Clothes bar

Between cabinet and wall we installed a curtain rod to serve as clothes hanger, to air clothes. Later I'll hang another bar for a curtain in front of it.

We also did errands (ordering some marble, swatches for curtains), garden work, and started installing a hose tap outside. Cement curing so images tomorrow. 

Lamps

I haven't been posting much. Three main reasons:

1. Most importantly, since the move our productivity has decreased, due to being a bit saturated, sense of urgency gone, it being winter (I think last winter the same happened, I thought it was the cold, but the house is now cozy, so perhaps the darkness), and it's actually difficult to do things when it's already full of furniture and stuff.

2. Even what we do, I don't take many pictures (re: darkness).

3. Lamest of all, blogger app stopped working so there wasn't a straightforward way for me to post pictures from my phone. I just installed Blogaway, let's see how that goes. Edit: great!






It took us a long time to decide which wall  lamps to get for the bedroom and bathroom.

We finally decided, ordered them, received them and installed them today.

The bedroom lamps are dimmable and the led light bulbs are awesome, particularly when dim. They have this crown of prisms thing going on.






The first floor is getting closer and closer to completion!

Last week's proggress

Attic: plaster joins on walls and ceiling; finishing around the windows with PUR foam, plasterboard and plaster; finishing the exposed beams (sanding, priming and painting). Pim's dad has an electric plane and Pim has used it to get the worst off (the beams are very rough and humidity protected with some sort of green stuff). I guess most people would either cover them up with plasterboard or nicer wood. I'm just smoothing them somewhat and then some thick layers of primer do the trick pretty well, you can still feel the grain of the wood somewhat. 

We'll keep this room pretty light since it may get quite dark in there in winter. I'll be white (broken white, RAL 9010) and a light-ish grey. I'll also leave the natural colour of the oak on the floor. We were unsure what to do about the brick wall. We've now decided to clean them off a bit and paint them white.

Bathroom: the bathtub is installed! I only have shitty phone pictures. The drains outside are also installed so now you can take a cold bath ;)

Dude comes today to start up the heating/warm water system, so warm baths coming soon! It is also starting to get chilly, so it is a good thing we'll be able to put the heating on.

The closet is also mounted, although it leans forward too much due to the inclination of the floor. We'll have to raise the front legs a bit. The shower tray is installed and tiled around (did I already mention that?) but we haven't installed the glass yet, and we ran out of grout. There also still a few tiles to place around some pipes and the bottom edge of the shower, over the wood.

And we finally decided which toilet to buy and ordered it! it arrived from England this week and we have put it together, but it isn't installed yet. We found out the drain we had prepared for it was too short, so we got an extra piece, and we need some diamond drills to be able to attach it to the floor. Hopefully this week. We have ordered more diamond drills, also to make a hole on the marble to install the washbasin. The bathroom is really coming together :D

Bedroom: keeps on giving me headaches! ugh. Mostly a paint problem after another, too tedious to even write about in detail. Last in the series: please remind me why I hate painter's tape, again?? 

Fresh plaster

Rough finishing

Fine finishing

:(

Drain from the bathroom

Attaching the bath drain (note the earthing)

Attaching oak grills as gas vents
(you're supposed to smell if it leaks)

I'll take better pictures soon

The oak lid is too light, but I am not gonna mess with it right now

One metal piece for the closet hinge was missing,
we improvised. I enlarged the inset...

And we used these strips, which work nicely

Bad photo, my specialty

Flooring in the bedroom

The bathroom is not finished yet, but we're getting closer. Meanwhile, this weekend we decided to tackle the flooring in the bedroom. Just because it's a lot to tackle, I guess.

We still have a detailed bathroom tiling post pending.

We went to the store to buy more floorboards, because we didn't have enough for all the rooms. Good thing, since they are discontinuing them. I hope we have enough this time. The floorboards are single pieces of massive, tongue and groove oak. I posted about them before. Here too.

All in all, Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, and a great amount of hours today (Sunday), and we finished the bedroom! (at nearly 22h) which is about 18 square metres. We also did part of the landing adjacent (the floorboards continuous).

Compressor + nail gun

This is a simple job, at least compared to all the other jobs... over the existing floorboards, two layers of 3 mm insulating foam (supposed to absorb 20 dB each, not idea how much that is combined) and the floorboards nailed on top.

Nailing boards diagonally on the tongue

Pim didn't want to hammer these things by hand with a hammer, too easy to damage the wood at this angle, and such a huge pain in the ass. Renting a compressor with nail gun twice would be as expensive as buying the entire set-up, so that was a no-brainer. We aren't sure what we are gonna do with all these tools once we are done, though.

