Plastering and Painting

A productive couple of evenings work. We've got to grips with Wickes 'One Coat' plaster - we hope. Only time will tell. 1 pint of water to 2 pints of dry plaster seemed about right. The mechanical mixer made the whole process much easier, although it took some practise to make sure the drill was running slowly enough that it didn't spray plaster/water all over the place! To complicate things a little, as the plaster thickens, we needed more power to the drill to make it turn faster, but the trigger isn't very sensitve. But we got there in the end.

Painting is coming along. The walls in the living room are now mostly green, and the wooden cladding and skirting boards are mostly reglossed. Thankfully the old paint had turned a little grey, so it wasn't too difficult to spot where we'd left off. It looks so much better now. Just a little more of the glossing and green on the walls - then we can start on the floor! The plan is to sand the floor boards, and then varnish them. Can't do that until after the painting is finished.

Shocking news!

We had a very productive day - and on occasions rather frustrating when I realised I didn't have all the parts to all my tools :( The router has a width gauge which seems to have gone walkies. It's in one of the boxes - I just don't know which one. I'm sure it's a clear-ish plastic one. But we have quite a few of them!

A few victories yesterday:

New exterior light as the old one was HORRIBLE:

Some minor disasters.

Where we were taking the tiles off the walls in the kitchen and stairs, the plaster underneath isn't too sound and was coming off in chunks right back to the brickwork. Looks like we're going to have to learn how to plaster:

When I got a drill bit set for Christmas, I didn't think I'd be using some of the items. For example the foot long masonry drill bit:
Why did the previous owners think that the above light switch was safe? It's got CHUNKS missing!

I did manage to electrocute myself a little bit. I was re-hanging one of the light switches, had isolated the power but didn't drill the holes for the box in the right place. So I had to put the power back on to drill the holes and then forgot to isolate the power. I got a bit of a shock through my hand when my palm touched the live and neutral wires. That'll teach me to mess with the electrics when I'm tired!

Plaster

Took a closer look at the plaster in the kitchen. Imagine taking a bucket of fine sand, and pouring another bucket of water into it, mix in some hair - and that's what it feels like is what's on our walls. You can wipe your finger across it, and loose sand comes off! And the more tiles we take off, the more 'plaster' we take off. Melody wants the tiles from the staircase (why are there tiles on the staircase?) for the kitchen. They are rather cool green and cream tiles (and some red ones too).
So today we have:

• Ordered the worktop for the kitchen - should turn up on the same day as the rest of the kitchen
• Bought green paint for the kitchen and living room
• Bought parts for the TV unit
• Bought a new motion sensing light for the front of the house. The one at the back lights the garden up like it's daylight!

More soon!

Making omlettes

... can't be done without breaking a few eggs. I'm clearly going to have to learn how to plaster! And this from taking a few tiles off the wall.


At least we're making head way. In about an hour we'd stripped most of the tiles off the wall, we'd got the old cupboards off - and Melody had sliced her finger open.