Day 312: The finishing touches

Since getting back from PEI, I've been put back to work on the kitchen. The task was to get the walls and ceiling ready for Jim the plasterer to come by and make it look all pretty. Needeless to say, there was still a lot left to do.

Most of this came in the form of wall smoothing/chiseling/grinding. Old wiring conduits and junction boxes needed to be taken from the wall to make it roughly smooth-ish. This made for some good Kodak moments. The void was covered with some bonding plaster.

Next with the chimney opening. I'd left this closed until the grand unveiling. What could be behind this piece of wood that's covered this spot for the last 40 years? Treasure? News Paper? Or something more sinister? ....

Nope. Only about 4 inches of soot/dust/yuck ... 

Oh well, we'll leave something more intersting for the next DIY Treasure Hunter, but that will be the subject of a future post.

Covering up the opening was a piece of cake. I put some 25mm x 50mm battens across the inside of the opening and cut a piece of plasterboard to shape. Simples.

Next came the lead pipes that were sitting in the wall. These were probably as old as the house. I was tempted to plaster over them. Care wanted them out. Guess who won that argument? 

First, I had to chisel out the plaster from the bottom. Next, I used my trusty angle grinder to cut out the metal retainers and then chopped the pipes from the floor above. Down they came with a thud! About 50lbs of lead are now sitting at the bottom of my garden. 

With the pipes out, I could focus on cleaning up the corner - a bit of plasterboard, a bit of bonding coat and some TLC and voila .. a decent looking corner nook. Which will be totally hidden by a larder cabinet. Time well spent? Well another excuse to use my angle grinder at least.

Caitlin and Ash also decided to get in on the action. Not quite sure what they were doing but it involved screws, screwdrivers, plasterboard and PPE (personal protective equipment) so it must have been important.

So after several months, 6 sheets of plasterboard, over 100kg of bonding plaster, the kitchen is almost ready for the final skimming. 

Sparking one up ..

The last bit of wood paneling - what's behind the door?

A sooty chimney - no surprises

More lead pipe

A chop chop here and a chop chop there

Pipe be gone ...

And it's gone

I think they are helping???

Focus ..

Day 284: All the support a builder could ever ask for

This weekend's task was to get the ceiling up. Rather than unleashing Armageddon and raining down a torrent of lathe and plaster on the floor, the "cleaner" option was to overboard the existing. Apparently this is an age old argument that out dates even the chicken-egg debate (chicken BTW), After extensive consultation with google and diynot, I elected to go the overboarding route. The reasons: 1) less mess, 2) less mess, 3) the joists were already marked and 4) better sound insulation between floors. 

Overboarding essentially involves screwing plasterboard to the floor joists above through the lathe and plaster. Since the joists were marked, this should have been an easy task. I enlisted the help of my 2 assistants: Care and the home made dead-man - essentially a 2x4 cut to the height of the room with some extra bits of week screwed to the ends. Both helpers had their strengths - Care proved more versatile in getting the boards up and held in place. The dead-man complained a lot less.The obvious challenge to this task was gravity. It's hard to hold the board in place and get the first couple of screws in place. Good thing Care was using her head ... literally.

I read that you should use 50mm drywall screws for this task. In reality, it's suggest going 70mm as not all the joists were the same height ... uneven=character I keep telling myself. Also the markings for the joists were more of a guidance than an exact thing as I found out. Regardless, with minimal wingeing and cursing, the first board was eventually up. A few more and voila, a new ceiling.

The Boss and Daddy's Little Helper also got into the task. Mostly though passing Daddy screws while he was up the ladder holding a drill in one hand, holding the screw with the other, and holding the plasterboard with the other ... yes, Daddy's are that good. With the lights back in place, all that is left to do is rough and finish plastering. However, as it stands, the room is staring to look much improved. Feels like we're nearly there now.

Support 1: Improvised dead-man

Support 2: Care using her head

 

Support 3 and 4: The Boss and  The Helper come to inspect the work

Obviously something wasn't to their liking

Looking like proper builders .. Ash also has a good set of tools

The kitchen as it stands with new ceiling and lights

Day 277: Another day, another shilling

The things you find under the floorboards. A little bit more history.

