Getting things finished

So I've finally finished the kitchen. It's been a long old slog, but we're there bar a few touch ups. But I've got to concentrate on the bigger picture. I've started on the baseboards and caulking in the hallway. There are some big old gaps, so it's going to take rather a lot of caulking, but it'll look good when it's done.

I've also finally got round to putting up the motion sensing coach house style lamps outside.

From Exterior Lights

Time shift forwards

I did say things would slow down a lot after my son was born. We haven't however been that slow.

The wall above the stairs was originally covered with a plastic coated ply board. This was very common around here 40 years ago as it was a way of very cheaply and quickly covering unsightly walls, and give it that wooden walls effect that was very popular at the time.

Underneath we found small holes in the walls from the nails, construction glue used in conjunction with the nails to hold the panels up. So we stripped the wall paper back to the plaster, patched the plaster up, and then skimmed the whole wall. I have to say, I'm very pleased with the results:

Still visible in one photo is the wooden frame I built around the stairwell, with a couple of strut supports removed so we could get access to the upstairs at night. The bar along the wall opposite the landing is screwed into the studs on the other side of the plaster. Whilst I was working, I temporarily screwed some planks over the top.

To do the ceiling in bedroom 4, and other places, I've bought second hand a cheap drywall hoist. Bedroom 4's ceiling was very cracked and uneven, so I've just screwed some gyprock over the top of that:

Of course then the light fitting wouldn't go up, as the box that supports it was now 1/2 inch further away. So a quick trip to Canadian Tire, and I had the parts to put the light back up.

We've also started on the bathroom by removing the horrible wall paper, turning the door round and boarding up the hole in the floor. Mischief the cat still hasn't quite forgiven us for that.

Doors

I dislike doors that don't close, particularly doors leading into the bathroom. It's lucky it's only us living here because the door would stick with at least 3 inches to go. It gets so stuck that one of our friends managed to inadvertently get herself stuck in there one time! Not only have I managed to get the door to close, which is a feat in of itself, but I've turned the door round. This is a major deal as I've had a love hate relation with doors for some time. But I was determined to get the doors right. So I spent two days getting the door turned round. You can see the very large gap above the door in the next slideshow.



Now we have doors that close, shut and stay shut in the whole house. We've even got a door that fits and is in keeping leading into the downstairs office.

We've also all but finished the kitchen floor (during which I had an unpleasant accident). We've found some self-adhesive tiles in black and white, which we really liked the look of. The floor underneath was so uneven and dirty however, we couldn't stick the tiles to it. So we've screwed some 1/4 inch ply board to it first. This gives the floor a nice even surface and it's very clean for the tiles to stick to.

You can see the results here:



Overall, we've done most of the gyprocking we're going to do in this house. We've even managed to get paint on all the walls we've worked on so far - but that's a photo album for another day.