TrafRd

Bits & Bobs

2012-01-30T19:36:00.001Z

Although the garden steps were finished some time ago, they needed to be cleaned up. The ‘bricky’ had told me about brick acid, which I had never heard of before, so some was bought. Some experimenting was done and then all the brick work was cleaned up.

Some parts will need another going over but it is all looking much better. There are also some parts of the stable wall, which was repointed the other year(over 3 years ago actually), that need cleaning up but that can wait until later in the year.

Water leak

A pool of water was noticed at the back of the washing machine and at first it was thought that one of its pipes were leaking….but no.. it was the mains water stop cock. This could turn into a big job as it is in a very awkward position. Proper planning was needed for this, as the main water input in the street needed to be turned off. It is strange that there are four main taps coming out of the ground and connected to the mains in the road – garage, stable, kitchen and utility where the washing mc is. Would it be possible to disconnect the stop cock without having to move large amounts of water pipe? This was one of the questions running through my head. Would it be possible to seal the leak without taking the tap off? Are the right size spanners(wrench, US spelling!) available? On testing a spanner for size the gland packing nut moved! “That should not be loose” and on tightening it up the leak stopped…. Well! We live and learn. The area is now drying out nicely.

Wiring

The main upstairs wiring loom that is next to my bedroom door has needed attention for a while. The wires have been held together with tape and the switches screwed to the door frame. The ‘new’ wiring runs inside the original wiring channel but the wires are now a bit thicker. A channel should be cut out of the plaster but I am scared about what may happen to it, if it is hammered! A ten foot length of door moulding has been found and this will be sufficient to go from floor to ceiling. I was thinking of plastering the wire into the channel but access may be needed in the future. The wires were sorted out and the moulding nailed to the channel. A lot of time was spent sorting out the switch housing as it would not be suitable to inset it in the moulding. One of the switches has three separate lights on it and one of these is a double gang! ie another switch attached. After carefully noting where all the wires were a ‘cock up’ was done, mainly caused by the fact that when they were disconnected an extra wire was found! This was the double gang bit and it took more than a day to sort out the proper connections. It is keeping me fit though as every time the power was switched on or off two flights of stairs had to be travelled. Eventually the moulding will be stained the same as the bedroom door frame. The upper half is going to be awkward as there are an extra seven wires to be enclosed!

Bedroom

Work has started on my bedroom and the plastering is completed. What I thought was a complete roll of the original wallpaper was found and this would be used on either side of the window. Unfortunately the roll was one length short, it was an old anaglypta and everyone I spoke to laughed when asked if they had any. One lady recognised the design and suggested to use a paper with similar contours but different pattern, which would not be noticed with a quick glimpse. A roll of this was found and one length put up with the old. It works! From a distance! Work on this bedroom will halt for a while as the ceiling and cornice has more water damage than first thought and all the paint and paper is just flaking off to the touch. Leave it till the weather is warmer and I will move bedroom to upstairs for a while. It is too cold up there in the attic right now!

One of the other bedrooms is having more than a facelift. It must be the coldest room being used at the moment. Two sides are outside walls with the garage and side entrance underneath and an empty attic room above. It only has a partly fitted thin carpet with no underlay on the floor. To warm this room up – Polystyrene wallpaper is being put on first and this covered by 1700 lining paper. The floor will have full underfelt covered by a fitted carpet. The previous woodchip paper has been taken off, some plastering was needed also, and while doing this stencilling was found on the walls. Some similar to the front room and it has been decided to put it back up again. The same stencil can be used as from the front room but a new one has to be made for the small one. It took a while to work out the repeat pattern and a new stencil is being cut on a sheet of ohp acetate.

The stencil sheet above is wrong as it does not have the full repeat pattern!

To be continued….

Cornice

2012-01-14T17:01:00.001Z

All three of the window mouldings have now been re-attached and it is getting closer to the time for plastering part of the bedroom. The hallway is still not finished though – the cornice is broken where the old electrical circuit breaker was. This needs to be done.

The materials have been available since August but it is a job that has been put off many times and often just forgotten. The idea was to make a mould and then cast the replacement bit of the cornice, using Alginate(made from kelp) and plaster of paris. The suppliers were very helpful when my needs were explained to them over the phone. The original intention was to make a mould for the full cornice ie. include both the vertical and horizontal parts but this meant that the mould would be very large and there was not enough Alginate. It was decided to mix the Alginate on a board and then to press this up against the corner and lower section. The instructions say -mixing for 50 secs – it then starts to set for the next 3 -4 minutes. This meant mix, put on board, get up ladder, press into place (quickly) and then hold in place for a few minutes. Much of the Alginate was wasted on the upper section and the length was not as long as hoped for but if two plaster casts were made there would be enough for the repairs. The ends were cut off and two triangular wood end pieces added.

Wait! This did not look like my cornice ! but of course, it is a reverse shape. The instructions mention ‘boxing in’ the mould but I decided to tilt it all so that when the plaster was pored in gravity would provide a flat surface, to fit against the wall. A hammer lodged under the base provided the tilting mechanism! A few experiments were done first to get the right plaster/water mix.(It always helps if the calibrations on the mixing jug can be read properly!) The wooden sides of the mould and a little front piece were held on by small panel pins and when the plaster had set, the wood was just pulled apart and the casting removed.

Two of these castings would be enough but they would have to be worked on first to fit fairly flush with the original. Originally a hack saw blade was used but it was soon realised that a tenon saw and a wide wood chisel would work better. The rear gaps in the cornice were filled with normal plaster, the casting pressed into it and the narrower slots filled later with filler. It was done in three pieces with about 2 ins of the castings left over!

The fitting was a bit of a mess, more time and care should have been taken with cutting the casting to fit the recess but done carefully, filler and finger can work well.

Windows

2012-01-05T17:24:00.002Z

The painting in the back room is now finished. Actually, the finishing touches to the picture rail were done on Xmas Day morning. The final bit took just 30 minutes.

A Batik from Mozambique was put up on one wall above the picture rail and another may go up elsewhere.

What would be done next? My bedroom is in need of refreshing and the first two things to be done are the windows and plastering bits of the wall. The windows first and I realised that there were three windows on the first floor that needed the original mouldings to go back on. Comparing the original to the present windows showed how much smaller they are now. About 6 ins had to be taken off both the height and width of the original frames. Which means that there used to be more light in the rooms. The present windows measure 4ft by 6ft.

The first photo shows what the windows have looked like for the past 25 years and the second shows what they look like after the surround was taken off and the original mouldings put back on.

There is still one window to do, those mouldings needed some more restoration and afterwards they will all be varnished. There are more windows on the top floor that will eventually need converting. An interesting thing about these window mouldings is that they are exactly the same as the door surrounds in the house, even the same width.

Stencilling finished

2011-12-22T14:16:00.000Z

The stencilling has now finished, the picture rail and skirting board are now being worked on. The two end corners were in a bit of a mess due to the old water damage.

As in the front rooms, someone at some time in the past had plastered in sheets of hard asbestos and these were left as it seemed a bit silly to take them out and then having to replaster. The walls were cleaned up, flattened out and then a coat of paint put on, from a distance it looked fine and the decision was made to just add another coat of paint. The skirting boards were a bit more difficult and minor but awkward repairs were made which included correcting previous repairs from the past. The right hand photo below had its own problems which are still being worked on.

When the floor joists in this room were replaced (before this blog was started) the floor boards on this side of the room had dropped about 2 ins(50mm) due to wet rot and an attempt was made to put the new joists in at the correct height BUT that meant taking down the bookcase, 7ft high(2 metres) and 13 ft long and which is bolted to the wall. The floorboards were jacked up as high as possible and left with about a 1ins gap between the skirting board! There is quite a draft coming through here from the space below and it needs to be plugged.

Here is the under floor space, which in the middle is 8ft deep

The picture rail was sanded down and painted but without taking all the paint off, the red was to bright. Now, sanded down, painted brown, then painted red(actually ruby starlet), this gives the depth of colour wanted. As before, the top moulding of the skirting board is being stripped and the flat portion just sanded, this part will now be painted brown first.

Before and after(with xmas decoration) pictures -

Stencil

2011-12-10T10:35:00.000Z

For quite a while I have been trying to decide what to do with the area above the picture rail in the back room. It is possible that, as in the front room, a shelf may have been there but that did not seem like a good idea. Pictures could go up there but would be difficult to put up and to see. It would be best if something was done to compliment the frieze after all the work that was put into restoring it. After restoring the original stencilling in the front room and the hallway I have become interested in the possibility of using stencils elsewhere in the house and have been looking at various web sites.

A web site was found with interesting large stencils and it was decided that one of these would be used above the picture rail and just below the frieze. What was thought a suitable one was ordered but before it could be used the walls needed to be painted and a decision made about the colour of the picture rail. The colour of the rail could be decided on as a working matter but the wall painting and the stencilling needed to be tried out first.

The first trial did not work out too well as the middle colour from the frieze was used, it looked very different when put on a different background colour and a lot more of it. So a decision was made to paint it out and redo in a different colour. The next colour was similar to the lower part of the frieze and worked much better so it was decided to continue around the room.

An interesting thing about stencils is that not all of the pattern needs to be used. So over the fireplace only a portion of the stencil was used, as an experiment.

It looked good… so the whole room is to be done. This also meant fixing the bay corners which still had a lot of old water damage from years ago. This would include some plastering and the possible use of lining paper.

Seven stencils have now been done and ¾ of the walls painted but the rest of the skirting board and picture rail still need to be stripped and painted the same colour as the door.
It is difficult to show the proper colours but the two below are the most realistic (no flash).

Garden steps and other

2011-11-28T13:26:00.000Z

As usual, things take longer than first thought. The bricklaying has finished some time ago but a lot more work has been done on the steps themselves. They have been realigned and cracks filled. Re-pointing of the brickwork has been very awkward due to the position of the majority of bricks, the downward slope and vegetation. A very large fern had to be dug up and its roots cleared out of the bricks. This did not do my back any good and Yvonne provided extra help to finish off the pointing in places that needed the most bending! An angle grinder was purchased and this used to cut up some of the old sandstone blocks to repair the bottom step – this is still ongoing.

The dado wallpaper is still being touched up with paint, it is surprising the number of times it has been checked and still find areas that have not been covered. Paint could have been slapped on quite freely but then much of the embossed relief would have been lost due to the thickness of paint.

As the fireplace is being used again it was also time to upgrade some of its accessories, as they were looking a bit worse for wear, with the use of some black enamel.

Some more work has been done at the top of the stairs and another part of one of the roof joists has been stripped. There is still a lot of work to be done up here, especially how to stabilise the old lathe and plaster walls.

Leaf clearing has taken a while especially as there are 6 deciduous trees over 30 ft high out the back and 4 in the front. It has been suggested that they are left but it is nice to look at the lawn.

Hallway

2011-11-12T10:23:00.002Z

The complete hallway has now had the dado wallpapered and painted. My estimate for the amount of paper needed was close, 10 rolls. Two strips had been messed up and there was a shortage of about 6 foot, this was mainly caused by the extra needed covering the angle for the stairs. Luckily it was possible to make it up using some narrow offcuts that were matched up.

Thanks to Marilyn who tracked down the pattern. I am not sure what would have been done to the hallway if she had not found the copy of the original wallpaper!
One thing in the hallway that always bugged me was the bathroom door. When the hot water tank was put in(many years ago) the door had been switched to open outwards as the tank and airing cupboard took up too much room. Since the new boiler was installed these two items have disappeared leaving more space in the bathroom. It should be quite easy to switch the door back to the inside of the room as, in theory, the screw holes for the hinges should still be there. Taking the door off, finding the old screw holes and refitting only took about an hour but there was a problem with the rim lock as it closed from a different direction. It then took another 3 hours of searching through old locks for parts, a bit of filing and bending before refitting the lock. Even taking the handle off was difficult as a threaded washer had been used, screwed onto the square spindle, something I had never seen before and it took a while to work out. Then the inside of the door frame had to be stripped. It has made a lot more space in the hallway.

Work has continued on the garden steps and I have managed to refit the lower step. This was badly damaged but some extra sandstone pieces have been found in a neighbours garden that can be used for repairs. The old sandstone step pieces were found at the bottom of their garden along with a pile of victorian garden edging strips, of which some of these have also been acquired also. These were noticed when inspecting the japanese knotweed!

Garden, steps, dado

2011-11-04T10:26:00.000Z

With the help of a neighbour more pruning has been done to the sycamore and cherry trees at the bottom of the garden. It takes quite a while to clean up all the cuttings but makes quite a difference to the light. The next garden down has a large clump of Japanese Knotweed but there has been an assurance that this will be cleared before Xmas! I understand that it is one of the very few weeds in the UK contolled by law!

The steps are progressing but not as fast as hoped and another days work should see them back in use. As usual it was a bit more complicated than first thought and the steps themselves had to be relaid, which in turn brought its own complications.

My very first attempt at wallpapering is well underway and the majority of the Dado on the ground and first floors has been completed. It has been nice to see much of the mess, holes and cracks disappearing behind a copy of the original wallpaper. Painting still has to be done and this should make an even greater difference to the overall look of the hallway.

Garden steps and skirting board

2011-10-22T17:12:00.000+01:00

The garden steps have gradually deteriorated over the years. The mortar is going and on the one side the pillar is collapsing through the weight of the stone top. It is also home to a huge ant nest and many miner bees. The intention was to do this myself but on looking at it carefully decided that it was beyond my abilities, so a local brick layer was called in.

It was soon easy to see that it was not just the brick work that needed doing but also the steps themselves repaired and some concrete laying to be done.

Preparing for wallpapering the dado continues and as usual is more complex than first thought. The skirting board in many places has come away from the wall or in some places such as the stairs, where it is solid, there is a gap of up to .5 ins(12mm) between it and the wall. It did not seem a good idea to have the bottom of the wallpaper finishing at a gap. So these gaps and other problems needed to be fixed. Below the bathroom window was the biggest mess(the bathroom has three internal windows and no external!) and gave me an idea of some of the maintenance that had happened in the past. The repair below looked a little strange and on further investigation looked even stranger.

The filler box was embedded in the wall as part of the repair! It was possible to get this sorted out and replace the skirting using the original nails and wood inserts in the brick. Looking carefully at the skirting board meant that the plastering was studied more closely and in one area on the stairs a large chunk seemed loose. What would happen if it was pried off? Not a good idea! My alternative was to wedge it tight against the wall and then fill the gap with plaster, at least this would stop further movement. After drying, take the wedges out and fill the wedge holes.

At the bottom of the stairs the skirting had flexed out by about 1ins(25mm) and after some thought this was fixed with nail and adhesive with the help of an acrow (builders prop) laid across the hallway.

Originally the gaps were to be filled with tubes of builders grout but it all just disappeared behind the skirting so that is why plaster was used, plus it would be more solid.

There is always something extra to do! Last night while going to the toilet, after the pub, a drip of water hit me on top of my head and some splashes could be seen on the floor. Is this another water leak? Upstairs in the bathroom the sink panels had to come off and the floorboards pulled up, there to find a puddle of water. Nothing seemed to be leaking but it had soaked through the plaster board and into the toilet below. Best to look at this completely sober in the morning. In the morning, after checking all the pipes, no leaks could be found but the washbasin waste pipe did not look right. After checking the pipe with a spirit level found that it was angled the wrong way – but this pipe has been here for years! This is what I think happened – when hammering the skirting back on outside the bathroom the pipe must have been jolted and slipped down causing the water to flow backwards and leak at a joint! The pipe was moved up and a bracket put in to hold it in place – end drips on head – I hope!

