Nearly There!!!

Kitchen units are now in and fitted, just waiting on the worktops. These had to be ordered as the ones Daphne wanted were not held in stock! typical, and there was a 3 week lead time on them, so we have to live without a sink and hob for now. I had to build the unit for the boiler from scratch, they gave me 2 large planks and a door, considering i'm not a carpenter by trade it looks pretty damn perfect, but then I would say that wouldn't I.

A few bits of skirting need to go on and the kickboards on the bottom of the units need to be put on as well, these will get done during the comming evenings as and when I have time and feel energetic enough to do it, have a bit of a cold at the moment and energy seems to be at a minimum.

Still need to get the lighting that Daphne wants, we decided against having under unit lighting as I could not really see the point. It does seem to be more for show than practicality.


The majority of the flooring in the kitchen is down now. I did have to rip up the old floor boards before starting the kitchen as the boards under the washing machine and dishwasher were rotten, years of leaks never being fixed had soaked right through the boards, the were so bad in places i could push a screw driver through them without any real pressure. Luckily the joists underneath were fine, but I treated then anyway as I had a large can of the stuff and I wont need it anymore, so they got a good soaking.

Hopefully the worktops will arrive in a couple of weeks and the job will be near completion. The tiling still needs to be done, however, we are still trying to find the tiles we want.

Plastering finished, woo hooo.

Plastering finished.

Started to give the walls a quick coat of paint, and painted the ceiling white. Most of the piepwork for the boiler is done, and I have completly finished the domestic hot water side of the plumbing, waiting for the plumber to come and connect the rest of the pipework to the boiler and pressure test it, connect the gas, and fire it up.




Well, we had the plumber here eventually, the first appointment he made was for a thursday, so I decided to take the day off work to be here for him and help where I could. The night before he dropped a note through letting me know he was going to be late, he would be here between 11am and 11:30 am instead of 9am. That was fine with me, untill it got to 1:30pm and still no sign, at which point I had to call him to find out what was happening, at that point he told me he would not make it, I was not impressed. When he finally did come on the following monday he could not get the boiler working and finally gave up telling me there was a problem on the main circuit board. So we were still without heating and hot water (we had been like this for over a month, and washing in cold water ain't much fun). Then, to top it all, two of the five joints he soldered leaked! So I had to repair those, so much for being CORGI registered. Anyway I decided to call British Gas (Darren Cooks idea) and they were here within 24hours, and the guy (Steve) had it all working within 2 hours and fully serviced, and the hot water has never been so hot! So we have heating and hot water now, and Daphne and I both had a nice relaxing bath, not together, as she displaces to much water and when she gets out i'm left sitting in a cupfull of water!!!

Plastering.

Moving on swiftley.

Plastered some of the walls, normally I would have done the walls after doing the ceiling, Its easier to do the ceiling first, I won't bore you with the details as to why.



Yep, thats me, not a pretty site I know. I am at that point 'trowling up' the ceiling, Daphne took these pics in between making cups of tea, well, it is thirsty work, and plastering ceilings does tire your arms a little.

Fitted the boiler in its new location, damn those things are heavy, well, they are when your trying to hook it onto a couple of bolts high on the wall. You may have noticed a step in the ceiling at the far end of the room, this is where I put in two new joists to support the ones above, they sit on the brickwork at either end and give the bathroom floor more support at that end of the wall as the wall is a solid wall (has no cavity) and the ends of a couple of the original floor joists above needed treating for damp, so I thought its better to be safe than sorry. Didn't want to get in the bath with Daphne only to find we end up on the kitchen floor, that wouldn't do would it.

Another of me trowling the ceiling, this is my Julia Roberts pose. he he..

Back wall has had a complete scratch coat of sand and cement and has then been boarded ready for skimming (plastering). You can see I'm using the cooker to support my 'spot board' (board with the plaster on), so don't believe Daphne if she tells you I never use the cooker!

