut the shelf from and replace the stick and line it up with one of the marks.
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Then mark the point onto the sheet.

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Measure twice three times and cut once.

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I cut the plywood slightly large so that I could scribe to our wonky walls.

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And the shelf fits!

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That looks like a handy idea for people working in new houses except it would need to be 3D as nothing is square to anything else. Saying that you could probably just pull the wall into place instead.
 
my last house was a 7 bed, full 2 storey 17c watermil in France......
built of field stones, walls 750mm thick......
nothing was square or leval....apart from the kitchen floor that the prev owner had put in a block n beam floor......
but filled it's celler with rubble.....(silly person).....
anyway all furniture was oak stand alone units with suitable wedges under the corners.......great laugh.....
think it's called character........
nice idea of the stick but would prefer Sooty's magic wand at times.......or POTTER'S wand.......
 
My dad lives in a cottage in Norfolk which is a clay lump construction. So solid clay walls about 2 1/2 foot thick, and not a right angle or truly straight line anywhere. Certainly has character, but a nightmare fitting his kitchen!
 
New houses are not much better. Is it because of the risk of tools being stolen that builders leave their squares and levels at home?

I used to make and fit some front door surrounds on a few new builds for a local developer, nice big detached houses that sold for a premium. I was always amazed how bent, out of plumb, out of line and twisted the two walls either side of the front door could be on a brand new house :(
 
Our house was built in 1987 and we moved here 10 years later. 3 new builds and 2 cottages done up and extended. I reckon the builders had one square and one spirit level between them, and the guy with the square was on his summer holidays when they did ours. But, good news, the spirit level owner was around when they did the big patio in the L twixt living and dining room. That is dead level....rain doesn't run off at all.

Fitting the kitchen, the biggest DIY job I have ever done. needed many 'fudges', the worktop at the end is slightly trapezoidal and the line of cupboard doors has a step out cunningly concealed by a pull out towel holder.

I wonder why it's all so hard, if I as an amateur can cut a 45 degree mitre on an architrave, why couldn't they?
 
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