Day 1088: The results are in

After tallying thousands on top of thousands of votes from our followers across the globe, the results are finally in .... and the winner is (drum roll)

Natural Calico

Basically 1/3 viewers thought this colour would look great. And they were probably right. We kinda liked Lemon Sorbet and went with that one on one of the walls. The colour was great .. it just didn't look good in the kitchen. 

So the result so far is that we didn't do anything really. But I'm leaning more towards the advice of our loyal readers and go with the Calico. 

So thanks everyone for your comments and votes - I think it shows that you know colours better than we do. I'll post when we eventually get around to painting. 

Day 1068: High pressure flooring

Finally it's flooring time. 

Joan and Rene arrive in a couple of weeks so the pressure is now on. 

Normally this is a one weekend job .. except I always like to make things incredibly difficult for myself.

One way of putting flooring down is to put down an overlay and let the weight of the floor hold it in place - called a floating floor. This has the benefit of being easy and relatively quick.

A more comprehensive way to do this is to glue down the floor. Much more messy and takes about 3x as long. However as everything is attached, it's also much more solid. It feels better underfoot as there is no floating involved. 

The first step was to let all the boards acclimatise in the room. This is because wood being a natural product expands and contracts. Better to have this all done before installing the floor so you don't end up with any unpleasant surprises. And I've already had enough of those. The benefit of taking so £$%^!!! long to get everything else done is that the flooring has had plenty of acclimatising time in our house. 

One of the tricky spots was the fireplace. I wanted a single board to wrap around the hearth to keep things neat and tidy and also look relatively square. Being an older house, there wasn't going to be much that was square in the room. But the secret is keeping things square where it is noticeable. The fireplace is a key feature in the room so this one was important. The other key point when planning flooring is to make sure you don't end up with silly cuts .. like a sliver of boards at the end. So lots of measuring and planning before even the first board went down. 

And there goes the first cut. I did this one by hand so that I could make sure there wasn't any oops moments. This could now slot under the hearth which we got installed slightly raised to allow everything to tuck underneath an give a nice finished look.

And the first 3 rows test fitted in place. Notice the stops made out of off-cuts to hold the row in place. 

Next came the adhesive. Special flooring adhesive - in non-Englush.

This was spread using a 5mm v-notched trowel. Nothing on the instructions told me this. I had to call up the place and ask. But £10 and a day later via Amazon - I was ready to go.

Lot's of good instruction videos on YouTube on how to put down flooring adhesive. My favourite was MrDoItYourself - his Englush isn't great, but he actually takes the time to explain the steps involved and good practice. As opposed to most of YouTube done in the usual Bob Villa, "take the wood and the hammer and magically everything fits together in 5 seconds" style. Another good video here although this fits more into the Bob Villa camp.

I managed to get about 6 rows done - 3 at a time - and clamped it all together overnight to dry. I used stops on both sides to hold everything in place. People use painters tape but I think this is a more reliable method. Notice the numbers on the individual floor pieces to make sure everything went back in order and there wasn't any overlapping joints.

Special learning from all this. Using gloves protects the hands pretty well but you lose feel for the glue. This means in my case that I smudged it all over the flooring. The problem with this glue is that it gets everywhere. A splash on the knee pads means it's suddenly all over the floor. Pretty easy to clean before it dries using mineral spirits. Apparently next to impossible when it dries so make sure you get it all off. It is also terribly messy stuff - thick and gooey when it starts off and a solid rubber when it dries. I had this stuck to my hands for several days afterwards. 

Rad pipes present another problem. Usually difficult but when matched with a angled corner, this become even tougher. The key here is to get the angles right first on the piece and then cutting out the hole an then then finally the wedge to put it back - see here for a video on this. 

Next was the final bits which included undercutting the doorway. This of course required me to get a new tool again. The FatMax multi-tool - perfect for the task.

What this involved was getting some off-cuts for both the plywood underlay and the finished flooring and using this to mark the bits that needed to be cut from the doorway. The undercut hides the ends of the boards and allows for the necessary expansion gaps. It gives a nice finished look to the entire install. 

Don't mind the chipped paint. This needed a re-coat anyway.

