Hello everyone.
Hubby and I decided to do a feature wall with mini orb, behind our fireplace. I tried to find some info on the net, but had no luck, so I have taken some photos and can describe how we did it, in case there is someone out there who needs some tips. We had to learn the hard way, and made plenty of mistakes, so I will try to list those too, in the hopes I can save someone else from doing the same.
from photo one, to photo two
Sue
you can purchase all the things you require from bunnings, but also other hardware stores will supply some of the items, or steel suppliers can supply the mini orb.
Mini orb from Bunnings is quite 'tinny' compared to the tuff stuff from the steel suppliers, but for cladding the walls, is fine. It comes in lengths of 1800mm, which is ideal to cut in half to make two 900mm lengths, the ideal size for a chair rail feature. The sheets are about 670mm wide (from memory) but we measured our wall and divided it by 600mm, so that we had plenty for overlap, and an extra sheet incase we made a mistake with one.
The wooden edge on the top is 'Georgian Dado rail' also from bunnings, and the bottom piece of timber is 'picture frame' and there are two widths to choose from, which is entirely up to your personal choice. We chose the smaller size (cheaper) The timber is bare, so you will need to stain or varnish it. I used some left over deck oil (intergrain) which turned out the perfect colour for us
you will also need 'liquid nails' and some panel pins (nails with small heads) which should be long enough to go through the trim, the plaster and into the studs.
Other tools required are a hammer, something to cut the tin (snips or an angle grinder) a wood saw, a drill with a bit to drill pilot holes for your panel pins, tape measure, pencil, level.
We did mitred corners.....tricky! If you have a mitre box it would help, or you can do as we did and use a metal 'square' to find the 45 degree angle. mark all measurements in pencil.
Start by painting your timber dado rail and the picture frame with the varnish of your choice. You may need two coats, so if you apply one in the morning, you might be able to get the second done that afternoon.
Once dry, place the picture frame on top of the existing skirting board (that way, if you ever want to remove the mini orb, you still have the skirtings in place and can return it to standard)
we needed to mitre (cut to 45 degrees) the left hand, bottom corner and needed a join to add more to the length. (our wall is 3300 and the timber came in lengths of 2400mm)
Ensure, if you have something like a fireplace, or permanent fixture, to put the join behind it. Leave enough room at the other end for the timber you will use on the right hand edge, there. (We used the Dado rail, as we had a big offcut) Its a little bit of thinking required to work out what you need exactly, so measure twice, cut once!
Place a bead of liquid nails, the length of the picture framing and stick in place to the wall, on the top edge of the skirting board.
If you don't have a 'stud finder' tap your knuckle along the plaster. The deep hollow sound is empty space, and the higher dull thud is where a stud is.
You can mark these on the wall, bcause the cladding will cover it. Using the drill, drill a pilot hole into the timber where there is a stud underneath, then tap a panel pin in carefully. You can finish it off neatly with a nail punch later, but if you go carefully, you can get them in quite neatly. Our nails kept bending (chinese?) so we coated them with soap which made them go in easier. The reason for drilling pilot holes was to ensure the timber didn't split when the nail was inserted.
do not put the extra length up yet.
photo one shows the mitred corner
Measure from the inside lip of the bottom picture frame (the bit your mini orb will rest on) up 900mm (the length of the mini orb) and mark it. Then sit a piece of your Dado railing so that the lip is over hanging where the mini orb will be. (our overhang was about 30mm) so the measurement in our case was 870mm BUT! we wanted to mitre the bottom corner, so we needed to measure from the bottom of the existing piece of picture framing, (top of the skirting) to the 870mm mark and that is how long we needed our side piece, then mitre the bottom corner to fit the existing one. (check the orientation of your mitre, you really need to think about it)
Once measured (and checked twice) cut, liquid nail, pilot drill, and nail into place
ok, as you can see, we had a power point to go around. Wasn't that fun? Quite a few curse words had, but we sorted it in the end.
first, we sat the mini orb into the lip of the bottom picture frame, and put it next to the power outlet and marked where the top and bottom were,
then we sat the mini orb on top of the power outlet, with it tucked under the lip of the side picture frame to see which corrugation the power outlet started at, and finished at. we marked that too, then followed them up to the first marks and drew an outline. We took the cover off the power outlet and put it over our marks to make sure it was the same size.
Be careful with the next step, as the cut tin is very sharp.
Drill a large hole in the middle of the bit you want to cut out, then nibble it away with some tin snips. At this point, swear as often as you like! (unless small children are present) Keep checking, by putting the power outlet cover into the hole. You want a snug fit.
