Day 841: Turning 10,000

The Suburbiton Project turned 10,000 yesterday! Thank you to all my loyal followers for tuning into insightful posts on interesting topics such as paint drying, cement pouring and filling up a skip. With exciting and topical subjects like these, I'm actually surprised the number is only 10,000.

And yes, I know the number sounds impressive until you compare it against:

• Google - 6,572,041 hits per day
• YouTube - 6,035,153 hits per day
• Facebook - 4,480,024 hits per day
• WaitButWhy - 50,000 hits per day (a blog on procrastination, imagine if people actually got around to visiting this site)

It still may be a couple of years before we're able to displace these sites, but I don't think it's out of reach. However, it's great to see how a site we created 2 years ago to document our adventures in refurbishing an old house has progressed.

What's been most inspiring has been comments from people that randomly came across the site on the Internet. I've apparently inspired a few people to tear apart their houses and gardens (and hopefully put them back together again).

For those interested, I've pasted some of key site statistics below:

Canada just edges the UK in this regard (thanks Joan!). 

So apparently, pouring concrete is the 3rd most popular topic in home renovation - who knew?

The house is nowhere near finished so lots more exciting topics to come in the year ahead. But in the meantime, thanks for supporting us and helping us achieve this truly monumental milestone.

Day 831: The monster in the attic

Once, a long, long time ago .. before many of us would ever remember, a deep, dark secret was

hidden away never to see daylight ever again .. or so it was thought, until this weekend when Scott battled The Monster in the Attic

This beast was as ghastly as you would imagine, large, scary, hideously deformed .. it was a challenge unlike any other that I had ever faced.

The monster that I'm referring to is the old galvanised steel water tank in the loft. My guess is that it's been residing in it's current home for over 50 years. For those unfamiliar with Victorian (i.e. antique) plumbing, this was installed to provide water pressure (head) back in the day. The tank would be filled by the mains until it reached the top and gravity would provide pressure for showers and toilets. The water wasn't drinkable, so the kitchen had a mains feed. For those wanting to learn more, click here (vented system).

Like the lead pipes, wood paneling or psychedelic wallpaper, this was part of the "original charm" of the house that we chose not to keep. Before we moved in, Tom disconnected this water box and hooked up everything to the mains pressure. The shower is much stronger and even the water in our toilet is drinkable (theoretically).

But the monster still remained ... just waiting for it's moment. Being massive and well over 30kg, this makes sense.

So why tackle the sleeping beast. Bascially, it would have had to go at some point. I'd like to use the loft for extra storage and this monster was guarding the way to the main loft area (and of course because it makes for a good story).

So how do you get something this massive and heavy out of a loft hatch? The Interweb has many answers and many of these were shot down. Some propose chopping it to bits with an angle grinder, but this gives off sparks and becomes a fire hazard. Some mention chopping it up with a jigsaw, but this apparently is noisy, slow and goes through multiple blades. A reciprocating, multi-saw would have worked, but I don't have one. So my plan was to tackle this beast whole hog.

Clearly this was no easy task so lots of planning was involved. My weapon of choice was a pulley system. This was good for 180kg, so enough for even the gnarliest of beasts. But how to mount it? I opted to mount a hook from the roof joists. But having no idea what the vertical strength of these joists are, and the fact that none spanned over the centre of the loft hatch, I ran a couple of 2x4's across the span and shot in lots of 4" screws to fasten them together and to the joists.

Next I purchased a heavy duty hook to which I'd mount the pulley system. All this under the watchful eye of the monster - it didn't seem the slightest bit concerned. Was there something that I was missing?

So that was enough for a day, and because I was also busy pouring cement (see previous blog post)

The next weekend, I built up the courage to once again face the attic monster. First was to move it from it's home for the past 50 years. I had to slide it over the loft opening, so I cut 3 - 2x4's to cover the span, screwed them down and just slid it across.

Then, and only then, did the true magnitude of the battle I was about to face truly show itself. What I had guessed was a square tank was actually a rectangular tank - 80cm wide vs the 60cm I had been expecting. This was a problem because the loft hatch is also just over 80cm wide. And to top that, there were still pipe fixings and valves sticking out of the sides. Out came the hacksaw and the first battle began.

