When we first moved into the house, we had an issue with a wee tiny bathroom that just wouldn't do. I took the executive decision to make the bathroom a little bit bigger and the office a little bit smaller (see here). This created a funny "L" shape in the office. No, I'm not going to tell you how I fixed this, but I will tell you how I made the "L" more pronounced and why I did it.
Let's start with "why". 2 things. The first is that I'm a stickler for doors opening into a room. No outties in this house!. I did the bathroom door previously for the same reason (see here). The second reason is that there is a little skinny and pretty much useless closet on the other side of the door. By moving the wall outwards, I can get the door to swing the right way (in) and get a closet that is much less useless (i.e. useful).
Useless closet. Grrr!
But as with most of my projects, there is a catch. More lead pipes!
I've know about this issue for a while, but never got around to addressing it until now. So a little angle grinder action on the brackets and they were down pretty quick. And man these pipes were like they were made of .. well .. lead. Heavy.
All of this activity made an unattractive wall look a little less attractive. I didn't think it was possible.
Luckily, I had some bonding coat plaster left over sitting in the shed. So in no time, the messy wall was a little less messy. I also learned that it's not good to use old plaster. Once the bag has been opened the remaining plaster will set much faster (becoming unworkable) yet take much longer to dry (go figure). For this little job it was OK, but it would have been a nightmare to try and do something larger / more ambitious. Lesson.. use new plaster.
So where to put the wall now. As this wasn't a supporting wall, I had my choice of where to put it. I elected to just move it out about 30cm to give me a nice sized closet on the other side. In order to get my lines right, I went back to my trusty plumb bob and got the lines on both the ceiling and floor. This is probably one of the oldest tools around .. and it works great for this purpose. This was probably the most difficult part of the afternoon - taking a picture while up a ladder and holding a plumb bob - I definitely could have used a helper here.
From basic to higher tech, I used my new Evolution Rage sliding 255mm mitre saw to cut the studs for the wall. This is a mean machine, it just feels solid when you use it. And it makes an aggressive cutting noise.
Notice that I partially screwed in the studs before fixing to make my life a lot easier. That particular timber was going on the ceiling side so it would have been a real #*&$@!!! to try and start screws with one hand and holding it in place with the other.
And the framing is starting to take shape. I elected to build the new wall first before taking down the old one just to provide a little support on the ceiling above and also so that I can shut the door while I'm ripping out plaster walls as these get really messy which I'd prefer to contain toone room max.
After the studs went up, the last bit was plasterboard. Pretty quick to do this.
And there you have it, a new shifted wall (or at least half of one). All of this took an afternoon to complete, so not a particularly difficult or involved job. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, I'll finish the other half.
