Friday 24 December 2010

Christmas Eve afternoon and all was still


Dave stripped one of the external walls today. A few days ago he took up the lino to reveal some nice floorboards underneath, but had the annoying job of having to take out a thousand rusty staples holding the lino on. We think the room is a lot colder with no gib on the inside, which should hopefully make insulation the walls very effective.

Thursday 9 December 2010

Leadlight No. 1

For the past 6 months or so I've had a new hobby: leadlighting.

Our house has a door with five windows around it (there must be a name for this kind of door but I don't know what it is and nor does mr google).

As you can see some idiot has painted the top window mud brown. (what is it with painting things brown in this house?!) And the two panels either side are not glass but chipboard (with holes in).

So I enrolled in a leadlighting course with an idea that I would replace the mud brown window with a leadlight. I hadn't got much further than that idea when I showed up and the first class was very stressful as I had to design my leadlight and didn't really like any of the designs I'd found.

Because of the diamonds in our existing hall leadlight (the one stained with nicotine) - see...

I decided I'd go with diamonds as the main theme. Anyway, after my second week on the course I'd already decided one window wouldn't be enough and that I would in fact replace all five windows. You may recall my vision:


The leadlight teacher tells me it'll take me 2 years to do it all. I told him I was going to do it by Xmas 2011 (18 months).

Leadlighting is not difficult, but it is fiddly, with many different stages, which are, in summary
  • Design (probably the most difficult) as so much potential to get it wrong early on and later have to fix it
  • glass cutting (quite easy, but if you get it wrong you have to grind down to the right shape which can take ages)
  • Leading (the lead is U-shaped and the glass fits into it, if that makes sense) - a bit fiddly as you have to cut the lead to exactly the right length
  • Soldering the lead points together
  • Cementing (very messy)
  • Blackening (a purely cosmetic procedure)

So for my window, which is about 85cm *38cm, it has taken me two 8 week courses (and that includes some working at home). And here's the end result...



I'm still busy designing the other four panels but I'm thinking I'll do the two small windows at the top next (because I will get more skilled and it's best to leave the most visible sections to the end). I will get them all fitted together, aiming for December 2011.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

The art of insultation

We spent a couple of months doing the underfloor insulation and this is the result. We used polystyrene panels which are cut to fit joists and concertina cut to allow a bit of compression. They then fit snugly without the need to nail them in. The panels come in packs of 12 and we were 1 short so I did a patch job with leftover bits on the very last bit. We could only get 24 panels in the car at a time which is why we've been gradually working on it rather than doing it all in one go.
The title of the blog entry relates to an amusing typo at the Placemakers DIY store where we went at least once a weekend for the past 2 months...

We have a proper basement, half of it is well above head height and most of it allows you to crouch-walk, only a small proportion requires the awkward shuffling on your back to do the insulation. This is not accident but design on our part - we were specifically looking for a house with an accessible basement to allow us to insulate it (saving 15% of heat loss, apparently)...
Total cost of the underfloor insulation for our 130m2 house was $1088 (but there is a part that can't be insulated) so it might be around the $1200 mark for the whole lot if we could do it all.
So we look forward to a much warmer winter next year :-)

Monday 13 September 2010

Bye bye carpets

I finally managed to finish my work on the front of the house. Here are the before and after shots showing my work at repairing and repainting the fence. As the next-door-neighbour said - it makes it look "cared for". The whole house needs repainting in the next couple of years but right now that's not high on our list of priorities.
Meanwhile Steve just couldn't wait any longer, the carpets had to go. I am gradually doing the underfloor insulation, have now done about half of it... but September (spring!) is here so Steve got suited up in his asthma defence outfit to rip up some carpet anyway. Ironically the main reason for getting rid of the carpet is to alleviate the symptoms of asthma but the process is an incredibly dusty one.

