Our Little Durham Restoration Project...

[paulrockliffe]

Right, quick blast while I'm a bit quiet at work and everyone has finished for Christmas......

Next job was the last few jobs in the new bathroom so it's ready for plaster, shower tray in, sealed etc:



And I fitted some architrave too. I wouldn't normally do that but the frames supplied with the sliding pocket door aren't designed to be plastered up to, which is a bit of a pain. I guess they're designed for a market where everything is taped and jointed?



I've probably said this before, but if you want pocket doors, get some angle iron, a sliding door track and make your own. With one of mine being a fire door frame, there's about a grand in the two doors, totally not worth it for the level of quality you end up with vs the difficulty of making something much better for half the cost. Lesson learned.

[paulrockliffe]

Then a quick interlude while waiting for the plasterer - the modified poo-pipe:

Fairly basic proposition, we have an old pipe and a new pipe vaguely nearby and they need to join up:



The whole thing was lashed up with a dubious adaptor 10 years ago when we put the toilet back where it was supposed to be and had to feed into the 4" cast iron drains, it's lashed up again until we extend the house below and replace all the drainage. So first job was to measure, dismantle and build up all the bends etc to fit:



Then the hardest bit was fitting it all together, but with a bit of finessing of the wall with the grinder and liberal application of rubber grease it just about went:



Fun job! Yes that is a 240v mains cable, it's not touching it as it looks in the picture, but that was a bit of a complication. The other cable is taking the internet out to my workshop.

[paulrockliffe]

Then the plasterer was back, he did his thing and here's some pics:







As soon as it was dry the paint came out and it looked like this:





Almost finished! It took over a year to get it all tiled and working, there's still a handful of jobs left to finish off too!

[paulrockliffe]

Then the sofa arrived, which was....... er....... premature!

[paulrockliffe]

So now we're finished plastering, painting and making a mess we can get the last of the carpet in. Just the detailing of the stairs etc to sort out first.....

Added some bits of timber to carpet up to where the banister section isn't in:



(Still haven't put that section of wall up!)

Chopped out that bull-nose where it got smashed when I dropped a lump of ceiling on it:



Some screws, an offcut from one of the roof valley boards and the blockplane and you'd never know I was here:



Top piece of skirting:



This one is tweaked out as there's the top edge of a piece of structural timber poking above the landing floor here. It's going waaaay back up the thread, but the landing was compromised on depth because there's a window below and a need to keep the rise of the treads consistent between all three floors. The landing is only 100mm thick, 10mm steel plates were used to build up the floor joists, but the brick pattern meant a taller bit was needed onto the wall and this is the cover. Basically.

Oh, you can see what I mean here:



Last bit of oak floor run in, with the alarm panel wiring run in the groove and protected with......er..... gripfill? Should be fine....

Old carpet up:



Skirtings for the new cupboard:

#

And a little trimmer piece into the understairs cupboard space:



Then onto the carpet and here's how we ended up:











Solid keep-the-wife-happy progress, the space is basically clean, tidy and useable now, so it's this point really that the pressure reduced and things slowed down a fair bit. Only problem here is I'll have to do all the work out in the workshop now, which is a pain, but also there's probably a solid month's work getting that tidy and sorted again!

[paulrockliffe]

So everything got tidied up next, tools out, mess out and I started trying to get the workshop fit for work again and running loads of junk to the tip. A double bedframe was going, so I brought that in to check I hadn't messed up the sizes of the smallest bedroom:





It's tight in both positions, but more room than I thought, so that's all good. You can see why the bathroom door couldn't go in the middle now!

Off to the tip with that then, and moved my wife's desk back in:



Then feet up for a bit!

[paulrockliffe]

But not for too long.....

I made a template for the bathroom worktop ready to start vaguely thinking about how the sink is going to go:



And the shower screen went in:



This is such an awesome opening design for such a small space. It's basically an 80cm wide opening, but the projection is about a foot, so you can open it fully without getting jammed up against the toilet. Some of the sliding doors I looked at were barely 30cm wide opening!

[paulrockliffe]

Blinds arrived, so here's a couple fitted:





These open from the top or the bottom or both, are black-out and are pretty neat, not intruding on the glazing at all when open. Expensive, but neat.

[paulrockliffe]

Then Pilkington's callled, "Your special order is ready Sir." Very exciting, but also I'd forgotten about that completely as at the time there was a national glass crisis going on as most of the UK plants were shut for maintenance and covid had pushed the price of containers up and imports were too expensive.

So, bit more precision timber around the stairs:





How are you going to glue that bottom stringer? Dunno, lash something up?



And done:

[paulrockliffe]

Then off to collect the soldiers:



12mm toughened. Had my brother dust off his text books to do the calcs for these as the glass shortage meant no one was bothering to waste time on doing free maths for people. The numbers came back at 10mm for the longest piece, but 12 looks better, so I went over-kill.

First one in, all sat on some foam tape:



Temporary top-fixing:



Spacer blocks:



Then repeat:



Until it looks like this:



We're still not 100% on how to transition the traditional old bit of the house into the new in the roof, the transition is quite jarring in this pic, but not something you really notice, or maybe I've stopped noticing. It was done this way for simplicity, the old stairs, which aren't actually old as my Dad put them in 10 years ago, might end up going to be replaced with something more consistent. Needs more thought anyway....

[AB]

I've just spent the entire morning reading through this thread

I'm impressed, if I had 10% of your ability I'd be saving myself a lot of money right now. Look forward to reading on.

Well done!

[malaccamax]

Any updates due? Need my procrastination fix!

[paulrockliffe]

Ha ha, I started a new job so I'm a bit busier than I was before Christmas. But I wrecked my leg playing football earlier in the week so I can't do much other than sit at a computer at the moment, so I guess I'll probably find time soonish.....

