Day 781: The show's over ....

When we were stripping wallpaper, we took down the curtains .. and never put them back up. While I'm sure it was entertaining for our neighbours and the local cat (Suki, see below), it was about time to get some privacy back.

We elected to go with plantation blinds as they are well .. just pretty cool. Instead of paying a fortune on one of the full service places like Hillary's, we went with one of the online retailers The Shutter Store . I'm convinced that all the shutters sold in the UK are made in the exact same factory in China - so the extra cost (like double) didn't seem justified. Online shutters are bit more DIY as you have to take measurements yourself. But given the theme of this blog, my readers would be disappointed if I did anything less!

I was impressed with the website and guidance notes. You'd have to be pretty thick to mess things up. Basically, you build some cardboard or paper templates. Measure out all the distances and plug them into the online tool. You can select pretty much everything imaginable - colour, opening direction, split, hidden bar, hardware colour, wood type. The only drawback is that when it's ordered, tens of thousands of Chinese workers get busy on them and there's no going back.

We went with a split cafe style look with a total of 24 panels in white hardwood. MDF would have been about 35% cheaper but it's heavier and I wasn't too keen on putting too much weight on the PVC windows.

The drawback was that the shutters were to take 8-10 weeks to get built and shipped so we ordered in late Oct to get for XMas. So all I could do is prepare the rest of the window. That involved sanding, priming and painting the window sill. I took the radiator off to make it a bit easier.  

So fast forward 12 weeks and the boxes arrived, and arrived and arrived - 11 boxes in total. They missed the promised pre-XMas delivery so I had to wait until after Santa left to get started. That was fine with me as 1) they apologised profusely and refunded my shipping fees and 2) I was deathly ill with the nasty flu going around here over XMas so this was the last thing on my mind.

Oh and the light sabre was a Christmas gift in case you're wondering....

Now comes the fun part .. blatant use of power tools. In this case, say hello to my new router. Totally unnecessary Black Friday purchase but useful nonetheless. Because we had PVC sash windows and I didn't trust their support properties for the shutters, I decided to build a frame to screw the shutters into. I had to take this into account when ordering the shutters so they wouldn't stick out too far.

I was going to order 15mm thick strips of softwood from the building shop until I realised that nobody stocked 15mm strips of softwood. No matter, I had some unused square edge flooring that was just taking up space. I cut this into strips of the desired thickness and then proceeded to route away. 

To manage the architrave around the window, I shaved off a groove on the back of each strip. Then is contoured these to fit snug against a PVC window baton. Was this necessary, no. But was it fun, YES!!!

With the batons all cut and routed, I proceeded to paint them with a wood primer. Once they were dry, I measured these to the inside window frame size and mitred the corners to fit together.

And for those in Canada experiencing temperatures of minus ridiculous, it was about 8 degrees and sunny on Boxing Day :)

The wood frame was fixed to the window frame with a combination of GripFill and screws. It should hopefully be plenty strong now. 

The first frame fastened and held tight with a clamp while the GripFill set. Notice the Christmas tree in the background. This is not recommended for those installing shutters in their hopes - gets in the way - but safer to keep in place than explain to a little kid coming down from a candy induced sugar rush that the tree has to come down early this year. I'm not brave enough to attempt that one.

The full frame now mounted .. on to the shutters.

Putting the actual shutters on couldn't have been easier. Even in my weakened post-flu state, it was a piece of cake. The only challenge was trying to figure what was what across 11 boxes. And all the blasted packaging!

I assembled the provided frame on the ground and fastened it to my new DIY frame on the window.

To mount the actual shutters, all I needed to do was align the hinges and drop in a pin. Simples.

And there you have it. Blinds are up and looking great. The show is over, but at least the neighbours have something nice to look at now.

Day 746: Crossing off the to do list

You may be wondering why we're back in the bathroom this week. The reason, unfortunately, is that we never finished the work. Got distracted with demolishing a kitchen and never had the time and/or motivation to get back to the original job. 

So a year on and the bathroom was still not painted. We kind of got used to the pink colour of plaster. But after painting the downstairs lounge, I was finally inspired to paint the bathroom. The good news is that it's a tiny room, the bad news also is that it's a tiny room. One with furniture that's difficult to move around. 

