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.
With all the effort, including a fall from the roof, it was still leaking, so I was done with it. I decided to completely replace the roof of the dormer. Some OSB, some nail coat and some bitumen should do the trick.
It was beautiful weather in between the showers. But I got the OSB on there before the first shower hit and got the nail coat on when the real rain started. The next day I finished by burning on the bitumen layers and finishing off the connection with the main roof.
Another rain shower showed one minor error in the connection with the roof and then finally, the roof was waterproof! At last! Time for a bit of vacation, so the next few weeks there will be little or no work done on the house. Because of the pandemic we will explore Estonia.
So, the doors are in, the space under the roof now is a cabinet, time to get this space organized. I already bought some Ivar shelves from Ikea, but not everything was available, so I had to do another run. Since the longest parts where only 179 cm, I figured it would ‘easily’ fit in Anna’s Toyota IQ and I even had 1 cm left. My plan to cut the long part sides in pieces for a second layer of shelves worked nicely, so 3 long sides turned into 6 made to fit short sides.
With the finishing touch between the old and new wood from last week as an example I also made a filler piece for the sliding doors. After I had made a new sill for one of the windows on the south side I now could use my new learned skill to renovate the windows on the north side.
And than when the first real room was about finished it started raining again and the roof leaked like it had never been fixed. So back on the roof to see what I could do to fix it. I now noticed the dormer did not have barge boards and since it was very windy I figured that might just be the missing link on why it is dripping again.
So from the wood I had laying around I made a barge board and put it on the right side of the dormer. It was not perfect, but it would do for the time being, as a completely new roof is planned for next year anyway, so on to the left side. I moved the scaffolding and started on the left side. The preparation went well, but when I went up with the actual board, something started moving and before I fully realized what happened the scaffolding was sliding away from the wall and turned away from the house, while I was going after it. A second later I fell in the grass, which gave a pretty good impact, but I instantly jumped up and shouted I was OK. Further inspection showed a few scratches, so I guess I have been very lucky. A cool thing to notice was that during the fall my body was moving towards a better position for falling. Got to love the muscle memory from years of judo!
During the weekend we found a nice lamp for in our toilet, it is an elephant with a small night light in its belly and a main light in its trunk. Also I found some time to create a replacement construction for a small greenhouse for Mo’s mother.
On Monday my patience was gone. I convinced Mo to have a test sleep in our new bedroom. It was great to finally be able to sleep in a bedroom again after just over a year of sleeping in the corner of the living room behind a cabinet. The new mattress was very firm, completely on the other end of the firmness spectrum from the mattresses we had slept on the last few months, which we both agreed where to soft.
The next morning we made a list of all the things, small and big that still needed to be done. After this night I was extra motivated. So things like putting the handles on the drawers, putting a ceiling in the toilet, working some wires in the ceiling, putting some finishing walls in the sliding door cabinet all went pretty quickly and than Mo got an email that our sliding doors where ready to be picket up. So I went to pick them up with Jan and discover new shabby corners of Tallinn. After I had put in the first door I was not happy, it seamed the floor was round in the middle and the doors did not want to be adjusted straight. Learning from the past I left it for the next day.
The next day became a few days later as there where a few very warm days, so we took the opportunity to take out the the windows to fix them up a bit and paint them. I did the fixing upping and Mo did the painting. I decided to try to clean the handles and hinges, which turned out great.
Then I put in the other set of sliding doors, this time it went much smoother and I also found the stopper strips, which helped a lot to keep the doors in it’s place. After that I readjusted the first set of doors and they now look perfect when the doors are closed, when opened you will see the floor is weird, but that is the charm of an old house.
We wanted to have the inside of the closet white as well, so Mo spend a few hours doing so. As a last thing this week I finally got a satisfying way to finish the connection between the old and the new wood, but cutting a piece of old wood to size and filling a small strip I cut of the new wood. I am super happy with the result.
It is nice to have an idea, but it has to be realistic. With all the (little) things that needed to be done to finish the bedroom, it was clear 7.7 would not work, but close to it would still be something to go for. So here is what we did this week.
With the long Estonian days curtains are pretty essential, so we went to look for something and as it has been so far, it was pretty easy to find something we both liked, it took about 5 minutes in the fabric store. Entering the curtain section I noticed something which looked very similar to my grandfathers curtains back in Leeuwarden, Mo saw the same fabric and it was done.
Back home I made and fitted the feather boards around the doors, while Mo started scraping of the old paint from the drawers.
Then she cleaned the old wood we kept in sight while I build the last walls in the toilet and we sanded and painted the windows.
I also had to get back on the roof, as during the rain, when the wind was coming from the east to southeast we had a bit of leaking again. I found the most possible suspect and covered it completely, so fingers crossed this will the last one until we will replace the roof.
For the past half a year we have been climbing on the higher sauna benches, while the wood for the lower bench was standing in the corner waiting for the day it would become a bench. With the new sawing machine I wanted to test cutting under two angles, which would be perfect for the sauna bench. I made sketch, calculated the angles, set the machine the before I knew it we finally had our lower sauna bench. This completes the sauna very much.
After that I finished the drawer cabinet, so now we can take of the old paint and make it fit into the room.
Meanwhile Jan came from the Netherlands with a big trailer full of furniture and boxes. As my dad had sold his house and moved in with Tine, and I still love the leather couches my parents bought when they got married, I inherited them together with some other stuff from the house and some car parts! There was just the issue of getting it here. Jan had a similar thing and when he suggested to buy a trailer together and drive it here with our stuff I was all for it and now it finally arrived. We stored most of the boxes in the garage, but the one with my grandfathers clock went inside and I put it on the wall as it seems to be the safest place to keep it. It was really nice to hear it chime.
Mo had reminded me that at one point we had talked about the idea to move into the bedroom on 7.7, exactly a year after we moved into the house (jeez, time flies), but in order to do that, some end spurt would need to happen. Good thing there now is a trailer to pick up large slats as having the car parts in town does not instantly fix my car. Good thing I could borrow Jans Citroën CX. Lovely car to drive, it made me miss my BX.
I took the slats through the router table and then made them to fit all around the ceiling of the bedroom.
We also needed windows sills, which would be nice if they would fit the room, so we looked through the wood we had saved and found some nice boards. I made the first one to fit and then took it into the shower to clean it, as it was very dirty, this turned out to be an excellent way to clean it and after that it made a perfect finishing touch for the windows of the dormers.
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.
With the new tools in, I could start making the baseboards for the bedroom. Since I have to make a lot of them to cover the entire house, it would be handy to have router table. I had already watched several video’s on how to make one, but then I remembered I saw a relative cheap router table at Bauhof. When I checked it out, I was in luck, as it was on sale, so I did not have to think long and ordered it, also as it also comes with some feather boards to keep the wood in place during processing.
After the first test runs, I noticed it was not very easy to keep long boards straight, so I decided to make a bit more sturdy table with some old kitchen cabinets I had saved. This worked great and I was able to turn meters of rough wood into baseboards.
After I made them I put two coats of clear lack on it before I could make it to size and put it in the room. For the occasion I picket the little hammer my grandfather has given me at some point. It was the hammer he got as a 13 year old when he started working as a carpenter pupil in 1928. I still use it for more delicate work.
During the weekend is was great weather so we decided to clean the windows in the living room. Lot’s of work as there is two windows, with 4 pieces of glass each. But the result was great. On the outside I also took of loose paint and put base coat on where needed.
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