Oak Homes Joinery Ltd
Established in 1997
Following an apprenticeship in carpentry and joinery and 14 years working around Britain and Europe I began business as Oak Homes. Our first job was restoring parts of the entrance hall to Portmeirion in North Wales. The bizzare Italian style village built around architectural salvage by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925-1975 which featured as the backdrop to the cult 60’s series ‘The Prisoner’.
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- The entrance to Portmeirion village.
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- Plaster repairs to the ceiling and installtion of new adjustable hanging frame.
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- Lining the hangers up and coating the panels with fibreglass matting and resin.
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- Ling the faces up to match the jigsaw pattern andrepairing the mouldings.
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- Panels hung and adjusted. with new plastered edging created in situ.
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- The finials where reclaimed and where there was further requirement a copy moulding was constructed to make new finials.
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- New alcoves were formed to the entranceway with oak lath.
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- Alcoves plastered and octagonal roofing made good to new doorway.
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- A single ‘green man’ was recovered from the original porch. We copied this and ‘with a few new distortions’ all 8 corners of the octagonal roof/wall junctions now contain one each.
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- New wooden panelling to the porch complete ready for painting.
Further restoration projects around North Wales took us slowly to the borders and Cheshire where the occurence of heavy timber frame buildings is far higher. During this period we were also carrying out work for the prestigious joinery company ‘Stuart Interiors‘ helping construct and fit carved oak panelling/ stairs and entire rooms into various castles and listed buildings around the world. Including the Elizabethan manor at Parnham House which , so recently and unfortunately, burnt to the ground. Work was also carried out for the well known designer ‘Johnny Grey‘ installing his unusual and beautiful ‘unfitted’ kitchens.
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- Oak gable before work commences.
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- Typical state of repair to the main structural sections.
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- Completed collar to principal rafter joint. repaired with air dried oak
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- Scarfed in dry oak to repair a mortice joint.
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- Tie beam repair section. Cut to fit around the remains of the original tie bea which had been hacked away over the years until virtually non-existent.
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- Fully repaired jigsaw that is the new gable.
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- Complete wall repair with sheeps wool and lime render panels.
Our first new heavy timber frame building was designed and constructed on the site of a similar barn in 1999 in Cheshire.
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- Cutting mortices before the advent of the chain morticer!
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- Purlin wedged scarf joinery.
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- A steam rally was on down the road. So we thought that we would put the engines to use.
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- 4 Bays and the walls are up.
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- Rafters and new roof lights in place.
My first workshop was opened in Chideock in Dorset. Due to space restrictions the years here were mainly confined to joinery and ‘on site, timber frame repairs.
After a few years building up the business in the local area and as we began taking on our first apprentices we relocated to an empty barn in Branscombe, East Devon which had the space and potential to construct the larger buildings were aiming at.
From then until the present the workshop has grown and we have constucted many beautiful building as can be seen in the portfolio.