This took a bunch of drop cloths and skill (had to say that) to get done. 

First job was to finish up some of the plaster imperfections. In hindsight, we should have plastered long before finishing off the tiles. It made it a bit tougher for Jim and some of the joints between tile and wall weren't perfect - and so they needed a little touchup before painting. This involved some fine plaster patch compound a lots of sanding (cough .. dust). We also gave the rest of the walls a light sand to make sure the new primer would stick.

After that was finished, it was on to the actual painting. First drop cloths were laid down across anything that couldn't be moved. And yes, people had to "hold it" or face my wrath. 

The first coat was the No Nonsense new plaster paint. I'm a big fan of this paint as it goes on nice and thick and coats/adheres fantastically well. I'll keep using it as long as there is bare plaster to paint in the house.

A couple coats of this and things were already starting to look good. The big concern I had was people steaming up the room while the paint was still drying. Because of this, I had to time the painting with everything else going on in the house. And people had to not shower for a day. I'm glad that the girls aren't teenagers yet - this part could have been devastating!

The next weekend was time for the big show, the final coat! We spent the week again deciding on paint colours (yeah). But like the menu at a good restaurant, there thankfully weren't many options to choose from in the specialised bathroom paint category. Unlike the menu at a good restaurant, some of the options would have left a pretty bad aftertaste. Who picks these colours?

So again going with Dulux, we really had to choose between 2 colours (white and white). We went with white. The colour was Rock Salt and in this case, matt isn't an option. Sheen it is.    

The results were really good. Better than expected. Anyone not following this blog would have had no idea what the original starting place was or that the back wall was moved 12 inches. The room is still not 100% finished (trimwork etc.) but it's been move a long way forward now that it's painted. Glad to finally get this off my to-do list, back to the rest of the house now.

Day 712: Little people and little trees

So those little cutouts in the driveway still needed to be filled with some plants. I use the term broadly as neither of us have any clue about green things growing in the ground. I checked the interweb but unlike the wide variety of entertaining and helpful DIY videos, this is a slightly underserved market to say the least. Most of the presenters in the video are 1) have about 50 years of experience in the subject and assume so do their viewers and 2) only seem to understand the on/off and upload features of their cameras. or maybe they've just managed to fit the video in between lawn bowling and bridge. A perfect example is here (17k hits, wow!)

Realising that we were a bit lost, we took a family to the local garden centre to get some help from people that knew what they were talking about. After looking at several plants that all started to look the same, we landed on Lingustrum Ovalifolium (aka Privet Hedge). The selling point was that we could plant and forget. It basically live anywhere that has oxygen, and pretty much does it's own thing. It doesn't drop leaves, doesn't need fed, doesn't need much if any pruning. Yes, it's the perfect plant.

I planted these one evening after a day out. It was getting late and I was busy digging and planting so hence no pictures; but don't worry, they wouldn't have been too exciting anyway :( 

After, we needed to put on what is called "mulch". I thought this was the clumps that came out the back of the lawnmower but apparently this is anything that goes on top of your flowerbed to keep out the weeds but let the water through.

We went with a large black slate mulch to cover over the dirt. We got a couple of 10kg bags worth of the stuff.I figured the large pieces wouldn't get blown around the driveway and pathway as much.  

This was an Ash and Care job. Ash was super helpful here, making sure the little rocks were all nicely distributed in the flower boxes. 

  

And yes, the tree is taller than Ash. But I I wasn't going to mention that at the time - she did have large rocks in her hands! 

And there you go, our venture into gardening - amazing to have a post not involving power tools or paint. We're far from experts, but the plants look to still be alive so maybe that's a good start. However, I don't think I'll be posting planting videos on YouTube any time soon.

Day 712: Not another blog about paint .....

I thought there was nothing worse than picking tiles. I was wrong.

Paint comes in even more colours and then there is the decision of matt vs satin. BTW, to save you the reading, always go with the matt.

So the front room went from plaster pink to white .. very white .. blinding when the sun comes up in the morning white. And since we didn't put back up the curtains, sunglasses are definitely needed in the morning in our lounge.

