Taps

The taps have arrived one month before we expected them to!

They look fantastic. Here's a taste, some handles in the three different finishes we chose:

Brushed nickel, Tuscan brass and opaque black

We've chosen brushed nickel for the kitchen and the laundry room, opaque black for the small bathroom and Tuscan brass for the workshop. The latter is an unprotected patina, so it will change with use, same as our raw brass taps in the bathroom.

All the taps in our house are Nicolazzi.

Storage, and a recycled door for the attic bedroom

This last weekend we worked on the door and the storage.

We found a couple of doors in the attic when we bought the house. We think they used to be another partition in the living room (the frame is still there) although it is difficult to know if they belong together since one of them was chopped short. That's the one we're recycling for the bedroom.

One of the glass panes was missing, and the door is too transparent for a bedroom anyway, so I removed the lower two rows of panes, and I will replace them with something opaque. Thinking about options. It was difficult to get them out without breaking some of the... sticks of wood that attach the glass to the door... :(

Some of them were already split from putting the nails in, so no way they weren't gonna break. Anyway, I glued the damages together. 

The bedroom side of the door will be white. That side is also more damaged (and the side where the stick thingies I removed go). Scrape, sand, fill holes, paint.

Decades of grime

Oops

Already split

OOPS

Glue-up

Glass removed, wood lightly scraped

The lock mechanism was fucked up, so we removed the entire box. We'll not put a key back in so I put some thin wood to cover the hole left:

This ebay find is extremely blunt...
and it is still the best saw I've ever used!
Apart from my jewellery saw.
I have to learn to sharpen it.

Glue and clamps

And a little filler to
hide my shoddy job

First layer. Can't find any primer...

Loki...

Second layer today...

 Pim started building a false roof to make storage space in this weird ceiling bit:

OSB "floor"

Today he put up the rest of the OSB, next, plasterboard on the bottom!

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!