Bathroom renovation: nearly finished

Bathroom a video by NBS78 on Flickr.

Everything is installed and working, just a few finishing touches and cleaning up to do now!

Bathroom renovation progress

Here are a few videos and photos showing the nice rapid progress of our bathroom renovation over the last few days. Hopefully it’ll all be done pretty soon!

Boarded out

Plastered

Wall tiles on, and partially painted

Bathroom renovation day 1

Bathroom renovation day 1 a video by NBS78 on Flickr.

The first day of our bathroom renovation saw a LOT of destruction. The entire bathroom was stripped out in a day, right down to bare walls!

Weirdly the room feels tiny now. Lets see what tomorrow brings.

A short film…

Just a bit of fun, here’s our house and extension in 3D animated glory! All modelled in SolidWorks and rendered in PhotoView 360.  Click the HD icon for better quality.

Refurbishing the fireplace

The dining room fireplace was no longer in use, we had the chimney capped but we wanted to keep the fireplace as a decorative feature, here’s how it went…

Firstly, here’s an old photo of the old fireplace, from pre-extension days.  Nasty.

First we removed the old wooden surround and painted it. We wanted the paint to match the colour of the Wickes Heritage Grey units in the kitchen, and found that Farrow and Ball French Gray was good (maybe exact?) match.

Once the fire surround was removed we ripped out the old fireback and hearth:

Boarded out the opening:

After this we had a cream marble hearth fitted professionally.

We then ordered some decorative logs from The Little Log Company, and mounted them on a board that snugly fits in the fireplace opening:

We sanded and filled the holes in the plasterboard on the inner fireplace surround, then painted it using a metallic gold paint.  Once that was dry we inserted the board with the logs mounted to it, then attached some beading which had been cut to fit with a mitre saw and painted gold – this hides the rough edges of the plasterboard.  Here’s the end result, complete with the painted fire surround:

Ikea Expedit hack: under-stairs storage

This project is a solution to a shoe-infestation that was threatening to spread over the entire house! Whether it was loafers in the living room, high-heels in the hallway or boots in the bathroom – they were everywhere…

The understairs area in our 1930s semi was a cluttered cupboard, clad in some flimsy tongue-and-groove panelling. An ideal shoe-storage area in the hallway if it could be repurposed with some clever Ikea hackery.

Expedit looked ideal, versatile enough for all sorts of footwear, especially with the various options for doors, dividers, baskets, etc.

Materials

1 x Expedit 149cm x 149cm shelf unit, high-gloss white
3 x Expedit Insert doors, green
2 x shelf brackets
1 x large L-bracket
18 x small L-bracket (narrower than Expedit shelf-thickness)
44mm square section timber

Step 1: Design

I created a 3D model of our staircase and the full Expedit shelf unit in SolidWorks, then modified both of them to work out where I should cut down the Expedit, and get a feel for how the thing would look when done. In hindsight it’s a fairly simple modification but creating a 3D model was a useful exercise to fully understand how things would work before attacking the Expedit with a saw. It was quickly apparent that it would need substantial reinforcement after removing two of the four outer panels – otherwise this could happen!

Step 2: Cutting down Expedit base

First I marked out the cut and scored the laminate surface with a sharp knife – then carefully cut with a panel saw.

Step 3: Assembling the first row

After fixing the base to the side panel I added three of the upright dividers, and also fixed in one of the door inserts to brace the corner. As a precaution I used wood-glue to fix the dowels in place.

Step 4: Add the first shelf

I inserted the dowels a little way through the shelf to locate it exactly against the upright, so it could be marked up before removing it to score then cut to length. Made a minor mistake here when fixing the shelf in place – I forgot to cut down the last upright dowels before inserting them, leaving them exposed and requiring cutting down later (much more fiddly) – lesson learned for the next row!

Step 5: Repeat for the next rows until you get to the top

I fixed the door inserts in place using cabinet connector fixings to provide extra rigidity.

Step 6: Add reinforcement shelf-brackets

Because the Expedit will be without two of the four structural outer panels it needs reinforcing. The missing upright can be partially replaced with a couple of shelf brackets. My design means this will be covered up when under the stairs, so I’m not too worried how this area looks.

As with a lot of Ikea furniture, the base panel isn’t solid – instead it is a honeycomb of cardboard with a thin outer structure. This means there is nothing solid to fix the shelf brackets in to. To remedy this I cut two lengths of 44mm timber to insert inside the base. 45mm would have been a perfect fit but 44mm was good enough, and readily available. I carefully cut away the cardboard honeycomb using a sharp knife and then a chisel when the knife wouldn’t reach, creating two slots for the wooden battens to slide into. The shelf brackets could then be fixed to the base and upright (being careful to use short screws on the upright thinner walled panel!).

Step 7: Add reinforcement L-brackets wherever possible

I added L-brackets to the back face of the Expedit wherever I could, taking care to drill pilot holes square to the back, to avoid screws puncturing the surface.

Step 8: Cut down spare panels to blank off back of cabinet

I marked up and cut the left-over small panels to fit in the back of the cabinet – for the triangular areas and those that don’t have a door insert. I then fixed them in place using a few more of the L-brackets.

Step 9: Cut and fit filler piece to upright panel

The upright panel wasn’t quite long enough to fill the void under the stairs, so I carefully cut the end off the other (unused) upright panel. This could then be attached in place, neatly filling the gap.

Step 10: Finishing off

The hack to the Expedit is all done! It is positioned under the stairs but not fixed in place, in case we need access to the cabling in the void behind it. Two jobs remain: panelling the areas to the left and right of the Expedit, then paint the staircase, but that can wait for another day…

More front garden…

Landscaping is all done – looking good so far.  Next up we need to add some green things.

Face the front

The front garden has suffered 18 months of abuse, being home to piles of rubble, bags of sand, gravel, pallets of bricks, various other building supplies, old radiators, and one blue porta-loo.   All these have left their mark, so it’s time to give the front garden an overhaul!

First things first, the digger makes short work of clearing EVERYTHING!

Next, laying the membrane and marking out the edging:

And the latest progress so far – edging has been laid and base substrate for the drive is in place.  More to come tomorrow…

New panes, no pain!

Next on the lists of improvements is new windows!  The old ones were probably fitted as an “improvement” in the 1970s, replacing the originals with 1970s state-of-the-art aluminium framed double glazing.

Unfortunately the last few decades weren’t kind to these windows.  The seals went, double glazing blown – so they were quite drafty and pretty ineffective at keeping noise out and heat in!

So here are our new Rehau double glazed windows!

And a close-up of the bay.

Just need a touch of masonry paint to make good a bit of disturbance on the render – then we’ll be all done!

New windows are excellent – nice and quiet, no drafts and a good professional installation from FHI Trade Frames.

Veg patch part deux

We’ve made a little more progress!  We borrowed a Kärcher pressure washer and blasted all the filth and green muck off the fences around the veg patch.  Once they’d dried out we then painted them with “Wild Thyme” paint from the Cuprinol Garden Shades range.  Was really impressed with the paint, it only needed one coat and went on really well!

We settled for the old-school approach with brushes rather than purchasing a spray; that was after reading endless horror stories online about sprays going wrong, getting clogged every couple of minutes, coating next door’s garden/house/car/cat, etc!  Brushes required some elbow-grease, but the afternoon remained calamity free.

Next up: finish the base for the corner shed (to the right of the apple tree).  Then finish off the gravel.  Then buy and build the shed!