So, for the walls I had the view of some nice neutral medium grey. Care thought we'd keep it all white. And we ended up finding every shade in between to help our discussion. Also, most people who've had the dreadful experience of painting will realise that even white isn't white - paint companies have even found a way to make that difficult. Dulux has from I could find about 15 shades of "white". So in came sample, after sample after sample. This and the fun experience of saying "hmm, that white isn't quite the white I had in mind". Argh!

So since life is full of compromises, so was our colour selection. We went with white cotton for the ceiling and polished pebble (Caitlin's choice) for the walls. It was lighter than I had in mind, but at least it wasn't white. 

You'll see on the tin that the White Cotton was a silk finish. Some websites say that silk is better in a lounge as it's brighter and easier to clean. Yes, I know it's the ceiling but you don't know the capabilities of my kids to make a mess. 

Anyway, I got the paint from homebase on a 3 for 2. Good thing as the silk looked horrible. Reflected the pendant light in some funny way and showed off every single imperfection in the ceiling.

Silk was replaced with a matt finish in the same colour. So the ceiling ended up getting 4 coats of paint in the end. Oh, how my neck really hurt after looking up for so long. At least I know we've got a good coverage.

I didn't want to make the same mistake on the walls. Instead of getting just the basic matt that doesn't clean all to well, we went with the Dulux EasyCare version. This is good for muddy, shaggy dogs and kids - apparently comparable in mess potential. After it's dry, the EasyCare is wipeable with a damp cloth without messing up the finish.

So on went on the final coats of paint. Cutting in from the edges to make sure the edges are crisp, and then roller painting the rest. I'm not sure why they don't recommend using masking tape to get a clean paint edge vs cutting in. But most YouTube clips recommend the former method. It's more time consuming and takes a bit of practice but works when you get the hang of it. 

So after all the deliberation, we were happy with the colour scheme. The Polished Pebble looked really nice - good choice Caitlin!

Day 693: $£##8@!!!!!! Trim

You'll have to excuse the profanity, but believe me, there was much of that going on during the subject of this post.

After the walls were painted a bright white, the old cornice was looking a little worse for wear. The horribly nicotine stained paint wasn't overly visible against the horrible wallpaper but now it stuck out like a City banker at a Labour party convention.

Before I could tackle the paint, first I needed to patch up all the cracks - of which there were many.

I tried the Screw Fix plaster filler which came highly recommended and some standard Polyfilla.

We really wanted to keep the original plaster cornicing to retain some of the original charm of the room. But it definitely needed some TLC. This is what I had to contend with .. times about 10.

The cracks first needed to be expanded. This may sound a bit strange but I had to take a stanley knife to the cracks to expand them even further. This then allows the plaster crack filler enough space to get into the crack and also something to bond to. 

I'm not joking about having about 10 of these to get through.

The Screw Fix stuff really worked a charm. Goes into the calking gun so it's easy to apply and is completely sandable and paintable. The only gripe is that it does shrink - even though it says it won't. But still I highly recommend it. My only advice is to put a little extra into the crack and leave it proud to be sanded down later.

In the corner, there was a larger gap vs a crack. This was left by the sparkie when he was running the light switch cable. The Polyfilla was a better option here. 

The filling was followed the next day by sanding, and sanding, and sanding. At one point I think I had completely removed my fingerprints. I tried my Tom Saywer trick (see post) but I think Care and the kids were now on to me. Eventually I got there and I had to admit that the results looked good. And no swearing yet.

All I had to do now was put on a little paint and it would be all good.

So I put on a coat of paint. ..

Followed by another coat of paint...

And another ..

And another ... But ..

No matter how much white I put on the trim, the result was always off white. The nicotine kept bleeding through. 

$£##8@!!!!!!

I had to go with the tough stuff .. Zinsser Cover Stain. This stuff is nasty and contains all sorts of laquers etc. But apparently it does the trick on nicotine (and the oil sector needs all the support it can get at the moment)

The stuff smelled up the entire house and I'm sure I shouldn't have been up a ladder when I was applying it. But the hallucinations did keep me entertained for a while :)

In the end, the stuff worked like it said it would. A couple coats of Dulux on top and the trim looked exactly as I hoped ..