And the last row. As I mentioned earlier, through planning in advance I didn't need to cut too much off the final row when installing. 

My circular saw with a cutting guide was perfect for this task. A table saw would have been more perfect, but unfortunately I don't have one of these (yet). If any spouses are considering birthday/Xmas presents however ???

Blocks were put in to hold everything in place while it dried. I even used a screwdriver for this task. Hey whatever works right?

I'd show the finished floor but it's covered with all the extra flooring while I do the other rooms.

Anyway, a couple of weekends to do the whole thing and even a weeknight. Which by the way was about 2 days before Joan and Rene arrived. I got it all done in time .. but just. Whew!

Day 1058: This is the way we paint our house

This is the way we paint our house .. slowly, room by room.

Today in Surbiton it was child labour day. There is something about putting coloured paint on a wall that excites kids - we practically had them begging to do some painting before bed tonight. Who am I to turn down voluntary labour?

So after ages and ages, we're finally going to paint the kitchen a colour other than primer. The question is what colour - never an easy task and hopefully this doesn't turn into a long, protracted Brexit-type negotiation like the first tile episode did. Which by the end of it I would have been happy to put lime green and orange paisley tiles on just to end the discussion.

Anyway loyal viewers of this blog, we have a request for you. What is your favourite colour of the paint blotches? We have some preferences ourselves but it would be great to put this out to the world for opinion. 

The samples are below - vote by number on the survey on the right of this page.

Day 1054: Getting walked all over

OK, massive post ahead.

The plumbing was all done. Finally ... And now it was time for the actual floors to go down. Joan and Rene are going to come in about a month's time and Carolyn is getting visibly concerned that there is no floor in the room. Can't understand why.

But contrary to any kind of logic.. to get the floors down, I need to take them all out. This was not because I was looking for more work or even because it makes for good blogging material. No, the reason for this was twofold: 1) I wanted to insulate underneath the floors as the room gets pretty cool in the winter time and this would be my only chance and 2) I noticed a joist in the corner had seen better days and was getting a bit spongy.

So there you go, all the floorboards had to come out. Believe me, this is no easy task, particularly as they were all tonge and groove. So out came the my new addition, a Stanley reciprocating saw to the rescue.  

You'll see that I numbered the boards and put a direction on them to help me put them back in place. I did it on the top as they are going to be covered anyway. If you're doing this and looking to restore the floorboards, just number the bottom instead.

With the boards all out of the way - and a very sore back to show for it - it was finally time to address that rotten joist (quite literally).  You can see in the photo below why there was an issue. This one was exposed to the air brick outside and over the past century has been struggling with a little water getting in. 

In taking that one out, I also noticed the joist against the wall needed to be retired. So that came out too.

The new joists were pressure treated to help with the damp, but I also soaked them in a water sealant to make sure this one will last another 100 years. I'll be long gone by then anyway.

So there you go, a floorboard-less floor. And dirt that hasn't seen the light of day in 120 years. And still no dinosaur fossils, treasure or really anything of note. I should give up on that hunt as I always seem to end up with the same result.

The new shiny (not really) joists in place. I couldn't disconnect the internet as I would have lost my tunes - and a builder cannot work without tunes in my opinion.

Next after all the boards were up and joists were replaced, came the netting to hold the insulation. There is purpose built stuff which is pretty darn expensive for what it is. The stuff I used was garden netting which is pretty, darn cheap. But it still does the trick. I used this and a couple of thousand staples to hold it in place - and, no I'm not exaggerating on the number here believe me. The netting was a PITA still though as it was just difficult to work with but I couldn't seem to find a good way of stretching it out and fastening it. I'm putting this down as just a difficult job. 

Quite the opposite, laying down the insulation was a breeze. Unroll the roll, cut and place. Rinse, wash, repeat. This took no time at all. 

After the boards went down, finally I started on the 9mm hardwood ply. This was mostly to manage any height difference in the floorboards for when I lay down the engineered floor. Why 9mm? Because I like to overbuild things. My thought was mostly that it would allow a countersunk No.4 screw and provide a smoother transition over any unevenness in the floor.

