Beetles in the attic

TJ and Frank, and the beetle who hasn't been named yet

Frank Styles, a mate who is an amazing graffiti artist, created this mural on TJ's wall. You should have seen the look of horror from Two-Heads when I told him I was having graffiti on his immaculate plasterwork. But even he agrees it's fantastic, and not at all what he expected. Frank was totally up for the job; he specialises in spray painting butterflies, ants and the like, with his own embellishments. So when TJ asked him for a beetle, he was over the moon. There is, in fact, a second beetle in the attic, which TJ will be able to see from his bed. He's a happy chappy to say the least. Every middle class home should have wood burning stove in the living room, a cement mixer in the library and beetles in the attic. Frank is available for commissions, and you can find him through my Facebook friends. I'm planning more art work commissions by friends who's work I adore.

Fire engine and soggy skip

Meanwhile, I got a frantic phone call Tuesday night from my neighbour Carol to say she'd called the fire brigade because someone had set fire to the skip in the alley. When I got there, I was told that a number of skips nearby had been set alight. Carol had put a hose on it as soon as she'd seen the smoke; she'd a good 'un. I think there was only one wooden pallet on the skip, the rest was rubble. Now it's soggy rubble.

Two-Heads stripping in the hall

Yesterday, as well as the murals, work cracked on a pace elsewhere as Two-Heads started to strip the horrid embossed paper off the hall, Brewie and his brickie Stefan made sterling progress on the kitchen and I did lots of glossing in the attic. And help is on it's way as my big sister Mel is coming up from Manchester today for a few days.

Trashing the living room

It's all been moving a pace at the new house. A big cement wagon thingy arrived with a hundred men to pour the foundations into the trench. It was done within about 15 minutes, and they were gone. The following morning it was set ready to build on, and down went the foundation blocks, which will all be underground.


Foundation blocks

Lots and lots of cement

I always find it fun to stand in a space which won't be there in the future, like standing in the trench, or a few feet down in the middle of the plot where my body would, in future, be sliced by the floorboards.


Off with those flowers

This week we also started trashing the living room, which is the only room we hadn't touched so far. I shifted all the boxes of Gangan's bits into the cupboard under the eaves, which I'd painted white inside already. Then we removed the wooden mantelpiece and the cast-iron fire surround. We're giving it to one of our new neighbours, Carol, for her back room.














Then the chimney sweep came; he was 100 years if he was a day, no kidding, and his hearing was not too good, but he was a cheerful chap and didn't leave a speck of dust. TJ and I were painting in the attic and we could hear the brush in the chimney as he worked. We even saw the brush peep out of one of the pots on the roof, startling the seagulls.

Hooble Dooble Digga Digga Digga Digga

Scoop and Muck

There was a digger in the yard and a cement mixer in the library. Is this Bob The Builder re-enactment day or what?!? After the guys had broken up a corner of the hard-standing last weekend to allow the digger to get a nibble at it, they dug a HUGE long trench for the new foundations under where the new kitchen wall will be, and round the corner where the end wall of the utility room will be. Tony was in the yard 'supervising' for a bit, and I was indoors taking photos, as they left the kitchen/hall door boarded up to stop the rubble dust getting in.



Rolly

The trench

We also squeezed in a visit to Ikea in between Tony's work & meeting etc. I think he has Hermione Granger's Time-turner to allow him to squeeze so much into each day and work at the same time. Anyway, as I posted on Facebook yesterday, our marriage survived the trip and no blood was spilt. We've come back with lots of pieces of paper bearing words like Besta, Tofta, Algot, and Faktum. My favourite is Numerar, which is actually a kitchen worktop but sounds like an Elvin fortress.

Tony measuring the alcoves

Fingers crossed the Building Surveyor will be visiting today, and they'll also pull down some of the adjoining wall to Keith's house up the street as the need to nibble into his yard for the foundations to be proper. I popped round yesterday evening to get the green light & he's a super chap. Mind you, he's seen how great our builders have been so he's confident they won't cause a mess. I'll be stripping the last few feet of the bannister and cracking on with sanding the spindles and removing the last vestiges of white paint from the underside of the handrail. By the way, B&Q's own brand paint stripper is a third of the price of Nitromors and does the job just as well.


And don't worry, if you didn't watch CBeebies about 5 years ago you won't get the full meaning of the post title.

Dirty, sweaty stripper

dirty work

Yesterday I got well and truly mucky. It was the hottest day of the year so far, and I was indoors after work with Nitromors and the hot air gun again. Not together, of course. That would be dangerous. Flammable. And even hotter than usual.



for the high bits

down to the wood

The paint stripper was gunked onto the hand rail on the upper landing, and while it did it's chemical magic I stripped some of the door frame for what will become the games cupboard in the dining room/library. I didn't want to use the gun on the lower stair rods because I'd have dissolved paint falling on my head. I'm not as daft as I am funny looking.