Board under the door frame (more about that below)

Board (bit) under the door frame

Puzzling around the staircase, more below

Putting boards in place

Closer to the finish line - many floorboards are dusty...

With such a grimy house all around, we don't want the floorboards damaged with the crap we carry in our shoe soles, etc, so we covered them with a thick felty thing (which is nice and lined with plastic on the underside) as we went. And it is going to stay that way until things clear up a little.

A more general view

What is this thing? more on that later sometime

The vanity corner

Glued bits

Under the radiator (so, inside the mantlepiece), and next to the wall besides it, we could not nail the thin strips of floorboard down anymore. So we glued them to the previous boards inside the groove.

The most challenging part in the bedroom
(which wasn't very challenging)

No hammering or nailing here, you push with your fingers

Last bits, these strips are just glued with white wood glue

Some pictures from Friday and Saturday, these were taken with my phone, so they're quite terrible:

Wood haul

I found a delightful little saw to cut door frames to measure. You don't even have to measure, just put the floorboards next to the frame, place the saw on top, and saw away.

Cutting the door frames to measure

The handle is raised you that you can hold the saw flat against the floor, and it has a mechanism to reverse the saw and make it face the left or the right. Great! I have no idea how these are called, there was a Dutch name shown in the store but I forgot.

Great saw

Nice and sharp little teeth:

Frame leftover

Pim helping me with the frame

Cut to measure board under the frame

Making sure the first line of boards is straight with the tiling laser

Cutting a template out of paper

I tried out the white MDF plints (?) we bought for the bedroom (we got solid oak for other rooms, I didn't feel like buying oak and then painting it white for the bedroom...), but I didn't install them all around the room yet. Mitered cuts with this fancy old thing Pim's dad found around (I think it's Danish), glue + a few nails, easy enough. I love the contrast of grey, white and medium wood all over the room:

Mitering tool from the 70s or 80s

Plint testing

Bathroom &

I am afraid all these images are taken with my phone, since it is always around and convenient.

Some leave much to be desired.

We bought a bunch of Ranarp Ikea lamps for the hall
and the staircase, some of them are up and running.

I would have preferred something fancier, but we're on a budget right now.
And these are quite nice I think.

Finally!! the roof guys brought and installed the attic windows.
These windows are Fakro (a Polish company) and they're neat.

Typical Belgian skies.

We're not sure what to do with the brick wall.
The attic is so much brighter.

The bathroom tiles arrived and we picked them up.
Winckelmans stoneware (grès) tiles, we chose 10 cm
hexagons in pearl grey, with green accents to
complement these antique tiles of the same material. 

I have finished the branch chandelier I started a long time ago. I don't remember if I posted about it. Inspired by images found on Pinterest, particularly this one. We gathered the branches around the perimeter of Pim's parent's garden. I will take better images once it hangs in the bedroom and explain the process.

Branch chandelier in progress

Painting in the bedroom is nearly finished
and we started placing the moldings.

I am actually glad they are foam instead
of plaster, I don't want to imagine how difficult
 to place plaster would have been, especially on
 such wonky angles.

The bathtub has been waiting outside for a long time, wrapped.
We finally made some space to bring it in.

We've mainly been working in the bathroom. Once it is finished, we'll probably move in.

All the pipes, drains and water outlets are installed, so is the electricity, and the insulation + plasterboards (these green ones are especial for bathrooms and kitchens) are up.

Now remains, in this order:

• Removing the floorboards
• Reinforcing the beams with steel (to strengthen and straighten the floor in order to tile)
• Placing OSB boards over the floor, with inset for antique tile trim (which are thicker)
• Tiling the floor
• Waterproofing around the shower walls & floor
• Installing the shower tray
• Tiling the wall
• Installing the shower glass screen
• Installing faucets, bath and washbasin, & toilet if we have bought one by then!
• Fixing plasterboard joins and paint over non-tiled areas

So it is a lot of work and it may take longer than we anticipate.

Removing floorboards.

These are the steel beam reinforcements.

I've been washing the oil residue and painting the steel, on the side that will be exposed after installing, with a rust resistant paint before we place them. They'll be glued (to avoid movement and create a sort of more rigid composite material) and screwed to the existing wooden beams. That's whet the holes are for. After researching the most efficient way to reinforce and straighten the floor for tiling, Pim made a technical drawing and had these custom made out of plate steel.