Build Challenge 2016: Bar Mills Dock House at Cundy Harbor

[S&S RR]

Bob


The build looks great and I'm very impressed that you keep the paint off the EXPO shirts. Great thread as always.

[ReadingBob]

Thanks for all the kind comments everyone.  They're very much appreciated.   

When I do a build thread like this I try to get myself into the mind frame that someone new to this aspect of the hobby might be following along.  So, even though it might be old hat to most/all of the forum regulars, I want to show the techniques I used as well as the mistakes I made along the way.  And I do like seeing alternative techniques suggested/posted by y'all for the same reason so keep them coming.   

John - I have an apron I usually wear when I'm painting or working with the messy stuff.  My wife has scolded me too many times for staining my cloths with paint, soldering flux, weathering powders, etc.         Thankfully she wasn't around the time I dropped a loaded paint brush and got paint on the both the recliner and the carpet.  It came off but I'd have been in real trouble if she'd seen that blunder.          

[ReadingBob]

Okay, let's see....where was I?     Oh yeah!     It's been a while since I've updated this thread but that doesn't mean I haven't been working on the build.  So let me bring you up to date.

After I assembled the walls I realized that following the instructions wasn't a good idea.  The instructions indicated that the corner posts should be attached to the side walls which I did.  I should have known better.     I've build a kit or two before this.  By trimming the corner posts even with the top of the side wall they don't match the pitch of the end wall.  Now, once a rafter has been glued to the bottom of the roof this little faux paus won't be visible but it'll still bug the heck of me.     


So I pried off the corner posts and replaced them.


Then trimmed them to fit properly with a single edge razor blade.  I didn't have to do this for the two corner posts at the office end of the structure.  Just the four on the main structure.


Whenever possible I like to make my roofs removable so I can install lighting and, if need be, access it if maintenance later on.  I built a little substructure using black mat board that I traced the end walls onto and 1/8" square strip wood and then glued the cardstock roof to it.


I made sure my little substructure would fit tightly into the top of the building and that the cardstock roof would overhang each end of the structure equally.


Next up was the little storage shed.  The front wall is very small, it has a large opening for doors, and prone to warping but no worries.


More in a moment....

[ReadingBob]

Gluing the rafter tail piece in place helps to straighten out the front wall as does trimming out the door opening with 1/16" strip wood (which I should have done earlier).


Ooops....if you want the shed doors to be closed they don't fit.


A little sanding along the edges with an emery board solves that problem.


I added blinds to some of the windows using white paper that I painted a light green.  Every now and then I take a full size sheet of white printer paper and paint it light green or beige or tan, etc. and use that to cut up and make blinds out of.


I assemble the office walls after the blinds were installed.  I used a square to keep everything lined up while the glue set.  IMPORTANT....if you're building this kit both the shed and the office walls do not have 'corner posts'.  That means the edge of some the walls will be exposed.  So, when you stain/paint/weather the walls do the edges as well!  If not, you may end up cursing yourself later on.     I got lucky and realized I had to do this before hand.  On the shed and the office anyway.   


Next I attached the shed and the office to the main structure.


More in a moment....  

[ReadingBob]

It's a little unusual to find strip wood laser cut in a sheet but there are two sheets in this kit that make up the docking material.  It did make it easier to work with it this way.  I added some texture to the surface with a steel brush I picked up in the welding section of Home Depot.


Then I began assembling the dock by adding the 3" by 12" joists to the landing per the template.  I didn't glue the pieced to the template.  I just held it down with my hand and eyeballed the whole thing as I went along.


Adding a joist...


Once all the joists were in place I flipped it over and weighed it down until the glue set.


I started adding the decking and cut various pieces to fit (lining up the cuts with the joists thanks to inspiration from Tom's RSM Delwins Boat & Net Storage build. experiences.  By the way, I had originally stained the wood with Hunterline Light Gray but felt it was too light so I added a coat of Hunterline Cresote on top of that.   


The extra cuts are a little detail, some of which may get hidden when I add details to the deck, but it doesn't take much effort and it's well worth it in my opinion.


More in a few.....

[ACL1504]

Bob,

Beautiful build and wonderful tutorial. I really enjoy following your threads.

Tom

[ReadingBob]

After gluing a few boards in place I weighed them down for a few minutes.  I'm using Pink Flamingo Glue available from Northeastern Scale Lumber and that stuff grabs hold pretty quick.  I really like using it for builds. 


Using another tip from Tom's build I gently sanded the surface of the decks with an emery board to give some color variations.


This nest step I thought was a bit weird but I went ahead and tried it.  The kit includes 'spacers' that get spot glued on the lower deck first.