The carpet, to remind you, is a threadbare brown shagpile. At a guess 40 years old. You certainly couldn't buy a carpet like it today!
So when taking up the bedroom carpet we discovered not only underlay but also, an even more ancient carpet underneath in an indiscernable and overly stained shade of grey. Difficult to imagine a carpet less attractive than the one on top, but there it was! That is lazy renovation - they couldn't even be bothered to take up the old carpet before fitting the next one!

Under the living room carpet we discovered a nice green hearth from where the fireplace was before being boxed in and some bizarrely poo-brown painted floorboards. I just don't get this. If you're going to paint your floorboards, why paint them the colour of wood?
The bedroom revealed some lovely reddish brown rimu floorboards. And a heap of staples to be removed from where the carpet was being held down. I have blisters on my hand from heaving them up.The next job will be to do the sanding. Still got to take up the carpet in the hall and other two bedrooms and then we'll hire a sander and do the lot together. The carpets are history and have started their next life in our basement. Anyone want any old carpet, we've got a bit going begging....?

Steve's final job this weekend was to install solar lights in the garden. It makes the very unattractive yard suddenly look much more like a place you might want to spend some time :-)

Thursday 2 September 2010

Building a bookcase

The extent of my woodworking experience so far in my life has been making a clock in Year9 CDT or whatever they called it. So I went on a few woodwork classes because I thought I would be able to learn how to frame all the souvenirs we got when we were travelling. The first thing I made in the class was a tool box made of MDF, and armed with the powerful knowledge of how to make housing joints I got some reclaimed wood from Brennans the house clearers in Kilbirnie and set to work on my first project - a bookcase. 


The raw materials for the bookcase seen here in our basement, cut up. 
Answers on a postcard if you know what the wood is - we think one is oregon. 


Through July I hand sawed the 2 pieces of really long wood into 2 uprights and 5 shelves, with bits leftover for a top and bottom. Into the uprights I chiselled housing joints 2 cm wide and 1.5cm. After the first one, with 9 left, I was having second thoughts about this approach but ploughed on. They got a bit easier and quicker with each one, but were definitely a labour of love, especially bearing in mind the work they entailed later on when I assembled it all. 


When I'd done one side of housing joints I realised that where I planned to have each housing joint didn't necessary mean they actually ended up there. I realised this after doing the first one on the other side, then I thought it might be a good idea to lie one upright on another and pencil out the remaining housing joints so that they matched with the ones I had already done, rather than relying on measurements. This proved to be slightly harder then it sounds as one of the uprights has a slight bow meaning that they wouldn't sit together properly. 


It was probably about 4 weeks of weekend chisellling and then I got annoyed with slow progress and just spent whole Saturdays bashing away on it. It helped that it rained most weekends in August. 


Jo keeps me company downstairs


Midway through August I lugged it all upstairs as it was time to start assembling. I laid one of the uprights down in the hall and made sure the shelves when fitted into the housing joints were at a right angle to the front and right angle along the upright. Strangely some of the them didn't fit the housing joint either because it narrowed at one end or narrowed as the shelf went into the housing joint. Both were quite frustrating, having to get on my hands and knees and chisel out a better defined housing joint, up to my ears in wood chippings in our hallway. 


When that was done and all shelves fitted, I got the other upright and sat it on top, sliding the shelves into the housing joints. Only  a couple fit properly, and if you got the housing joint at the top to fit, then the other end didn't. So it was a process of elimination to see which one in the middle it was. At first I thought I should sand the shelves down but that took ages, so I resorted to chiselling deeper housing joints. It was complicated by the fact that the beds of the housing joints weren't truly level, with my right angle checks earlier sometimes being aided by me holding the shelf in place, whereas now it was resting however it wanted. 


I eventually got it to fit, so then I took it all apart and glued the shelves to the first upright with the help of lots of wine bottles to hold the shelves upright. When that was dry I chucked the other upright on top and glued that. 


At last, the uprights and shelves are assembled and glued. 
The hall was temporarily turned into a workshop, 
but I wasn't too worried about the carpet.