Back to Blogging

Hi again,

Lots of things have happened since the last post. The drains have all been lined and renewed where necessary, this was all done on the house insurance which saved us a lot of money. The yard still looks a mess but thats a job for another time.

Well I have started on the kitchen, well, I have been working on it for the past month or so.

So, where are we upto you ask? or maybe not, well, it's starting to come together, we have had a few ups and downs, but things always seem to work out right over time.

OK, Started by stripping out the old kitchen which is good fun because you can vent plenty of anger whilst being productive!!! After stripping the old kitchen out the walls needed stripping off back to brick, this wasn't very difficult as the old plaster was completely shot, and just fell off on its own in places. The major headache in doing all this is the fact we still have to live around it, so I had to keep the cooker and hob for as long as I could before removing it, and the washing machine and dishwasher also had to be constantly worked around.

One good things is that I can re-wire the room to how we want it, the original wiring was not that far from where I decided things had to be, but some of it would have been condemed it was that bad. One of the sockets had a metal backbox screwed to the surface of the tiles! and the mains cable was just tacked to the surface of the wall! even the 32amp cable supplying the cooker was just hanging out of the cooker switch, which was mounted behind one of the cabinets which had its back cut out so you could isolate the cooker. Needless to say that the room was completely re-wired correctly, with the cables sunk into the walls with protective capping over them.


This is Hollie getting stuck in with a brick hammer. The new brickwork behind her is where I had to remove a window which was unfortunately in the place where the boiler will be hung eventually. The Boiler in its current position actually blocked half of the window anyway, and I could never figure why it was put there in the first place! but I guess not everyone is logical.

Hollie really enjoys destroying things! not sure if I should be worried about this or not! She loves working with me on the house to the point where she kept talking about having her own toolkit, so I bought her one, a fifteen year old girl with her own toolkit! maybe its a first. She has even done some joinery for me, I got her to join 2 pieces of the kitchen units together using dowels, glue and clamps! hopefully this means she won't be ringing me up every 5 minutes to fix things when she gets older, if I could just my other 2 duaghters trained up I'd be on a winner..

Above: Most of the walls have been stripped back now, and the ceiling is also now stripped back to the floor joists above ready for plaster boarding.

Had to rebuild this part of the wall as it decided to fall apart when I was removing what I can only describe as concrete from the face of it, even found the old iron brackets which were originally put in for the sink! Do you like the new sink? one cold tap and a bowl, hence the reason we needed to try and keep the dishwasher online as much as possible, for some reason Daphne was not impressed with the minimalist look.

Whilst the walls were back to brick I hired a DPC injector and injected the two external walls, it had already been done, but they had done it below the floor joists which was two bricks lower than the external DPC, so I injected at the same level inside as the external DPC, makes more sense on a solid wall (no cavity).

Next step was sorting the ceiling out, had a few issues with trying to re route the pipe work for the bathroom above, the old pipes seemed to go everywhere! so making the route as straight forward and as short as possible was a priority, especially as we have a combi boiler. to make it easier I decided to drop the ceiling by 2 inches, so a got some 3x2 wood and bolted these accross the joists.

The arch wall was given a scratch coat of sand and cement to biuld it out as it needed a lot to make it look anything like straight.

Fixed a peice of 3x2 to the face of the box lintel I put in above the window and door to bring it out to the level of the brickwork, keeps the wall continuos and looks a lot better once the complete wall is plastered. The wall where the boiler will be situated has had a scratch coat of sand and cement, and will get another coat before plastering, because I'm putting the boiler there it needs to be sand and cement and cannot be dry linned.

Ceiling now boarded, apart for a small peice above the new position of the boiler, this is so I can fit the boiler and then bring the pipework to exactly where I want it.

Winter Break

Not done anymore on the house as I am waiting for the weather to pick up, and my bank balance!

Next job is the kitchen, thats going to cost a little more than the other rooms, so money is the key rather than my time. Still yet to plan it all out, but I'll do that once i have an idea of what we actually want. The walls i know for a fact will need to be completly removed and replastered, but as for lighting, well i can't run any cables until I am sure of what type, and where the lighting is going to be.

