Decorating the Nursery

We've spent the last couple of days beavering away on the nursery. The skirting boards (known over here as baseboards) were very boring, so we've added some beading to the top of the skirting board. And that's when we discovered one of the fun things about old houses. Despite the brand new 'gyprock' on the walls, they aren't flat. There's a gentle undulation. So our nice straight pieces of beading aren't flush to the wall. The ceiling is also not entirely flat. So the new coving (aka crown moulding) around the top of the room has had to be modified to take this into account, which then had to be backfilled with dry wall compound. We got a little inventive to do the back fill. We copied the idea of an icing bag used to put icing on a cake, and were able to inject drywall compound into the crack with ease.

The moulding around the centre of the room is there to accentuate the size of the room, which is in fact very small. We got the idea from a DIY program we saw. This was particularly difficult because the room slopes where the building has settled over the last hundred years, but the modern moulding is square. We lined up the first piece with the most difficult part to get right, the sloping ceiling. After that, we worked by eye to try and keep the moulding roughly level and in line with all the other pieces. Doesn't look bad, even though I say so myself.



The icing on the cake is that we've finally managed to get some primer on the walls and ceiling - we'll be ready to paint the walls in the next couple of days!

Kitting out the kitchen

Having hung the plasterboard on the wall, we've put the window frames back in place. Then spent three days sanding the floor. It seems that the previous owners had at some time glued previous coverings to the planks, which is a shame because as you can see from the photos, the pine has come out almost white. We now need to varnish the floor, which will probably take the best part of a week to do the three layers.



As you can see, we've had the worktop for the kitchen delivered, but as the units aren't built yet, we've had to leave it on the floor in the dining room. Of course, it's not flexible, so we've had to put wedges underneath it where the dining room floor isn't flat. To try and keep it clean, we've put some plastic over the top and posted a sign reminding people not to walk on the plastic. The cat clearly needs to learn to read!

We've finally stumped up the cash and got someone in to plaster the very awkward corner in the ceiling of the nursery. More photos soon.

Kitting out the kitchen

With the door sill finished and in place, it's taken me a couple of days to build a brand new door frame and put in place a temporary door - the one from the kitchen. It's been very difficult and I've decided it's something I'm not very good at. Perhaps some practise is needed, but as I've haven't got any more doorways to build, I'm not going to know. It didn't help that (as with most of the house) nothing is square, nor are standard measurements used - inches or centimetres. A day or two of frustration however means that the doorway is complete, and once we have a period door to match, we'll be able to set that part right.

In the mean time, I've put the studding in the old doorway, and secured a piece of drywall inside. The wall inside the office doesn't appear to be parallel to the wall in the kitchen. To complicate things a little, the wall between the office and the kitchen still has the old wooden shingles and the wall boards on the studs. I've screwed the piece of gyprock in place in the office. The electricians haven't quite finished in the kitchen, so although I've cut the gyprock for the kitchen side of the doorway, just not screwed it in place just yet.



In the meantime, my wife has spent quite some time putting new trim around the small window in the kitchen.

The whole process of putting the kitchen in has been slowed down significantly by removing the door. We've put in the order for the additional wall units, and put in the final order for the counter top which should arrive before the new year. It seems companies round here take a rather extended Christmas break, so this was the last opportunity to get the counter before early January. We've also bought a small fridge to go under the counter, and we've ordered a sink to go under the small window. The hot and cold water shouldn't be an issue, as we can take the feeds from the water heater we're going to move. I'll put the pipes in before the water heater's ready to move. All we need is a waste pipe fitting - we'll be getting a plumber in for that bit!

We've removed the the plaster around the stairwell, which was flaking off the wall all too easily - probably got very wet at some time. Once the gyprock is in place, we'll put up the plaster (also known as drywall compound) on the seams, and over the screw holes.