Loose ends

2011-10-12T12:21:00.002+01:00

Cleaning up the hallway has continued, the dust, paint and plaster drips etc.. The cornice still has to be done! Back to the top floor stairway, where the hallway painting began, there was still some stripping to do. Decisions have to be made on how to deal with the walls inside this little area. 30 years ago it was a kitchen for the top floor flat.

The, now stripped, wood trim around the skylight highlights the shape nicely.

There has been no door here for as long as I can remember but one was found! Unfortunately the panel mouldings had been taken off. Another strange shaped door was found which was the original door from the bottom of this stairway. The banisters had been closed in and a door for the flat put in. This door would never fit in a normal doorway so the panel mouldings were taken off to fit the other door. The strange door was then broken up to be used as firewood!

The new door has not been fitted yet but is just resting in place. I still do not know what to do with this little room but will continue restoring it until something comes to mind. It would make a nice toilet and shower for the top floor!

During the week everyone in the house was woken up at 5.30am by, what we thought, a huge explosion. It sounded like a bomb had gone off. A day later another explanation was found. In one of the rooms on the top floor there is the insides of a baby grand piano, this has been against the wall ever since I have been in the house(I think that someone used to play it with drumsticks!!). Last week, for some reason it decided to fall and this was the explosion. It is very heavy.

Why? After all these years should it fall over? Perhaps now is the time to try and move it down the two flights of stairs!
While cleaning up, the tiles set aside for the back door were found and it was time for them to be laid. A new weather board was needed for the door and the stone step painted to fit in with the surrounding stone work.

Recently one of the the local pubs decided to replace their garden furniture and after the local parks and schools showed no interest in the old stuff it came to our attention. We were offered two of the benches and after finding someone with a van managed to get them home.

The one next to the wall took a bit more work to place as it was where the old barbecue was. A lot of bricks had to be moved and a base was made of leftover bark from the wood pile. They will not be used much for the rest of this year but will be handy in the future. It is intended that the blown bricks in the wall will be replaced… one day!

Sinks

2011-10-01T14:30:00.002+01:00

Have been resting a bit this week (well… reading Neal Asher Sci.fi.)along with clearing up mess and putting away tools that had been left all over the house. At last the old(new) sinks have been installed along with new taps.

There were a few problems with fitting but in general went very smoothly.
The bottom left sink looks good in the photo but was actually badly cracked.

Shower, hallway and soffit

2011-09-24T00:21:00.001+01:00

Decisions, decisions….First, the shower .... originally the space was going to be filled with bricks. It needed two bricks deep to reach the correct height and even then they had to be mortered and levelled then plywood on top. The wood store came to the rescue again and three pieces of marine ply was found that would be sufficient. The number of bricks to be used was changed about three times and then it was remembered that there were some very large old floor joists in the basement. All the bricks were removed and the joists cut to size. The ply was also reduced in size, to fit inside the old surrounding bricks.

The next problem was the drain hole. Well, not the hole as that was easily cut but the base could not be put down without the drain in place….but the drain has to be on top. This was eventually sorted out with the use of a wire coathanger pushed through the drain plug (I will not go into detail). The base was laid and the new shower door and side fitted, not without its own problems but a shower has been had, successfully. There is still some tiling to do as the base is lower than the old one but someone else is going to do that. Some old floor tiles were added below the base.

The hallway is almost complete, the stencilling done and the only thing left to do is to repair the cornice, perhaps sometime next week! The area under the stairs has had its different treatment and I am quite pleased with how it shows off the curvature.

A friend wished to borrow the scaffold tower and it made me realise that the soffit still needed repairing, so the deal was, if he helped me fix it, the tower could be borrowed afterwards.

It impresses me that if two people work together how much faster things can be done. The total time for putting up the tower, repairing the soffit, painting it, dismantling the tower and putting it into the back of his van was less than 4 hours. A bit faster than if it had been done on my own.

Shower basin

2011-09-17T21:05:00.000+01:00

The hallway has continued with the majority of the ceiling covered and the stencilling done except for the section next to the back door. The white paint ran out and the understair area is going to be treated differently.

A change was needed and the shower was leaking again. At first I thought it was poor fitting of the shower surround but then realised it was the crack in the tray itself. This crack had first been noticed on my return from Africa but it had been ‘sealed’ with numerous things! The pivoting door was a bit of a nuisance as it gave very little room for people to get in and out so a decision was made to replace both the tray and the surround. A new tray was purchased along with a new surround that had a folding door (three times the cost of the cheap pivoting one).

So, next, take down the shower surround and remove the tray. The surround came down with no damage but the tray would have to be tempted out with the sledge hammer and lump hammer

.It cannot be seen in the photo above but there was two inches of water under the tray. This was a concrete floor and to give room for the waste, the tray had been positioned on top of wall bricks.
It was obvious that the original support given was not enough for the tray and on reading the instructions for the new one understood the difference needed.

The tray should have been bedded on a 5:1 sand/cement mix on a solid base of either marine ply or concrete! After getting the water out it was noticed that the bricks and the concrete floor were water sodden so the new tray would have to wait until things had dried out a bit. This would take a long time, perhaps two air vents could be put in the side to allow future air flow!

Marine ply – the cheapest board found is £54 and will they sell half a board? A piece of plywood was found in the garage, exactly the right size but with a melamine top, could this be used? Would the mortar bond to melamine? Doubtful!

Hallway

2011-09-05T13:50:00.000+01:00

The painting of the hallway has continued and at last all the walls have been covered. This has taken longer than first thought. The ground floor walls were in worse shape than the first floor. A lot more of the previous paint had flaked off leaving many areas looking untidy. In many areas items had been attached to the wall with blu-tak and when taken off the paint came off with it. Other areas had little blisters that needed clearing with a scraper. The procedure with all of this was to cover about 10 ft width at a time. Using the scraper first clean up all loose or chipped paint, open up all the ‘stone block’ lines that had been filled, any cracks in the plaster were opened up, then attack all of this with filler. For the deeper cracks external filler was used first as it contains cement. As with all old houses some of the plaster had come away from the walls, easily found out by giving it a tap with the knuckles. Only in two areas was the plaster taken off and redone with plaster board. In other areas the cracks were opened out and filler pushed in the full depth of the plaster, this would also stop any further movement (my theory!). Doing all of this covered many of the stone block lines so they had to be redone, most while the filler was still damp but others after it had hardened. Faced with this large expanse of wall it is easy to miss discrepancies even after studying it 2 or 3 times! More of the border above the dado rail has been done and repairs done afterwards using filler and a little artists brush after the masking tape was taken off. The masking tape was also taking off some of the old flaky paint not noticed before!

There were also many chips in the cornice which seemed to have been caused by detaching telephone lines and these also had to be repaired. It was found that the best tool for filling these areas was my finger.
This may seem to have been a bit laborious but I believe much easier than taking off tons of plaster, taking it to the tip and then putting up new stuff without any of the stone block lines.

One thing that may be regretted is the decision to do the ceiling and cornice after the walls but I was eager to see the difference that the new paint would make. There is also the stencilling still to do as well. The right hand photo, above, shows the beginning of the wall, after the vestibule, that goes all the way up to the skylight in the roof, which is a total height of 33 feet(10 metres).

Cornwall

2011-08-29T12:17:00.000+01:00

I have just experienced my first camping trip for many years. This started with a night stopover, on the way, at Lynmouth in Devon. Stayed B&B in a little pub that is shown on the right of the first photo. Lovely area and interesting history, well worth the stopover.
Then onto Kelynack which next to St Just, about 5 miles from Lands End. This is a lovely area and has wonderful coastal walks with beaches in between.

There are also some old tin mines that can be visited some dating back to early 1700’s.

It was a nice break and good to be out in the fresh air all the time. It was also nice to be away from the city lights and see the stars properly again.

Trees

2011-08-29T11:35:00.000+01:00

The end of the garden has become a bit overcrowded and in one bottom corner there are 6 trees. These have been forced to grow higher to get light and the old box tree is also stretching out and not looking very good. The trees are oak, horse chestnut, cherry, sycamore, box, plus a small yew.
It was decided to get rid of the horse chestnut due to its shape and position which would give more light to the others.

So, with help from a friend, up the ladder, the smaller branches were cut off with a hand saw. A rope was then attached to remaining ‘trunk’ and the base done with the chainsaw. The cherry tree was also trimmed. This took up most of a day and a further day was spent cutting up all the branches and chainsawing the thicker parts. This has now all been bagged or put on the wood pile.
More of the hallway has been prepared for painting which will have to wait until after a holiday.

This section has not been cleaned in a while and where the picture has been taken down is just above a radiator! More work for the sugar soap!

Hallway - back door

2011-08-14T17:25:00.000+01:00

The holes and cracks have been patched up, in the one case with the help of a wall brick cut to shape, and the painting done. This section now looks much better.

The plaster of paris and the moulding alginate have arrived for fixing the cornice but I do not know when it will be done. It seems better to do some more of the hallway wall at the moment!

The main stairway painting has also been done.

A new shower mixer had to be fitted as since the installation of the new central heating, last year, the higher pressure had caused the leaks in the old mixer to get worse. Of course, this was not simply take off one and add a new one as the pipe centres and fixing holes were completely different. The old fixing screws had rusted so there was no slot to set the screwdiver in but eventually they were out. A method was worked out that only needed a 3ins section of pipe to be added. I had not done any pipe soldering for a long time and managed to make a mess of one of the connections. The most difficult part was unsoldering the bad connection with only two hands. Sensibly, instead of trying to resolder the same one, a mechanical straight coupler was used (should have done that in the first place). The new mixer is a definite improvement on the old one.

Hallway - moving down

2011-08-08T20:02:00.000+01:00

The dado has now been finished all the way up to the top rooms, the small gaps filled in and also varnished. The next job was to move down to the main stairway and the wall was painted as far as the downstairs toilet. The main stairway needed the stripes painted above the dado rail but it has two major curves in it. One convex at the top and the other concave at the bottom. Should they be done freehand or should a template be cut? It was decided in the end to take reference from the curved dado and do it in steps, a bit like a geodesic. The curves are about 1ft6” (46cm) radius. The height of each stripe section was marked on the walls and then strips of masking tape about 1.5”(40mm) long were added. The lines were then painted and they looked good…… Until the masking tape was taken off and the underlying paint came off with it. It was the original paint that was coming off from in between the stripes and also affecting the new paint. Only thing to do was find all the loose paint, take it off, using masking tape as a sucker, repaint the wall and redo the stripes. I wanted to leave the new paint for a couple of days, to set properly! So move down to the back door section of the hall wall!

This was in a bit of a state, the dado rail and skirting board had been replaced previously http://trafrd.blogspot.com/2010/01/hallway.html and this was going to be a bit more complex than the upstairs.

After the initial clean up and widening of the cracks bigger problems appeared. Some new cement mortar was added, where needed and some plastering done. The square gap in the cornice is where the wiring went through from the original fuse box (the fixing holes were still there) and new mouldings will need to be made for that and the section next to it! After taking off the tatty lining paper a wooden triangle was found that shows the end of the top of the stairs. It will be interesting to see what is revealed when the curved section is cleared. The same stencilling is also noticeable both at the ceiling level and above the dado rail!

The area next to the back door has, in the past, been affected by damp and some strange patching done. On ‘opening up’ the cracks more work was revealed! The hole appeared with very little help. The graffiti has been there for the last 30 years but covered by a picture and it was tempting to put a frame around it and leave it there but thought that was being bit silly! This area will be cleaned up and then a return the stair dado stripes for them to be redone.

Dado Rail

2011-07-31T16:39:00.001+01:00

The painting has continued with all the walls and ceiling now finished, even the ‘toilet’ hallway. For some reason this toilet part of the hallway does not have a dado rail even though there are four doorways coming off it. So, it would be good to give it one with the same style continuing throughout. This raised another question – Where should it stop? This part of the hallway joins up to the top floor stairwell at a curved corner! It would be interesting to put the dado in going around the curve and then continue it up to the top floor at the side of the stairs. If it does not work it can always be taken off!

The first photo shows the main hallway with the old wallpaper on it. The toilet hallway has different colours at the dado because the new papering will be left until all the walls are painted, including the ground floor.
It was interesting making up the dado rail as many angles had to be worked out and then cut. The staining was done first and then the wood cut to shape and fitted. A matt varnish will be used afterwards. The lines painted above it were done using masking tape.

The very top section of the stairwell still has to be finished and then some attention needs to be paid to the main stairway(left photo). On reflection I would have preferred an extra section at the bottom of the stairs that would have made the angle less sharp but…….It will be interesting to see how well it stays on as it has been glued on not screwed. Putting screws into this old plaster is always a tricky job, just a few pins were used to hold the dado rail in place while the ‘glue’ set. It seems quite firm…..we will see!

Hallway stencil

2011-07-23T20:28:00.001+01:00

The walls above the dado and the ceiling have now been painted. The large cracks have all been filled and covered and can hardly be seen. Thanks to Marilyn http://hauserhaus.blogspot.com/ replica wallpaper has been purchased for the dado, not quite as deep but the same pattern in blown vinyl. The stencilling has been done on both sides and the strips painted on just above the dado. Next, is to paint the existing paper the same colour as the strips and stencil. The wallpapering will be left until all the hallway is painted. By that I mean the toilet hallway and the ground floor hallway. Now that the Tour de France is about to finish work may progress a bit faster and the afternoon will not be spent in front of the TV.

The old gas light on the wall cleaned up nicely and it is a bit strange to hear a slight hisss of gas if it is turned on! This must be investigated at some time.
For a long time I have been searching for some replacement ceiling lampshades in the back living room and at last have found the two needed. The biggest problem was the size of the fitting aperture(4 3/4"). The first photo is one of my old ones the second(right hand lamp) shows one of the two new ones.

They were found at http://www.englishlampcompany.com/ceiling_lamps.html and were shades only, so cheaper than the advertised ones.

Stencil?

2011-07-15T19:31:00.002+01:00

The painting continues but as usual it is going to take much longer than thought. This time it is not a horrible discovery but it was unexpected. As this wall has not been touched in a long time a decision was made to wash the wall down first, after all the filling and smoothing had been finished, before painting. So, using a sugar soap and water mixture that was sprayed on, it was washed down. After doing this for about an hour I stepped down from the platform and looked up to admire the difference. Was it my imagination but it looked like shapes could be seen just below the cornice moulding? Imagination, as 5 minutes later they had gone, that is, until more water was sprayed on. Shapes could be seen in the reflections from the wet wall, eventually I decided to try something that had been seen on TV. Scrape the paint back gently and go through each layer of paint separately. There were only three layers of paint and a stencil shape emerged that I had seen before. It was exactly the same stencil shape that had been found in the front living room. (http://trafrd.blogspot.com/2011/02/stripping.html )

This scraping of the paint was done in a few other places and other paint work was found just above the dado rail. This was the original décor and to repeat it is why things are going to take a bit longer as this landing is about 35 foot(10m) long. A decision must also be made about the dado as a lot of the old paper has been taken off and could I afford to replace it? More about this at some other time.

First floor landing

2011-07-13T09:43:00.002+01:00

The attempt at painting continues but now on the first floor landing. There are a number of problems with the walls and ceiling. Damage caused by old water leaks and, I hope, old settlement. The cracks have been there for as long as can be remembered. My strategy is to open them out a bit, fill them and then sand down. A couple of the larger cracks will be filled first with cement based filler and then something finer. Many of the stone block grooves will be redone as well.

