A ceiling and a kitchen floor

All the preparations are done, time to rent a plaster plate lift and put in a ceiling. Of course all the lifts where rented out at the Ramirent around the corner and also in the other Tallinn branches there was no lift left over. Good thing there was one in Keila, so a little drive through the beautiful Estonia landscape and we could start anyway.

With the lift, putting in these huge ceiling plates was a breeze. We where done before we knew it. To to do some plastering. Well a lot of plastering. And then after some sanding it was time for a coat of paint. I figured Ral 9010 would be a good colour.

With this work done, the next step was to put in the linoleum in the kitchen. There was an annoying surprise when we found out they had cut the role just a few cm short. But after a bit of measuring and rethinking the way we could lay it we made it work. It was a fun new skill to learn and the result was super!

Now we could pick a colour for the kitchen wall. We picket an egg yellow, and could hardly wait to put it on.

Redoing the living room floor

The first project my dad and I planned to do was to redo the floor, straighten it out an take out some of the of the movement we noticed in some spots. We planned to replace the OSB for a thicker version, but with the prices being threefold of last year, we decided on different solution.

First we took out the floor and then we had to find the highest and lowest point of the floor. With the laser and a pole this was relatively easy. We found the difference throughout the room was about 5 cm. Especially in the middle of the room the beams seem to have bend over the years.

We got straight wood and screwed this to the sides of the original beams. In between we place cross beams to strengthen the floor boards. After this was done in the kitchen area, we got the hang of it. After about 6000 screw the more expensive Makita screw bit was warn out. It sure proved it was worth the extra money. All in all it still took almost a week to replace the floor, but the result was very satisfying.

The next step was to create an air duct for extraction hood in the kitchen. After some careful consideration we create it with 1 90 degree angle in it so the exit would be a bit away from the roof, as in the winter snow would otherwise block the exit.

As I wanted to have gallery rails to hang painting from to be flush with the ceiling, on other job this week was to put these at the correct height. This made me realize it might be a good idea to run some cables to the windows in case in the future I want to create automated curtains. A small job now, hopefully it will be useful in the future.

Towards the weekend we got a message from Ikea that most of the kitchen was in. With a bit of logical loading the van held the entire kitchen and even had a bit of left over space.

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.

The ceiling

With just one week to go until we have a house full of people, we are trying to get as far as possible. The walls in the kitchen is finished. Marc helps out with filling the screw holes.

Later in the week Jeff comes to help out with the ceiling. We start by putting metal stud up. Another great use for the laser.

Towards the end of the week we are just a day short to put the plaster plate on the ceiling, but it is already such a big difference from a month earlier. Time for a wedding party. We’ll be back somewhere after.

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