I also picked up another tool for this one ... an impact driver. I'd been eyeing one for a while and used some of my BP voucher points to buy a gift card and pick up this bad boy. Thanks BP!

Drill drivers are fantastic and really worth the purchase for anyone doing a lot of screwing (um, in the building sense). I should have bought one ages ago. They make a hell of a racket, but much less stripped screw heads and torque on the arm. 

Day 1040: All plumbed out ..

With the floorboards finally all lifted up, it was time to tackle the plumbing for the heating system. The catalyst for all this was a very slow leak in the central system, meaning I would have to keep topping it up in the winter to maintain pressure. Livable, but not great. And once the floor is down, it's never coming up again. So best to fix the problem once and for all. 

The big issue was that I had no idea where the leak was. I figured that it had to be on the ground floor as I would have been able to see a drip coming through the ceiling (water stains). Still there is a lot of pipe to cover to try and find it. Also, some was copper and some was replaced with plastic when we redid the radiators. I'm more of a copper man myself.

So, off I went in the search for the drip.

The tools for this one. A new pipe bender (fun), lots of copper pipe and lots of fittings. The reason for the bender was twofold 1) bends are much better for flow of water vs. fittings and 2) if my soldering is not up to scratch, less fittings mean lower chance of failure.   

And after watching endless YouTube clips on how to bend pipe - some way more scientific than they need to be - I had a go at my first bend a 90 degree one. It ended up looking OK. Not to be outdone, I decided to go next for 45 degree offsets (bottom pipe). This also went well.  

Now that I'd done a couple - I was declaring myself the pipe bending master. So that means I would of course try the worlds most complicated bent pipe run. This had to go over a joist, bend 90 degrees, then under a joist and then up the hallway radiator. No probs. Finished product below.  

Next, I wanted to switch out the old valves in the dining room for modern thermostatic ones. A bit strange, that the rad looked fairly new but the valves looked like they came from the first Model T. 

So, I drained the system and isolated the radiator before taking it off the wall. The old valves were 3/4" vs. 15mm for the new ones, so the rad tails also needed to be changed (which is why it took it off the wall).

The pipes underneath looked OK, but there was a massive kink in one of the nuts for the old fitting. I initially through I'd just re-use them but instead had to cut the pipe and olive and reinstall it. I was surprised how that fitting managed to not leak given how bad it was. 

The new valves looked and worked great. And I managed to only get myself a little wet in the process. I'll call that a win. 

Finally for the most complicated of the lot. This was the feed coming into the living room and had the great complication of lots of pipe in very little space. Add to that, as I wanted to keep the rest of the system pressurised while I was working I had basically double the pipe to deal with. 

First step was to run all the copper pipe. Difficult as this was under the joists and tricky to navigate 2m lengths around. 

Once this was in place and cut to size, then came out the fittings. Lots of elbows and T's. You can see how little room I had to navigate here. But basically I took each fitting in turn, starting with the bottom ones and working my way up. The key to a good solder joint is cleanliness, so I took care to clean off each pipe/fitting and applied lots of flux. Happy with the result - an not setting the house on fire in the process. 

Once I was happy with the fittings, it was time to drain the system, connect the last bit and go for the pressure test. And ... NO LEAKS! I was pretty happy with myself at this point and took a well earned beer (or three).

After the system was filled with water, I had to add some inhibitor. This keeps the water getting all gunky and rusting through the rads. Now the challenge was how to get it into the system.  Basically, I was going to buy the ready-made filling system from Amazon - but they ran out of stock. So I took a queue from one of my favourite plumbing sites (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nmCkxjZoPc) and MacGyver'd one myself. So drained the system down a bit, cracked the nut on the radiator and used my Buxton water bottle filled with inhibitor. 

Finally, after spending 45 minutes doing all the plumbing (yeah right) it came down the last step, wrapping the pipe up. This was to keep it efficient and ensure that all the heat in was going to the radiators not heating the void under the floor.

Now with all that nonsense taken care of, it was finally time to get down to the flooring. Joan and Rene are coming in a few weeks and Carolyn seems fairly enthused about looking at all the great fitting joints - might have something to do with the lack of floor in the house. 