Some of the movement near the ceiling was as much as ¼” (1 cm) which meant that work was needed to ‘flatten out’ the wall or moulding. There was more damage to the mouldings than first thought but I am getting better at shaping the filler to the required shape. On one particularly bad section some of the plaster had to be ‘shaved off’. It made me realise that the rough texture was completely intentional as underneath the rough finishing coat was a much finer plaster, the opposite of what is normally done. I am not too worried about the cracks as in the past some of the original wiring has be found going through them!! So they are at least 80 or 90 years old. Some attempts at repairing has been done over the past but was awful and has had to be redone.

A check was needed to see if my idea of repairs would work so the area next to the top floor stairway was painted. I think it will be fine….Some people have said to me "use lining paper" but filling in the cracks means that the slight movement of the plaster is stopped. This may be important due to the heavy trains that go past at the bottom of the garden, which can be felt in the house. Plus lining paper can be seen as a cover up.
(The window that can be seen in the photo above is for the bathroom and the platform is over the stairwell!)

Painting

2011-06-29T20:29:00.000+01:00

The painting of the wall has continued along with the realisation that the same surface goes from the roof all the way down to the front door. So, patching of the wall and the filling of cracks has continued all the way down to there.

Above shows a fairly large crack that has been filled and then painted over. As this was successful the filling was continued along the rest of the wall.

Back to the top of the house and to finish the stairway the ceiling needs painting along with the skylight opening. A lot of this has had bare plaster on it for the last 25 years or more. Half of it is original as it constructed of lathe and plaster and some of the holes needed repairing.

The centre door frame has now been stripped and it is intended to strip back all the woodwork above the frame directly below the skylight. In the centre doorway there is no door ..but one the exact size has been found (not in very good condition) and it may be fitted. With the ceiling white and the walls magnolia this whole area is much brighter and reflects much more light onto the first floor landing. Perhaps a mirror on this wall will help as well!

Some more of the highlighting has been tried and it works well without being noticeable as painted on but brush and paint will have to be used as the felt tip nib has worn out.
Doing all of this means that the other walls and ceilings of both the ground and first floor need to be done as well…and a lot more paint and filler purchased.

Stairway

2011-06-22T12:10:00.001+01:00

As usual, this is taking much longer than first thought. Larger ladders have been brought in and it has been difficult working out where to put them to gain access to parts of the ceiling and wall. The highest part is about 26ft(8metres). The grooves took a long time as when they were ‘opened’ it was noticed how damaged some were. There were also many chips in the plaster, much of this would have been done by people moving furniture up and down the stairs. There is still the insides of a baby grand piano in one of the rooms up here! Filling was done using first plaster and later filler. The grooves were redone by refilling and then while still damp remade using a ruler and a small metal bar. This made the edges much sharper, it would have been nice to do all of them but this would have meant too much effort. There are about three different types of plaster on this wall some of the original is so coarse it needs about three coats of paint to cover it properly. In some areas what seemed to be a plaster skim turned out to be lining paper and in some areas when painting with a roller it pulled off as it was being painted, creating a lumpy mess on the wall! Using a brush did not cause these problems. The whole wall could have been plaster skimmed but this would have ended up with a completely new surface. In the end I decided to repaint and let the different textures show through. After all this is still the original plaster on the walls.

The first sections painted were then finished off by highlighting the groove with a light grey felt tip pen. This worked very well as it made the painted grooves stand out better and just looked like shadow, especially the vertical lines. Narrow felt tips are not made for this and the end wears out quickly so another method may be needed. The ceiling will probably be done in the same colour but this has not been decided yet! One surprising thing is that the ‘block’ sizes are not standard, the widths and heights are all different. This means that no two block sizes are the same!! This is the same in the main hallways.

An experiment was tried with the damaged sections in the main hallway by skimming with filler.. it seemed to work but this must be left until the stairway is finished.

Top floor stairway

2011-06-10T12:50:00.001+01:00

While sorting out some of the ‘rubbish’ on the top floor I could not help but notice how awful the walls were in the stairway. They had been poorly papered and then covered in grey paint which over the years has been scratched and chipped. Perhaps it is time to give this area a clean up.

The hatch halfway up/down the stairs goes into the loft space!

This is a very awkward space with the one wall going up almost two floors. Luckily there is an old wooden extendable ladder that fits in this area and on the stairs quite well. Again, as with the large front room it was interesting to see what was beneath the wallpaper…..Nothing very interesting… but….All of the main hallways in the house have ‘blocks’ scoured into the plaster. A lot of the plaster has a rough texture to it. I now realise why! Many of the Georgian houses in the city of Bath have their internal hallways done the same..it is an imitation of stone blocks and that, I think, is why the plaster was left rough. In one house visited the grooves had been highlighted using grey paint, so after repainting, the same effect will be tried. If it works the same will be applied to the rest of the hallways!

In this stairway the stone lines had been filled so now they are being unfilled. The first photo below is of the first floor landing wall. Look carefully for the ‘block’ grooves. The second photo is after the wallpaper has been stripped in the stairwell and the grooves opened.

On a different note, 90% of the wood pile has been split and pushed further back nearer the wall and under the Yew tree. This means that some more of the old garden path can be recovered and it has been grass seeded. Plastic sheeting has been used as otherwise the cats in the area would make a mess of it.

Clear out

2011-06-09T20:24:00.004+01:00

Every so often the city council do a ‘large item’ rubbish collection and one was done last week. I thought that this would be a good time to get rid of a few more unwanted items. Some rearranging is being done on the top floor, after items that were being stored for a friend had been taken away. There were some old gas fires that would never be used again and they are difficult to give to other people due to modern safety regs. There was also an old angle iron ¾ bed that needed to go. Some other unwanted things were upstairs in the stable. Another gas fire, a trunk, suitcases and other bits of ironmongery.

A total of 7 gas fires and the bed were only in the yard for an hour before the scrap man turned up and took them away. One of the fires was so nice it had to be kept for some future time!

A few other items were also found and I decided that instead of leaving them to corrode in some dark corner or be thrown away – to put them on display. An old mangle, still in working condition and some old irons, that were rusty but cleaned up nicely.

During this ‘clear out’ a number of sinks were found. These had been put aside, along time ago, to replace existing ones. The bathroom sink is just too modern and ugly and the toilet sink now has spidery cracks over a lot of it.

Two of these will be used as replacements and the other returned to storage. Two of them have matching pedestals.

Log Pile

2011-05-28T18:30:00.002+01:00

A major attempt has been made of cleaning up the log pile. Much of it has been lying there for years, a lot is rotting and it takes up a fair chunk of the garden. A major portion of it was the Ash tree, which one morning took up half of the garden ..(see photos) also a mature Horse Chestnut and a large Sycamore, from the neighbours garden, which had caused the garden wall to topple over. This was in 2006 and there is still a fair amount left. The smaller logs have been cut up, split and burnt but he larger ones have been just steadily setting in.

This is what the ash had become in 2008 and the pile after my first cleanup.

Below is what the pile looks like now. This was the result of attacking all the large pieces, up to 1metre in diameter, with a heavy lump hammer and wedges. This went fine until my thumb was damaged by the, hammered over, top of the wedge! This has been sorted out by grinding down the the curled over bits on the top of the wedge.

The pile is gradually being pushed back and bits of the garden recovered. It is amazing that each year the rasberry bushes manage to grow up through it. Actually, it does not look that much smaller in the photos but I assure you it is. Much of the old bark is being utilised on the pathways.

Garden

2011-05-19T20:27:00.007+01:00

A few days have been spent cleaning up at the bottom of the garden. Mostly, pruning or lopping off branches from numerous trees. The illegal houses built next door have caused everything to grow higher to catch the light. The bottom third is in shadow most of the day!

Quite some time was spent trimming up the old box tree and the yew tree(bush) is now shorter and thinner. The big sycamore at the bottom is also short of a few branches. Some general weeding has been done with a major attack on the three types of buttercup that seem to be everywhere.The main chopping was done with the three tools pictured and the most useful one being the long red pole(which someone gave me last year). It is 6ft long and gets a bit tiring when being held at arms length but has enabled me to reach many areas so much easier.

All the branches that were too thick for the smaller lopper have been left at the bottom of the three pronged ash tree ready for the chainsaw. Although 14 bags have been filled with leaves and small twigs and three bags of starter wood for the fire, the area hardly seems to have been touched - but it is a bit lighter down there now.

The two photos are of the same path but from different directions.

Stable wall

2011-05-14T18:09:00.014+01:00

Replacing bricks at the corner of the stable has now finished and I realised why the old bricks became blown! At some time in the past this area had been repointed using very hard mortar. This as I understand means that dampness comes out through the bricks and not the mortar causing the brick to crumble. Some had lost a quarter of their thickness.

There are still about three more left to take out but this will be done when the weather improves. Also, there are still areas higher up on the side and back that still need repointing.
Secondary Glazing (see Labels for more)
There were two windows at the top of the house that were not finished. On one smaller window the acrylic sheet had been put on but he frame not repainted. Both windows needed complete stripping, coats of primer and then top coat of gloss. The spacers were made up and fitted for the top sheet in the large window and then the acrylic secondary glazing fitted. A total of 41 of the acrylic magnetic sheets had been ordered and 40 fitted with no problems. The last one would not fit… and was about 5mm too high. The magnetic strip had to be taken off and about 5mm cut off the top using the bandsaw. The strip was then glued back on and the sheet fitted. On a number of other sheets the double sided tape has failed both on the metal strip and the magnetic strip. So these are being re-stuck using contact ahesive. This seems to be working well.

Other photos had been taken but without a flash and all came out dark on the inside, so the extra photo is the view from the window.
It has been interesting to receive the latest fuel bill and looking at the difference that the new boiler and secondary glazing have made since last year. The fuel bills are down by about 40%! Which is very pleasing.

Holiday

2011-05-05T17:17:00.005+01:00

The last couple of weeks have been a bit different – one week in Cyprus, a few days in North Wales and a stop-over in Bath. All very different, I visited a lot of ancient sites in Cyprus, stayed in a 16th Century house in Wales and saw the famous architecture of Bath.
In between, the lawn seems to have gone mad and everything else grown and doubled in size. This all needed due attention to it. The Ash tree is looking as if it will become a proper tree again and it will be interesting to see how it grows during the summer. The first photo shows end of April 2008 the next beginning of May 2011.

So! Back to work and the stable still needs repairs to the brickwork. The bricks in the curve of the outside corner have deteriorated badly especially nearer the ground. The new bricks were bought last year. The radius of the curve had to be worked out and then the bricks specially ordered, they are not cheap. Unfortunately modern bricks are thinner then the old ones and so the mortar needs to be laid much thicker.

The bottom courses will be done in sections as there is a possibility of the bricks above the gap coming loose if there is no support! Instead of simply chiselling the bricks out, as was done when repointing and repairing the main walls, a tip has been taken from the DIY manuals and holes drilled in the bricks first. This makes the chiselling out much easier but creates a lot more mess, but, these bricks cannot be reversed and therefore could not be used again anyway.

Outside

2011-04-10T18:35:00.006+01:00

The lawn has been de-mossed, given time to recover and cut for the first time this year. Some major pruning, upto 4 ins dia, has also happened to both the horse chestnut and cherry trees, hopefully this will give the old box tree a bit more light. Weeding has started again and at present am concentrating on dandelions and buttercups, the sprays do not seem to affect them so a very large screwdriver and a glove is the method.These blossoms, from the pruning, were put in the jar completely closed but within 2 days had opened nicely.

Also time to fix up the old lamp.It was first stripped using a combination of gas torch and paint stripper. Quite a bit of time was spent dealing with the shade as the original had rusted badly and the glass lamp had broken. Eventually I managed to combine two shades and fit a different lamp shape with some creative panel beating.

This was originally an old gas lamp and the wick adjuster can be seen on top of the bulb holder section. Now, this angles the bulb direction! The shade is held on with wing nuts. A brown hammerite and white enamel were found in the cellar and applied.

Holes were drilled in the bricks and it was attached with rawl bolts. The wiring went into the loft of the kitchen via the back of the weather board and a hole was drilled in the ceiling for the cable to go down to a plug socket. It worked….If it is used a lot a switch will be installed.

Large Front Room

2011-03-29T18:38:00.009+01:00

The rug fitted nicely and eventually the cabinet tops were put back on. These tops are heavy, 1 ins thick oak! The furniture has been moved around a bit! It seemed a shame to cover the rug! Now it is a case of tidying up, reorganising the insides of everything, moving TV cable and .. finishing everything off properly (this is what I am really bad at). About 3 weeks ago new, second hand, curtains were bought and these have been put up along with a brass ‘chandelier’ which a friend donated some time ago.

The only thing not touched in this room is the ceiling and there are 30 of the small leaves that are missing from the frieze. The putty mould is available from the back room frieze work so eventually it will get done. Small handles and bolts for the cupboard doors were utilised from the ‘cellar collection’. I intend doing some more stenciling around the fireplace.

Flooring , Quadrant, Cabinet

2011-03-24T19:57:00.004Z

The flooring is finished except that the doorway needs re-doing and two, 2 inch patches on either side of the fireplace need to be added. Two pieces will be shaped that fit the door frame mouldings closer and then clipped in. At present the insides of the boards have been fixed with tacks ie to stop them rising or moving inward. The tack head is exactly the same size as the recessed shoulder at the end and sides of the boards! I actually tried putting a nail through a spare piece and was surprised that it went through quite well but it is preferable not to damage the boards.!
The quadrant was surprisingly expensive and the store did not have enough anyway. Luckily the old quadrant had not been thrown away. The paint was stripped off it to reveal hardwood almost the same colour as the shutters, so that is where the majority was used.The quadrant was first cut to fit each length and corner, then mitred and painted ready for nailing. Nailing! What a game! As soon as the nails reached the old wood of the skirting board they bent, eventually new panel pins were used. The mitreing was more difficult than thought and the marking out had to be very clear to avoid confusion and wrong cuts. The final boards laid down left a gap on the final wall almost the same size as the quadrant. As the skirting was not perfectly straight extra boards needed to be cut about half an inch wide and then clipped in!

The first thing to be done on the cabinets was wood stain, a Jacobean Dark Oak, as where they had been joined together was much lighter than the polished sections. The old mouldings had never been put back on but there was sufficient to do the front and sides of the 2 sections. There were three different types, a fairly flat base, a small semi circular and a large architrave type. This last was where the problems started. Since getting the cabinet (25 years ago) the mouldings had never been put back on and I had forgotten what they looked like. The architrave type did not fit on flat and it was very confusing trying to work out how to cut the mitres. What made it more complicated was that the top and bottom were different. Eventually a method was worked out. All of the mouldings are of solid oak and are heavy and hard, the tenon saw has been blunted cutting it. It was also impossible to nail through it or into the cabinet so screws had to be used.

The base sections have also been cut and mitred – ‘no more nails’ may be used for these!
There is one skill in particular that I have developed while doing this. It only takes as little as 5 seconds for me to lose a pencil and cannot believe the amount of time spent looking for them even when behind my ear! In future one will be tied to a cord around my neck.

Also - the underfelt has now been cut and tacked to fit the inside of the flooring and the rug laid in position!

Decorating

2011-03-16T19:25:00.004Z

The walls are finished! Even behind the radiator and the radiator itself. The previous post showed pictures of the wall with one of the stencils missing but it is simple to rectify that.
The skirting board has also been finished, the top moulding was stripped and the flat section sanded down. The gas torch is no longer used as the hot air gun has a milder heat and can be put down at any time! It is not good for my back working in a crouched position all the time but I am getting used to it. The most awkward part of the skirting board is the top. A lot of gaps between the wall and skirting need filling and then there is the decision as to where one colour stops and the other starts and how to do it.

