Kitchen window post

This post was a long way coming. Since I have a lot of images to post, I have been experimenting with some code added to the blogger template in order to have galleries to display the images. It is very clunky but it does the job. I should seriously consider importing this blog into my main website blog, but I have to think how and if I'd still like to keep it more separated.

Meanwhile, let us continue.

It has been cold, wet, and miserable. January and February are not pleasant to work around outside here. Luckily Pim and his father do not seem to mind too much, I have bad joints and I just can't work in these conditions, so besides a coat of paint in a small surface while wearing a Peruvian oversize pullover (what a wuss right?) I have done nothing of this project until the windows were in. By March however I have started gardening ;P

In the gallery below we pick up where we left in the last post:

• Sliding door beam concrete-d, bricks removed, edges redone. First time we can really see some of the garden from the house. In this case, a big pile of bricks :D
• Dining room window (where the shed door used to be) beam placed and concrete-d, bricks removed to widen, bricks added to make door into window, edges redone.
• Bit of wall where the radiator goes gets painted, green of course, and the radiator put up (it was in the way, this is one very large and 100 kg heavy motherfucker).
• Existing door widened, some bricks added between the pre-existing door and window for a stronger structure.
• Existing window narrowed and lowered to be as low as the kitchen counter.
• Outer windowsill stones (Belgian blue sandstone) placed. Some of these are very heavy... unlike other windowsills in the house, we had them delivered, but Pim and his dad installed them. I was able to help moving a couple ;P
• Threshold stones placed, same as above.
• After some delay, windows, door and sliding door/window? placed by the window guys today!
• And now PHEW!

And now, onto other kitchen things... walls, floor, insulation...

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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!

Lots of progress

I've so much to post about, I might have to split the posts today!

Lately, when I want to post here, I can't even recall what we've done, I just go to the camera and see what I've been taking pictures of.

I'll start with the oldest stuff I haven't posted about:

More shellac layers to the bedroom floor.
I mentioned this on the previous entry.

We started laying down the attic floor! We actually installed all of it in about 5 hours. Much faster than the bedroom floor! 

We got lucky though, we barely had to cut any boards. Three boards fit almost perfectly along the length, missing a little bit at the end.

Since this ends up at the very edge of what is going to be a built in closet, we did not waste huge amounts of boards just to fit these tiny bits, that are barely going to be visible and never stepped on, in the groove of the boards already placed. So we just cut pieces from two boards to fit the gaps, fitted them into each other's grooves and nailed them. The join to the main body of boards was then less than perfect, but I filled it with wood paste and sanded it down, and it looks great now :) I mean it doesn't really look like anything!

I did also lightly sand (120 grit) down the entire floor, and gave it one layer of oil. I am using the same oil I used for the dyed boards (V33 waterproof). Since the boards in this room are not to be dyed, I decided to treat them when already laid down. The dye is water based and it really did raise the grain of the wood, the wood was rough after one layer of oil over the dye. However it looks very nice and feels very smooth on the natural boards!

Left, oiled, right, bare

Brings out the figure

All oiled. At this stage it really reminds me of olive wood :)

After this, I will give two or three layers of shellac, then we install the baseboard and the room is finished!

Next: washbasin.

We realised we also needed to make an inset for the drain hardware to fit on the marble.

Pipes

Due to the location of the vessel sink (covering a large rust stain in the marble),
the drawer could not be made to still work, with an inset or so. We took it
apart, and nailed/glued the front of the drawer in place. We didn't destroy
any parts, and I've kept them for now. I am sentimental. And cautious.

Uncomfortable to work inside a cabinet, but hopefully worth it.

Bonus:

A cat looking for the other cat behind the mirror

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