It took a couple of hours of intense fighting before  it was clear that I was going to win this fight. The monster was injured but far from beaten.

Next came the real scary part, trying to hoist this thing down with the pulley system.

I drilled out six holes in the frame to run some rope through. I took some high strength nylon rope and tied it in a double figure 8 pattern with knots at the ends. According to many websites (like here), this is the strongest way to tie 2 pieces of rope together. I wasn't going to take any chances.

Everything should hold now .. all spec'd for >150kg. But there is always that niggling concern in the back of the mind. Well time to test it out. Monster, it's just you and me.

It was actually easier than I had expected. Whew. The monster gave a few fighting kicks here and there - like almost not getting out of the hatch - but it was clear that it had met its match.

Once it was out of the loft, it lost some of its fierceness. I was able to navigate it down the stairs and using a hand truck, out the front door to it's new home in the bottom of the garden. I've heard that these things are worth something for scrap metal, so it may end up out front next. Let's see.

Either way, the monster is no longer gaurding the entrance to the loft and terrorising the house. Over subsequent blogs, you'll see me put in some loft lights and board over the loft joists to turn this into usable storage space. But that's another story.

In hindsight, this was probably a bit pointless, a bit dangerous and I should have left it in situ. For those ever tackling this kind of task, I'd assume that this should always be the first choice. Leave sleeping beasts where they lie. But if you feel the need to attack one, choose your weapons wisely. I'd go with the reciprocating saw as my first choice, the pulley system as a backup if all else fails.

But there you go, the end to this chapter in the scary story. And yes, it had a happy ending.

Day 827: Plugging a gap

The front room was starting to look half decent. The only problem was the gap in the middle of it. Cold air was getting in and it looked pretty unsightly. We needed to find something to fill the space.

Luckily the guys at Galleon Fireplaces had the perfect solution. Plug the gap with a new log burning stove. We went with a 5kw version made by Capital Fireplaces - mostly because anything bigger and we'd be able to start drying clay pottery in there. Nope, it was just the aesthetics of having something intentionally burning in the room and maybe a little extra coziness on winter nights.

We knew the chimney worked as there was a gas stove in there when we first moved in. We had the chimney swept and inspected first before confirming this particular job - required by code.

Also, the chimney needed to be lined so that the fire is what's putting the grin on our face - not the carbon monoxide leaking out into the house. The guys spent a lot more time than expected running the pipe down the chimney. I did confirm with them that this was both approved for woodstoves and convenient passage of jolly old men. They also needed to put a new cap on top of the chimney suitable for wood burners. And of course, it being London and us needing to do work outside, it rained ....

Next once the liner was installed, next came the register plate which is just the metal bit that goes on the top and connects in with the pipe.

The guys also worked on the hearth which is honed black granite. Black granite was chosen vs slate or limestone as it was the hardest wearing material and avoided scuffs and scratches well. With a fire and a couple of kids, felt this was a good option to go with. Also, all my hard work on getting the floor level (see here) was probably a but unnecessary - they put down new mortar under the hearth and re-leveled the entire thing. Well hopefully my work made this a little bit easier - or at least an entertaining blog entry :) 

Nice of them to put down covering so as not to wreck our "lovely" floor. They were super considerate, although in this case, anything they did to the floor would likely improve its current state.

Next came all the pretty stuff, namely the limestone surround. I think this may have been the first time that Care and I have agreed on something completely without the need for 10,000 samples first. Progress maybe? No, unfortunately the 10,000 flooring samples sitting in the room would suggest otherwise.

And that was the end of Day 1. They were doing a great job so I wasn't going to rush them. 

So Day 2, I was back at work so Care had to double as photographer. It took them a few more hours to install the rest of the surround, wood burner, insert and calking/finishing. It seemed a bit comical that we covered the original rustic bricks with faux "rustic" bricks but that is apparently what you do. Don't ask.

And there you go, the guys from Galleon standing proudly by their work. Nice job!