Next was the new flooring and where to start. What finally decided me was how the furniture would be moved around to accommodate the work. The flooring will be going around the carpet, which for the last few weeks is where all the furniture has been moved to. If the most complicated side was done first (fireplace), the cabinets could be moved into their new position when the section was completed thus giving a bit more space to work in. Half of the floor has now been done ie. the fireplace side and the door end, I have yet to decide how to deal with the doorway!
This klikka system is very good but you have to be very accurate in how the boards are laid down. A fraction of a millimetre(.010 ins) out and a board further along will not fit properly. If a mistake is missed it is easier to take everything up and go back (I know this now through experience). Wooden quadrant will seal the gaps around the sides and help stop the boards from moving. I intend to paint the quadrant and put in the nails before nailing to the skirting board.

I do not think that this is being done in the correct way - the boards are being laid in the wrong direction ie with the floorboards not across them but this is how I wanted it. Probably these floors are not normally laid with a hole in the middle but I wanted the carpet and its underlay to lie fairly flush with the floor. Some method is needed for securing the planks on the inside so they do not slip over time, the ‘room ends’ are just one plank deep.

Stencilling

2011-03-07T19:24:00.004Z

One section in the corner next to the bay window had not been painted at all, only about 2ft. This was to be a failsafe, just in case my dimensions were not correct or there was something unsure about the placement. It is quite nerve wracking putting paint onto a wall for the first time with a stencil!
First to be done were the separate shapes just below the picture rail, 3 at a time as that was the size of the A4 acetate sheets. There are some gaps left at the corners but those will be done when all others are finished.

Next was to put on the two lines of masking tape for the 3/8 ins border lines. A little gauge was made up for the different parts so continual measurement with a rule was avoided. After the tape was on then check for the lineup of the corner stencil. In one store I had noticed two types of masking tape and was told that one type had poor stickiness so that paint would not be pulled off when removing. Guess which type I had? It was not too bad and going over carefully with a cutting in brush was easily done. The corner stencil was postioned and then held on with old masking tape(not very sticky) ready for stencilling.

It was difficult to decide on what to do with the fire place, until someone mentioned putting up a large painting. There was, not a painting but a large painted batique from Swaziland. Originally this was twice the size but but years ago had been cut in half to make curtains…! It was possible using picture hangers to hang it off the new ‘dado’ rail above the picture rail.
There is still the unpainted section to do ie one corner and then I can get back to my original intention of painting the skirting board.. Oh ! and laying the new floor!

One thing that was very difficult to sort out was the dado rail –strip, shown in the previous post and seen in the last photo above. A number of paper borders were looked at but all were too big or too fancy. I did not want to put on two extra strips of masking tape all around the room just to get a plain line! Eventually something was found that seemed perfect so it was purchased and put on the walls. It does the job and looks good.

Cellar and Decorating

2011-03-05T12:07:00.005Z

The water got a bit deeper in the cellar and after discussions with the neighbour he agreed to check the main manholes in the road. He reckoned that they found a ‘small blockage’ and cleared it, the following day checked his cellar to find that it was empty – no water. There was still water in mine but it was lower. The neighbour lent me a dirty water pump but the following day there was only a bit of water in the one cellar so it was not used. ! This may have been due to the first blockage that was cleared and the seepage has taken time to clear up! It will now take a while for the cellar to dry out completely.

The colours have finally been decided on in the front room and more painting done. The new ‘dado’ has been painted, the picture rail has been re-painted and the walls are almost finished.

One big problem has been the new plastering especially above the fire place. It was not possible to get a smooth surface! At first I thought it was my technique and/or dirty tools but then realised that it was the plaster…tiny little grains were in it that when getting to the smooth work caused grooves to be scratched in. Eventually the leftover plaster was taken back to the shop where they surprisingly agreed, after rubbing a bit of plaster between fingers, that there was a problem and gave a new bag. This now has to be rectified on the wall! After doing this and repainting, the stencilling can begin. Note: The different colours in the photos are caused by different lighting conditions.

Cellar

2011-02-27T14:57:00.002Z

For the last week the cellar has been filling with water. It started last Sunday afternoon when a puddle of water was noticed in the corner, I first thought that perhaps something had been spilled but when going back down 2 hrs later, three bigger puddles had appeared. By the following day it covered half of the floor and bailing out was started using a dustpan and bucket. The following day most of it had dried up but then reappeared 3 hours later in the day. This must be coming from next door. They were told about this problem but we had to wait for the landlord to unlock the door to the cellar, it was about 3 ins deep in water! The water board was contacted and there man came and did a check and found two blocked drains on the side of the neighbours house. I unblocked these and checked the flow by pouring water in them, which flowed away freely, so no longer blocked. The problem is that the water continues to flow in my cellar and no blockage or leak has been found. The neighbour two houses further up the slope of the road has no water problem in their cellar so it must be originating from next door. The three cellar floors are now covered by a minimum 1 ins of water and I have given up trying to bail out. We will see what happens next.

Decorating

2011-02-27T14:23:00.003Z

It has actually been about 35 years since I decorated a room, so it is, really, another new experience. The walls have been stripped, the plastering done(well most of it) and decisions have been made about what to do with the area above the picture rail. All the photos or drawings of Victorian houses show either a picture rail or shelf but never both. Something had been attached by screws in that area so I have decided on a decorative ‘dado’ rail. Some time ago a catalogue of ‘artline décor’ mouldings was seen in a local store and although it is made of polyurethane it looks like plaster. It also had 3D panelling strips and it was tempting to try this for the panels stencilled onto the wall but it was decided to stick to the original stencilling. The area above the picture rail has been patched and painted and the dado rail attached. The rail has not been painted yet as I wanted to see what the rest of the room would look like with the all of the walls painted. A brown has been found that makes rail look like a wooden moulding!

The floor in this room has been painted numerous times and in true Victorian fashion it was agreed to paint it again.The floorboards are not in very good condition and a lot of work would have been needed to seal it from the basement but having found out that lacquered cloth and then lino was used decided to look at alternatives. It is surprising what is available in lino these days and how expensive it is! Wooden flooring was looked at but eventually the thought process went something like - paint, oil cloth, lino, wood, laminate flooring which could be classified the modern equivalent of lino. Laminate flooring was decided on and a cottage oak style was chosen that will be fitted around the central carpet.

The stecilling around the wall has been traced onto acetate sheets and cut out. After numerous mistakes they are now finished and the postioning of the shapes recorded.There are a lot of holes in the wall, made by pins and/or nails, that would show up after painting so time was spent filling these along with patching the plaster. I understand now why professional decorators often strip rooms completely down to the brick and redo using plaster board, it is faster and neater but not best for this situation.

Large front room

2011-02-15T14:35:00.007Z

“Got a bit carried away” is an under statement. The original intention was to just paint the door the same colour as in the back room. Then it was to continue along and paint the skirting board but to do that the skirting had to be repaired(it still not finished). To fit the skirting properly some plastering had to be done and to do that some wallpaper stripping was needed. I then became fascinated as to what the original décor was and so continued stripping. In my usual, lazy way, furniture was moved as and when needed and life went on in the room as usual. It has now got the stage whereby all the furniture has been moved inwards and the room cannot be used normally. It is easy to store the pictures, just move them around the room. Another decision made was regarding the large cabinet. It took up too much room, this is after already being cut in half(the other section is in the kitchen). I have decided to cut it in half again and put each section in the bays on either side of the fire place. To strip the end wall the cabinet had to be taken apart and moved, this meant emptying it of all the glass and collected junk(treasures), then putting them somewhere else or throwing away.

There were a lot of holes left over from things attached to the wall at some time and the section above the fireplace had some major cracks in it. The other surprise is that above the mantel piece there seems to have been shelf and it was the removal of this and the replastering that seemed to have caused the cracks. The general outline of where the ‘shelf’ was, about 18 ins(46mm) above the mantle, can be seen in the photo.

Two of the ‘treasures’- a carbon arc heater, and an old toaster.

This meant that the smaller front room needed to get proper TV reception and so the ariel cable was tracked down and spliced so as to serve both rooms. Reception is bad here and the cable runs up through the house to on top of the roof, cable is used for the back room.
Quite a bit of research has been done relating to the area between the picture rail and the frieze. One thought was a shelf on which plates and other nic-nacs would be put, very popular in Victorian times. Another was panels arranged round the room below the frieze. After spending time on the internet, in the reference library and talking to people I am still not sure what it could have been but the shelf seems the most likely.
An interesting, online, book was ‘Hints on Household Taste’ ?1872. A bit heavy going but intriguing.
It is, now, time to stop and rationalise what I am doing and the order in which it is being done as the whole room will end up being changed.

The cabinet, originally from a chemistry lab, in its two halfs.

Stripping

2011-02-10T15:49:00.004Z

The wallpaper stripping has continued both below the picture rail and above. There were quite a few layers of paint on the paper but the top layers came off first and then after spraying the leftover with a water and washing up liquid mixture the final layers came off easily. The above section has thrown up some interesting possibilities. Just below the frieze is a pink colour, about 1ins(30mm) deep, but nothing that can be recognised in it. In the middle of this section is a dark brown line and it can be seen that above it was something else, about 2ins(60mm) high, which does not seem to have been a stencil. After finishing one wall it was noticed that at fairly regular intervals there were plaster repairs. To my thinking, this means that some kind of rail was attached. The ‘stucco’ mouldings are attached with plaster and are not as long as the patches are apart therefore(?) the rail must have been wood. Some research will have to be done to look at possibilities.

Never having done any stencilling before it was decided to carry out an experiment. The pattern below the picture rail was traced onto a sheet of acetate (the thickness used for photocopying OHP transparencies, of which I had some old ones) and the shapes then cut out with a sharp blade. The stencilling was tested in the hallway below the dado rail in a section that is waiting to be painted. It was surprisingly easy. As this was my first attempt at cutting the shapes and there were some inaccuracies a new one will be made for the real thing.

The last photo shows some of the old wallpaper – It is difficult to imagine what the room must have looked like when it was full of that pattern….

Skirting Board

2011-02-07T13:18:00.003Z

After painting the door in the front room it was time to have a better look at the skirting board and decide how to deal with it. In the corners of the room next to the bay there is some water damage from many years ago. This also caused wet rot damage to the skirting board and needed to be repaired. In reality this damage was a bit more complicated than first thought. Someone had at some time in the past put in sheets of asbestos to stop the damp coming through and the plaster behind was in a bad shape. The sheets needed to come off, the poor plaster cleared, replastering and then repair the skirting board.

The old skirting board is made in four parts, the top moulding(2.5 ins thick), two vertical sections(.5 ins thick) and packing pieces behind the vertical section. The two vertical sections must be to cut costs as 6 ins wood is and would have been cheaper than 10ins. The sizes available to me were the same so it was made up in the same way. An extra insert piece was needed, at the side, which will be closed up with filler.

While doing the plastering more wall paper had to be stripped off and I ended up getting a bit carried away with that. It had always intrigued me as to how the rooms would have been decorated originally perhaps now was the time to find out. First was the corner of the room where the plastering was done and then the walls next to the door. It was possible to take off all the old wallpaper to see what lay underneath, the original décor had been painted straight onto the plaster.

The original colour of the skirting board and door was the dark brown scumble. It looks as if all the other decoration was done with stencils. Is it feasible and do I want to renew as much as possible of the original….? It is probably better to do new and different colours but follow the overall design. Will the area above the picture rail strip in the same way and what will it reveal?

Unexpected

2011-02-03T13:54:00.002Z

During the summer 5 framed prints were purchased, mainly for the frames, they were only £12 each. Two were put up in the back room(see previous post) with the intention of finding something else to put in them. There was a small tapestry from Thailand, that was bought years ago, so the intention was to replace one of the pictures with that but a suitable background was needed. Perhaps a dark plain wrapping paper would do. Just before leaving the house I remembered the roll of sugar paper that included the drawing of http://trafrd.blogspot.com/2009/11/picture-frame.html , so, down into the cellar to see if any was suitable (this roll had been checked many times before). On looking at the colours it was noticed that one of the sheets, a bit grubby, was folded in half. When opened – another drawing was found and what a lovely drawing! This was, again, done in conte crayon and definitely needed to be framed.
Here is the little tapestry…

Here is the unexpected…..

Both are now up on the wall.
And I thought the house had no surprises left……!

Finished?

2011-01-30T22:48:00.006Z

The frieze was finished today, all 76 ft of it. It remains to be seen whether a bit more is added – gold or coral but for the time being –enough. The problem now is that the rest of the walls need repainting along with the skirting board.
Here are some before and after –

And a couple showing a bit more of the room.

It has been enjoyable doing and seeing it gradually change. Whether I would start another one is a different question. Looking at my blog, the first attempt with the peel away was the post of 27/04/10……and the first time it was mentioned(first photo) was 27/01/10…almost exactly one year ago.

Not exactly quick work but it was all experimental from beginning to end.

Perhaps my back will get better now!

New Frieze

2011-01-28T19:16:00.003Z

I plucked up courage today and started painting the frieze. It has been put off for long enough and the paint is sitting there waiting! The trial patch was in the corner above the bookcase.

The three colours used were walnut(eggs), palest nectarine(roses) and apple white(ceiling).
The walnut looked really good but was far too strong, the palest nectarine was far too pale and although it does not show on the photo, the apple white was good.
Back to the paint shop after checking colours a bit more.
Satin bow and coral flower were the new colours. Although the satin bow was paler than imagined I decided to go with it.A complete run was done, one end of the room plus a couple of feet on either side. It was easier than I thought. The 20ft took about 3 hours. The roses first, highlighted with a little paint pad and everything else done with a large pointed brush.

The eggs looked a bit plain and I could not resist adding some of the apple white to it to highlight the ‘leafy’ bits. It is also tempting to add a touch of the coral flower on the little bumps below the eggs but that may be a bit 'over the top'. Perhaps better to see what it looks like tomorrow.

More doors

2011-01-27T14:18:00.005Z

An old finger plate was cleaned up and attached. The end board for the bookcase had been lying around for years so this needed to be fitted properly. This would close up the gap between the skirting board and the bookcase..and also hide the unpainted top of the skirting board behind the bookcase. The skirting board profile was copied onto the end board, cut out with a coping saw and the board fitted, the end of the bookcase looks much neater now.

As this colour scheme seemed to work quite well it was decided to take the same approach in the front room. So that door was stripped and painted in the same way. A lot of filler had to be used and some major holes blocked up, it took a while to fill in all of the holes from the dart board use.

There were two more of the ‘levered’ handles, used in the back room, but on trying to fit them realised they had to turn in different directions (left and right hand?). After a lot of thinking and taking apart the mechanisms a way of fixing them was sorted out. On attachment to the door it was realised that the levers were too heavy for the lock and so they fell down, or were open, all the time. So the old enamelled round knobs were put back on, along with another cleaned up finger plate.
It is unlikely that all of the skirting boards will be completely stripped(too much work) and I am thinking of ways to make the job easier. They do not have so much paint on so it may be easier to just clean, sand and paint. As someone mentioned “who looks at skirting boards”? Certain parts need to be repaired but where in good condition could be just painted over……

Doors

2011-01-13T17:38:00.008Z

After doing some repairs it was also time to do some more work on them.
Again, below, is damage done during a break-in(25 years ago?), in the small front room. This could be repaired in a similar way to the others.
Before and after

The whole doorway in the back room was a bit of a mess so after doing repairs and an amount of filler to cover up the dog scratches and other holes, it could be improved. If it was stripped ,there is too much damage on it to just varnish afterwards. So it needs to be painted. This means that some serious thought needs to be made about the décor in the room. Some ‘trial pot’ paints were purchased for the door and skirting board, along with samples for the frieze ( it has not been forgotten). There is a lot of wood in the room and a colour was needed that would complement it. The first colour was no good but then a decision was made on a second colour. The stripping continued, about 7 or 8 layers of paint and it was painted again. Some other door handles were found in the cellar and those put on.