The bookcase didn't have a top or bottom and wouldn't have looked right without them. I managed to break one of the shelves free from its glue by forcing the top between the uprights, which annoyed me, so I reglued the shelf (very badly) and sanded down the edges of the top. As I was reluctant to bring the sander up to the hallway, I made endless trips up and down the stairs to the basement, as I didn't want to sand too much off so that it didn't fit, and it was never quite enough. 


The bottom was a whole different story. I had measured the distance between the two uprights and cut down the remaining bit of wood to fit. However when I tried to put it in, it turned out the two uprights weren't quite flush, with one in front of the other. Therefore my oblong piece of wood wasn't going to fit. So I had to cut a massive wedge off the long side. Then I had to do the same as with the top and keep going up and down sanding and trying to fit it in. Very frustrating. My main mistake really was to have the top and bottom sit inside the uprights rather then over them, if you know what I mean. 


The top and bottom is on.
  The next step was to cut and attach a piece of MDF to the back for strength. Although with the housing joints and the top and bottom fitted in rather than out, I don't think I really needed this. But I went ahead so now my bookcase will survive a bomb blast or any terrorist attack. 


The MDF was tall and wide and 12mm thick and unbelievably heavy. I had to cut it down to the right size and it proved quite difficult to saw in a straight line without much care and attention. 


The bookshelf stands proud


The original plan
The finished article (and yes,
the top needs fixing to the wall
but it's just like a bus I promise)











So there we are finished. One solid wood bookcase. If I was to do it again I might have done dowels rather than housing joints but they look good. I don't think the MDF back needed to be so thick.

I am taking a break from this now but we have a long list of furniture needs and stockpile of wood offcuts so who knows what we might come up with?

Monday 30 August 2010

Cool things I found under the house

We spent a very busy weekend basically working on the house in one way or another. I can't talk about the curtains I spent all of the rainy Sunday making because it's just too depressing, to spend all that time only to be really disappointed with the result...
Anyway I will maybe tell that story another time.
So what I did do this weekend is dig around under the house. It rained almost all weekend and I had noticed that there were a couple of areas around the house where the rain wasn't draining too well. (Steve's previous blog about the squelchy moss was one of them....) Anyway I thought about this and figured that logically, water shouldn't be collecting in a concrete yard - then did a bit of digging (literally) in a few likely spots and discovered two drains, both completely covered with mud. The second one was completely blocked and required me to lie in the mud with my arm right down it to unblock it.... Very satisfying when it clears though... I just wonder how long it must have taken for decomposing leaf litter and mud to completely cover up a drain such that you can't even tell where it is?
While lying in the mud I noticed this bone pendant sitting in a puddle. I'm sure it's some genuine 400 year old maori taonga.

When I'd had enough of rummaging around in the mud I went back to installing underfloor insulation which took me to some of the dustiest parts of the house. I doubt anyone has had cause to go there for many years, given the lack of concern for the drains....

But I did find this cigarette packet. Notice anything about it?
... No health warning. In NZ they were introduced in 1974 which means this packet is at least 36 years old.

And I saved my most exciting find til last: An old, rusty metal sign lying in the dust turned out to be one of those cool old advertisements for Van Houten's cocoa which I think is one of the best brands of cocoa still. Shame it's a bit rusted away but rest assured it'll end up inside the house not under it eventually...

Sunday 22 August 2010

Getting back into it

We had to have a break as this renovation lark can get a bit heavy sometimes, so last weekend we ran away up north to the shores of Lake Taupo. Unfortunately the rain followed us so we couldn't do any skiing, but we did plenty of relaxing and thinking about what we'd like the house to look like. We got out the coloured pencils and did some 'artist's impressions'.