And the stove in action with a nice oak log. I learned by trial and error that logs are both heavy to carry home from the store and $&£@!!!! difficult to get burning. My recommendation is going for a softer wood like ash, unless you have a massive incinerator wood stove.

Now that the stove is installed, we can finish off the flooring - after of course deciding which of the 10,000 shades of wood we prefer. Arrgh!

Well at least the unsightly gap in the wall is now plugged with something a bit more pleasant to the eye (and warm on the toes),

Always good to have some before / after pictures to show progress. Technically this is a during / during picture, but you get the idea. Whenever we finish, we'll do a proper before/during/after comparison - but that is still a long, long way away.

Day 823: Pour some concrete on me

This fireplace 'aint fit, Scott, c'mon get on it
Lookin' busted up just like it was blitzed 
Lookin' like a mess, like a dog's breakfast
Demolitions done man, time to invest

Razzle 'n' a dazzle 'n' a flash a little light
Put it back together, Scott, make it right
Sometime, anytime, make it nice and neat
This little fireplace needs some concrete

So c'mon, take a bag, open it up
Add some water, mix it up

Pour some concrete on it
Ooh, 'cause it's way too rough
Pour some concrete on it
C'mon, get it level and stuff
Pour your concrete on it
Just can't get enough...

We're getting a wood-burning stove installed. Mostly for aesthetics but it will add a bit of warmth to the house too. Everything is ready to go. Chimney is swept and inspected and all good. The only thing remaining is the lousy base. It's rough and crumbling and probably not a good starting place to rest the stove hearth on. So on comes the concrete.

Now the question is, how much (in kg) would you guess this requires?

The first step is to add some SBR to make the cement stick to the substrate and not have all the moisture sucked away before it dries. I'm sure this is factually incorrect - but it seems that you use PVA for plaster and SBR for cement for roughly the same reasons. 

Then on went the cement. This is the ScrewFix "No Nonsense" brand which I've had luck with on other products so worth a try. 

It went on fine, just not as much coverage as I expected. I ended up putting 15 kg of the stuff on and still had a lot of filling to go. As the result was also not as flat as I'd expected it to be, I thought I'd give floor leveller a try. This is the U-Can brand from B&Q. Floor leveller goes on like a thick custard and uses gravity to flatten and make it level.

Rather than provide you with a lousy how-to, please check out the video here. So inspired by the hairdresser, off I went to level the recess. Yes U-Can!

And there you go, a level floor. I should mention that the first time I poured, I discovered that there wasn't a good seal in one of the corners and the custard like mixture leaked away on one side. The first result was actually less level then when I started. The second attempt worked as expected however.

So total pouring to get this thing filled

15 kg of concrete

15 kg of leveller

30kg. 

No wonder my back hurts. But at least this thing is proper solid now. On with the stove which, as I type, is getting installed .. stay tuned.

Day 786: A re-launch and an apology

As 2017 rolls to an end, it's time to reflect. Reflect on all the great things done in the year and all the things not done .. such as updating this blog!

I haven't been sitting idle, I just haven't been blogging (almost as bad). So over the holiday, I've got things back on track and caught the blog up on all the happenings of H2 2017. I've turned off the Facebook updates while I've been doing this to keep from spamming everyone's feeds. It's back on now so you'll once again see links to the best DIY-on-a-Victorian-semi-in-Subirbiton website on the Internet (at least I hope so, if not let me know who is stealing my thunder)

But please read through some of the old posts. My work is like a fine wine .. my recollection of the activity gets better the longer it ages.

So my new year's resolution is to blog more, get my readers back and keep things interesting. This year, I may even try posting some videos.

I've also been told by the site management that my project delivery has been very unprofessional - late, not well communicated etc. If Care was paying me, I'd have been sacked a long time ago.

To step up the professionalism of the work, I've created a project plan. Somewhere on the links to the right, you should see a link to a Gantt chart showing what we've got planned and how we (erm .. I) are doing against the plan. Few things in life are certain, but one thing that I can guarantee is that in 365 days from now, nothing will have gone to plan.

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.