There still needs to be done, the other 30 ft of skirting board around the room. I am glad that it is less than it would be due to the 15ft long bookcase. . Only one coat of acrylic has been put on so that some of the wood grain and imperfections could show through. I think it works but it is difficult to see in the photo.

Repairs

2010-12-31T14:04:00.010Z

Well! Things have slowed down even more over xmas but a bit of work was achieved. The sink waste froze up again and also the bath waste pipe. The second theory, was that as the taps had a slight drip these small amounts of water were freezing up at a joint or bend. So the plugs are being left in after use, over night there is about half a cupful of water to be released. The final right angle bend pipe was taken off the sink pipe and a straight extension added to it.

I have always been bugged by some of the door frames. When the house was lived in as flats there were yale locks on most of the doors, meaning that these doors now have a circular hole where the lock was and a cut-out in the door frame/moulding. The holes have been covered by finger plates but they still look unsightly. It is time to fix these at last. An extra length of door moulding was found and stripped, this could be used by being cut to size and fitted to the gaps. Eventually it was realised that it would be easier to cut a complete horizontal section out of the moulding and replace it with a good piece. The first door to be worked on was the back living room, paint was stripped off to make working easier and it was easy to see that there was a bit more than a small gap to be filled. The problem relates back to when the house was being broken into and doors had been kicked in, damaging the frame and mouldings. It would now be easier to replace the whole length but the spare moulding was from a smaller door frame. So cut out the worst parts and insert a long length of the extra. There had been other damage done to the door by a dog that had been kept in the room and a new panel moulding was needed also.

And inside the front room

The next three photos are from the back door, after some cleaning up had been done. This moulding is 9ft 2ins(2.8 m) long.

The last photo above is part of the damaged split moulding taken off the living room door and was used to patch the bottom part of the moulding in the photo next to it.
This was something new so was quite interesting.

Three other frames were patched using cut-outs from the stripped extra moulding and some 11/8 ins dowelling found in the cellar. Most damage is on the inside where the intention is to repaint.

The last photo is the vestibule back to its normal state.

Extra Maintenance

2010-12-17T13:08:00.001Z

The weather is bringing its problems. After returning from a night out found that extra lighting was on and doors open! The reason was that water had been running down the ceiling from the bathroom. My immediate thoughts were that for some reason the repaired pipe from the previous week had again come apart but no – this was something else. When using the bathroom sink, before going to bed, the sink plug was removed and water poured all over the floor, behind the boxed in section! I had no idea what could have caused this, what could have caused the waste pipe to move or to be parted? Luckily, panel pins had been used to hold up the boxed in section so the front was easily removed.

Waste water had ‘backed up’ until it had reached a section in the waste pipe were a sink had been previously but had never been properly sealed off. The waste pipe ran under the floor boards of both the bathroom and the toilet. Would all this have to be taken up to find the cause? First, check the waste pipe on the outside wall. Is it frozen? Frozen pipes look just the same as unfrozen! Stick finger up pipe! Then it was noticed that there was a very slight bend in the pipe, this bend could have something to do with it. A stiff length of electrical cable was found and pushed up the pipe, extra resistance was found about where the slight bend was! The cable was not firm enough to break up the ice so hot water in the kettle was used and gently poured over the pipe. After a short while the sound of rushing water could be heard as the 4 meters(15ft) of blocked up water ran out. The bend had been caused by the pipe being cut slightly too long and over the years gravity had caused the plastic to bend, this was corrected by making the pipe shorter and therefore the angle of descent greater. We will see!

Vestibule finished?

2010-12-15T18:47:00.007Z

The other side of the vestibule was slightly different, the skirting board had been attached more firmly and was in better condition. The gas meter is in a corner next to the front door and a free standing coat stand takes up much of the space.

The same technique was used but it was a bit more difficult to get a good covering of paint. The gas meter is a bit of an eyesore so would it be possible to cover it? An attempt was made at doing something with the old skirting board but it looked awful, so a three sided box was made from the inside of some old drawers (remnants in the wood store).The mitering for the dado rail did not go quite so well but at the moment it is being held in place by friction only and is quite firm.

As this area was virtually finished now it would be good to put back some of the old ‘door furniture’ that was still lying around in the basement(They had been 'cleaned up' during the summer). The original door bolts, and safety chain were put back on, with I believe, their original screws, which fitted in easily. They were originally taken off when we had many break-ins and the thieves bolted the doors to stop anyone entering the house.

An extra bit of stripping has also been done using the 'peel away', as on the arch in the first floor corridor are a pair of corbels that had a heavy amount of paint on them.

They are not very visible but do look much better.

Cold weather

2010-12-15T13:32:00.006Z

A spell of cold weather makes you look at heating issues in a bit more detail. Two improvements have been made recently.First, a continuation of a problem that was noticed last year, http://trafrd.blogspot.com/2009/12/weather.html . There was still a draught coming through this bedroom and then I noticed the ceiling in the outside passage way which is directly below part of the bedroom. Exactly the same problem as the garage ceiling, a crack running round the periphery of the whole ceiling, caused by movement from many years ago. This was caulked along with re-mortaring gaps in the bricks that went up above the ceiling level. The passage way is 20 ft(6 meters) long. This could make the first floor warmer!

Second, I happened to read (as one does!) that with central heating radiators there should be a difference of 20 degrees F between the inlet and the outlet. Had the radiators been balanced since the new boiler was put in? A DIY book mentioned attaching thermometers to the pipes but these had a cost of about £30/40 each, other types mentioned included infra red thermometers. After a search on the internet an infra red thermometer was found for £17 at Maplin, this little investment could be worthwhile.
It was tried on the pipes but eventually the flat part of the radiator was tested just next to the pipes. The first radiator tested, in the breakfast room, only showed a difference of 5 degrees. This radiator had never reached its previous temperatures since the new boiler had been installed! What was happening here? My theory was that the flow of water was too fast and not enough heat being given off! The lockshield valve (outlet) was turned down step by step (inlet valve fully open) and temp. readings taken until the required temp. difference was reached (it is realised that this is the reverse of how it should be done at installation). What a difference! the room even became too warm and the inlet valve had to be turned down to restrict the flow. This was done with all the other radiators which had similar results but not as drastic. This must mean that the pump is now working less (should last longer) and it has also been noticed that the gas usage has dropped.
How is it known that the gas usage has dropped? Well, when quarterly winter bills have been as high as £1200 there is a big temptation to watch usage on a regular basis. Readings are taken on a regular basis of both electricity and gas, then entered on a spreadsheet. This works out usage and prices for daily, weekly and monthly rates. It has been very useful over the last few years.

more vestibule

2010-12-11T15:41:00.006Z

With the wiring re-organised decisions had to be made about the rest of the area. Below the dado rail was a strange mixture of original plaster, bits of heavy wall paper, various holes and on one side some dark brown stuff(?). Above the dado rail someone had at some time or another plaster skimmed the walls and then painted over with gloss paint. How will this be dealt with? My first reaction was to scrape off the skim and gloss paint but after one attempt at this decided, no! How about plaster over all the holes and irregularities and try to blend in the slightly different levels between the original plaster and the gloss? I did at one time think of taking down all the plaster and redoing the whole area with plaster board. This seemed just too big a job for this small area. In reality it just needed to look better (which would not be too difficult)! First, was dealing with the gloss paint - wash it down with sugar soap, then sand down all the surfaces which would hopefully give a base for some emulsion paint to adhere to! The first coat would then give base for the second and might give a good covering! Try it out first on one half of the space! The plastering was done given time to dry and then the whole wall painted over. It came out much better than I thought it would.

The skirting board did not fit properly and consisted of two different shapes, so why not replace it all? I had noticed when dealing with other skirting around the house that some of it had been made in sections to make up the 12ins height. Not only that but packing pieces had been used at the back so that 1 ½ ins thick board was not needed. Perhaps this technique could be used. Some ½ ins planking was found and some old door frame moulding (that needed to be stripped first). This together would make good skirting board!

To get the colour to match the door frame three different wood stains were used. As mentioned in the previous post the dado rail was actually picture rail, new dado rail was available and of a reasonable size so some was purchased. The biggest problem was cutting the mitres. I have a tendency with wood to try and cut it too accurately and always leave it slightly too big, then have great problems cutting the final fractions. A sanding wheel would be a good idea for taking off these last bits!

It is a distinct improvement and so now the other side has been started!

Carpet

2010-12-01T11:41:00.004Z

Some time ago a decision was made to replace the old carpet in the large front room, parts of it were threadbare and had occasionally looked for a new one but was shocked at the prices and styles available. While surfing the net I had come across a site which had some truly remarkable carpets (irugs.co.uk), some of the prices were up to £120,000 and more, yes, 120 thousands. It was interesting just looking at what was available. It would be nice to have one of these rugs, about 14 ft by 10 ft. Nearly all of the rugs had been reduced in price so what was available and at what price? Most were hand made but some machine made. A section was found of some nice rugs, the size wanted, machine made and reduced in price from about £1800 to £240! This seemed a very good deal so let me make an order. If it was a con and payment was made through paypal not all would be lost. If it was not a con I could end up with a very nice carpet at a very reasonable price.The order was made and shipment was free, so where was it coming from and how long would it take? The USA ?……A Fedex tracking no. was noticed and this was checked. Its journey started in North Carolina and after 3 days had reached Paris, France. On the day for delivery from Stansted Airport, UK, (total 5 days) I waited patiently and eventually checked the Fedex tracking…..it had been delivered and signed for!!! It was a con?! so Fedex was contacted and eventually they told me that it had delivered it to No 16 and not 61 (a typing error somewhere?). No. 16 was visited and after a brief conversation managed to load it up on my back and carry the large package home. Wow ..what a nice rug! It had been worth taking the chance on something that seemed, to me, very risky. My apologies to irugs! they had also given me a further reduction in price and a small free rug for being a new customer.

Taking up the old carpet made me realise that another spare one was rolled up on the top floor. This was a previously fitted carpet in one of the bedrooms that a new person in the house had not liked, so they had replaced it. That bedroom is the same size and directly above the small living room and should therefore fit it, except for the bay window. There was some extra of the old carpet still in storage so that could be added. Should all the furniture be taken out? No.. just move furniture out of the way, fit the first part of the carpet and then move furniture back. This worked well except that for some reason the width was about 6 ins too small. How could the walls have been constructed that would make the first floor room smaller than the ground floor? The extra in storage was used for both the bay and the sides and it was possible to match up the pattern for the sides.

Maintenance

2010-12-01T11:02:00.004Z

People say that things come in threes! Well, first was the realisation that the shower was definitely leaking, the regrouting and temporary sealing.
Second, It was noticed that the new boiler pressure had dropped, perhaps it was due to bleeding air out of the radiators. The water was topped up and then monitored, the pressure quickly dropped again, this must be due to something else! All the radiators were checked for leaks and outside my bedroom door the carpet was soaked in water. The problem was caused by the thermostatic valve. A similar problem had happened before but not so badly. Just inside the top of the valve is a small ‘o’ ring, this had perished and was letting water through. Replacing the valve meant shutting the system down. I have not been able to find anywhere that sells the ‘o’ rings and all of the new valves have different a size but there were some old valves that had been replaced earlier in the year, perhaps the ‘o’ rings were OK. A good one was found and fitted – no more leaking and the boiler pressure is now constant.

Third, a few days later I went away for a couple of days and on returning found the house quite cold and the stove had been lit in the breakfast room. “This did not look good”. It turns out that just after I had left someone noticed water running down the walls in the breakfast room, it was coming from the bathroom. It took about 15 minutes to find the mains water tap and turn it off.
A hot water pipe in the bathroom had parted and because the new boiler provided either hot water or hot water and heating it was turned off. It stayed like this until I returned the following day. The problem had been caused by the connecting of the plastic speedfit pipe to to a copper one. This problem had first occurred when the new boiler had been switched for the first time after all the lead piping had been replaced (see http://trafrd.blogspot.com/2010/02/lead-pipes.html) but I thought that the fitting behind and under the bath was OK!!! The only connector not available was a straight one and on visiting the suppliers saw another fitting not seen before, a plastic ½ BSP nut connected to a 15mm speedfit pipe, this would be perfect. It took 5 minutes to fit (under the bath on my back) and the boiler was switched back on. Whew! It was fine.

Vestibule

2010-11-19T20:26:00.005Z

A rest was needed from the Frieze and the leak from the shower has been slowed a lot by using some waterproof tape over the crack. The shower basin will definitely have to be replaced in the near future.

Although some work was done on the vestibule last year(varnishing), it is still in a mess and it is the first thing to be viewed when anyone enters the house. The main wiring loom runs through here and has been like this for as long as I can remember. It was boxed in originally but not for the last 20 years. After scraping some of the flaking paint off the walls realised that the first thing to clear up should be the wiring. My initial thoughts were to cut a groove in the plaster and cover the wires with a galvanised steel channel. Wait.. the state of the plaster could mean that bigger chunks could come off, if so it would probably be easier to take it all off and replaster. Also the galvanised channel available is very small and would not cope with the number of wires.

What were all the wires for anyway? Surely the black ones are dead and not in use! The only old wiring left in use is for the lights in the cellar so it should be possible to clear them up. Down in the cellar there were three old circuit breakers that still had wires attached, this seemed a bit silly as the new distribution board put in last year has individual circuit breakers and all the power derives from it. So the old wiring was rationalised, disconnected from the circuit breakers and connected directly to the distribution board. This meant that all the old wiring leading upstairs could be traced back and pulled out. This was done and all the old black(rubber coated) cables taken out. The normal channelling was still too small so could some kind of conduit be used? I came across some conduit used for covering gas pipes and decided to give this a go, if it did not work on the outside of the plaster a groove could be cut to fit it in. The next problem was fitting the conduit into the ceiling via the old plaster coving. There was already a messy hole there but not flush with the wall. This was sorted out using a hacksaw blade and a wood chisel, the old hole will be repaired later.

This was a big improvement on what was there before. Next, an old gas pipe, running up the adjacent corner was cut out. New skirting board and dado rail will be needed and will have to be made. The present dado rail looks as if it is a picture rail, perhaps a previous repair! The bottom half of the walls will have to be skim plastered. Some of the tongue and grooved boards in the hallway had moved over the years, creating gaps. These were fixed using a ‘hook’ that has been made to slip under the skirting board and hammer them back into place. A bit of explanation about the floor – when the house was purchased the whole hallway, breakfast room and kitchen tiles had to be taken up and a damp proof membrane put in. We could not afford to have it re-tiled but were in contact with some people that were demolishing a squash court, so hallway and breakfast room floor became one inch thick maple.

