Building The Imperial Legacy

"Rome was not built in a day"

 And neither, let me tell you, was my Mum's garage!

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It is incumbent on every emperor  to bestow a physical legacy for the betterment and benefit of mankind; as well of course as to ensure the mark and glorification of their own magnificent reign.

Great baths, theatres, fora and aqueducts dominate the ancient world and still endure to perpetuate the memory of our imperial ancestors.

Indeed, it can be one of the pressures of being an emperor, to know that one must build .... and it is a pressure that I have not been immune from.  The last two summers have seen the emperor building his own modest legacy.

[Video of Great Garage Build, Kinross 2011. Click to Play]

So in my own modest way, I can now somewhat relax.  At least until next Summer, when ramping and landscaping will follow.  

One Door Closes And Another Is Renovated

Having dropped out of work last September, I eventually found myself working on my Mum’s old Edwardian front door. It was pretty shabby and in need of serious painting. As it turned out, the job was nothing short of a total renovation.

It started with stripping the door to the wood which took 2 days. Yet this only revealed how bad things really were. It highlighted that in places, the paint itself had been fulfilling an essential structural role. The red-wood mouldings of the panel door were in a very poor state and I made the reluctant decision that most (eventually all) of them needed to be replaced.

Having ripped out the mouldings – things looked pretty bad and I think my Ma might have been getting slightly worried. Things looked far worse than before I had started. My main problem was in sourcing authentic mouldings for such an old door. This turned out to be a real challenge as absolutely none of the DIY chains or timber merchants offered mouldings of the scale or quality that had been taken out. It was really important to get it right as otherwise this classic door could have looked so wrong.

By a stroke of luck and partial genius on my part, I eventually managed to source the perfect mouldings from a picture framers of all places! Indeed it transpired that what I needed was not so very different to an inverted picture frame moulding. With the purchase of £90 worth of oak moulding, I was back in business.

Having cut, mitred and pre-drilled the mouldings, I was able to get them in without too much trouble. It just remained to fill all holes and sand all the door surfaces. I also caulked all the joints before building up the door again with the necessary layers of primer, undercoat and paint.

It was a long, tough job, and I reckon it took about 2 weeks of work and cost around £400 in equipment and materials. However, it did come out looking very good and I think it was more than worth it to preserve such a period feature of my Mum’s house. I certainly learned alot of new skills and would be even better were I to embark upon any job like this again in the future.

Anyway I won’t go on about it any more – but I am rather proud. As Ma always said, " its good to have more than one string to your bow."