Not really much to write about untill I start on it.

Looking forward to having it all finished and normality can return!


Take care till then

DIY - Dining Room

Spent tonight sorting the painting out, looks finished now but I need to check the bits around the inside of the window, its not easy to tell under the lighting, better to check it in the daylight, shame its dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home, but thats winter for you!

filled in the gap between the top of the skirt board and the wall, looks good, but I'm bound to say that ;)

Just need to tidy up and finish a few bits...

DIY - Dinning Room

This week has been mostly painting and varnishing. Its all comming together now, had to hire a DPC injection unit to redo the DPC in one of the corners as it still hadn't dried out and I thought it better to err on the side of caution. I need to buy a new door as the old one don't fit the new door casing. Apart from the new door and a bit of touching up of the paintwork and a damn good tidy up, its about done..

DIY Dining Room

Not posted for 2 weeks now, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Spent the first week doing the coving, took a while as I had a lot of filling a sanding due to the curved part and also because none of the corners are at right angles. I painted the coving but on its final coat the paint decided not to stick properly, causing it to peel (see pic). This made more work as I had to sand it all down again then repainted it, but it did it again. ARGHHHHH!!! I thought maybe that it was drying to quick or something, so I sanded it again and then applied a coat of PVA, let that dry then painted it again, well, it seemed to work, apart from the odd spot here and there which I redid.


Didn't get much done last saturday as Joy had a photo shoot, so we took Hollie and Emma along and got there pictures taken too. hopefully we will get the pics next week, I'll scan them and get a few posted on here when I get chance.

DIY - Dining room

Removed the old carpet today and took it to the local tip. Had a bit of an accident today though, Joy (my youngest) with her constant question of 'Can I help?' had a fall. I told her she could give the coving a coat of paint and sorted her out with a small container of paint and a brush. All I heard from the kitchen was a crashing sound as the step ladders had gone through a loose floor board, I rushed in to find her trying to pick herself up whilst screaming, and covered in white paint. I sorted her out and checked all her cuts and bruises and got her to rinse all the paint out of her mouth, luckily she only had a few bruises and nothing was broken, well, apart from the floor board. I then proceded to nail the bloody floor boards down, unfortunatley, they were the ones I had taken up and hadn't nailed down when I had finished, and forgot to inform her they were loose, so I then went on a guilt trip, big time. Strange, I am always telling them to be careful of things when i am working, like watch out there is a sharp blade there or be careful i have removed the floor boards, seems the one time I forget, then the accindent happens, well, I suppose its not really an accident, more of neglegence on my part. lesson learned.

DIY - Dining room

Its definatley coming together now. I have finished off the skirting, the coving is now done also, and I have started the sanding of the skirt boards, spent some time today putting the coving up, had a bit of dificulty on the curved wall, I could not get the coving to follow the shape of the wall, so I decided to cut it into smaller pieces, it seemed to work quite well although I will need to spend some time blending it all together but that shouldn't be to difficult.

As you can see I have the architraves on as well now. The picture below shows the coving, well, its actually cornice, it was the largest type there was in B&Q (another plug... I'll have to see about some gift vouchers.. he he), the fact that its quite large helps as the ceilings are very high and normal coving would have looked real small.

Well, I was trying to take a picture of the chimney breast which had suffered from some shrinkage cracks, which I have repaired, however, it seems when ever the camera is out Hollie pops up, little poser..!! :)

DIY - Dining room

Well, all the plastering in the dining room is now finished, next job is the coving. We saw the coving we want at B&Q, just need to get it picked up and back home, I'll have to see if I can borrow the works van as the coving is 3m in length, which won't fit into our Renault Clio!! I can also get started on the Skirting as soon as the plaster has dried out. At least all the really dirty, messy, and dusty work is done now, so it should start to come together a little quicker now which is good as we are getting a little bit fed up with living in a building site.