Oh and in case you wondered... I did finally find the leak. It was a hidden drain down valve at the front hallway radiator, beneath the floor. I can't say it was the best place for putting one of these. But from visual inspection, you could see the calcium buildup around the threads so it obviously had been the culprit. Leak fixed.

Day 1006: What Lies Beneath

It was destruction time again at the Suburbitonproject. 

As we are going to lay down flooring (eventually) on the ground floor, we needed to make sure everything was sound underneath. In Victorian houses, the floors are usually suspended with joists spanning sleeper walls and floorboards on top. Air bricks are installed in the walls to let the wood floors breath and not get all rotten. In some places there is even space to crawl underneath - but in ours there really isn't - well, not for me anyway. 

So this meant checking everything under the floor was sound and also accelerating all my future projects into a short period of time. The big rush? Joan and Rene are coming in about 6 weeks' time and Carolyn was pretty firm in that they would need a floor to walk on. Demanding client.

So my big list of under floor jobs:

• check joists for any signs of rot
• check for leaks in the plumbing
• look for dinosaur bones
• re-plumb a couple of radiators
• insulate the heating pipes
• find buried treasure
• run network and coax cables
• discover secret passageway
• put insulation under the floor

As you can see, there was a lot to do before our company arrives. Time for some busy weekends.

The first part was getting all the floorboards up. This is a back breaking job in the best of times with square edge boards, however in our case the boards had been replaced sometime over the last century with tongue and groove boards (T&G). These go down easy and make for a solid floor but are a real $@&£!!! to get back up. 

I followed another blog (Restoration Couple) for inspiration. A great site worth following and kind of makes our DIY blog look a bit DIY 😞 .. they are much better on the tech editing (but I think we have the advantage on the humour front)

Anyway, the big difference was the T&G. The tongues had to be cut to get the boards up. I tried a variety of options but landed on the circular saw with the depth set to a minimal level and the reciprocating saw (my new gadget bought for this). I also tried a Dremel with a wood bit but I think this job was too much for it so not recommended. 

The circular saw was the easiest and fastest but it kicked up a tremendous amount of dust. So my recommendation after all of this would be to get a plunge saw (which I didn't have).

You'll see that I numbered the boards. This was so that I could put the jigsaw back together again. Since the boards were being covered up, I used a Sharpie and was OK with writing on the top. If we planned on restoring the boards (which is a lot of work BTW) I would have been a bit more considerate. 

There you can see some of the boards now lifted up and the joists and sleeper walls. And further down .. what lies beneath. In our case, some dirt that hasn't seen the light of day in over 100 years. And still no dinosaur bones ... I think I may need to give up on that dream. 

This was a lot of work to even get to this point. Cut grooves, pry board, curse, pry some more, curse, finally get one end of the board up, curse, pry some more and then finally the board comes out. Then it's getting about 30 nails out for each board. The best way to do this is to turn the board upside down and hammer them out.

I figured by the end of the day, I'd banged and pried out about 600 nails. No wonder by back was hurting. 

And of course, I had to do the same for the hallway. 

But after all this I did find one of the things that I was looking for (besides a dinosaur and hidden treasure) - the reason why our heating system loses pressure once every couple of weeks. In the photo below you can see a drain down valve with some limescale on it. This might have worked OK on the old gravity fed system but was probably a constant drip under the new pressurised system. 

The blue pipe is the polypipe that Tom ran when he replaced the lead water mains coming into the house. And the rubble is leftover building material from sometime in the house's history. Apparently, most builders back in the day (and several today as well) just chuck stuff under the floorboards instead of throwing it into a skip. In all fairness, back in the day there were no white vans or skips to take rubble away. I took some of the bigger pieces up, but didn't want to get too crazy on an area of the house that I hopefully would never see again.

So in the end, a long day of ripping boards up and then having to put them back so we didn't lose any kids under the floor. We almost did lose the neighbourhood cat Suki who decided she wanted to explore. If only I could teach the cat to solder pipes, there might be a use for her.

Carolyn came home and said "what did you do (besides making a mess)?" and for once, I didn't have much to show for it. Ripping up boards, while necessary, is not much fun .. or good blogging material for that matter. My apologies.