DIY Remodeling Project

Diary - Week 13

We’ve chosen the hottest week of the year to remove the wall between the kitchen and the sitting room. We created an enclosure around it so that the dust wouldn’t go everywhere. It looked like a scene out of ET. Of course dust  did go everywhere - the wall was a stud and plasterboard partition. Actually, getting rid of the wall didn’t take a long time and wasn’t very difficult - it was the dust prevention measures and the cleaning up that was time-consuming..

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DIY Project Diary - week 12

I had a meeting with the local planning office and they confirmed that the space on the first floor cannot be opened up because a protected escape route must exist in case of fire. These rules apply to three (or more) storey buildings. Installing a fire escape into the garden is not acceptable because the garden doesn’t have a direct access from a public road, and it’s not bigger than the height of the building. Expandable ladders attached to outside of the windows are not allowed either..

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DIY Project - week 11

We finally moved into our bedroom! Six months after we moved into our house. The mattress & the blind arrived on time; we created the radiator cover from Hessian and attached some floating shelves on the wall facing the bed. I filled the storage boxes with stuff but I also got rid of many things I haven’t used for years. I found things in boxes that I didn’t even remember I had - so  I reckoned if I haven’t needed them for a long time (or ever) I won’t be needing them now. It’s such a good feeling to clear stuff away!..

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DIY Project Diary  -  Week 10

Painting with the paint gun isn’t easy at all. I’d assumed it would be a time saver - but it isn’t. I bought an electric HVLP spray system - supposedly perfect for professional painting and lacquering because it creates an even, smooth finish - no brush strokes, no roller marks. However, the paint has to be thinned. A lot. Otherwise the nozzle gets blocked. This makes the paint so thin that you have to spray a surface many times. If you spray for too long the paint starts running down the wall..

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DIY Project Diary - Week 9

In the world of home improvement things always take longer than anticipated. No wonder builders never finish projects on time - why, knowing this, can’t they be realistic and allow for extra time when they give their estimates?..

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DIY Project Diary - Week 8

We really should have bought a bench saw.  Having cut 3 MDF sheets we’ve realised that doing it with a circular saw just doesn’t work properly because the MDF is only 6mm thick and 2.4m long! I got bored with cutting all these strips and wasting more material - I just wanted a builder’s merchant to do it for me. We’ve called around and eventually found a company nearby who would do it for a small fee, if we bought the material from them. I calculated that we needed another three sheets – at least. We needed to cover all walls, head board, cabinets, the lids of the boxes, the eaves around the window..

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DIY Project Diary - Week 7

Not much progress this week. We demolished the useless built in cabinet between the bedroom and hall - it opened up the whole floor. This cabinet was built like a mini-room – it had proper stud-partition walls – with insulation and everything. No wonder there was no space left inside it for anything much!..

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DIY Project - Diary Week 6

The bathroom is finished - at last! The newly mirrored door arrived; the mirror wasn’t broken this time en route. It took almost a day to install it into its sliding gear – but we’ve made it! Whilst waiting for the door, I cleared out the bedroom, which has been used as a dressing (and junk) room since January. This took me a couple days. Unfortunately our office is no longer clutter-free. I had to locate a few boxes of clothes there – making it almost impossible to get to the cabinets. But there was nowhere else to put things…other that the garden which is already full of junk: the old bath suite, doors and dozens of boxes full of our kitchen gadgets and utensils – which, it seems, we can live perfectly without..

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DIY Project Diary - week 5

Last week was tough. The tiler spent 5 days doing the tiling (he’d estimated 3 days work) so I decided to do the grouting myself. I thought there was nothing to it, I’d done grouting before! Grouting between big tiles is easy. But the mosaic tiles are a nightmare – particularly cleaning off the dried grout. There was dust everywhere. Anyway, it was a good exercise for my arms but it took me two days to do it! Then I had to seal around the bath and taps with silicon – it’s fiddly but strangely satisfying..

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DIY Project Diary ? Week 4

Well, the tiler didn?t turn up ? he hadn?t finished his previous job. We asked him to come over after work at least to look at the bathroom. I didn?t want any more surprises and I wanted to know how long it would take him to tile the whole bathroom. He came over on Monday evening and told us that big tiles cannot be cut around the wall mounted taps..

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