[malaccamax]

paulrockliffe said:

Ha ha, I started a new job so I'm a bit busier than I was before Christmas. But I wrecked my leg playing football earlier in the week so I can't do much other than sit at a computer at the moment, so I guess I'll probably find time soonish.....

Argh, sorry about your leg. However...your pain will be our gain (if that doesn't sound too harsh)

[paulrockliffe]

So a year later a year more progress?

Not really, last year was pretty slow all round, I lost motivation to tick off all the little jobs and I've been saying to myself, "I must get round to ordering all those bits of wood and glass I need." for at least a year. Actually, I checked my emails and it was July 2022 when I almost ordered the wood but got scuppered by the supplier not having any boards longer than 2.4m when I need some in 2.45. That's how slow I 've been!

I'm forcing myself to get on with stuff now, partly because I know if I'm ticking off jobs the winter pisses me off a lot less and partly because the sooner this is finished the sooner I can justify starting another project that's been on the back-burner for a while. Plus I have some old cars that need my attention.

I also had a lot of other things that were put off that couldn't really be put off any longer, so I lost a lot of time to catching up last year, I lost a fence in a storm back in 2019 and lashed it back vaguely upright with some rope. I hate fences, so I started on a massively over-elaborate wall/pizza oven/patio project last year. I need to get this blog up to date before I can start mixing in those projects, so here I am.......

[paulrockliffe]

We're heading in to Christmas, Christmas 2021 for those not keeping up with where we are, which includes me.

Christmas usually involves a bit of, "We need to do x random job if people are coming", and I agree to make sure it's done because frankly there are another 10 similar jobs that I'm just grateful aren't on the same list. As much as I'd like to know what the methodology behind deciding what 'must' be done, I know if I ask I'll be buried on more work, so I don't.

This year, well two years ago, it was under the eaves must be finished or at least presentable. Let's go for presentable, it feels more achievable......

So, if you're paying attention you'll recognise this bench, I made the top for the bar that we setup for our wedding and now it's a fold-up extra bench in my workshop, that I now can't use because it's blocked by my Mini, which is blocked by 10 bags of cement, but that's a whole other adventure....

Anyway, I sent off a cutting list for some top-notch plywood, when it was still just about affordable, and got all these pieces back, they're pocket screwed together and sanded to glass to get a super-matt finish on them when they're painted:



The full frame looks like this, you can see where drawers will go and there's a raised frame around the drawers. WHat you can't see is that the right hand set of 3 drawers isn't attached to the rest, those drawers are going to slide somehow so I can get behind to access the rest of the eaves. There'll be a small door next to these drawers that gets me in behind the second half of the eaves that's behind the sofa:



Paint:



Drawer fronts:



Rough location:



At this point we're no where near done, I think I might have the cabinets and drawers half built outside, but we're not actually all that far off presentable, which was the low-bar I was set:



Merry.....er....Christmas!

[paulrockliffe]

By compete coincidence just before sitting down to see where these updates were up to, I took one of these drawers out to finish it over the weekend, so that's a nice little insight into just how slow I've been recently.

[paulrockliffe]

I was at a loose-end on Christmas Eve so I did a quick job:

Plasterboard:



Filled and sanded the joints:



Paint:



Not perfect, but good enough for what is just a cupboard. Eventually there'll be drawers at the back with a worktop on, amplifiers for the surround sound in the loft and the various ceiling speakers that have gone in and my 3D printer will fit into the top corner quite nicely. The cupboard will double-up as a wardrobe if the small room ends up being sued as a bedroom, but that's way down the list even now.....

I'll rotate the pictures next time....

[paulrockliffe]

After Christmas it was back to those drawers, I started making the cabinet to go behind the sofa, this will sit at the far wall away from the main block of drawers, with the space between being left for the sliding drawers to move into:



Then started making the sliding cabinet:



Hindsight is a wonderful thing, this would have been a lot easier if I'd just designed those drawers to wheel out into the room with a locking bolt to fix them in position or something, but at the time I thought I would need to have easy access to the storage. The reality is that that half is entirely filled with Christmas Decorations. Oh well.

The full cabinets got like this before I needed to track down the right paint and stuff to make more progress:



I can't remember exactly what happened next, probably the glass was ready to collect, but I moved onto glazing rather than getting these finished....

[paulrockliffe]

Cast your mind back and you might remember that we framed out the landing area between the two new rooms so we could glaze parts of the walls to avoid completely separating the rooms from each other. I don't regret this at all, it's a really nice detail and works really well at giving the feeling of a spacious London flat on top of the house, but if you'd told me how much work it would take and how much the glass would cost at the start I might not have gone through with it. Certainly my wife would have veto'd it for sure:

Anyway, this all 18mm fire-rated solid panes with the frames all designed to spec, it requires super-precise joints as well as intumescent sealants, so this was a total pain in the arse to do. The angles are complex, the length are exact and the frames have a 15mm bevel on them that adds an extra angle to get perfect too. This sort of thing:




Some of them can't be cut on my mitre saw, so they were marked with a carpenters bevel, had a knife-wall cut to set the finished position before being cut and planed back to the lines. Jesus. I quickly realised I needed to not mitre the joints but butt joint everything, working around the openings.

Noice:



Noice, noice:



Here's one I mitred before I realised how long it would take:



Anyway, eventually I had it all cut, glazing packers sorted, sealant ready and we got the first one in:



Lovely, lovely.

The second one was a repeat of the first. If you've ever wondered what an £800 pane of glass looks like, it's this:



You can see it's dark now, this was a whole day's work! Each cut involved measuring length, both angles, cutting, trial fitting, trimming, fitting again, these are the numbers for that:



4.37 miles, 74 flights of stairs. fking hell.