Shower

2010-11-12T10:41:00.004Z

The shower cubicle seemed to be leaking more and the tiles getting wetter so a closer look at the grouting was made. It seemed that some of the tiles had not been grouted properly and water was soaking in, to the thickness of the tiles. So, clear away the gaps in between the tiles which seemed, only to be filled with compressed sand and dirt. It quickly became clear that only a small stretch of the tiles had been grouted. How could this have happened? Turning the old kitchen/pantry into a shower/toilet had been my last project before going to Africa, in fact the corner sink had lain on the floor in the corner all the while that I was away. This is now over 20 years ago, the actual process of going to Swaziland happened quite quickly and must have been just as the grouting had started. So – clear away all the gaps between the tiles and grout properly. This was more difficult than first thought as some of the gaps are about 1 mm. A few days work and it was finished. Was the water the result of the shower cubicle leaking or something else? There is a crack in the shower basin, is it possible that this is leaking and was then emerging through capillary action at the surface of the tiles. Do I want to completely dismantle the shower to find out? First, is there a way to seal the crack? We will see!

The stripping of the frieze has now been completed and all the broken and missing roses, both small and big, have been replaced. It took a while to clear out the leftover plaster/cement in the one section of the room but at last, it was done. Now the painting or the decoration of it can start. There are some extra mouldings so these can be used to experiment with to see the effects of different finishes. The section shown in the photo has had about 10 replacement bits.

Frieze and other things

2010-11-05T12:49:00.005Z

The last section of the frieze is about to be cleared today and replacing the missing or broken roses has begun. About 30 of the small roses will need to be needed. Some of the early sections will have to be redone as they still have plaster attached to them. It is surprising how much better one becomes with practice! The walls have been cleaned all round and the room is looking brighter!

There is still about a third of a tub of Peelaway left so some other stripping will be done in other areas.

The scaffold is now down and awaiting to be moved to the front of the house to repair the soffit. It is too wet at the moment to strip and repaint the neighbours wall….but attempts are being made to clean up the yard prior to this.

A visit was made recently to Glasgow which was thoroughly enjoyed. Stirling Castle and Loch Lomond were only 30 minutes away and the two best visits were the old Roman Fort and Pollock Park. The Roman Fort for its views and the walk along the Antonine wall. Pollock Park not only for the house but the wonderful Burrell collection(free entry) housed in the park grounds.

The last photo was taken from a car park no more than 10 minutes from Glasgow airport.
There were many other things I would have liked to have seen but……next time. Perhaps even the Falkirk wheel, which is a rotating boat lift…!

Slow Progress

2010-10-14T17:49:00.002+01:00

More of the walls have been cleaned in the back room and there is now only about 10 ft of frieze left to do. More of the replacement mouldings have been made and the small airholes filled with filler. The filling was done with an artists brush dipped in filler and it was painted on…seemed to work quite well.The scaffold tower has been moved again, this took a little longer than first thought as tiles and other stuff needed to be moved out of the way. The non working security light was replaced and the TV ariel moved slightly. The light works fine but no better reception on the TV.

A decision has been made to paint the neighbours wall - so first the base of the wall needs to be cleared as it is covered by piles of bricks, wood, old lead, copper piping etc. The bricks and wood can be moved and it is about time that the lead and copper went to the scrap man. A trial run for cleaning the wall was tried out using the high pressure water hose, it takes the old paint off quite easily and will be easy to operate up the scaffold tower. It might also be a good time to get rid of other accumulated rubble that has collected outside.

More Frieze

2010-10-04T14:45:00.005+01:00

Work on the frieze has continued and attempts at making the replacement roses have been carried out. My first attempts were to make impressions in a block of clay but quickly realised that this would not be practical. The best idea came from Marilyn and her use of Amazing Mold Putty, it took quite a while to track a supplier down in the UK but eventually one was found. My initial idea was to do the moulding in Plaster of paris but after looking at what was available in the house tried filler and plaster. Moulds were made using the Amazing Mold Putty. The filler took too long to harden but the old plaster that now hardens too quickly for putting on walls seemed to be a good idea.

The small rose pops out quite easily even with the small undercuts but for the larger rose the mould had to be cut on two opposite sides. The difficulty has been trying to make sure there are no air bubbles in the quickly hardening plaster as it is being inserted. Too much water and the resultant casting breaks up on being taken out. Small air holes can be filled!
To give a rest to my back from working on the ceiling an attempt was made at cleaning the walls with sugar soap. Wow! What a difference, the walls were probably last painted about 30 years ago. The ceiling will probably clean up even more. One person said that they thought a section of the wall had been repainted instead of just cleaned.

Painting

2010-10-04T14:42:00.001+01:00

It seems to be raining every other day and this has slowed the progress of painting the top window. It is easy to forget how long it takes to put on three coats of paint especially when the surrounds of window panes have to be done but I am becoming more comfortable in the safety harness! The larger window is now finished and the scaffold tower has been moved into the corner for the smaller window. I have realised that it will also be possible to get access to the TV ariel and the non-working security light by moving the tower again after finishing painting the last window. Serious consideration must be made about painting the neighbours wall as with the tower up it will be much easier.

Scaffold

2010-09-24T09:43:00.006+01:00

While working on the computer a load ‘thump’ was heard outside and on investigation it was noticed that a section of the fossit?/soffit board had fallen off. It was near an area that previously had water and pigeon damage! It needed to be fixed and my ladders are not high enough, the scaffold tower was probably not high enough so the only solution would be to hire a more substantial one for a week(minimum hire period). On the other hand, the scaffold tower had never been erected fully and two windows still needed painting at the rear of the house. This would be a good opportunity to see exactly how high the tower would go and hopefully paint the two remaining windows.

It is difficult to work out if the tower is high enough or not to repair the soffit at the front! Trigonometry could be used with angles and measurements but then someone mentioned how the boy scouts measured heights of buildings using a staff….this is similar to the way that artists measure proportion using their pencil or brush. Anyway, it was realised that the actual height was not needed if the tower could be compared to the fossit height at the front. It seems that the tower may be high enough… but first, paint the windows. This could be a good time to paint my neighbours wall as well!.... Yes, it is quite high and so, a safety harness has been acquired that will be firmly attached inside the windows.
Work on the frieze is continuing.

Frieze

2010-09-10T20:12:00.002+01:00

More work has been done in the back room and as a progress report can say that more than half the frieze has been stripped of paint and plaster. An earlier posting stated how I thought the mouldings were made up, now the reality can be seen. There is a crack in the ceiling that goes all the way across, at the one end of it the moulding had dropped slightly. When stripping this section a slight movement could be felt, this movement became more and more until……..

It is 8ins(200mm) long and should be quite easy to put back up but will wait until the whole room is finished.
So far, 5 of the large ‘roses’ have dropped out and three are missing. 11 of the small roses have broken off and another 9 are missing. These numbers will probably increase! New ones will have to be made and currently have thought of two ways to do it. The simplest solution is to make an indent in Plastiroc modelling clay the other is to make a split mould out of Liquacast, a jewellery moulding rubber. The clay will be tried first, which was acquired free of charge and if it does not work then the moulding rubber which has to be mixed accurately by weight(?) and cost £24. You can guess which one was acquired first! Plaster of Paris will be used for the castings…..I think!
Here are some larger areas of progress made.

More breakfast room

2010-09-04T13:52:00.008+01:00

Here is a good example of how easy it is to become ‘sidetracked’ and end up doing things that were not intended. One of the door frames in the breakfast room has always been in a bit of a mess, in fact the top moulding has been leaning in a corner for years. Time to clean it up and fix it.
Again the old scumble needed to be taken off and the photo shows a before and after of stripping. The door frame itself was so difficult to strip and I have a feeling that the paint was actually grey primer for a car!!

I think that this ‘room’ used to be a pantry and has an outside window looking into the wood store, it is 6ft square, but now contains the washing machine, a second fridge freezer and other things. I have been thinking of putting a door on it but space is in short supply in this strange room that has 4 door ways, a large window and a large chimney breast.

A new addition arrived yesterday, a friend rescued this lamp from an old factory that is being demolished. Decisions will be made as to where it will go outside and the extent of cleaning/repair needed.

Breakfast room shutters

2010-09-02T10:24:00.003+01:00

More work has been done on the frieze but this would be just showing more of the same. Further progress will be shown at a later date.
The shutters in the breakfast room were stripped many years ago but not done very well and a lot of the scumble was left on. It was time to clean them up and fit the ‘new’ shutter bar.When the house was first purchased this area of the house had dry rot. Much of the woodwork was destroyed. All the plaster taken off the wall and the brickwork injected. The shutters were the only untouched area and a new ‘box’ for them was added. I did not like the finished colour then and still do not but do not want to do the extra work of stripping something and redoing it when it is in a good state.

This stripping was done with the electric blow gun and its more delicate heat was perfect for getting the old scumble off. It was all finished with a water based clear matt varnish which is touch dry in 20 minutes and brushes are just washed in the kitchen sink, much less trouble than oil based stuff and better from an ecology point of view. All painting both inside and out has been done with water based paint.
The ‘for sale’ sign is just an old enamelled sign that is lying around outside. The state of the outside wall of my neighbours house has also become a bit obvious and sooner or later this needs to be dealt with….it is 42ft(25m) long and 30ft(18m) high.

Frieze

2010-08-23T14:51:00.006+01:00

One complete wall of the backroom frieze has been stripped. At a guess, to do about 3ft(1metre) of all three types takes about 6 hrs. What makes it harder is planning the next days work as the peelaway needs to be left for 24 hrs. So at the end of a stint of finishing off, the next days layer of paste has to be put on. The peelaway works very well on the paint but whoever first covered this frieze pasted over all the gaps with plaster or filler. Once the paint has been peeled off the slightly soft plaster can be carefully eased away. For up to an hour or so after the peelaway strip has been taken off the ‘plaster’ flakes off but if it is left too long it hardens and becomes very solid.

The first photo shows, on the right, a section with the plaster still on. If a screwdriver tip is inserted into the centre part, with a bit of luck, the complete surface of a petal will drop off. The inside has to be dealt with in the same way. Originally the concave recess for the flower seems to have been painted a dark grey, possibly to make the shadow fuller and for the flower to stand out more. I do not think that this will be done this time! After about 3 hours, open to the air, the brown colouring disappears but this is the type of effect that will eventually be applied.
The second photo shows a corner of finished and untouched. An estimate is that about a third of the room has been stripped. There is no intention of doing this everyday so I have no idea how long it will all take.

Narrowboat

2010-08-19T11:56:00.006+01:00

I have just spent the last four days on the canal. It was a lovely break and a nice change in scenery. For those that do not know, England and Wales have quite an extensive canal system that these days is mainly used for leisure. There is an extensive system of locks, many only 7ft wide and hence the width of the boat, that join the different levels of canal. These narrowboats are usually between 45 and 65 foot long and about 6.5 ft wide. They usually sleep between two and six people, have cooking and toilet facilities and many have both solid fuel heating and central heating.
Speed limit is 4mph and when passing other boats it is normal to reduce this to 2 mph, so it is not for those that wish to rush around.

The right hand photo, above, is the start of 22 locks that took about 31/2 hours to get through. Those locks are wide enough to take two boats at once.

My trip started in Birmingham city centre and ended just outside Leamington. Four days by boat or one hour by car! There is a saying in Birmingham that the city has more miles of canals than Venice! On a day to day basis they are rarely seen but they are there.

It is so different from normal life..as everyone says “hello” to each other and instant friendships are made at lock gates with people off other boats.

If some extra exercise is needed, walk to the next lock and wait for the boat to catch up!

There are also regular stops at canal side pubs and overnight stops are usually within sight of one.

My friends, whose boat it is, have been away for over eight weeks and are making their way, slowly, back home.
I have started work again on the cornice in the back room.

Oh!

This is what happens if you fall in the canal ...

Shutters - now finished

2010-08-12T11:04:00.003+01:00

The extra wood has been stripped and it does make the shutters look better. The shutter bars have been cleaned up and one set fitted in the large front room. I now have a standard way of dealing with old metalwork – scrape the paint off, then heat up with the gas torch. A blast of air often turns the metal black or if shiny can take it into the blue colour and cool, then varnish. This way the metal work is not covered in shiny new paint and the parts look their age. The old rim lock was cleaned up in the same way. After taking it apart and cleaning all the old dust out it worked perfectly and will be fitted in due course.

There was a problem with the small front room. The curtain rail follows the bay and the ceiling panel is now below the tops of the window. This meant there is no horizontal wood to attach the curtain rail brackets to. This was solved by cutting the curtain rail into three pieces and attaching them to the vertical sections of the window frame and shutters. The curtains open inwards, lining up with the vertical window frame so all the shutters are visible. This room is not wide enough to take the curtains to the outside of the shutter frame. Plus also, the only curtains to be found were only 8ft(2.4m) in length which fits perfectly inside the bay window as against the 10ft(just over 3m) needed to reach the floor.

Shutters finished?

2010-08-07T11:37:00.003+01:00

The top moulding was taken off, stripped and varnished. The scaffolding re-erected and when the ceiling panel was inserted – almost a perfect fit. It was decided to refit the curtains as in the back room ie. attach a 2by2 strip on top of the frame and fix the curtain rail to this. It would mean that when the curtains were open all of the shutter panels would be visible. The top frame with the curtain rail attachment on it was 15 ft(4.6metres) long which meant it was a bit awkward to move about.

A bit of plastering was needed before the ceiling panel was put in. For the first time, I found out what happens when old plaster is used. It hardens before before you can use it! Something to be noted for the future. Although I thought that the bag had been resealed well, the top layer must have had too much air getting to it but the lower layer took a bit longer to harden so was used by mixing small amounts at a time.

After looking at the result decided that some more wood needed to be stripped. The outside edge of the windows had been left white in both bays but now I realised that stripping the extra bit would make the panels look much fuller. So this will be done in both rooms.

More shutters

2010-07-31T13:52:00.007+01:00

Before continuing with the other shutters the holly bush out the front was given a haircut, first time in two years! It took a bit longer than I thought it would and made quite a mess on the pavement until the cuttings were cleared up. Below is a photo of the Camperdown Elm, one of two elm trees in the front garden. I have wondered how many elm trees are still around in the UK as they still seem prone to Dutch Elm disease. The Camperdown Elm can only be produced by grafting.

The last set of shutters have now been stripped and sanded. The mouldings done with wire wool. A lot of coloured wood filler is being used as these shutters have been quite battered and there was a lot of white wood filler in them. So all the white is being taken out and replaced with dark oak, which blends in quite well. After actually reading the manual for the sander the vacuum cleaner was attached to it to suck up the dust. This worked really well as the sander was operated on the end of the vacuum pipe which helped extend my reach.

A lot of patching and repairs were needed and the whole left hand set of shutters were being held up by one hinge. So the whole set were taken off so that all three hinges could be attached properly. When they were put back on, along with the repaired inner panel, it all fitted quite well.
The shutter bar had disappeared a long time ago and the clasp was broken – so a visit to the local

http://moseleyemporiumantiques.com/ was made. They have a basement which is full of , amongst other things, old ironmongery. After talking to the owner two bars were found along with their clasps. These will be cleaned and then one set used for these shutters and the other set in the breakfast room . The old rim lock may be used in the toilet.

The top moulding has not been stripped yet but once everything else has been varnished, this will come off to be stripped giving space to insert the old/new ceiling panel. The scaffolding will need to be erected in again.

Shutter stripping and fitting

2010-07-22T12:50:00.005+01:00

Both of the ceiling panels have now been stripped and varnished. It was a bit of game getting one down from the first floor of the stable mainly because of all the other junk around it. It was covered in pigeon nests and the associated stuff that goes with them. One of the mouldings was missing so a new one had to be found and fitted. It is exactly the same as on the door panels in the house and luckily there is some extra of this! It is quite striking when the old dirty paint is first stripped off giving the wonderful golden colour of the wood underneath.

