Linseed Oil Varnish

I did quite a lot of work in the kitchen over the last couple of weeks. Apart from painting all but the last coat (which will be a latex paint), I wanted to get all the dirty work out of the way before the kitchen is installed (which is next Tuesday, Nov 4th, by the way). By "dirty work" I mean cleaning the brick wall (by scraping the old pointing out), pointing the wall and sealing it, varnishing the beams and sealing the whole lot. The last coat of latex paint also belongs to the "dirty work" category, as does putting in the floor. Basically, when they come with the kitchen on Tuesday, I want that room to be fully finished (apart from having no door).

Apropos varnish, I read that a linseed oil varnish is the right man for the job if you have old beams. It is mixed with turpentine, so there is a bit of a whiff off it (like petrol), but it soaks into the timber very well. In the photo you can see the difference between a beam which hasn't been varnished at all (just sanded) and a beam which had a single coat of varnish. In the meantime all of the beams in the kitchen and in Eileen's room have received two coats of linseed oil varnish. I ordered a linseed "Firnis", which is a linseed oil based sealant. It dries quickly and leaves a bit of a shine on the timber. When it comes I'll give all the beams a shot of it. The pictures below are of the kitchen floor ("italian travertine") and the living room floor ("antique oak").

Some more painting done

For the past few days I've been putting in a couple of hours painting - it's a relatively quiet activity that I can do at night as well (especially now that I have a 50W LED floodlight in the living room). I started with the bathroom and kitchen. The bathroom and all walls but the north wall (the one backing on to the corridor) of the kitchen are covered in fibreglass. Theoretically, it is possible to paint directly on to the slabs and practically it is better to plaster the slabs, but the fibreglass is actually a very good solution. It is considerably faster than plastering and has the huge advantage that it will not crack if there is movement in the slabs underneath. In our case, there very likely will be movement underneath, as the beams running on top of the internal partitions are also connected to the rafters. Thus, in a high wind, the roof will move, put pressure on the ceiling beams and this could be transferred down to the partitions - causing cracks in plaster or paint (the latter if the paint is applied directly to the slabs). There is already one significant crack in the paint. The kitchen north wall (the one without fibreglass) has a crack at the place where two slabs join. It isn't really a problem because it will be behind the kitchen block, but it goes to show, painting directly on to slabs might look ok (it does actually), but it isn't very stable.

After putting two coats of dispersion paint on the bathroom and kitchen walls I moved on to the living room. I have one coat on the partition walls (i.e. between living room and bathroom/kitchen) and two coats on the corridor (including the ceiling). I also have one coat on the south wall of the living room and have also put one coat on the reveals. Another thing that makes a lot of sense and which really enhances the final coat is sanding. Before the final coat, I decided to sand the subcoats of paint. Sven has a great machine called a "Giraffe",

which is connected to a big vacuum cleaner. The giraffe sands the wall and the dust is sucked directly into the vacuum cleaner. The result is a very smooth wall, ready to take the final coat of paint. Speaking of which, I now have the latex paint for the bathroom and the kitchen. I'm delaying applying it until I have new rollers. The good roller that I have can now only be used for the stipple finish on the plastered sections. I used it there and now there are tiny stones from the plaster in it - these make it impossible to paint the slabbed walls.

Some painting done in the kitchen

We're still busy putting fibreclass coating on the slabs, so paint will have a better surface (and the paint won't crack if there is movement in the wall). I was a bit sceptical of this as (usually) slabs are plastered and then painted. This option was a lot less expensive (the fibreglass is about €80 for a 1 x .5m roll and the glue is about €20 a bucket) so I was anxious to see how the paint sticks to it. As a comparison I left one wall in the kitchen (the north wall) raw - i.e. no fibreglass. It will be "covered" in kitchen anyway, so it won't really be visible.

The result of the first coat of paint are certainly interesting. First, the paint sticks perfectly to the fibreglass and leaves a decent finish. One coat is not enough - first, I want to paint in latex paint and secondly, I used the green slabs in the kitchen too (because I had enough of them). The green colour is still showing through the first coat of paint, so it's no harm to give them a second coat of latex anyway.

Below are some more photos of the painting. I want to paint the living room soon as well, but there are still some damp spots on the wall (some of the bricks soak up humidity much more than others), so I'll need to heat the place up properly first.

Outside done (bar the "Sockel")

I know I promised an update and forgot about it, so here it is. Behold, the outside is pretty much finished. "Pretty much" because the "Sockel" (that's the stripe at the bottom of the house, underneath the plastered and painted part) still has to be taken care of. My plasterer (Chrisch) already said he'd do it. I'm not sure if it will be done this year, but if not, I don't care. Inside is more important anyway.

Speaking of inside, we did get quite a bit done since the last update. For example, if I recall, the last update was just after we slabbed the kitchen. Well, now the bathroom is not just slabbed, but also tiled (well, the walls are - the floor will be

done in November, after the concrete is heated up and cooled back down). I hadn't expected the bathroom to be finished as one of the first rooms, but as fortune would have it, it looks like it will be done first (or second, depending on when the kitchen and the tile layer arrive). As you can see from the photo, the bathroom is tiled up to about 1.2m - above that we want to paint with a latex paint (i.e. a paint that is suitable for a bathroom). Obviously, where the shower is going, there are tiles up to the ceiling (and yes, underneath the tiles is sealed with Elastogum and a sealing tape). I can now get the bathroom fittings (toilet, sink, shower) put in - but I want to finish the painting first. We won't be painting the slabs directly (though apparently that is done relatively often) - we'll be fixing a fibreglass wallpaper to the slabs with an adhesive. When this dries, it provides a flat, stable surface for painting. The end result is (apparently) as though the wall had been plastered. This fibreglass coating is also suitable for the bedrooms - which have a kind of oil paint finish which will not really be suitable for any kind of plaster.

Oh yes, before I forget, we also put in the balcony. Grasser Metallbau built and installed the metal frame and steps. I had to pour some concrete for them (around the metal legs) last weekend, but other than that they were fast and clean. I did the timber decking (larch, 4cm) with Sven last Saturday. It took us the whole day, but the end result is quite good. We only had to split one larch board over a length of 20m (the last one). Apparently larch is weather-proof, but I think I'll treat it once or twice with fungicide, so it doesn't start to go black on me. There is also a special oil for larch - that might be useful too. I haven't looked into this yet.

The next up on the schedule is to get plasterboard on top of all the chipboard/OSB in the living room area, to finish the kitchen ceiling (insulated and the vapour block is in, but the lats have to go up and the slabbing has to be done), and to get going on the ceilings in the bedrooms. I already started the insulation (18cm - to suit the thickness of the joists 035 rockwool should do the trick).

Below are a couple of recent photos...