Once that is done, you can replace the cover on the outlet and slot the tin into place. You should find that the tin extends above the side picture frame, for us by 30mm
Photo two shows the finished corner and power outlet
This message was edited Aug 31, 2013 9:45 PM
Adding your mini orb panels.
Use a clout (a nail with a wide head) at the top to secure. Make sure it is inserted above the point where your dado rail will cover it. Use as many as you like along the top edge. Check that the bottom of the mini orb is sitting within the lip of the bottom picture frame. You can also put a clout in the bottom left corner (it isn't obviously visible) and the bottom right corner, which will be covered by the next sheet. Start from the left and add sheets to the right.
Now a mistake we made was putting the sheets in willy nilly. Put the original edge at the bottom, and the cut edge at the top, as the original edge should be square! Make sure you have the edge of the corrugation curving toward the wall.
Overlap the next panel by at least two corrugations and remember where the first clout was nailed, so nail the next sheet through a diifferent corrugation. It could be usefull to check the right had edge of each sheet with a level, as sometimes it can get out of plumb, and the sheets will be crooked when you get to the end. You will find you can't nail the bottom left of each added sheet as it will be visible. We found it didn't seem to matter though, and left them un-nailed
ok, now you will need to add any extra length you need, and your right side timber. We decided to use an offcut of the dado rail, (a) because we didn't have enough of the picture frame and (b) because the cut end of the dado rail had a gap where the router cut out the overhang. So......we mitred it! Arggghhhhh!
Obviously we had to sit (not glue or nail) the dado rail ontop of what we had done so far, also had to add an extra piece for length, so made sure the join was behind the fire place. The top Mitre was cut, but only after we measured once, twice, even three times! We then mitred an 'over long' offcut of dado rail and butted it up to the top dado rail, on the right edge, then measured, measured again and marked where it touched the top edge of the skirting board, now cut it! Also mark where the right hand side Dado rail extends left, along the skirting, (then set it aside) because this is where your bottom picture frame will need to end, so you can measure the bottom picture frame now, and AGAIN, then cut it. Liquid nail it, drill the pilot holes and nail it into place.
remove your top dado rail and continue to add your sheets of tin until the end. Hopefully yours will be square, but if not, you may have to remove clouts and stretch, or ease top or bottom to get it square the end. You will need to finish the tin sheet short of the end, to allow for your right hand timber (for us, We needed about 25mm) you can cut the tin by scoring a line with a screwdriver, down the length of the corrugation, maybe rescoring a few times, and then bend it back and forth untill it breaks off. Use clouts to keep it in place.
Now you can put your side piece of timber into place, sit your dado rail on top again and check that it all fits. Take the top Dado rail off again.
Liquid nail your side timber, adhere to the edge, drill the pilot holes and nail it.
Liquid nail your top Dado rail, sit it in place, liquid nail and add any extra length and also sit in place, using liquid nails on the join and mitre. Tap along the wall to find the studs and nail the Dado railinto place with panel pins.
Wah-lah! a corrugated wall
This job really needs two people to make it easy.....ish! depending on the two people! heh heh.
You will need a day for the varnish/paint and a day to complete a wall of this size, with breaks for lunch and sanity!
photo one shows the join in the top Dado rail
Photo two shows the right hand side, using Dado to Dado rail and mitres.
Photo three. The finished wall
I hope this might help anyone attempting this kind of thing.
Please don't hesitate to ask for tips, and if I can, I will help.
Sue
This message was edited Aug 31, 2013 9:49 PM
Hi everyone – Here we are at the end of yet another month and getting closer to the silly season once again. Happy Fathers Day to any of our Fathers, (even the lurkers) and I hope you all have an enjoyable day.
Just so no one gets confused, my comments for today start about the posts on the August thread and continue into this new September one.
Tash – It's a bit unusual to hear you have a bit of “free time”, where's the “billy lids”? (Cody - this is “Strine” for kids). Anyway what ever the reason, it's always good to hear from you; or anyone else for that matter.
It's very true what you say about some of the growers with the largest collections being more reluctant to donate plants than those with just a few plants. Like your Dad, my Dad always had a saying also and that was; “Them that's got it will always have it as they never give any away” in his case he meant money and not brom's though. Personally I've always enjoyed giving, more than receiving, and I think even donating a bit of spare time to a voluntary group makes you feel pretty good to know you are helping someone. Unlike the miserable thieving bas..rd who pinched a large brom out of my front garden the other night. If only they had said they liked it I would have willingly given them a spare pup, but no; they had to take the lot didn't they, and trampled on three others to get to it.