This thing must have been lost when they build the house in 1897 and sat there ever since. Can't say it's in the best condition, but still a kinda cool find for a Saturday afternoon.

 

Day 277: Just a little bit of history

Old houses seem to be built from brick and newspaper. I've found more than my share of old newspaper in this place. I think it's kind of similar to the carbon dating archaeologists use. For instance, I'm pretty sure this place hasn't been decorated since the early 70's as that's when the majority of the newspaper is from.

 

The papers below are what I found in the kitchen during the tear down

 

Old .. found under the shelf covers in the kitchen

Older .. found as a plaster backing in the ceiling

Oldest .. wartime bank notice .. found behind the kitchen shelf

Day 270: Things are lookin' up - aka my neck's a hurtin'

Before people start thinking I'm some combined Mike Holmes/Bob Villa on steroids. This posting spans a couple of weekends .. and a bit of mid week magic.

So the task at hand was to finish framing the ceiling void in the extension, install insulation, run the ducting and plasterboard the lot. Piece of cake

You'll have seen in the previous posts that the old area was a bit of a falling apart Artex mess. The whole thing came down with minimal effort. As usual, putting it back took a bit of extra work. All the key bits were in place however; Tom re-routed the hot water pipes and got his mate to install the vent hood for the 150mm kitchen exhaust.

So first, I decided to put on the insulation. Given that it was pretty cold with single paned windows, a grossly undersized rad and no insulation whatsoever, I'm expecting big things now. The kitchen may even end up being a bit too warm with the big vertical rad, double glased windows and now insulation. Let's see this winter. I'm expecting super cold temps to make it all worthwhile.

I grabbed 50mm Celotex. This was the largest width I could fit between the rafters (and much cheaper than say 100mm). Cutting it was a breeze with a extending knife - although recommend wearing a dust mask and doing it outside as it looked a bit like the North Pole afterwards (or Pablo Escobar's kitchen table). The Celotex is foil lined on both sides for moisture protection and is rigid enough to hold itself in place. The density also gives it better insulation properties. A 120cm x 240cm sheet did the whole area with some left over. Joints were sealed with foil tape (really cool stuff - like sticky kitchen foil).

After the Celotex came the vapour barrier. This keeps all the moist air on the inside of the house so it doesn't escape through the insulation and condense on the other side leading to nasty things like rot/mould/etc. The material looks like old garbage bags fused together in a big sheet. Cost-wise however, it doesn't look a thing like old garbage bags fused together in a big sheet. This was fixed in place in one sheet using a staple gun to hold in place. Good ol' duct tape was used to seal the joints.

Later came the framing for the duct work. This would have been a great time lapse photography piece. Except I'm not so talented nor motivated to set this up myself. Maybe the next reno project. So the challenge - I decided to go with 150mm kitchen ducting. The problem - 150mm is 6" which is BIG. It doesn't turn corners very well and takes up a lot of space. I initially thought I'd do the whole thing with flat channel ducting and put it together like LEGO. That didn't work entirely. So thanks to the Internet, mixed and matched some semi-rigid aluminium round ducting, flat channel pieces and an adapter to connect the two. In all, it somehow worked. Joints were sealed with mastic sealant and double sealed with special PVC ducting tape. The aluminium pieces used my favourite aluminium duct tape. And the valuable lesson/biggest surprise of all .... Duct Tape, the centre of all household repairs .. ISN'T PARTICULARLY GREAT ON DUCT WORK. Amazing! Look it up if you don't believe me. Generations of people have been mislead, including myself. Go impress your friends with this great piece of trivia.

But the duct work worked after all. 150mm throughout. This thing is really going to suck. Whenever the hood decides to arrive.

Last came the plasterboard. With all the duct work in place, I just need to conceal my great work. Good thing there is a blog so it can be appreciated by millions around the world (or at least a few appreciative friends/family). I figured to celebrate my achievement and make plasterboarding a bit easier, I'd go and purchase a new Dremel tool to add to the collection - a hole saw kit. Basically a poor man's router. This think makes cutting plasterboard details a breeze - an a lot more fun.

You can see from the results, it looks much better now. Ready for some finishing work and plastering on top.