Kitting out the kitchen continued

The next step is to get a door in the wall in the office. We've not got one that matches the rest of the house, so for now we're just going to install the door we just took out of the kitchen. To do that we needed to remove the window. We've finished taking the window out, and removed the wall below the window frame - still some work to do but it's nearly there. We're reusing the window sill as the sill to the new doorway. We've cut off one edge to square it up. The floor in the hallway has two layers of floorboards, and the lower layer sticks out by 2 cm. So I'm going to have to route a grove out of the edge of the sill so it will sit flush with the floor. We've started that process, but I spent most of the day trying to level off the area where the sill will end up.



We've been in a building site for a month a half now, surrounded by plaster dust and a mountain of plaster lathe and wood. The electricians began working on rewiring the building a few weeks ago. The electrics are so old they were probably original to the building - so they could be 100 years old. We've been moving forward slowly, but we feel like we've not had a huge amount of success until today. It's amazing how much of a sense of satisfaction you get from just one thing getting installed just right:

Kitchen design rethink

Our electrician, Quentin, has pointed out the obvious solution to our dilemma over the layout of our kitchen. The kitchen is a terrible lay out:

• 5 doors, one on each wall, and an additional one on one of the longer walls.
• The staircase going up into bedroom 4
• The water heater next to the cooker

One of the doors leads into an office space at the front of the house. The office only has one other door, which leads to the front of the house and the outside world. The office is an addition to the house, and there are two windows leading into the space, one from the dining room and the other from the hallway. We'd always intended to take the window out of the hallway and put a door in its place, but the plan was to do that further down the line. However, Quentin pointed out that if we did it now we'd be able to fill in the door in the kitchen creating an entire wall to put counter top and cupboards on. It also means we'll now have space to put a sink in. It will also simplify moving the water heater, as it means we'll be able to run the pipes round the wall behind the cupboards rather than under the floor.

Before we could change our plans permanently, we had to check out the space around the window. The wall in the hall used to be an exterior wall, and therefore is load bearing. We were warned to look for a plinth in the wall cavity that shouldn't be removed. Luckily, when we opened the wall below the window, it appears the plinth is at the level of the floor in the hall.

So we've removed the doorway in the kitchen and made a start on removing the window. Removing the window was very hard work, clearly very well built. The original wooden shingles were still attached to the wall and in very good condition, which made them difficult to remove and we had to break most of the to get them off the wall. We're hoping we can use the old window sill at the bottom of the door as a step as it's a good solid piece of wood.

Square peg, round hole...

As we are discovering the Canadians (and Americans) really do like to do things a little differently. The screws need a different driving bit - a square hole???

Kitting out the kitchen

Taking a brief respite from the nursery to allow the plaster to dry, I've started to tackle the insulation in the kitchen so we can move the water heater. The sparks are using the power cable that was attached to the tumble dryer to temporarily power the new fuse board, which frees up the corner. Same old trick:

• Tear down the lathe and plaster (a very messy job, which isn't helping my cough/cold)
• Adding some noggins between the studs so I can attach the vapour barrier at the top and bottom
• Add insulation between the studs
• Stapling the vapour barrier to the studs
• Finally screwing the drywall to the studs, and plaster over the cracks and screws

In a more modern construction, we wouldn't need to add the noggins between the studs. Insulation has a way of drawing water in, and once wet it stops being so good at insulating. This in particular causes a problem in a wooden building as the water can start to rot the timbers.

In the roof there's an additional problem. The asphalt shingles are nailed to the roof, and a lot of the nails go through the roofing boards. These nails are exposed to the outside temperatures, including the freezing cold, and frost can form on these nails inside which will quickly soak the insulation in the rafters when it warms up. To prevent this, when installing the insulation polystyrene rafter vents, which are stapled to the roofing boards before the insulation is installed. This allows crucial air flow to keep the nails and roofing boards dry, when combined with ventilated sofits and further ventilation at the top of the roof.

Once we've finished drywalling that half of the kitchen, we can start to fit the kitchen cabinets.



Oh yes - and I apparently don't know my own strength. I've managed to snap the bolt on my circular saw that determines the cut depth.

The pink rafter vents can be seen in the photos of the nursery below: