cheers guys,
January 2015 update
Yep, I'm still alive. Just with a lot more responsibilities and stress than before, hence the lack of updates on the van. Yet again nothing has happened with the van due to life getting in the way over the past few months.
I did get the livingroom finished for xmas though. If you are interested in it continue reading , if not then head to the end of the post for van related news.
When I first moved into the new house the livingroom was very um, 'granny' friendly. The typical 80's brick wall/fireplace inside around the walls was taking up about 2ft of space. Basic electric fire. uncomfy sofa and chairs, textured wallpaper, basically it was needing a complete refresh. The good thing about the house is there is nothing that needs urgent attention.
One Sunday after lunch I was wondering just how easy it would be to take the wall down, I got my hammer and bolster and knocked a few bricks down.
Then thought "well, looks like I've started the decorating now then" so I carried on.
With the walls down I made a start on digging out the fireplace and hearth. The chimney was still there and unblocked so I got a chimney sweep in to give it a good clean and test. It all came through OK, just a little pointing to do around the chimney stack on the roof but nothing major. I broke out the hammer drill and with a chisel bit I lifted all the tiles and broke the hearth down to leave me the sub-hearth. Also, the wall above the fireplace had been covered in some kind of 80's wood laminate with what felt like superglue.
That's the good thing about the salvage yard I work at. You have to be up for trying all aspects of the job, one of which is installing the fireplaces so I know how to remove one and clean the chamber out.
It was going to be a lot of hassle to the walls skimmed with plaster so I opted to use plaster board. My boss told me the easiest way was to "dot and dab" it. Which is using an adhesive to attach the plasterboards. First I had to PVA the wall to seal it.
Then the adhesive.
I took my time to make sure everything was all square and level when I put the boards on.
Then cut out the hole for the fireplace.
I wasn't too keen on the dot and dab method. Sure it was effective at holding the boards up but I seemed to make a complete mess everywhere, seriously, everywhere. For the 2 other walls I just done it the traditional way of using 1/2 x 1 inch timber and screwed the boards to that. Then I had to fill the gaps.
The whole time I was doing this was after work and weekends so it took a few weeks to do, the upstairs spare room became our livingroom for the time being. Anyway, at this point I was ready for the other side of the wall.
I really wanted a slate hearth for my fireplace but I couldn't afford it, even through my work it would cost atleast
£250 as it needs backfilled for a solid fuel fire. Instead I made a small shutter around the fireplace then poured it with the ducamix (heat proof concrete) and let it set. Oh, I also had to extend the electrical sockets to the new plasterboard.
Then I got some nice porcelain tiles, 6 of them for £40 to use as the hearth.
Filled in the gaps with tile grout and it was done, saved me about £180 over a s;ate hearth and in hindsight I'm really happy with the outcome as the porcelain tiles are so much more durable than soft slate.
I temporarily put the combination in place to see what it would be like and try pout sample of wallpaper. This is the same combination I restored that I used as a dummy fireplace in my old rented flat.
With those walls done I had decided to take a long weekend off work so I could repair the lexus starter motor solenoid and do a lot more to the house. Worst weekend I've had in a long time. The started motor is right between the V of the cylinders, underneath the injectors, air manifold, 2 water pipes, LPG injectors etc.. and basically, long story short I was at the garage form 10am to 2am, 16 hours. Had to leave the car at the garage and find my own way home and took a while to diagnose the rubber o rings in the injectors were leaking so I had to blow £30 on 8 little rubber washers to get it to run right. I only had 1 day to do the house, hence the exhausted and curse word off face on me.
I was adding another power socket to the other wall as I wanted the TV to be between the doors and didn't want to run cables around the door frames.
I smoothed and filled all the other walls once they were stripped and started to line them with lining paper. If anyone else out there is new to this house renovating thing I really recommend spending £20 in a good thick book about it, I got the readers digest diy manual which was good at explaining all of the things I was needing to do. Here I am checking out how you do wallpapering.
