Gills penned this which I’ll construct from some of the reclaimed oak here, using a light oil to retain as near a light oak finish as possible.
in the meantime, all other windows, doors and frames have been made, fitted with locks and hinges and then removed again for the painting process, should keep Gill busy a while, then I’ll install & fit double glazed units..
Our first veggies are ready
made for a special lunch
wood for the new front door, we have acres of this to use at will as we wont be needing these 1st floor timbers in the big barn
these will create the framework for the door (not the frame itself, thats already made)
this i’ll rip down and cut to length, they’re 9″ x 3″ x 6 meter & way a fair bit
30 years old this saw, inherited from my father, i worked along side him making gates with it in my early days, weather the tops of 7″ square oak posts together one each end turning together, fond memories 🙂
carefully selected ‘straight’ boards that’ll be tgv in fill
a serious amount of straightening and thicknessing needed before any form of joinery work can begin
this for planing
lovely to expose & bring out its character when running through the planer
bored
its very time consuming trying to work with old ‘characterful’ timber 
laid out, although I’ve hung hundreds of external doors, I’ve never made one from scratch, I’ve dismantled many a door though so have a pretty good idea on construction.
I have the luxury of a mortise machine but tenons are a back n forth affair with the cross cut saw, does the job though…
add a rebate for the TGV facia boards to sit in so as to create a decent weather barrier, this is the bottom cross member
all glued & clamped together, some way of pinning the joints is needed, we bought some oak M&S furniture many years ago & I always loved the square dowels they use to hold the joints together, so I have nicked their idea inserted at a 45º angle for a bit of flair 
frame finished, ready for boards and window
this was a fun part, we laid the boards in the door to get an attractive order to fit them in, knotts to the bottom as we’ll remove a fair chunk of wood for the window, then distribute boards for an even layout of knotts. I pplayed with this for ages, sat & had a tea, moved them about again got it right, Gill came along & changed it!
once decided it was back to the router & the scary Tongue & grove bits, after having one fly out on me once I’m always a little tentative of lumps of steel spinning at 20,000 rpm inches from my body.
finished profile, I added some chamfers to the edge of the joints and a flute down the face of the board as most of the original timber work for barn doors etc have the same, nice to look at but also creates a additional channel for the water as opposed to it all ending up in the tgv joint.
45º brace to alleviate dropping
fitted, along with all the front windows, gills finished digging out all the old pointing and render, starting to look like something you’d want to live in 🙂
Our build 