Garage – Rõika 15

Garage, party preparation and more

While cleaning up the attic of the garage we came across the upper shelves of the old kitchen. It made sense to hang them in the garage kitchen so we have more useful space and more unity.

In between I made a few holders for the french cleat wall and I arranged a bench for the home gym, which starts to look more complete.

November is also the month Mo has her birthday. As long as I know here she never celebrated it much but this year she planned a real party in combination with an exhibition of some of her art. The art rails really showed their purpose and even the bathroom was brightened up with a fitting work.
This also was a good excuse to refit the kitchen sink and finally move my standing desk and office chair from Mo’s studio to my office. This involved building up scaffolding so we could move it in there through the window.
For the party I spend a day in the kitchen making beautiful and tasty snacks for the party, which gave me nice memories to the time I worked in the big kitchen of Amsterdam Rai.

We also visited Mo’s mother, who had an issue with a toilet pot that was leaking. It turned out to be an easy fix by replacing the bold that connects the water reservoir and the pot.

Inside and outside

October is often a month for finishing of things outside and start with inside things again. This year was no difference. After another trip to Ikea, I put the blackout curtains in the bedroom. Nice in time for the dark months ahead.

On the roof I did some finishing touches around the chimneys, screwing the finishing profiles to the chimney and applying sealant for a water tight connection.

On the west wall of the house, I dug a trance next to the wall as deep as the gravel would let me to put some foundation insulation there. Once I have this put up around all the walls I will need to put some finish on it to make it look better then it does now, but for now it will be insulating.

Inspired by cleaning up the corner of the garage for the home gym I finally changed around the work bench and cabinets and made a start on a french cleat tool wall, which was on my wish list for a few years already. It really helped to get things organized. I guess this wall will fill up one tool (rack) at a time.

The curtains can be open to the top and to the bottom

Second layer and garage cleanup

The 3D-printer was standing on the floor in my office. That had to change, online I saw a lot of people use Ikea’s Lack table to put it on and there are plenty of little hacks you can print for it as well. So of to Ikea.

While there I found the Hornvallmo blackout curtains, which would likely be a good solution for the bedroom, as the support rails guide it nicely next to the glass so no movement through a draft and to be opened from the top and/or the bottom. At home I measured and we decided we should take them on a next trip to Ikea.

The second layer of paint on the house took way less effort. It was a joy to paint and the result was amazing. It seems 2 layers will be enough.

Toward the end of the month Marc had ordered an olympic barbell and 177,5 kg of weights. I had seen a squatting and bench press rack on the Wise marked place and after consulting with Mo, we decided this would be nice birthday present for the boys, as it is always hard to find something for them. But where to place the rack…

A good reason to clean up the garage and create a little gym area in the back. For now we put a leftover piece of linoleum, but I guess at some point some rubber mats would be better.

Bathroom and summer kitchen

The first thing to finish was the bathroom ceiling. The majority of the work was done already, only the main ceiling had to be put in, plastered and painted. This went pretty smooth.
In between we moved the temporary kitchen to the garage and made it into a pretty cozy kitchen. The only thing missing was running water and a sink, but this was fixed with a the vacation jerrycan and a bucket. It is temporary anyway. Soon we will be able to use a real kitchen.
Finally we could also put in the cabinet in the bathroom. At first I thought of building a cabinet, but when I found out it would fit a stock cabinet from Ikea with matching wooden doors, the choice was easy. Just in time for the arrival of my dad. It was good seeing him again in Tallinn. Looking forward to all the work we have planned.

The first thing we planned to do was take out the floor in the living room/kitchen and make it completely level. So taking out all the floor boards again. Minor detail was then we had build the insulation and walls over the floor, so we had to cut the floor. My old cheap jigsaw broke, so time to replace it for a real one. For some parts this was not the best solution either, so we also got a little circular saw blade for on an angle grinder. A scary tool that got the job done nicely.
With the floor out, we had to find out how big the difference was. After a lot of measuring we found out the difference between the highest and lowest point of the floor was almost 5,5 cm. No wonder the floor was wavy. We put in screws at the measuring points to visualize what we needed to fix and decided to screw some straight beams against the sacked beams.

Ready, set: GO!

This first decent vacation since we got the house has done us good. We rested, got inspired and were ready for a big large sprint. On a rainy day in France we went to Ikea and made the last decisions about the kitchen, so we where ready to order it.
It had been hot in Estonia, actually this region has been the hottest in entire Europe. Those small tomato plants we left a month ago, turned into a huge tomato plant jungle, which Mo cleaned up nicely.

After that it was a week of visiting a lot of shops. First stop was Ikea to check some final details and double check if everything we picked was also available in Estonia. Than we went for Floorin as I though linoleum might be a good solution for the kitchen. Mo’s first response was something like ‘No way!’ Ben when she saw the modern colours, she agreed to check it out and after seeing it in real life the decision was made quickly. We also found some roles of heavily discounted linoleum in the colour chartreuse, which we thought would be nice for the hall way. Nice detail was we brought a bottle of Chartreuse from France and it is clear how the colour got it’s name.

Next was a few countertop specialist, the good thing of have two offers is, you can negotiate prices. Since the first company we checked couldn’t beat the price of Granimar the order went to them.

For the living room we wanted a wooden floor. After earlier success at K-Rauta we went there and also this time we found a floor we liked quickly. As a bonus we also found a vanity desk for in the bathroom that was on sale, so we took that as well.

With these preparations done, we could start the real work. We wanted to try to get the bathroom done before my dad would arrive. It was just the ceiling, starting with plastering it.

And since we would replace the entire floor in the living room/kitchen we also needed to make space there, so we cleared out the garage to create a temporary kitchen there.

Start of a chair

About two months ago I talked with Mo about her birthday present. As I found out she is very fond of ‘De Stijl‘ I aked if she would like a Rietveld chair for her birthday, which would be delivered a bit later… Time flies so it was about time to start building it. As wikipedia has a full list of used parts it was pretty easy to calculate how much wood I would need. Since beech wood is very hard to get in Estonia, I used pine.

I started with a beam that I cut to length, then I cut them to size followed by drilling the holes for the dowels. When dry fitting them, it quickly started to look like the chair. As I did not have the sheet wood, I put a few other pieces to get a feel of the later result. Time to get paint.

With these darker days it was getting a bit annoying that the light in the garage kitchen did not work. After testing together with Jan who stopped by for a visit, I consulted with Loeke. The solution was actually pretty simple. It turned out the common ground and the switched ground where close to each other, and not explicitly marked. Since the switched ground strip was full I had continued with the common ground, which is a different circuit, so the circuit break did work as designed. I added a extra strip to split both grounds up and then I had light in the kitchen and under the train roof.

In the mean time it seems winter has started with a nice layer of snow and temperatures under 0.

The workshop

Secretly I had already started to use the work bench, which also stimulated to create a bit more order in the tools. I had seen a nice design of so called french cleat storage wall and wanted to try this. So I made a few small tool organizers. Because of the system you can easily move a set of tools do a different part of the workshop. After building this test setup I am convinced I will use this system to store the rest of my tools later on.

A few days later a new toy arrived, an Odroid N2+ with ‘gorgeous’ aluminum case, shortly the Home Assistant Blue, as an upgrade for my Raspberry Pi 3 to run home assistant for the upcoming years. So the darkest time of year I had something to keep me busy. Of course the first thing I did was open the case to check the content (and to turn it around to the connector where on a more logical side.)

Workbench and garden shed

After a week of very visible work a week of less noticeable work followed. I finished the driveway outside of the gate, but then I went back into the garage and worked on the workbench. When I dry fitted all the joints I was impressed by how sturdy the workbench was already. I was looking forward to gluing it all together.

I also wanted to close the wall in the garden shed that has been build on the back of the house as there is still some cold air seeping in. For the bathroom I had taken out half of the windows, so there was a spare part on both sides of the window on the outside. While doing this, I noticed the part of the wall under the window was pretty crooked, so the result was not perfect, but good enough for a shed.

Garage kitchen and driveway

With all the space in the garage kitchen it is motivating to clean the place up. I started with cleaning the walls, it looked as if I had painted them. There was a lot of dirt on the paint. After that I placed some of the old Ikea cabinets that came from my grand parents. They fitted very nice. As the cabinets with the doors had been hanging cabinets, I made shelves to add to them.

In between, 4 months after ordering them, the guitar wall holders for Mattias finally came in, just a few weeks after his birthday, but it sure is a finishing touch to his room.

Recently I had noticed there is a hole in the driveway where the trailer tends to get into while backing it up into the driveway. I decided to fill it up with some left over sand that was kind of in the way anyway and than cover it with some of the split we still had on a big pile in the middle of the driveway. This gave such a nice result I continued working on the driveway the rest of the week.

Little by little it really started to become a driveway. When I met former coworker Jarkko at a house warming party who said he really like carrying stones and wood, we made an appointment to move the pile of stones that has been laying against the house for as long as we know to a better place. Mattias also helped cleaning up the bricks pieces at the front of the house. This cleaned up even more and the result looks great!

Workbench and garden work

If you search the internet for Morovian workbench you will get a lot of information on how to build one yourself. I started with making the countertop and once I had glued the two pieces together I could already use it by putting it on some supports. Then the real work started, making mortise and tenon joints, bridle joints and dove tails. One of the reasons I picked this workbench is to get back into wood construction.

During the weekend we decided to pick the apples that had not fallen yet, so we can store them. After that I figured it would be a good idea to extend the electrical system from the garage to the train roofs, having a light and a power point there will come in handy. Doing this also was a good excuse to clean another piece of garden, so next season we will have grass there and not weeds.

As a last thing this weekend Mo and I moved all the light armatures and cover from the garage kitchen to the train roof, so we can look through that later on and getting more space in the garage at the same time.