I made sure I had them in the right position per the templates.


When I spot glued the upper deck in place I used a small square and the structure itself to ensure the upper deck was in the right position over the lower deck.


Next I used a razor saw to add some texture to the pilings.  The kit includes bamboo skewers to be used as pilings.  In hindsight I wish I would have replaced them with some dowels of a similar diameter.  But hey worked out okay.


More in a moment...  

[ReadingBob]

Bob,

Beautiful build and wonderful tutorial. I really enjoy following your threads.

Tom

Thanks Tom!  I took some inspiration from your experiences with Delwins.  That help quite a bit. 

[ReadingBob]

I cut the skewers to the lengths indicated the instructions 2 1/4" and 1.6" (don't you just love it when they give you one measurement using fractions and the other using decimals?  I don't have a 1.6" on my ruler.    ).  Anyway, if you build this kit you'll quickly discover that you need various lengths of the shorter size to get a perfect fit.  It all depends on where the sit on the bottom of the lower deck support or reach up to the deck planks themselves.  I glued them in place, saw they were to short in some cases and pulled them out, cut new ones, installed them, etc.  It was a bit of tedious process.


After carefully removing the spacers (and holding my breath that the pilings would now hold the upper deck in place) I applied a bead of glue to the decking support piece and prepared to glue the structure in place.


As I was sliding the structure in place the notches of the upper deck slid into the wall of the structure and I had a perfect fit!     I was impressed.  I would have thought, with the notches for the upper deck, it would have been just as easy to add the two decks to the structure first and then add the pilings but this method work.


Prior to painting I cut the corrugated roofing material in panels.  I made a little temporary jig with blue painters tape right on my cutting mat.


Next I assemble the short stairs that connect the lower deck to the upper deck.  The kit includes runners that get glued to a spacer to hold them apart and in position for gluing the boards in place.


One small problem though.  It's hard to see in this picture but the runners are spaced too far apart for the laser cut boards.   


More in a moment....

[cuse]

Wow. Moving right along and looking good. Great posts Bob!


John

[ReadingBob]

The solution to that problem was to pull one of the runners off of the spacer and trim a bit off with a single edge razor blade.  Afterwards everything worked fine.


I bought myself a little flashlight to keep at the workbench.  One reason was I wanted to use it to check for light leaks.  There's an obvious problem with this kit when it comes to light leaks.


Can you see the problem?     I'll fix it later but it would have been easier to fix before hand had I been paying attention and realized this was going to happen before gluing the building to the deck.   


I applied 3M Transfer tape to all of the roof cards in preparation for adding the roofing materials.


And trimmed it to fit.  Given that my roofs are removable I can work on them without handling the structure.


When you peel off the 3M Transfer tapes carrier material you're left with the sticky stuff on the cardstock roof.


More in a moment....

[ReadingBob]

Wow. Moving right along and looking good. Great posts Bob!


John

Thanks John!  It's getting there.  I hope you still have a spot reserved for it.   

[jrmueller]

Thanks for the detailed posts Bob.  Lots of good tips.  Jim

[ReadingBob]

I decided to use some Bar Mills shingles I picked up several years ago for some of the roofs as opposed to the shingles included in the kit.  One of the reasons I did this was that the kit includes several 'sheets' of peel and stick shingles but there is one structure with shingles on the walls.  There's no indication as to how many sheets are needed for this structure vs. the other structure.  1?  2?  So rather than paint and weather one sheet and then find out later I needed 2 or risk running short on the other structure because I used too many on this one I substituted these instead.  Starting at the bottom and working my way up I applied them in strips.


After every three or fours strips I'd flip the roof over and trim the strips to fit using a pair of Friskar Micro Shears (a really handy tool to have on the workbench).


There us a cupola and cooler that need to be assembled to add to the roofs.  I cut out the parts for both and filed the edges smooth with an emery board.


I partially assembled both structures prior to painting.  You have to decide to paint an weather everything first or do like I did and do a partial assembly first and then paint and weather it or assemble everything first and then paint and weather it.  I like being able to paint things that will be recessed before they're in place where it's harder to get to them with a sponge so I chose to do it this way.


Like I rambled on about above.  I assemble the core of both units prior to painting and weathering everything and then proceeded to paint them (Reefer White followed by the sponge application of Khaki and Gray craft paints followed by A&I).


And that's were the pictures I uploaded the other day end so I guess I'll stop here.    

Thanks for following along.  I hope to get more done this weekend.

[ReadingBob]

Thanks for the detailed posts Bob.  Lots of good tips.  Jim

You're more than welcome Jim!  Thanks for following along.