The progress of our renovation
Next weekend we will be traveling to the Netherlands for my fathers wedding. So this week I try to finish the second bedroom, so starting next week I can work on the living room!
So lots of details, finishing the desk, put door knobs on the cabinet doors, making window frames. I actually made to little pictures. But the important thing. The room is ready for Mattias to move in next week!
There is still a lot of small things to finish in the second bedroom. So this week is dedicated to that. First I finished the cabinet under the roof with plaster plate. Then I found out some material we got from Mo’s kindergarten this spring would make excellent doors and while I was at it, also a nice desk.
When I took out the outside windows, I would out that the bottom part of one of them was in pretty bad shape. I decided to try to make a new part, as these window frames are made without glue it was easy to take it apart and after that is was a fun exercise to recreate the part using the table saw.
In between I also found the time to finally sand the garden bench that came from my grand parents and oil it. It looks like new again is ready for the winter.
We had wonderful days camping around Estonia. In between we have been home for a few days when we knew it would be raining all day. But when we got home, there was again plenty to do to finish the bedroom and then to finish the second bedroom.
In the master bedroom I finally figured out how to finish the space above the drawer cabinet and in the second bedroom I put up lights and some art.
When we moved in there was an old drawer cabinet left on the attic. It kind of fit the house, but needed a lot of work to restore it to something decent, on the other hand the big drawers would hold a lot of stuff, but then again where to put it, it is pretty big. The solution to this came one day when I imagined the drawers can be build in under the roof. Now I was going to do that.
With the nice weather the vegetable garden finally is taking of and also the weeds, so in between working in the house I weeded the garden and finally the first corn plants showed up. In the front yard I also found that some of the sun flowers actually started growing.
And finally Matias came up with some colours for his bedroom. He was inspired by one of his favorite paintings made by Mo, so now for us the challenge to find a matching wall colour. In the end I think we where successful and the first result was promising. It sure needs an extra layer, but it looks nice.
And of course in between all these bigger things that make it to the blog there are also lots of details that are done. One of them is putting a door stopper on the backdoor.
Actually there was just one thing missing from the bedrooms, the doors, perfectly timed they where on sale at ABC, so with the help of Jon-Paul we got three doors. With guests in the second bedroom, I placed that door first and then placed the the master bedroom door and toilet door.
During the weekend ABC also finally had their 25% off sale again that I had been waiting for. With my birthday coming up I had my eye on a router so I can make the moldings for the finishing touches and my need for a table saw was now big enough too. Jeff helped me to pick them up.
One of the first things I did with the table saw was make a new sill for one of the outside windows of the bedroom. It was a absolute pleasure to create the different angels on a piece of wood and once I put it back on the window, it was much more sturdy again. With a bit of paint it even looked half way decent.
With the bedroom occupied I continued my plaster plate work into the stairway. This was one of those relatively small jobs that made a huge difference. After that I cleaned up for my birthday weekend.
This week is the last week before the summer vacation for the higher education, that means Rika, Marcs girlfriend will come over and they would like to stay over, a nice deadline to roughly finish the second bedroom and the stairway. So building and covering more walls, plastering the ceiling (where Marc did a great job), painting the ceiling and laying the floor.
On Saturday we had a new error on the heating system: E44/E45 Draft. So I checked the parts that seemed logical to me, but could not find a direct reason. I did however notice the chimney was pretty black and it would not hurt sweeping it, so I went to ABC to get some chimney sweeping materials. I was pretty impressed by the amount of sooth I took out. I guess about 3-4 liters from the 4 meter pipe from 11 months of use. The sweeping itself was rather easy, so I guess I can do it a bit more often as a preventive measure.
In the mean time Pelltech had replied to my question on how to solve it. It turned out that besides the chimney one of the fans had also a significant sooth buildup. After cleaning that, everything worked as expected again.
Learning from the past I got enough floor boards so it even would fit the extra piece of floor that needed to be covered under the roof. By Sunday night the floor was done, just in time to have a guest room. I just needed to get doors.
In between the insulation I also put PVC pipe in the wall for the electricity cable before closing the wall with plaster plate. Once that was done Mo and decided it would be good to take out the wall under the roof to create more visible and practical space. This went pretty smooth, after that Martijn came to help and put in the plaster plate under the tilted part.
With this in it was time to start building the wall that would divide, the room from the stairway, as part of the wooden wall that would be staying was 13 cm think, I opted for 2×6,5 cm metal studs. This turned out nicely and made a smooth surface with the existing parts. I also put in a little ceiling in the hall ways so the chimney sweeper hatch would be easily accessible.
In the mean time Marc helped to take out the wall that had been closing the stairway from the downstairs wall way. More air and visible rest. Mattias helped taking out the nails and sorting the reusable parts and future firewood.
Since the second bedroom is not really a room yet, the plaster plates need to be extended into the stairway. For this the scaffolding is very handy. Soon the ceiling and wall are covered as well.
As it is nice weather, the garden is also asking for some attention. I planted the soaked peas.
Earlier I had started to dig out one of the tree trunks, which was a lot of work. Marc stopped by this week and took it upon him to finish the first trunk. Towards the end I remembered I have a tirfor that might be useful pulling out the trunk. That worked great, so the other trunks where out in no time.
Back in the bedroom I needed to build a metal stud frame in front of the wall for the insulation.
Now that we found the right colour, it was just a matter of putting it on the rest of the walls. With the white base coat it worked easy and every finished wall convinced me it was the right colour. For the final touches like the skirting boards and finishing slats I need to get a router, but after 5 weekends of 25% discount at ABC this weekend there is no discount, so a bit of patience. Good thing there is plenty of other jobs still waiting.
One of the things I had pushed forward for a while already was to rewire the pumps of the heating system. For some reason they where connected directly to the mains, so they are all running 24/7. The heater has been designed to also control the pumps so it can also prioritize the hot water to either the boiler or the heating systems. I discussed changing this during the last visit of a mechanic and now I finally did it. Likely the big difference will be noticed when the weather cools down again, so that will take a while.
Since the first patches of our vegetable garden where easily filled we decided to clean another piece for beans and peas. So lots of time consuming sifting of dirt, but with the weather getting nicer and nicer it is good to be outside.
In the weekend Mattias and I put in the plaster plate on the ceiling for the second bedroom. So nice to see the big changes a bit of plaster plate can bring to a room.
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