I've never done any good with the Ae. Chantinii types (with the exception of Echidna) as I always lose them to the cold weather. However I've always been told to grow them in bright light right up under the shade-cloth roof. Now from what you say, this might be where I'm going wrong because now that I think more about it, that's exposing them more to the cold as well as the light isn't it? Maybe if I grow them in a more shady and protected spot they might grow for me. That might be why Jean can grow them where she is, and that's much colder than my area. So maybe just one more try following your growing tip Tash. Do you happen to know what amount of light they grow in when they are in habitat? Maybe I should have found this out first instead of just rushing in.
On the topic of pups; how big are they when you remove them from the Mother plant Tash? I know the “Golden Rule” was always wait until they are one third the size of the Mother before removing them, but the longer I grow brom's for and the more pups I take, I find they make into much better plants (and quicker) if I leave them until they are about three quarters the size of the Mother and have roots of their own. This also follows advice from an old friend of mine, who is an I international judge with fifty years experience both here and in Europe and she says the reason for a lot of plants being smaller in size now than they once were, is because people get greedy and take pups off while they are too small so they can get many more pups.
She says it's better to get two decent pups than eight or so “stunted” ones, because with these (stunted ones) it will take about three generations and sometimes more before the plant eventually gets back to the correct size of the original plant. Of course you can pump the fertiliser into them but then as you say, you run the risk of lanky plants with thin droopy leaves. I don't know if what I've just said has anything to do with why you and your friend have found the second generation smaller than the first, but I think it's something worth considering, and it's easy to trial.
Tash, I never had you tagged as a “Scaredy Cat”, and frightened of a poor old Huntsman as well. They are just coming inside to warn you of impending rain and won't hurt you anyway. If you try and catch one it might give you a bit of a bite but it's not very venomous. If you want to get it out of the house, just get a millet broom and put it near the spider and it will crawl onto the millet, carry it outside and put it and the broom in the garden. If it continues to crawl over the millet end and up the handle, just wait until it's about three quarters of the way up the handle, and then just grab the other end of the broom so the spider is then crawling away from you. “Easy Peasy”.
You really cracked me up with your story about the Huntsman in the shower; Gee I wish I'd been another spider on the wall to witness your run through the house in the raw and all wet from the shower, slipping and sliding as you ran. You should have been on “Funniest Home Videos” I'll bet you would have had everyone rolling on the floor laughing.
I remember once seeing what looked like the fattest Huntsman I have ever seen on our lounge room ceiling cornice one night; but when I looked more closely it was a female carrying its egg sack beneath its body. Anyway I never thought any more about it as they usually go out on their own accord eventually without me having to evict them. When I got up the next morning there was the Mother Huntsman (much smaller in size) and surrounded by a hundred or so tiny huntsmen spiders, they seemed to be everywhere. When I came home from work that afternoon they had all vanished; I don't know where they went but had my suspicions were “someone”???? might have sprayed and killed them, anyway they were gone and so was the Mother.
I read (part 1) of an article about one of the N.Z. Growers “stabbing” a large Vriesea but he didn't use a screw driver, he did it with a length of thin hollow steel tubing which removed a core of tissue completely from the plant and left a clean hole right through just like it had been drilled out. There was to have been a part 2 follow up but either it wasn't written or I missed it so I don't know how successful this method was.
They say a picture paints a thousand words and your pic's of “screw drivering” a plant does just that, so thanks and well done Tash.
Sue – At last we get to see some of your pic's. What was the problem?
That Neo.'Pinstripe' is certainly a beautiful radial red; nice uniform colour and shape to boot; and as for Neo.'Princess Di', that's always a nice plant; I've seen it grown in good light, poor light and in between and it's still always very easy on the eyes. That Pic.4 is a nice garden shot and I really like the little Neo's in the trough; are they Fireballs?
I love your pic of the Python; you should re-write what's come to be called the “Don Burke Song” (Give me a Home Among the Gum Trees). You could change the words to “Give me a home among the brom plants; a rat or two and a bull frog too”. (That's the first line and I'll let you do the rest)
Sue, that's a fantastic job you and Bill have done with the Lysaght's Mini Orb, and the wooden dado mould really gives it a professional finish to set it all off. I'll bet back in the 1920's when the John Lysaght works first started rolling this product they never envisaged it being used for something like this; but then you and Bill weren't around then either were you?
That's a really good DIY explanatory set of instructions and pic's for the job you did and I'm sure if anyone wants to do a similar job, you will have saved them a lot of hassles and swearing; well done the pair of you.
Cody – Good to see you still looking in, areyaavenagoodweeken?
Sorry no pic's today as I haven't had time to take any but I'll take lots at our show next weekend to share with you all.
All the best, Nev.
