Next beam + bathroom closet

While Pim and his father were placing the next beam for a window in the back building, I took everything out of the bathroom closet, we took it apart, and then I cut a bit off the back legs. The floor in this room slopes towards the center and so the closet was leaning forward a lot. I guess I must have take a picture of that at some point, but I don't find it now. The top of the closet was 10 or 15 cm away from the wall when the bottom was close to the wall.

I also glued back a decorative leg piece that had fallen off, and some other parts where the hide glue had fractured a long time ago. I softened the glue with wet (warm water) kitchen paper towels, then scraped the excess off, and reglued with Titebond liquid hide glue. I think I am a convert now ;)

We put the closet back together, which is a delicate operation since the three door are caught by the top, and have to all be placed at once. It is a three man job.

This is how "level" it was

Knife wall

Chunks off

Scraping old glue off

Re-gluing

Quality control

Straight up 

Nice and close to the wall :)

On the beam front, Pim and his father encountered more difficulties than last time.

The beam that the roof guys placed over the entire length, on top of the wall, was anchored to the wall with large bolts. This made removing the old beam over the door a little difficult. This opening had to become much wider than the door so the beam had to be replaced. Pim had to drill around the bolts, concrete will later be placed around the bolts to anchor them again.

The beam was again placed over to flat and level pieces of concrete

Another recycled railway track serving as beam

Picture dump

I haven't updated in a while, so I'm gonna do a picture dump with a little commentary.

I started removing paint from the front door. It's a mess!

We'll perservere.

We also installed much needed blinds in the attic windows.

We doubted a long time about the colour, finally went with white.

They absolutely block the light.

Shellac!

There was a spare night table around so I washed it, shellac-ed it,
and it is now extra storage in the attic bedroom.

The bathroom vanity suffered water marks, so I fixed it...

The first layers of shellac I used, I mixed well with all the wax contained in the flakes. I found info that the wax is more protective against vapour, which worried me more than a few droplets of water (we ventilate a lot but showers happen). However it is less water resistant.

I rubbed the spots with alcohol and a piece of cloth, which worked quite well, and then gave a few more layers of shellac, this time skimmed from the top of the mix. There will still be wax, but less. If this doesn't perform well enough (we are trying to splatter less, but we're human), I'll have to bring out the varnish :(

And... workshop! I'm very excited about the workshop ;P but it needs lots and lots of work...

Closing gaps with PUR.

Plastering.

Installing water pipes.

Putting up plasterboards.

Water, yay!

Sad post: cutting furniture up

I feel tempted to title this post: "Picture dump 2". No much time or energy for much else...

Not that I've been taking many pictures: it is too dark. With the Solstice behind us, perhaps this will change soon.

The house is still a mess, lots of boxes everywhere. I hear this is normal...
Let's see what I find in the memory card...

Ah, yes. I butchered the Art Deco sideboard to have access to plugs in the wall behind. Router, external drive etc live now inside. I kept the piece I cut out, I tried to do as little damage as possible, but...

Aand, had to cut up even more furniture. The cupboard/library/whatever Pim inherited from his granddad was 5 metres long. There is no such wall in this house.

It is made up of 5 elements, but the "seat" was made up of 3 elements (2, 2, 1), and the only 1 metre element is an edge element, so we had to cut one of the 2 metre "seat" pieces in two. The entire thing is oak, except for the pieces were they could get away with some early type of particle board with a thick veneer, like the "seat", and most everything except the doors and drawer fronts.

I managed to cut a straight line, and then filed a camber on the edge as the other pieces had (sorta, they're a little convex, but you can't tell the difference). A little walnut dye and a little wax and you really can't tell. I don't have any good pictures, this is the darkest room in the house...

The join is between the first and second elements visible in this pic.
Do not confuse with the black cable lying there ;)

Gratuitous cat photo in the relevant piece of furniture

So, the leftover element went upstairs next to my side of the bed.