The white paint on the doorframe came off in huge rubbery strips, and the layers of varnish underneath made lumps of claggy resin on the blade which I scraped off onto the back of an old chair I was standing on. I think I'm going to keep some in a specimen jar as it looks kinds funky.

After half an hour the Nitromors had shrivelled up the top layer of paint, and softened the lower layer enough that is scraped off easily without applying any pressure. A second thin coat and the varnish came off too. It's going to take flippin ages, as it has to be done in stages and small sections, but it's going to be worth it.

While I was at work, Two Heads was hard at work breaking up the old foundations.

The photo of the yard in the sunshine was taken at 08.50 Thursday and the big view from above was taken at 4.30 Thursday, so you can see it's a long slog breaking up all that concrete. I couldn't get into the yard to take a ground-floor photo this morning (7am)as they hadn't started yet and the door was still boarded up.  Brewie the builder says the wall is staying, as it's a perfectly good fire rated, themal, thermite, thermoneuclear thingamy rated wall. He plans to book a digger to come in on Monday and dig down the metre-deep trench for the new foundations. Whoopie; we'll be around on Monday to see it in action. How excited am I?!?!?!

Gone

The old kitchen is no more. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-kitchen. There's only the wall that butts onto next door with a narrow cavity between, and the concrete foundations which will be lifted today. We don't know if Brewie plans to keep and re-use the side wall or not. I don't think he can, as it needs to come out to enable him to dig down the correct depth of foundations. Hmm. Intriguing. I've just noticed that the wood shed on the left has gone too.

I can only take photos from the upstairs windows and can't get into the yard because by the time I get round after the school run they've finished for the day and screwed on the panel over the kitchen/hall doorway, stopping hoodilums from getting in.


all gone

While Becca was at a campfire party at West Boldon Lodge, eating marshmallows and chasing toads, I spent two hours stripping. I'm getting good at it, and I hardly made any gouge marks at all. I think I have developed a relationship with the green-handled paint scraper. We've been through a lot together and we have more work to do, but I don't think it will let me down.

I daresn't count them

isn't it beautiful

The bannister is very handsome under that nasty paint; bronzed and glowing. Tony's buying me 10 gallons of Nitromors and some think gloves today. I also have a tentative go at the newel post. Only the flat bits, and it's rougher underneath than I'd have guessed, so that will need some work.



that acorn needs to go

While I was working away I was thinking about the stairs. The last three houses I've lived in didn't have stairs, but our family home in Liverpool did. These will be the stairs that the kids storm up and down, the stairs I'll send them up when I'm annoyed with them, the stairs we'll run down on Christmas morning. Where TJ will sit on and cry when he splits up with his first love. The stairs Rebecca will come down wearing her prom dress, or suit. Stairs mean a lot to me.



Demolition Man

Tuesday they started to pull down the old kitchen. And they were very tidy about it too. If you look at the big picture here the new kitchen will go past that yellow wallpaper and half way down the white wall. Then, the new utility room will continue to just past the start off the khazi, and the outside shed will run where the khazi is to the far wall.



stage 1 of the demolition

'before'





they left it very tidy

I managed to strip the stair rods down to the landing, and my left hand was only a little numb afterwards form the vibration of the gun's fan. On the landing there's an extra stair rod nailed next to the one on the next step up, and it doesn't match. The rod on the stair rail turn is also new. However, we have five of the original posts left over from the section they removed for the attic stairs.




The ornamental woodwork stripped easily, but the sawn-off ends of the  stair treads wouldn't strip as the paint has soaked right into the grain. Tony agrees that we'll add bull nosed trim and file it to shape before we re-paint so that the original shape is restored.


odd stair rods



smart stripes



Here's some images of what I have in mind; varnished stair rail, painted rods, skirting and steps, a smart runner (possibly striped) and a contrasting wall colour to show off the fresh white. I'm not sure how I'll pick out the curved wood trim, that needs more thinking about.  But I want to get it all stripped by the end of the week.

neutral



happiness is a warm hot-air gun

this is coming down

exploratory hole

Last week we got planning permission for the new kitchen & bathroom, so here's some 'before' pictures. The current kitchen extension is coming down because there wasn't enough foundation to allow us to build a bathroom on top. We could have under-pinned but is was just as easy to pull it down, build new founds and build up anew.



you can see next door's upstairs bathroom which ours will but up against

Our new kitchen will be higher and longer, with a utility room at the end, and even a wood shed. Above will be the bathroom with a sloping ceiling and lots of windows and skylights.


Tony isolating the kitchen electrics

We isolated the wiring in the kitchen ahead of the demolition. As usual, it wasn't straight forward, but Tony figured it out and made it safe. So this week it's coming down. The neighbours have been warned. They're a friendly bunch, both of which took us into their own homes & showed us around, then came into ours, eager to see what we were up to.