Then trying it out, fairly easy once you get the hang of it.
With all that done I got the gratebuilder from work to do the chamber work for the fireplace. I would have given it a go myself but when its something that has the potential to destroy the house its probably best to leave it to the professionals.
First fire ever
Next thing was the floor. The wife and I wanted to have a nice sanded floor so I hired a floor sander for the weekend. Oh, I had also painted the other wall at this point too, a kind of stone white for the walls on the fire place side and a light green on the others.
I worked through all the grades, then used the edging sander and finally filled the gaps with pva mix and a top coat of pine wood filler. Took all weekend, very dusty and very noisy.
All that was left was to fit new skirting boards and give everything a little tidy and I was done, next step, the furnishings.
I'm really happy with how it turned out and quite proud of myself to do pretty much 99% of it myself. I still go by the motto " you don't know if you can do it unless you try it". You might just surprise your self.
I managed to finish about 2 weeks before the xmas holidays so I let myself have a good rest.
Then I got some news from my boss that kinda annoyed me. Last time he was over from Florida we discussed when I would have a garage built assuming I moved into this house and I said June or July. To which he replied, "well, if we say July will be your last month at the garage would that be OK" so I agreed thinking id have plenty of time to build a garage. Then a few days before we broke up for the holidays he told me he needed me out by April.......
Uuuuugggh, so that just added to my stress, if I knew that's what he was planning I would have started the garage before the livingroom.
So my new project that I'm going to have to rush though is a double garage. Scotland's rules regarding a garage without having to get planning permission are actually quite relaxed. Here are those rules.
(1) The provision within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse of a building for any purpose incidental to the enjoyment of that dwellinghouse or the alteration, maintenance or improvement of such a building.
(2) Development is not permitted by this class if-
(a) it consists of a dwelling;
(b) any part of the development would be forward of a wall forming part of the principal elevation or side elevation where that elevation fronts a road;
(c) the height of the eaves would exceed 3 metres;
(d) any part of the development would exceed 4 metres in height;
(e) any part of the development within 1 metre of the boundary of the curtilage of the dwellinghouse would exceed 2.5 metres in height;
(f) as a result of the development the area of ground covered by development within the front or rear curtilage of the dwellinghouse (excluding the original dwellinghouse and any hard surface or deck) would exceed 50% of the area of the front or rear curtilage respectively (excluding the ground area of the original dwellinghouse and any hard surface or deck); or
(g) in the case of land in a conservation area or within the curtilage of a listed building, the resulting building would have a footprint exceeding 4 square metres.
The only part of that which has been my biggest challenge is the 2.5 metres max within 1 metre of the boundy, due to my garden being about 6 metres wide and the garage being 5 metres wide. Ive spent a lot of time drawing and measuring so I don't need written permission (I,e a huge amount of money and time).
This is the garden when I moved in.
Since then I've had to lift all the stone chips and mark out my dimensions for the monolithic slab I will be pouring in. Underneath the blue tarp I have about 40 concrete sectional panels I got for a steal second-hand.
The outer edges of the slab will be 300 x 300 then the centre will be 150mm thick, ofcourse I will also have rebar and mesh in there too. Gives me a good indication size, really happy to actually start my dream of my very own double garage
.
Which brings me to today. The trenches are dug and I'm now skimming the top layer for the centre of the slab. A few people have already asked me why I'm not just hiring a digger and skip to do it all but to be honest I'm absolutely skint. I managed to get a small loan for the material but if I can save myself money by digging and disposing of the clay/soil in a trailer at the local tip I will. (even if that means roping in my poor brother to lend a hand, cheers bro)
I'm hoping next week will be the last weekend of digging. And I can get the rebar in and concrete poured maybe around mid February, we'll see........
The only true van related news I have was I was in the December issue of classic ford which was nice. I'm missing not having done anything to the van for ages now but I guess I need to do all of these other things first so I can have the time and space to do the van, it should all be worthwhile in the end.
