Scribers: Part 2 - The Solution

In my previous post I outlined the challenge with scribers - or rather, the lack of scribers.

Our joiner is making scribers to fill these gaps.

A scriber is a long, vertical piece of wood shaped to fit:

Above: A new scriber has been inserted to fill the gap between the vertical wooden post and the weatherboards on the bay front of our villa.

Of course, there is still a tiny tiny gap between the scriber and the weatherboards - making something that fits within fractions of a millimetre isn't possible!

Apparently this will be filled with a product called "No More Gaps" before it's painted.

A quality finish

The joiner's doing an outstanding job of providing a quality finish. He's added a lip to the scriber, which matches the lip on the window frames.

To show the difference, here's the "before" photo, with plain vertical posts:

And here's the "after" photo with the new scribers, complete with lip:

Making and fitting a scriber of this quality isn't a quick job: it's taken the joiner the best part of the day to make one scriber. And the photo above has two scribers in it, so it's going to take a while for him to finish the job I reckon!

The quicker solution

The quicker (and probably cheaper) solution would be to just insert lots of little plugs into each of the gaps.

The pic below from the Bungalow & Villa catalogue shows the plug that they stock for this.

Above: Rusticated weatherboards plus a rusticated weatherboard plug - from Bungalow & Villa.

Image Credit: Bungalow and Villa.

When I was browsing the Bungalow & Villa catalogue, I learnt that the weatherboards on our house are called "Rusticated Weatherboards". I'd been calling them "scalloped"... oops, wrong!

Other styles of weatherboard include "Bevelback" and "Shiplap".

You learn something new every day huh! Especially when you're renovating an old house :)

Adding new villa fretwork

Our villa was built in quite a plain style - it doesn't have the fancy fretwork that many other houses of this era possess.

So while we're sprucing up the front, we're going to add a few bits and pieces to give it a bit more character, and make it look more "villa-ey". It should give our house a bit more street appeal.

Above: The exterior of our villa is quite plain at present.

I did a good amount of research as to what I wanted; a bit of the research was online, but most of it was done by walking round the area with Mr Kiwi (and our dog) to see what we liked and didn't like.

We decided that we wanted to add a little bit of character, but not go overboard: we don't want the house looking too twee and frilly.

As the builders are now hard at work, I made haste to Bungalow and Villa in Morningside.

Even though they sell everything online now, I wanted to see the items for real before purchasing.

I was expecting a small shop, but it turned out to be huge showroom and workshop! They have just about everything you need for renovating a period home.

I bought:

• Large brackets x 4 (for the bay front)
• Teardrops x 2 (for the bay front)
• Small brackets x 2 (to go above the doorway)
• Finials x 2 (1 for the bay front; 1 for the garage)

These all come in treated paint quality pine, so our next job is to undercoat them and paint them in white enamel.

Above: The fretwork I purchased from Bungalow & Villa now needs to be undercoated and painted.

When I brought these home and showed Mr Kiwi, he exclaimed "wow, our house is actually going to look like a villa!"

Yesss! I can't wait to see what these will look like when installed onto the front of our house!

Project cost: $$ (materials only)