Unfortunately, the demolition didn't start on Monday as planned, as Brewie the builder was finishing off another job. So Tony fetched me a hot air gun, and I made a start on the staircase; my aim is to have the handrail stripped and varnished, and all the rest painted white, with a striped runner. However, all of the stairs is currently covered in the lumpiest white paint you ever did see. Honestly, it's a mess. So my job is to strip the worst of the paint, sand down and undercoat. The stair rails are coming up a treat, and so is the under side of the handrail. But I'll use Nitromors on the rail, not the hot-air gun, as there's only a thin layer of paint on that and I don't want to go gung-ho and ruin it. I got seven posts done in just over an hour, and I was sweating buckets. 

 

Organised Chaos

warning

The living room is the only room we haven't stripped, and it's become the dumping ground for everything we brought back from Dad's house in Manchester, plus our tools (keeping them separate from the builder's tools) and other bits I've brought over from our current house where we're running out of room. The door has a 'keep closed' sign after it was left open when the BIG hole was made into the roof space and SHIT LOADS of soot came down.




Aladdin's cave

It's unbelievable how much mess each job creates; bricks, board, flooring-strips, plaster-board, plaster, sawdust, wood-scraps, bent nails, screws, fluff and dust, wrappings and papers, plastic fittings..... The list is endless, and the bags of rubbish going out are also endless. Thank goodness for Henry. He's been my daily companion, keeping on top of it all. Without Henry I'd be surrounded in a constant miasma of dust & debris. I've already had a couple of coughing fits when we were working in the attic, and again in the master bedroom which is the main space used on the first floor for all cutting and chopping. Becca's room seems to be for storing newly-delivered materials to be used upstairs, and the spare room is just too small, and still has floorboards up from the on-going re-wiring.




debris in the master bedroom

Treasure in the master bedroom
 

One corner of the master bedroom is my treasure trove, where I've kept the door we took off the big landing cupboard, plus some lovely bits of skirting board, and the spindles and bannister that was chopped off the staircase to make room for the new attic stairs. I'm sure I've squirreled away a couple of particularly handsome bricks, and miscellaneous metal fixings I've 'found'. I can't help it.

The next exciting stage starts tomorrow: the existing kitchen is being demolished, and then the new kitchen and utility room is being built, with the bathroom above.  Loads more mess to come. When will it end?

Cupboard Love



it's THIS big

Look at the facets

This is the space under the stairs now that it's been plaster-boarded. Ian did an amazing job cutting the facets and getting the joins spot-on. He really is a gem. As soon as I started explaining that I wanted to keep the lovely angles and not just board it up in one huge piece, he knew what i was getting at. I said before that he'd promised me that if I wasn't happy with his first attempt he'd be glad to rip it out and have another go. but he needn't have worried, it was exactly how I'd envisioned it. I plan to put a large chest of drawers under here, maybe the sewing machine and a lamp. There are socket points to the right for hovering, maybe a standard lamp, and lots of lights at Christmas.



Becca wants to sleep in the cupboard

Now Rebecca wants to take turns sleeping in the space under the stairs, then she saw the size of the cupboard we'd built in the attic and she wanted that as a bedroom. The attic cupboard is in one of the corner's above the hall. TJ's bed space is the other corner above the hall. Where the new attic stairs come up there's a small landing before the door, and to the left is the space that stretches under the eves. We copied our friend Brian's attic, further down the street, and turned this into a big cupboard, with an access door off the landing. Tony's installing lighting, and we're not plastering it, just boarding it up and painting it pale. The access door will be a plain one as you'll just be able to see it from the first floor landing and I don't want it to be a feature. We're not sure if it'll have flooring other than the boards there are at the moment. Maybe I'll lay a piece of lino, maybe just paint the floor with some spare floor paint I have. But it'll be for the Christmas decorations and camping stuff.

This blog needs some colour, as everything at the moment is greyish. So here's a picture of some shiny yellow front doors...



Boxing Day

Fire safety is a big issue, and as we're turning a two-storey house into a three-storey house there's lots of regulations we need to abide by, such as changing all the doors on the descent from the attic to fire-rated doors. Tony's installing a fire-detections, carbon monoxide widget system throughout the house. But I digress.....

Becca in the corner

We didn't want the attic to be a sterile cube, which is why the brick chimney was such a blessing. Another feature we wanted to keep were the attic structural beams. However, everything in the new attic needed to be fire-clad, so when we asked our builder if we could keep the beams, we learnt that we couldn't have the bare wood beams exposed as they'd be a fire risk, endangering our attic and the neighbouring roofs in the case of a fire. So, the work-around was to clad them in plasterboard.



Dancing on the ceiling

There was much measuring and cutting, taping, and edging in this wire-edge-strip stuff which gives a clean edge and allows the plaster to adhere.

Boxed-in beams

The result are these wonderful faceted areas, lots of intersecting lines, and beautiful shadows. We intend for it all to be painted white, maybe with the beams picked out in grey, maybe not. With the strong light, the shadows may give enough definition, we'll have to see what its like after a few coats of emulsion. I feel fun with a roller coming soon.