Day 683: Whitewashin'

So what do you do with fresh plaster. The answer is nothing. Give it as long to dry as possible. We gave it about 2 weeks before Carolyn insisted on getting her sitting room back. We grabbed a new bucket of ScrewFix's finest new plaster paint. This was the stuff we used on the kitchen and it worked a charm. Below is the rest of the kit - an ever growing stock of poles, trays, liners and brushes. Every time we paint something I feel the need to pick up something new. 

First step was the cut in .. basically painting all the tricky parts with a smaller paint brush before moving on to the roller to move a bit quicker.

Now some people enjoy painting ... they are typically called "artists" but for the rest of us it's not the most interesting of chores. However, in painting the room, I had a bit of a Tom Sawyer moment .. For those that have no idea what I'm talking about, click the link below...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xZm2UOam74

The dialogue went something like .. 

"Daddy what are you doing?"
"Painting"
"Can I do some painting?"
"I don't know, it's very tricky to get right. And I'm very picky with my painting"
"WAAAAAAAAAA!"
"OK, OK, only if you are really careful"
(add a second kid and a wife, with roughly the same dialogue)

And before you knew it, I had a small army painting the room white.

And the pink room was now a white room. With a lovely brownish trim across the top.. But that is the subject of a future post.

Day 677: The pink room

Long time, no post. Before you think that we've been neglecting our DIY obligations, let me tell you that things on the Surbubiton project have been progressing. Things on suburbitonproject.blogspot.co.uk have however been neglected. I think our blogger should get the sack ...

So onto .. er .. um .. September....

We just returned from holiday in Canada to a freshly plastered lounge.. The walls were pink and smooth and much, much less cracky. There were apparently some drama moments with the plastering, but that's another story.

The plaster was still a bit wet in some areas, so we'll need to leave it be for a bit longer to dry. I did however need to clear out all the plaster from the light and power sockets in order to get things plugged back in. A little TLC with a Stanley knife and this was quickly sorted.

The challenge now is how long we can bear having a pink room .. I suspect my stamina is longer than Carolyn's. 

Day 674: The grand re-opening

So our final day on the job. Today was spent putting down the decking boards on our finely crafted, perfectly level and square frame.

And everybody put in a helping hand. The only limitation we had was drills - and later batteries. 

Today's top tip was the use of countersinking screw bits (see below). These rings allow the screw to go flush with the deck - to avoid trip hazards and other RWI's but prevent your super-torque driver from burrying the screw way into the wood causing water pockets and premature rotting of the wood.

After a while, the batteries started expiring (definitely not the workers!). However, Victor kept things moving along with his trusty plug-in drill (who needs batteries?!)

Before it was fit for general use, Montecello Inc management (aka Jen) came to inspect the integrity of our work. 

It passed inspection! (of course) so the workers then tested the load bearing capacity of the corners. 

And voila, a new deck! The pressure treated wood will be left for a year to age before staining/sealing.

The Montecello patio is once again open for business.

And for the record, no adults were harmed (RWI'd) in the making of these posts.

Day 673: Strong foundations

Now that the old deck risk was mitigated, it was time to build a new safer deck in its place. To keep the laborers motivated, the management of Monticello picked up the builders breakfast of champions - Timmys!

Today's task was to build the foundations for the new deck to rest upon and put the supports in place. Safety was the number on priority on the job site as the events of recent days put this all into perspective.

Our architect, Paul Skemer wasn't going to take any risks with this deck. This deck was designed to be strong enough to launch a NASA space shuttle. 

After the workers had finished their glorious breakfast, we got started on the foundations. The blocks were burried in the ground and quite solid. They were designed to carry a 4x4 post. The only issue was that they were far, far, far from being level. The team elected to put the posts in place and run a line level between them to get something more true.

Then we started running 2x8's across the length and width of the porch to create the frame. Of course nothing was perfectly square so this took a lot of moving things around to get right.

With the frame in place and reasonably level and square, we started putting the cross joists in place. These were hung on metal joist supports and spaced to allow the decking boards to be screwed in place. This was where we needed to decide on what lengths of decking boards to use.

A helpful step came in from another Paul in the team - try and avoid cutting boards if possible. Time is money, and cutting takes time. Not to mention the risk of another RWI! On a 20ft span of deck, this meant alternating 12ft and 8ft lengths of boards. All installed with no cutting required. Simples.

And there you go .. a deck frame all completed. Time for a much needed break.