How will the panels be put up? It seemed a good idea to use the DIY scaffolding. It measures 6 ft by 4ft so should fit within the bay window. . Just two sections turned out to be almost the perfect height.

The first bay to tackle would be the small front room, mainly as access is easier After trying out a number of different ways to fit the panel it was decided that the top frame moulding needed to come off(all 12ft of it). A few adjustments needed to be made ie. small sections sawn off the main shutter frame and this enabled the panel to be slid in. Of course the bits that needed to be sawn were in the most difficult positions and for this the little saw with switchable blades came in handy.

It makes the window look much better! So now… finish stripping the full frame in the larger front room and fit the other panel.

Go Slow

2010-07-12T18:47:00.004+01:00

Things have been a bit slow recently. My back has still not fully recovered and with world cup football along with, now, the Tour de France, it’s a bit like being on holiday. Still, some progress has been made.

I can vaguely remember, years ago putting stones down on the front drive. Last year the top surface of earth was shovelled off and I was contemplating buying a bulk load of stones to resurface. To do this properly the ground needed to be prepared and possibly a membrane put down but on remembering the work done years ago and all the crushed hardcore put down, decided on a different alternative. Shovel everything up as far as the old hardcore, sift it, put the fine stuff back on top of the hardcore then put the stones down on top. Use the garden roller to compress first the fine sift and then the top layer of stones. A couple of bags of new stones could be bought to fill in any sparse areas. Below is a before and after, I think it is coming out quite well. More than half of the front has now been finished. If new stones were to have been put down the ground would have had to be prepared anyway. This way no new stones have been purchased.

This is has been done, one hour at a time or until the back starts aching!

Some more work has been done on the shutters. The left hand side is in not in good condition! One of the back boards has been taken off for repair and the shutters will have to come off for repairs to the hinge areas. All the shutter panels have been stripped but the wall panels are still being worked on. Next will be the ceiling panel!

Garden

2010-06-20T13:26:00.005+01:00

For the last week or so the weather has been good, so most of my time has been spent in the garden. My back has still not recovered from its problem of about 2 months ago, this means only working for about an hour and then take a rest. It has not been helped by the world cup soccer which means that breaks are longer than the work time.
All sides of the right hand shutters have been stripped.

This is what my time has been spent on.

Of course, one of the cat had to be included, whose mouse count is increasing well.

Wooden shutters

2010-06-08T19:37:00.005+01:00

There is still one set of wooden window shutters left to strip and repair in the larger front room. The windows need to be open for doing this so it must be done during the summer. Some time was spent sharpening up all the stripping tools. One had been ‘lost’ so a new one was bought and ground to fit the mouldings. After a few hours on the first day a glove had to be worn – blisters were already appearing at pressure points.

The first photo below shows the end of the second day. Once the moulded panels are finished, only on the two outside shutters on each side, it should go quicker.

It is easy to forget that there are a total of 8 separate shutters to be stripped, both sides and the wall panels.
Just to make life a bit more complicated I remembered that the ceiling panels for the two front bay windows were also available. One of them was rescued from the first floor of the stable and the sizes checked. It will still fit, with a bit of work, so the intention is to strip and fit both. The panel is 8ft(2.4m) long and 4ft(1.2m) deep so it will have to be cut off the 12ft(3.6m) long piece of timber it is attached to and then fitted above the windows to the ceiling.

May

2010-06-02T14:00:00.005+01:00

I do not seem to have done much this month and things that should be done have been left. Perhaps it is time to write up a list of all things unfinished and make a restart of them!.
The garden has taken up a fair amount of time and buttercups are still being pulled up. A major go at pruning has been attempted on bushes and trees that seem to be a bit overgrown. The ‘goat willow’ was almost covering the little apple tree so a number of branches were taken out.It does not look much but that little ladder in the photo is 15ft(4.6m) high. Being still relatively new to gardening I found that pruning makes quite a difference. A bit like having a haircut which looks very smart and new but then it reverts back. One big mistake made was trying to kill off some stumps by spraying the leaf growth on them. Not realising how strong the weed killer was some managed to filter over on to the lawn and shortly some more grass seed needs to be put down.

At present there is a spare bedroom room in the house so this was a good time to fix up the fireplace which was not in a good condition. Surprisingly it was the most complete original one left in the house. All the marble and cast iron had been painted numerous times. This was a good opportunity to try the left over peel-away on something else. It did not work to well on the cast iron and just seemed to semi liquefy the blacking that was the first layer. I reverted to normal paint stripper for both the cast iron and the marble which worked quite well.

I had not realised before that the majority of this fireplace was cast iron, even on the inside. The damper or cover above the grate had rusted so badly that a section had disappeared. How could this be fixed ? Some moulding had been made up for the bathroom dado rail (more about this some other time) and the shape of it seemed to be similar to the rotted cast iron. Perhaps it could be altered and fitted in some way? Having recently found some cellulose putty(never heard of it before) in the stable, it was thought – shape the wooden moulding to fit the cast iron and then fix it in place with the putty then finish with a metal filler. The fireplace is unused, just decorative now, so the wood and filler will not create any problem. It worked quite well and was fitted back in after being covered with black shoe polish, along with the rest of the cast iron.

Prostitute

2010-05-26T12:12:00.008+01:00

There is not much being done on the house at the moment but there is something else that might be of interest.
Back in, about, 1978 we received at knock at the front door by a man claiming to be a film director. His name was Tony Garnett and wanted to make a film called Prostitute. We were all a bit dubious about this but after he took us all down the local pub, the Old Moseley Arms, and explained about the film, it was agreed. Filming lasted about 8 weeks and it was a bit strange being in my room with a walky-talky next to me saying when no noise could be made. The film was a semi documentary highlighting the background and problems of prostitutes in the area. There were a lot around at the time. I think it was in the 70’s when Birmingham City Council unofficially allowed two streets in the area to be used as brothels, so that the situation could be controlled. The government eventually put a stop to this.
For a long time I have been trying to find a copy of the film and through a site called Reel Streets have at last be able to see it again. Many local people were used as extras but only a few have been recognised so far, along with two members of UB40.
It was interesting seeing views of the house from 30 years ago on film. Many of the shots were close up, so could have been anywhere but some were easily identifiable.
The photos show stills of - first the film followed by now.

Outside

2010-05-16T20:55:00.006+01:00

No more work on the cornice until the new larger tub of the peelaway is delivered!
More work has been done on the garden. The newly sewn grass is starting to come up, a lot of the moss has gone and the weeding continues. Getting rid of buttercups and the strange blue flowered stinging plant are my weeding priorities.

Does anyone know what it is? The roots can be upto 1 ft(300mm) deep and over 1 ins(30mm) thick. The whole ‘bush’ from one root can be over 3ft(1 metre) wide.

I think the garden, in general, is looking good at the moment. After laying the new edging stones and realising the difference they make, the old ones have now been reinserted. I did not realise how many there were and a number of them had almost disappeared. Below, shows how low many had sunk before being dug up.

When the footpath was put in at the front of the house, for some reason it started halfway up the drive. This means that in the winter and wet times if cars are in the drive, people must walk over muddy bits. So, continuing my attempts at recycling, managed to find three unused paving slabs. One was found propped up against the wall, one had been uprooted to make way for the Belfast sink out of the old herb garden and one came from the bottom of the garden which used to be the entrance to the old potting shed. The potting shed disappeared over 30 years ago.

The sand base, mortar and thickness of slabs meant digging down over 3 ins. All the old stones laid with no ground sheet, years ago, started to appear. So the earth was sieved and the stones put down again. I may try this with the rest of the front garden and the earth that was sliced off the top last year. If this works there may be no need to cut slabs for the little triangle gaps, perhaps just a base of mortar under the stones! It is hoped that with the sand base and mortar under the slabs that a car may be driven over them, when more parking space is needed, without cracking the slabs. We will see.
The bathroom has not been mentioned for a while but a decision has been made to tile it up to the dado rail. After searching around in the stable and basement a total of 170, white 6 ins tiles were found along with a few white patterned ones from the old kitchen and 20 others of different colours… Surely they were intended for the bathroom, as after doing some sketches and calculations, a total of 176 are needed! Never having done any tiling before this could be interesting!

More Frieze/Cornice

2010-05-10T22:00:00.007+01:00

I am never sure which term to use and realise that the mouldings that are being cleaned are really part of the cornice. It seems that it is made up of separate plaster of paris mouldings, the lower one, each moulding 10 ins long. The middle one, with the roses, seem about the same length but the roses are a separate moulding and are held inside a moulded recess with a blodge of plaster. The top mouldings, on the ceiling, which look like an icanthus leaf with a small rose next to it, seem about 4 ins long and are quite delicate, some have come away but it will be possible to stick them back on.. A leaf and rose measure 2ins.

Not all are in perfect condition but they are probably about 150 years old. Not all the old paint work is coming off, possibly due to the different depths that the peelaway paste has to be put on. One or two areas are coming up perfectly white other bits are coloured and it seems that the first layer next to the plaster does not want to join with the rest being peeled away. Looking at the texture this may be distemper!? These parts are being removed by hand using a little screwdriver, a little ‘dig’ with it and often a section will drop off eg. An individual petal off a rose. The area around the roses are most difficult as the gaps have been filled with paint. Whew, I am sweating just writing about it! I am tempted, that once all has been stripped to just leave it in its natural state but other options need to be looked at. It depends how it will fit in with the future decoration of the room which at present this is unknown. I have counted the larger roses and there are 222 around the room which means the same number of the smaller ones. Any surface finish put on them needs to be very thin and quick or it will never be done. It seems silly to make each moulding perfect as they are 10 ft high up on the wall and few of the details will ever be seen clearly but can be made to be more uniform.

Frieze

2010-05-10T11:22:00.005+01:00

The first tub of peelaway has been finished... actually the covering has run out leaving about a cupful of paste. This is because when first started the paste was not layered thick enough and the early parts will have to be done again. The whole room will possibly take at least another three tubs. So far, about four metres have been stripped and one metre of all three sections takes about 4 hours. It is time to stop for a rest when my arm cannot stay up for longer than a few seconds. The tension in my calves is also beginning to relax and my technique with the more delicate bits is improving.

The question now is when it is all complete, at some time in the future, how will it be finished off? Current thought is to use a thinned down white emulsion which will give consistent colour and allow the shadows to stand out better. It has been noticed from the ‘roses’ that have fallen out that the cavity left behind had been painted black, which would also create a better highlighting effect.

To give a break from being up the step ladder, the edging stones have now all been inserted down the one portion of the garden. Other, old ones, that had started to disappear by sinking into the ground have been loosened, taken out, gap filled and reinserted. The photo shows the new 190 that go all the way up to the French windows.

Secondary glazing

In general, the acrylic sheets have worked really well. The problems have been caused by the windows themselves ie. they are so badly fitting that wind blows off the magnetic sheet. In the bedrooms this has been cured by putting strips of v-seal around each window. In the downstairs bay the problem has been the large opening window, which is almost 1 metre square. When this room gets hot in the summer, the two side windows are normally opened as they give a better draft so the big window has been sealed off with builders caulk! On 2 of the windows, upstairs, the magnetic strip did not blow off but the double sided tape attaching the strip to the acylic sheet came off. So, new double sided tape was purchased and the strips redone. Will wait and see if the problems have been solved!

Another mixture

2010-05-04T10:39:00.006+01:00

Well, the dandelion beer was disgusting, one person said that they thought it would poison everyone, no wonder it never caught on. It was tested with a hydrometer though (before being thrown away) and measured 6% alcohol. This means that the dandelions in the garden will have to go. Weed killer does not seem to work and taking them out by the root takes so long. A new approach will be tried by cutting through the root underground and then pulling the whole plant out.
Laying the garden edging ‘stones’ has been started (they were bought from a salvage yard last year) and about 50 have been inserted so far with about the same again to go in. It does make a difference being able to see where the lawn finishes and garden starts, especially when cleaning up with the strimmer. The second 50 will take a bit longer as an amount of rubble needs to be cleared which is the leftovers from the building work next door.

The experimentation for cleaning the frieze has finished and shortly I will have an extended go covering a much bigger patch. This will be a slow job because of the awkward working position and my back not liking it. Once the paste is put on thick enough and left for 24 hrs it really does peel-away. Although in the photos the results look quite ‘tatty’ it is a huge improvement.

We tend to get varied bird life turning up, like last year when a pheasant suddenly appeared. Below is a view from the back room during the week.

All three seemed quite happy viewing the garden until the cat got a bit too close and it was time to go. Remember the house is less than 2 miles from the city centre!

A mixture

2010-04-27T11:35:00.003+01:00

There is still a lot of weeding to do in the garden and this will continue. It is easy to forget that if you have a wildish garden it has to be kept in some sort of control.
More attempts have been made to control the moss and the earth in an area at the bottom of the lawn has been dug/loosened up and reseeded. The same area was done two years ago! A lot of bluebells were also taken up and in future will be cut back a bit as they seem to like growing in the lawn too much.

At last work has started on the back room ceiling with the peelaway. So far, just experimental to find out how much is needed to be put on the paint. Already the possibilities can be seen but it will be a slow job. The first attempts used far too little of the paste and it needed to be layered on a bit heavier. When taking off the first paint, two ‘flowers’ came off but it will be easy to fit them back into their holes again. I will just have to be careful and make sure, in the future, that none of them drop and break. This is fortunate actually that they came out as there are 3 or 4 missing around the room and it should be possible to make a moulding from one of the loose ones and replace the missing ones. It is quite amazing how delicate these little ‘flowers’ are and they are even curved to fit in with the larger moulding that they fit into..

Following my use of the wild garlic leaves another attempt at using ‘stuff’ from the garden has been done and the first batch of dandelion beer has been made. It has been bottled but not tasted yet. We will find out in two days time. The recipe says 100 heads to make 2 litres. If it is any good it may be an idea to harvest the dandelions instead of trying to kill them off all the time. I have read that in the past that dandelions were cultivated commercially for a number of uses and can even remember buying some dandelion coffee, which was made from the root

Procrastination

2010-04-19T21:42:00.003+01:00

There seems to be a lot of the above going on at the moment. The bathroom is still not painted and there are a number of other things that are being put off. Still there has been a lot of weeding done in the garden. My main priority for a start has been buttercups, they are growing in colonies and seem to have an aim of taking over the garden. The moss is back in the lawn with a vengeance and treatment of it has started. In some places, at the bottom of the garden, there is now just bare earth which will need to be reseeded properly. It is nice to see the plants appearing again and I have actually managed to make spread of some wild garlic(Ramson) leaves which goes very nicely in a salami sandwich. It will be nice when it all flowers as it is such a lovely plant. At last, the name has been found of two groups of plants that appear every year, it is Comfrey, one group is white the other red, it has many medicinal uses, mainly external. Later in the year I intend to make up some rose hip syrup, amongst some other things that can be made from the plants. The photos of the garlic and comfrey are from last year.

Below are the bags of left over rubble along with three green bags of buttercups at the end.

The rubble from cleaning the tiles still needs to be bagged and shortly, I hope, will also be done and all taken down to the dump. There are still a lot of brick portions that need to be dumped, which are left over from the wall pointing repairs of last year and they need to be cleared up as well. This also makes me think of all the lead and copper piping which needs to be sold to the scrap man! BUT you never know when it might be needed!

Tiles and Steps

2010-04-12T18:24:00.005+01:00

The mild weather meant it was good time to be outside, so the scarifying was done and a couple of other things.