Artist's impression of the view into 11 Howard Street. Note beautiful handmade hall table to the right and handpainted cabbage tree on rear hall wall
Artist's impression of stained glass windows at 11 Howard Street

But this weekend we got back into it with a vengeance. I went and bought a spade and cleared the back yard of all the squelchy moss that has built up as a result of the neighbour's tree diverting heavy rain from the gutter to our backvyard. At the same time I kept an eye on the sunshine, we're now getting sun in the back so we're making a record of what gets sunshine so we can work out where to build the deck.  The present location of the compost heap (go figure!) is looking like the best bet.
We reckon we'll get about 8 months of sun in the back yard - we've just endured the 4 months of gloom.

Celebration time at no 11 as the socks get some sunshine
We replaced a bit of the porch, can you spot the difference?




Well, ok, it is the cross beam on the left. I machined a bit of 2 by 4 in my woodwork class, then we drilled some holes in it so we could nail it into the main struts on the porch, then we filled the holes, then we painted it (after matching the existing colour and buying similar paint). We reckon it adds 5k onto the house value ; )

Speaking of which, Jo continued her 'what the buyers will see first' project and sanded down the flaking fence posts ready for re-painting and made our gates close by screwing in the hinges.

We went and bought some underfloor insulation and started with the worst corner which Jo described as a coffin to wriggle into to try to fit the polystyrene tiles. Technically we can now take up some of the carpet above to see what the floorboards look like underneath. (we've been waiting for either summer or the insulation before taking up the disreputable threadbare brown shagpile carpet).  We're hoping for some lovely rimu floorboards ready for sanding.... fingers crossed.

Next up - curtains, fences, and furniture...

Sunday 25 July 2010

Fences and tradesmen

With Steve locked in the basement sanding his bookshelf it's left to me to give another update. We've been trying to get a few bits of work done but are having a lot of trouble getting tradesmen to even answer the phone. You'd never guess there was a recession on. We managed to get an electrician and builder in to give us quotes for bits of work, but our most urgent need, window maintenance, we haven't had any joy with. At least we're not having to pay for it yet I suppose.

Meanwhile I've been fixing the fence at the front of the house. There were several broken or missing fence palings (think that's the right word). It's not that difficult to fix fences but it took ages to track down where to find the replacements from, get the right style, buy primer, wait for primer to dry, get matching paint, do two coats of paint, find the right nails and then wait for a dry day to actually effect the repair...












Apparently having a neat and tidy front of the property raises its resale value. Not that we're planning to do that in the near future but it's certainly more regular, but now it's obvious that the whole front fence needs repainting! That means sanding before I even get to the repainting stage. It's never simple...











Til next time.
Jo

Monday 5 July 2010

Getting slap happy

I promised the double glazing and here it is over the louvred toilet window which lets the southerlies blow through and actually lets rain in too! Not any more. The room is noticeably warmer. Just seen you can see me in the photo...! ha ha.


It's Steve's very own invention, well - almost - it's a kind of stolen idea. Commercial companies do the same thing, create custom-made removable magnetic panels and attach them to existing windows - but for about $150 per pane. Steve's home-made version costs about $30 per pane, most of the cost being the adhesive magnetic tape. He's only used cheap thin perspex but you probably could scale it up to use a thicker kind of material which would be more transparent.



It works very well on conventional windows but on a lot of them you can't get a panel to fit (e.g. on sash windows) because there are locks etc. in the way. But it's a big improvement, plus you can remove them in the summer....
For some reason on our trip round Bunnings to buy a new shelf to put up in the kitchen (we were too short of worktop space so I thought I'd create a bit more next to the cooker)...
... we got distracted by paint and decided it would be a great idea to paint all of the cupboard doors in the kitchen a different colour using sample pots. Here's the before and after shots...
Before:
After:


I think it's very Balamory. I particularly like the purply one on the far right. But I think it clashes with the pink walls. With any luck we'll only have to live with this kitchen for a couple of years anyway...

Wednesday 23 June 2010

A few cosmetic improvements

A new Coat Rack:


We solved the coats on the bed problem finally with our driftwood-random coat rack. Hooks include drawer knobs, bits of driftwood, old hooks from the salvage yard and some new hooks too. The coat rack itself is made of a bit of driftwood picked up at Lyall Bay. The biggest challenge was screwing it into the wall: we had to make recessed holes as the wood is wider than our screws are long.
But doesn't it look cool!