Due to the way the legs were made (one leg in between two elements) we had a conundrum with this orphaned piece. Had to hack some more I'm afraid... I removed the back leg and some extra pieces of wood that were in the way, didn't install the only front leg left over, and just installed a new set of 4 legs that we bought in the hardware store (turned beech), I dyed them to match and protected them with shellac.

There is space on the left of it, where I want to build some storage and a hanging bar for clothes that need airing and so on.

As can be seen in the previous pics, this element is bare on both sides, and there's even a hole over the seat/drawer section. I'll have to cover this up somehow.

Looking ok from the front ;)

And, to end on a brighter note, a piece of furniture I did not have to hack into:

Bad lightning

I got this table off eBay for 25 euro, in 2007. The top was damaged because someone put a hot pot on it. I started fixing it up back then, but it's been covered up for years, after a monumental fuck up*. All this time I thought it was cherry, but now I got a better look at it I realise it is mahogany... I found an older image:

Back in 2007. You can see the crop circle if you squint.

I found about the fuck up in my old Livejournal. Ugh. Back then I didn't even finish sanding off the gunk since my sciatica was very bad. Just covered the table up until now... Here's a post about the first "restoration" steps, and here about the fuck up. Do not mix sawdust with wood glue to fill gaps, kids! :(

Now I've only sanded, oiled a bit and shellac-ed. I was aiming to fill the gaps with the shellac, but they may be too deep. We'll see. Looking good so far. Darker, more red than the previous finish, because of the oil I believe. It has a great depth now so I am happy about that.

Him Diamond

We're exhausted! Working a lot lately... :)

Mostly pictures:

Pim concentrated on the front rooms plaster finishing.
Lots of work here.

I am anxious to have a washbasin! started working on the vanity.
I give two layers of thick shellac to all the bathroom furniture,
inside and out.

Drilling holes for plumbing.

Old houses, uneven floors. I stacked popsicle sticks until the vanity was level.

Then I lengthened the legs with layers of them + PVA glue.
I did smooth them and paint them later, so the fix is nearly invisible.

The vanity marble was very scratched and stained.
There is a large, deep rust stain that I won't be able to remove,
we're just placing the washbasin on top!

After a lot of work with diamond polishing pads.

And more. I am using grit 60 through 400.I have finer grits, but I doubt if I am gonna go over 800,
the windowsill is just honed and I like it like that.

We also drilled the holes for the plumbing on the marble.
Diamond tools FTW.

We were unaware of templates for core drills, I just read about them yesterday.
Too late to order any, so we made our own with a piece of OSB, which worked
perfectly. You only need to use it until you have a groove (first pic).

Drilling, marking, drilling.

One 5 cm hole for the drain, two 1 cm holes for cold and warm water.

I also worked on the floorboards, bedroom and landing.
I wasn't happy with the finishing (dust sticks to the old finish like nobody's business, bad since the house is still super dusty).

The more I use shellac the more I like it (looks and performance).
So I vacuumed, cleaned the dust with warm water only (I wrung the microfibre cloth as much as possible - it dried fast) then applied a thick layer of shellac.

I worked on a continuous length of floorboard from end to end. Started with one at a time, ended up daring to tackle 4 at a time. Working fast, it works great, and looks very good so far.

No pictures yet.

Bedroom radiator

Last weekend I did not post... I have a few pictures that I'll be posting once we finish a few more things. We mostly worked in the attic bedroom.

This weekend it was just Pim and me, and we have been working in the bathroom. One thing that got finished (installed) is the bathroom radiator:

Water pipes

Of course, solid brass screws!

Ta da!

The lightning is fluorescent (I am thinking of changing them to LED), so the pictures are not great.

After seeing the radiator all wrapped up for months on end, I can't quite believe it is up! Not running yet though, but this closes the circuit and we already have a date for a guy to come check up and start the heating and warm water up! We'll hopefully have heating in October :D

A few other random bathroom pictures:

Moldings, trims, paint got done

Soaping off the grime

Closet and a night table got a thick, sealing layer of freshly made shellac

State of the bathroom as of now