The steps in front of the outside toilet were made up of house bricks which over the years have been slowly disintegrating. The steps were too close to each other and not very safe. After looking around at the slabs available some were found that were just the right size. One slab had to be chopped shorter and two others needed the edges just worn down a bit and then they fitted quite well.

With a bit of cleaning up and the bricks mortared they should work well.

Something in my back was pulled while handling the slabs so it was decided to leave the tiling of the old herb garden until a later date. Then assistance was offered, that could not be refused, as the offer was to do all the carrying and heavy work. A lot more rubble was needed than first thought but there was plenty available and so the area was filled in and then a layer of sand on top. This will be finished with some dry mortar mix. One good reason for covering this area quickly is that the cat will lose its new toilet and will have to go a bit further afield. The larger rubble left over was bagged ready for taking to the dump. The bags used were old plastic coal bags of which one type I am sure would not be allowed to be sold these days.

In the garden

2010-04-08T19:29:00.003+01:00

The boxed in areas of the bathroom have now been painted but everything else has been left as it is, for the time being…
The weather has been so nice that the lawn has been cut and trimmed for the first time this year. Moss is going to be a big problem again this year and I foolishly attempted at raking it by hand but after a while decided to use the mechanical scarifier after mowing. That is still to be done. A bit of weeding has been done and it is nice to see plants starting to revive. All the transplanted bluebells seem to be doing well and I look forward to seeing them all out. Work on covering the old herb garden area has continued and a few days has been spent cleaning up the old quarry tiles. These were taken up from the kitchen floor when a damp proof membrane had to be installed, many years ago.

Above is my work area for tile cleaning and about 30 at a time are being done. Approx. 130 will be needed. There are still a number of bags filled with rubble lying around and these have been emptied out as a hard core base for the tiles. After all the tiles are cleaned there will be another couple of bags available for other things.

The Changing Bathroom

2010-04-02T18:44:00.004+01:00

The plastering is finished and has been sealed with a PVA mixture. It was time to look at the room and decide what else could be done without stripping the whole room. The floorboards were loose and some warped. This being the leftovers from installing central heating pipes, rewiring and my latest plumbing. These were all fastened down and /or replaced, I was very careful not to use the old holes and not put a nail through a central heating pipe as happened last year. Something needed to be done about the assortment of pipes on view and also the area around the old skirting board as this was in a very ragged shape. Perhaps something could be done with the old airing cupboard boards. A new work ethic was evolved….think about it for 2 hours work for 1… but eventually decisions were made. The old tongue and grooved boards would be used to box in the pipes and skirting board area. An internal frame work was made using old wood, the boards cut to size and then pinned to the frame.

The area under the bath is in the worst state and there are two holes that go straight through the floor and into the laundry room below. This area has not been touched in ?? years! The proof, is what was found under the bath and floor boards…see photo..

It was intended to use wood effect laminated flooring but the repercussions of how to fix them in place became too much. An old ‘funky’ rug was found on the top floor and this put in the bathroom for a temporary(?) period, It fitted quite well.
The zinc sheets were taken off the walls around the bath, leaving, what I think is a nice effect. Below is a photo of the rug in situ.

The boxed in parts are now stable enough to sit on but still need to be painted. Now, more decisions need to be made, what colour to paint the walls, how to deal with the stripped zinc area, where and how to hang towels, extra mirroring, shelving space. Two little shelves have been acquired (see photos above) but these are actually from the base of an old coffee table that had fallen apart!!

Slow progress

2010-03-25T10:58:00.006Z

In the downstairs shower, the extractor fan switch will stay where it is and be permanently on. The windows on the outside needed new putty, which takes a long time to dry, and the ledge on the inside needs filling and re-varnishing as it has had a lot of water on it. A shower curtain is being used to cover the gap between the shower stall and the window ledge, this may stay there.

The bathroom is slowly looking better. The patches have dried out and further filling done. This is my largest piece of plastering yet about 8ft by 6ft.

The weather has changed and it is staying light longer so work has been done on the garden. First a general clear up but also some repositioning. The snow drops have been out for awhile now and the bluebells are starting. They must propagate via the wind as there seemed to be more on the pathway than the garden. Quite some time has been spent clearing the pathway and replanting bluebells elsewhere, there must have been way over 100 moved. Bark strip has been put down on some of the cleared pathway.

The herb garden has been dug up, the herbs, totem pole, and nose moved and it is being prepared for a solid base. Originally it was going to be covered with paving slabs but on realising that there were still a lot of quarry tiles left will have a go at cleaning them up. It will take a while but the alternative would probably be to throw them away (Shock!Horror!).To get rid of the final pile of earth in the front, the side of the garden area was widened ie. the rocks dug up and moved further out into the ‘drive’. This gave room for the extra earth and made it bit more of a garden and not just a strip on the side.

Bathroom

2010-03-14T17:22:00.004Z

With the new boiler installed there is no longer any need for the hot water tank or the cold water storage tank above it, so both have been taken out. This also meant that the airing cupboard no longer worked so the whole thing can come out. Here is a photo before being painted last year and also minus airing cupboard. It needs a bit of work! More of the plaster will have to come off as quite a bit of it is loose.

The old and new pipework (shown in a in a previous post) needs to be boxed in and some plastering done. The little window, showing, must have been a late addition as the brickwork around it is in a terrible condition and also needs to be fixed. The old airing cupboard was made of tongue and groove panels and it is intended to reuse as much as possible.

Shower

The shower, downstairs, is much more powerful now and is creating a lot more ‘mist’ and condensation. An extractor fan was not really needed before but now it is. When the wood panelling was originally bought (25 years ago) an extractor fan was purchased and luckily this was found still in its box in one of the cupboards downstairs. So the intention is to fit this into the window, which is permanently closed, then have it operating whenever the light is switched on. Take a window pane out and replace it with a block of plywood with the extractor attached. As usual, one change in this house results in many more. It is also likely that a new mixer will be needed due to the extra pressure, it is already leaking. I am tempted to do this by using two taps for mixing and also a central one for controlling flow but more about this when or if it is actually done.

The work on taking the window pane out made me realise what a bad condition the whole window was in. It seemed silly to do this work without re-painting it, both inside and out. The window is now sealed shut! The outside still has to be finished but the fan is in and working. There was one horrible moment when switching the fan on for the first time and it was making a very loud noise, on investigation, the lever for opening the vents was stuck, which was quickly sorted out. The fan is connected to a 3 amp fused switch but it must be decided whether to have it on all the time or just for showers. This may mean repositioning of the switch for easier access.

Planning Permission

2010-03-05T13:48:00.005Z

This is a continuation of the ‘Houses next door saga’ http://trafrd.blogspot.com/2008/06/planning-permission.html .

After I had complained to the Ombudsman about the city council, eventually a demolition order was slapped on the houses. Get proper gardens or demolish within 6 months. A lot of negotiating went on and various offers were made for my back garden all of which were eventually refused.
Strange…. After 6 month deadline, nothing had happened, the houses were still there and people still living in them. One month later there was new planning permission applied for, initially refused by the city as not enough information was given.
This is what the new application was for – cut the illegally built houses in half both vertically and horizontally. They would be left with 2 roomed bungalows, a bedroom and a living room/kitchen area. Squeezed in between these two rooms would be a toilet. The plans are below.

The original plans did not even have a back door until after I had complained to the city! To my surprise the city planning officers agreed to these changes and it went to planning committee recently and was passed. Changes to be made within 9 months, so they say.
We read in the news about people that have built a porch or an extension to their house being ordered to pull them down and being fined because it does not fit in with the characteristics of the neighbourhood. This house is within 100metres of an architectural conservation area and my neighbours now have permission to have 3 houses(they look like holiday chalets) in their back garden alongside my garden wall. The back gardens of these houses are the half the width of the houses to be partly demolished. This now means 4 back gardens and a car park alongside my garden. My garden wall with a fence on top reaches a height of 3.8 metres. Both gardens were originally at the same level.

Well, at least the light will be a little bit better and some privacy regained.
The planning report seems to miss out many of the areas that I have complained about including the fact that the developers claimed that my garden was theirs. It is public information so if you wish to have a look, go here for the planning application or for the report . Perhaps it is time to return to the Ombudsman to see if they feel procedures have been correct.

New Boiler

2010-03-03T19:24:00.004Z

Well, it is a good job that I did not attempt to do this myself, a bit too complicated for me, too many things that could go wrong. Two days work and the plumbers were finished. As they were shown the different areas where things operated from one of them commented that it was a bit like Narnia. It is now just a matter of adjusting settings around the house. Readings have been taken of gas usage but it will not be possible to compare until all the adjustments have been made.

The shower, now, has really good pressure and it is nice having hot water all the time.
It is taking a while to sort out the thermostat as the old one had six on and off times but he new has six different temperature settings. It needed a mental flip to understand the difference, especially after trying to set it like the old one. The equivalent of switching off is to set a low temperature. A lot of adjusting is being done as many of the rooms are kept at different temperatures during the day and night and the thermostat only reads in one area.

Mirror

The overmantle mirror has been put up in the breakfast room above the solid fuel stove but there was no mantelpiece. There were parts of an old pitch pine bed frame available, some of it was being used to hold up the old boiler. These pieces were cut to size to create the mantle piece, fitting on top of the dado rail. The problem was how to attach it as the walls are not very flat. I remembered being told that normal mantlepieces are held in place with plaster, so I am going to find out if it works with wood. The plaster takes up the discrepancies nicely and it seems to be holding well. Two candlestick holders from an old piano were added and they seem to finish it off nicely. The mirror lies on top of the mantle and is held to the wall with two screws. It was intended to angle it forward slightly so it could be used but this may take place at a later time.

Lead Pipes

2010-02-20T19:13:00.004Z

The hot lead pipes were replaced with speedfit piping and connectors. A day was set aside for switching off the mains water and replacing the cold water lead pipes. This would be a bit more complicated as the lead pipe from the water tank needed to be blocked off until the tank was taken away. The new cold water piping was laid out and connected ready to be fitted into the mains. The main was cut (nervously) and as the first connector was being fitted realised that the main pipe was ½ ins and not 15mm. All the other copper pipe in the house is 15mm but not the bit that had just been cut. Oh dear! Or words to that effect. This was early evening but there were a number of hardware places open until late, they would have 15mm-1/2 ins connectors – not one of them!
His meant no cold or hotwater over night or until it could be fixed. Luckily the kitchen hot and cold runs off a different inlet and water buckets were put next to the toilets, hopefully just for one night. The main water pipe is 15mm and after the first T junction the pipe turns into ½ ins and continues up through the house. How was this connection made? After searching the internet and looking through catalogues one shop was found that might have a connector but no special connection could be seen where the pipe sizes changed. There must be another way! The ½ ins pipe is only slightly bigger than the 15mm, perhaps it could be ‘sanded’ down. So, while watching TV, a test fitting was made by just swivelling the pipe around inside a strip of emery cloth. The theory was that any slight irregularity would be taken up by the rubber ring inside the speedfit connector. To cut a long story short – it worked.

Two connections were made into the mains pipe and it was time to block off the lead pipe from the water tank. Squeeze the end shut, heat up and then wipe over as the lead begins to melt. Sounds simple! The only way to test the wiping was to turn the water back on, it took about 1 ½ hours to pluck up the courage to actually turn the tap.
There was one leak at one of the cold water taps and a little fountain of water coming from the blocked lead pipe. The tap was fixed quite easily but the lead pipe took another two goes. Initially the lead pipe had been cut with a saw but after doing this 3 or 4 times decided to use the garden lopper shears(used for cutting small tree branches) and this made life much easier as most of the lead pipe was under the floor boards.

It has been quite a relief to have all the water back on again for the last 2 days. The only problem is the shower, as now the cold water pressure is much higher and only a small turn makes the difference between hot and cold. When the new boiler is in this should even out as both hot and cold will be at mains pressure.

Overmantle mirror

2010-02-15T18:16:00.003Z

Some time ago a friend gave me three old Victorian overmantle mirrors. They were all in a poor shape but I thought it possible to do something with them. The simplest one has been worked on this week and is about ready to go on the wall. It was completely filthy with paint and old plaster covering it and 3 of the mouldings were broken. Some time was spent looking for replacements mouldings but to no avail….. Of course! I can make them myself and remembered at school, many years ago, a shaped scraper being made with two pieces of wood. The actual scraper used held in between the 2 pieces is a piece of broken hacksaw blade which has edges sharp enough to cut the wood. It took a while to get the technique but worked out quite well in the end. The wood was stained, fitted and the whole of the frame touched up and then varnished.

The pictures, original, are from The Ullman Mfg Co, New York, copyright 1900. I am amazed at how well they have endured after being dumped in the back of a garden shed in the Wales countryside for many years.

New Boiler

2010-02-15T18:07:00.004Z

Well… the boiler has been ordered and here is hoping that the bills actually do come down by about 30%. It has needed quite a bit of thinking to work out where the new pipes will go and what will be the repercussions of the new system. A company called Eager was chosen as they offered the best deal, they are also the largest and will give 5 year parts and labour warrantee. They actually sent a surveyor round to check everything out and specify parts needed. That was an experience in itself, “That’s illegal” was a common comment, starting with the floor standing boiler 6 ft up in a cupboard. The heating controls cannot be halfway up stairs as when turning it is possible to fall! The biggest change is going to be the changeover to mains water, which means no more cold tank and no more hot water cylinder. Most of the cold water taps run off the cold tank and 3 of them are still lead. Two hot water pipes are lead and it was noticed that one was leaking slightly so they were both replaced with plastic. Most of this work had to be done while lying under the bath and most done with one hand. Now all the hot water is copper or plastic and has a new feed pipe that can be connected to the new boiler.The new cold water feed is being planned and it may be possible to switch over before the boiler is installed. It all depends on my ability to wipe or block off the lead pipes and have been practicing this with the old lead pipe left over from the hot water.

The bathroom floor is in a terrible state with rubbish under the floorboards that must cover the last 50 years. Most of the boards have been taken up at one time or another but never nailed down again so most have become warped and do not fit properly.

Heating/Insulation

2010-02-04T21:41:00.002Z

The under floor space in the back room has been completed. Hopefully there will be no need to go down there again for a long time. The entrance was too small to get the rolls down there so all 15 of them had to be unravelled and pushed down, they took up quite a lot of space. I can only get down the trap door with one arm raised out of the way and the entrance is over by the light in the photo.

While researching the insulation and other heating things it was noticed that there is a government scrappage scheme for old boilers which just started in January. You have to have an old inefficient boiler to take advantage of it and they offer a £400 rebate. All central heating boilers are rated from A to G and only the G rated qualify. I checked out my boiler from the various lists and one site claimed that it may be classified as X and may be operating at 60% efficency. The new A rated boilers operate at 90% or more. Does this mean that there could be a gas saving of 30%? My bills for this winter quarter are likely to be about £1000 and a new boiler could mean a big savings. The problem is that I have no experience of installing a boiler and do not want to attempt my usual trial and error methods. A boiler for this house could cost between £800 to £1200 which sounds reasonable but I have no experience of installation costs as have been doing everything myself. After getting 3 quotes now realise that the new boiler, installed, will cost £2500 and more. A bit of a jump!

The current boiler is now 20 years old and was installed by my late co-owner with the assistance of a central heating friend but the hot water cylinder is still standing empty in the corner of the room never having had the water actually connected. So it may be time to splash out, get more efficient heating and on tap hot water at the same time. With the current systems available there may not be any need for the hot water cylinder ! The boiler is 6ft up in the press cupboard that was repaired last year.