The startin' place

Celotex polysomething insulation for roof voids

Lots and lots of plasterboard

Celotex in place

Now some vapour barrier (glorified garbage bags)

Vapour barrier in place now sealed with good 'ol duct tape

Beginnings of the frame for the ducting

Some ductin' in place

Scott's got a new gadget

The finishin' place - ready for cornerin', tapein' and plasterin'

Day 257: Singing the dishwasher blues

Belated post ..  The countertop was delayed - so my posting of its install is also delayed.

This weekend's challenge was to finish off the countertop, get the cabinet doors installed and to get the dishwasher put in place. The first is a high difficulty task but the last 2 are relatively simple for the average DIY'er. Except my dishwasher just chose to be difficult once again. I don't know if it's me or that we just picked a dumb model - in either case, it's been much more of a challenge than expected.

First the countertop joint. Not to bore everyone with details but the measurements were extremely tight. Either I got the cuts correct or I put another 3m length on order for a few hundred £££. But needless to say, I gave it my full attention and made sure it worked.

[TECHNICAL SECTION]  (please feel free to skip) .. the gap for the main part of the countertop was 2400mm, the countertop was 663mm wide and 3000mm long. The corner cut needed to be 1265mm from the wall. So I cut the countertop to 2400mm and shaved off the back to get a 630 depth on the main sink portion. The extra 30mm were from the dishwasher not cooperating with the pipes. With this in place, I needed to use a heat gun to get the edging off the front to make the corner joint. Pro's use a router and a special jig - I have neither. So I use the factory cut edge and a heat gun. For the other side of the corner the 600mm piece that I cut off would have been too short, so I flipped the piece 90 degrees and used the depth of 663mm to get my length. It was so close that I didn't even need to cut this piece. The edges butted up nicely together and used some old plaster bags as weighting while the wood adhesive set. Always make sure to use waterproof adhesive on counters in case any water makes its way down a joint [END OF TECHNICAL SECTION]

Next onto the dishwasher. As described above, we had to move the entire countertop out 30mm to accommodate the silly thing. Next I needed to build a frame around the d/w to support it and the countertop. I used spare end panels, screwed to the sink carcass on one side and free standing with feet on the other.

Why feet? 2 good reasons here: 1) so that we have something to fix the kicker panels to and 2) to allow better routing, positioning of hoses and cables. On the right side, this involved fastening a couple of blocks to the panel to hold the feet. I also kept a 200mm gap between the d/w end panel and the boiler filter and plumbing to allow for servicing (Tom you're welcome)

After getting everything in place for the first time, I realised that the d/w door didn't fit into the opening (it did, but it wouldn't open), so I had to move the panel 1cm to the right. Put the d/w back in again and once again the same problem except at the bottom - there needed to be clearance here too. So off came the panels once again (getting good at it now) to notch the bottom. Do all people with in-build d/w have these problems - seems like they are more trouble than they are worth. I better not see a dirty dish on the countertop after all this.

Finally, a little gloating on the countertop. Find the joint - I challenge you. 

The bags are there to keep weight on the countertop



Spot the joint .. go ahead ..

Day 239: Masters of plaster

To put things into context, these walls have seen through 2 world wars and been metres away from German bombs (literally dropping on the doorstep). No surprise that they've seen better days. But no worries, things are looking up for our kitchen walls.

A little TLC and they will look great once again.

First the corners around the door frames, if you can still call them that since there was little corner left in them. I needed to strip them back to pretty much brick to get a straight edge. I used some rough corner beads to build back the corner shape - being careful to keep the edge straight and plumb. Given that the door jam was somewhat slanted, I don't think it would have been geometrically possible to get all sides even - or that's the story and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, it's close and I challenge anybody coming over to tell me otherwise.

I even managed to get Care getting her hands dirty. Stripping away wallpaper. This time we had a textured floral print both in the natural and pastel blue forms .. and some nice ducky wallpaper.

I also tackled the back wall where the 900 range is going. Turns out, that was where the original range was before somebody had the bright idea of relocating it. (shaking head). Anyway, the wall was completely uneven, part un plastered and part poorly plastered. No problem for the masters of plaster. A little bonding coat to get the surface even-ish. And some finish coat to get a nice smooth finish. Well nice enough to be hidden by tile later on :)