Day 302: A door to the loft

I just realised that this poor post had no text and some pretty mediocre photos. So maybe an explanation would help. 

Seeing as we are going to make our little loft extension area a dumping ground for excess stuff (eg XMas ornaments) we needed a better way of accessing the area.

The loft door (the replaced one) was still just a sheet of plywood. I finally decided to take the time and build a proper door. It was amazingly easy - the only complication being that the loft hatch was more of a trapeziod than a rectangle meaning that I 

had to be a bit creative with my cuts.

The first step was to build a frame out of 2x2's using the plywood as a template. Corners were mitred and small braces were put in the corner for support. As I was using leftover 5mm ply, I also needed to put in some braces to have something to screw down to.

Overall, it looked OK and was plenty sturdy for the purpose. As it was raining and generally lousy outside, I didn't spend too much time worrying about insulating, filling or painting. I figured that this could be done sometime later.

May 2018 Update: This door has seen a few changes since this post. I've taken it down and added some insulation and some back panels. I also filled the wood edges and screw holes with filler and coated it with wood primer/undercoat. Eventually, I will put on a coat to colour match the ceiling .. but I need to paint the ceiling first :)

Day 175: Ivory or stone

We're picking a new kitchen and have started the design online. The initial results look pretty good so far. A big improvement from what we presently have in place. Just need to figure out what colour doors to go with ...  ivory or stone.

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Day 174: The other half

Finally getting around to building the other half of the wall I knocked down to expand the bathroom. As handy as it was having some make-shift shelving, it was about time to put it back to a proper wall. That and it probably looks a bit unsightly having sheets of drywall sitting in the hallway.

So in order to put up the drywall, I first had to finish off the wall socket (subject of another post) and move the light switch. Both simple tasks, both took much longer than expected. Anyway, with all the electrical in the right place, it was time for ..... Rockwool.

This is a mineral wool sound deadening material that per code needs to go up in partition walls with bathrooms. It comes in 120 x 60 slabs and just slides into the void and stick through compression. Pretty easy to work with. The only issue that I had was that my studs are 40cm centres so I had to do a bit extra in the way of cutting. 

With the fluffy stuff in place, I finally got the drywall up. Given the sloping ceiling and the great opportunity for measurement error, I also used my bevel. This proved to be a really handy tool. So 2 sheets went up in no time and the wall started looking like a .. well.. wall.

Day 167: Done with tiles

Finally got around to finishing off the tiling in the bathroom this weekend. Basically created a big wall o' tiles on the back wall. Notice the angled cuts going up the sloped wall - and yes, this was about as tricky as it looked. Thank you bevel. Other than that, some edge tiles around the window and near to the door and some trim "dado" tiles on the accent walls. Just needs a bit of grouting and the tiling is done. Thank goodness 

The only things that remain in the bathroom will be to replace the door (to swing inwards) and plastering the walls and ceiling - bringing in a pro for this one - small room, angled walls, sloping ceiling, no thank you!

Day 148: I've been framed

I finally got around to fixing the window - been putting this off since we had the window replaced. When the window guys removed the old window, half of the plaster wall came with it. Nicely tucked away behind some architrave, it needed to be fixed.

 

Rather than plastering around the architrave (an option) we decided to pull off all the plaster, put up some backerboard and tile the wall instead. Given the placement of the shower door wall, the architrave could have only gone around 2/3 edges and wouldn't have looked symmetrical (see picture).

 

So in the spirit of "it going to look worse before it looks better", I took off all the remaining plaster down to the brick wall. And in doing so, I found the old lead over flow pipes. One went up to the loft cistern, the other was just terminated. You can see the picture of the pipes from the outside (not the most attractive feature of the house). After some cutting, hammering, pulling, nudging, swearing ('cause it helps), and more coercing, the pipes finally came out. They left a fairly large hole behind however. Good thing I'm now an expert with spray foam. I applied a much less generous amount this time and the hole was nicely plugged.

 

The wall behind has seen better days. The masonry needed to be smoothed out to fix the backerboard. After adding wood supports, bonding plaster and some chiselling, it was finally ready to go. I applied a coat of SBR diluted 3:1 with water as a bonding agent/moisture guard and fixed the aquapanel with tile adhesive. After this set, I put some frame fixer screws to hold it in place. The final result was mostly flush - the rest I could smooth out with the tiles.

 

In place of the architrave, I decided to use a tiling corner bead. I fixed this to the uPVC window frame using some mitre glue. I suspect that this is really super glue in a more expensive package. But hey, it did the trick and felt like I could do pull-ups on the new bond.

 

Finally, came the tiling. Given the irregular border of the window frame now, this involved some creative tiling. I bought a special Dremel attachment a while back for just this task. It's basically a rough stick that goes on the end; but it just eats away tiles and made my job easy. Recommend this for anyone doing intricate tiling. The overall job looks fantastic if I can say so myself. Really nice boarder around the window now and will show a treat when I get around to the grouting.

 

 

Day 154: Something a-peeling

Today the task was to tackle the wallpaper. It's about 3 layers deep from what I can tell and painted over at least once. What that means is that it's going to be a pain in the @$$ to take off. I am definitely curious what lies beneath - a healthy plaster wall or a crumbly mess?

Today's tools:

• gloves 
• 100mm scraper 
• wallpaper remover 
• a poky, pointy stick 
• some elbow grease 

Although it looks like some medieval torture device, the pointy stick is actually for perforating the wallpaper to allow the wallpaper remove to really soak in. It worked a treat and the task was easier thank planned (although I planned for the worst).

 

The wallpaper remover gets mixed with water (kinda like a dish soap consistency). After about 10 min, it eats away at the wallpaper adhesive and it can be scraped away with a scraper. Recommendation is to invest in a good one to save some effort in getting the paper off the wall. The on that I use has replaceable blades so that it's always sharp.

 

Still, the task took the better part of the afternoon and made quite a mess - see from the pictures. I even had to enlist the work of a couple of smaller helpers to get finished. Good news is that the wall underneath all that paper was in pretty good shape. Now that I've finished with the sockets, I'll get around to doing a skim coat of plaster and it will be ready for paint.

 

 

Day 142: Socket to 'em

Most homeowners have been here before .. the sockets in the room are in the exact spot you don't need them. Probably should have got the electrician to move them when we did the re-wire, but at that point I didn't know where everything was going to go.

So on the other side of the bathroom is the 3rd bedroom - which will soon be the office. Right now it's Scott's tool room/workshop. There are 2 power sockets in the room, but they wouldn't be near where the computer desk is going to go, and I'd also need to run a couple of network cables into the room

Nothing too serious .. except ... the wall that I wanted to move them to was a masonry wall. So in order to have flush sockets, I needed to drill/chisel out the blockwork. The other option woulkd be surface boxes in conduit - but that would have been too easy. The job was actually much easier than expected .. but also a lot dustier. The key here is to make sure you're using a good masonry bit; the one that I had cut through the brick like butter.

I chiselled out the outline for the pattress boxes and a route for the cables under the floorboards. I decided to put the wiring through conduit rather than plastering them into the wall to make my life easier in the future. Wires can be run then after the wall is finished.

Those with a keen eye will notice in the pictures that he plaster is receding slowly away (like Brexit supporters). Reason being is that the plaster was loose on the wall and I decided to take it back further to a point where it was still bonded. I used some hardwall plaster on the bits that I chipped away and will skim the wall after the wallpaper is removed (but that's a different story) .. The little blocks of wood are nailed into the wall and will be used for fixing skirting sometime it the not-so-distant future.