And in my other piece of cosmetic mastery, I started cleaning a mark off the yellow "stained glass" window half way down the hall and discovered it wasn't stained yellow glass after all. Well, it was stained - stained with 120 years of cigarette smoke and grime.

Here's what it looked like to start with. The paler panels are where I was cleaning a stain off and discovered it was a bit more stained than I'd originally thought...


And here's the before and after shots....









That's about 4 hours worth of scrubbing to get it back to its original state... but I think it looks great.
Next up: Steve's home made double glazing. Watch this space.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Aargh! a leaking roof

No sooner had we got the insulation in than it started chucking it down. It rained all week and on Saturday was pretty torrential. That was when we noticed water dripping down the walls in a couple of places....
So back into the loft I went with a raging hangover after a rather big night out with work the night before, to discover about 5 different leaks! Needless to say our lovely new pink batts was soaking in places, and all Steve could think about was how we would dry it out again!

Our immediate measure is a series of buckets under the drips in the loft but the short term plan is we think we'll get someone in to try to patch the holes - neither of us are game enough to climb on the roof as the back of the house is a two storey drop. In some ways it's really good that we had such a big storm within a month of moving in as it's highlighted a problem to be solved urgently.

It's not looking great though - everyone I've spoken to (well, two people) says we'll have to replace the whole roof (corrugated steel - about $10,000). That could put paid to the new bathroom this year :-(

On the plus side Steve fixed the gushing downpipe under the shower in about 30 seconds. Good job we didn't call a plumber!

Thursday 27 May 2010

Priority no. 1: loft insulation

After the last frigid winter in our rental property loft insulation was very high on our list of priorities.  The NZ Government has a grant scheme for insulation - up to $1300 against the cost of installation - but you have to use an approved installation company, so once you factor in the labour cost it's not worth using them - and the companies have long waiting periods - 15 weeks - which would take us beyond the end of winter!  So in the end we decided to do it ourselves - how hard could it be?

We settled on R4.0 which is 190mm thick - most people go for 3.6 but we want a really warm house!  You get 6.3m2 per bale so for our 130m2 house (it's a bungalow) we calculated we needed 21 bales - but deliberately underestimated as we didn't want to buy too much.  So we bought 17 bales at a total cost of just over $1700.

A note on types of insulation: the most commonly used brand is Pink Batts which is made of recycled glass.  It is an irritant which is not nice to install.  The ecological and less irritating option is wool - but at double the cost we decided we didn't have cash to spare.  Anyway, Steve came prepared for action in a disposable boiler suit (the same kind kiwis wear when supporting the All Whites football team!)



Installing insulation is not the most glamorous job and we didn't get much take up of our offer of pizza in return for hard graft - though Jill came along to muck in...



Some tips for insulating your loft: don't open the bales until you've got them into the roof space as they are compressed so they massively expand when you slit them.  A kneeling board is pretty much essential if you don't want bruises all down your legs from shimmying along joists.  Definitely long sleeves, gloves and mask required.  You'll need a knife to cut the insulation to size (it fits between average joist widths but you need to cut it in places) Be prepared to get very hot and very dirty.  Start at the edges and work back towards the loft entrance - and don't do what I did and insulate over the porch - here I am removing the insulation from over the porch area.


It took us about 7 hours in total, this is what the mask - and I - looked like at the end ...
Hard work, I have bruises in very strange places and a head full of cuts from
bashing my head on the beams.












The half finished product:

And the finished product:

In the end we were one bale short, which we thought was pretty good judgement, so the total cost was around $1850. 

At the same time Steve did a sterling job cleaning our very slippery stairs - they don't get any sun in winter so there's moss growing on them.

Next job: fix the ('leaking' is an understatement - more like 'gushing') pipe under the shower...