Day 1250: Sort of DIY cabinets

Alcoves are the areas around the fireplace a.k.a. nooks. They are actually pretty useless space most of the time but work well with little inbuilt cabinets. 

I had great intentions of building my own custom cabinets out of MDF. But seeing as I don't have a proper wood shop .. yet .. I decided to buy them. As you can imagine, getting custom built cabinets typically cost an arm, a leg, and maybe some fingers and toes. I managed to find a hybrid called DIY Alcove Cabinets which cuts the cabinet to measure and flat pack ships them. It's DIY but in reality, it's just like Ikea flat packs with a bit of extra steps. 

Anyway, photos of the assembly below. 

So just like Ikea furniture, I got a bunch of flat panels and a box of random kit. Instructions were online .. I would have like to see it in the box too. Minor gripe. 

Putting things together was pretty simple - screws and dowels

Caitlin and Ashley were very entertained by the assembly (in my head at least) .. In reality, they were more like, "what are you doing with our TV?!!"

My second grip (and I only had 2) was that the cabinets were not built high enough to accommodate the skirting underneath. My goal was to make this seamless with the rest of the room. I gave them the details/height for the skirting but evidently it was missed.

Not letting that get in my way, I made a couple of 36mm shims by screwing together a couple bits of floorboard. Care this is why I don't throw away scrap wood. 

With my shims in place, the cabinets were put into position and very importantly, leveled. Next the fillers at the side were installed and the doors test fit.

Finally, the top was cut to the shape of the alcove.

Test fitting the skirting to make sure I got the correct height.

So that was the left one .. easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Next came the cabinet on the right. This one was a bit harder because of all the cable-ey thingies.

I also had to finish off the network cabling. This was on my very long to-do list but figured this would be much easier before the cabinet went in place. So some quick networking was in order.

The skirting behind wasn't at all necessary but hey, for all that was involved I put it in anyway.

Now the fun part of cutting out the back to provide access to the cable-ey stuff.

First try .. and almost

Second try with a little more cut out. 

The other fun part was cutting a hole in the top to let the cables exit for the TV. I bought one of those ring things to make it look neat, but I still needed to cut out a 50mm hole. This wasn't as easy as I would have though as it had to go through about 50mm of MDF. I thought my hole saw was going to start a fire it was working so hard to get that hole cut. 

And finally, the kids got their TV back. And I got a, "oh that's nice, now get out of the way!"from the kids.... with this discerning audience, you take what you can get I guess

Left side with skirting (sans doors)

So there you go, sort of DIY cabinets. I had to use tools at least to put them together so I guess that counts.

Day 1188: A new floor needs a new door, for sure

With a shiny new floor installed, next was time for a new door. 

Things all need to go in a certain order of course. No point doing the door when the floor would change height by about 25mm. And I can't really do the skirting until the door architrave is in place so the door needed to be next. 

I also used the old door as a stencil as, you guessed it, old house does not equal plumb doorways.

The timber screwed into the door at the right points makes a helpful guide for the circular saw.

To be exact, I used a new-ish toy, my laser measure. I'm a techie geek at heart and when it becomes a techie-toolie thing, wow then I really get excited. So the laser measure with it's smartphone interface is perfect. 

Some mm's here and some mm's there. 

"Perfection requires precision" - S. Hare, 2019

With the door cut and several iterations of hanging it and getting it just right, it was finally on and good enough. Next and - sorry no photos - came the door handle and latch. I used more smarter drilling this time and less chiseling (see guidance video here from Tommy's Trade Secrets - or not so secret I guess since it's on YouTube)

Finally, it was a couple of coats of wood primer and in the frame - final coat will come but I'll wait for the summer when the paint can dry outside a bit quicker (and not get rained on, unlike the poor builder)

New door, new floor, blog post o'er

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.