Some work on the gallery

 

It's been awhile since I've posted anything here - May, to be exact. Not all that much went on since May, all the same. I had just finished a small corner where the ladder up to the attic is last time. After that I got working on the gallery. In one of the previous posts I showed how I hid the cables for the electrics in the pointing in the gallery back wall. Once the pointing was done, I was able to get working on paintint up there. The brickwork itself wasn't all that great and I didn't pay anywhere near as much attention to the pointing as I had in the kitchen as I knew I'd be painting anyway. I used a whitewash paint (lime based) which was supposed to have some kind of additive to make it easy to wash/clean. It certainly wasn't anywhere near as easy to work with as paint - it tended to get very thick. Even diluting it a lot with water didn't thin it out enough. One advantage of the thick paint was, however, that it was easy enough to fill gaps with it that normal paint would not usually fill. Because the paint was not all that easy to work with, it did take quite some time to finish the job.

In the picture on the right, roughly half of the work was done - the easy bit. The brush was wrecked after that much so I ended up having to get more. No amount of cleaning would have saved it. There are four triangles in total - you can see only two of them in the picture. It was very hard to paint these - I was trying to get too much paint on either the ceiling or the rafters, but given the limited space for manoeuvring, this was not easy at all. After a couple of late nights, the job was done. I'll have to stick with whitewash for the future, I think, because I doubt any normal paint will stick to a whitewashed wall.

Once the back wall was done, we had to decide on what to do with regards access to the gallery. I have a fine new ladder for getting up to it, but that isn't really a permanent solution at all. The solution we were looking at was a hole in the gallery floor with a retractable ladder. I wasn't really looking forward to that work at all and to be honest the solution wasn't all that good. I got Stuckenberger over to have a look and he decided that we could cut out the chest high beams provided that the roof was secured above and below that properly. To do this, we had to expose the floor joists next to the roof supports, so that they could be bolted to each other. This prevents the roof from collapsing outwards. It was a fairly easy job to take up the OSB - I just cut it along the joist to make it easier to put back afterwards.

Stuckenberger had already measured, cut and brought me over new beams for overhead. I painted these with the same linseed oil paint that I had used for the rest of the rafters. It took three coats to get them the same colour as the other ones. Today, two of Stuckenberger's men came over and installed them. Between installing the new beams, securing the floor and cutting out the old beams, it was about three hours' work for two men. The end result will take a bit of getting used to, but it allows me to finish off the floor up in the gallery and to contemplate what stairs we will use to get up there. There will also be a railing up there, so that will change the look of it a bit as well. Below is a picture of the finished job (well, inasmuch as I still have to paint the cut ends of the timber).

Finishing up one corner

We pretty much finished up one corner of the house last weekend. To the left of the first bedroom there is a corner/alcove which we didn't really know what to do with. The ladder up to the ceiling is here, so it was going to be difficult to put up a wall. We decided to leave it as an alcove and to put bookshelves into it. Here a few pictures...

More pointing

I finally had time this evening to get three buckets of pointing done up in the gallery. Yesterday I was in Nuremberg, Wednesday Bayern were playing Manchester and on Tuesday Dortmund were playing Real Madrid. Today there were no excuses. I have now more or less finished the third bag of the special pointing mortar. I'll use up the other two bags and after that I'll mix my own. I have enough sand, cement and Mariensteiner. I'll mix up a load of it dry in the mixer. I can carry that up to the gallery and then use the hand mixer above to mix it 'on demand'.

Other than pointing, today Niedermaier's men were back. This time to install a new sensor in the heating upstairs. The sensor measures the rate of flow of liquid in the solar modules. The advantage of this is that we can finally figure out how many kilowatts the modules are producing. Given that a litre of oil has about ten kilowatts, we can quite easily figure out how much oil we are saving. While they were busy installing, I saw that the back of the user interface LCD module on the heater has three RJ45 ports - meaning that it is intended that something is connected via network. I had a look on the Internet and saw that Solvis sells a netbox which connects to the heating over network. The netbox itself gets an IP address via DHCP from the local network. I'm not quite sure if the netbox itself gives the heater an IP address, but I fully intend to see what happens if I connect the heater to my laptop and see what happens over the ethernet port with wireshark.

Starting the wall in Sandra's office

The brick fire wall originally served as a fire break between the hay barn (agricultural use only accordingly to the planning office) and the house itself. Because those were two separate 'uses', there had to be a fire wall between them. When we went to get planning permission, the main issue was convincing the planning office to convert the agricultural use into domestic use - i.e. meaning that the entire house would be domestic. When the planning office approved our plans the fire wall became redundant as a fire wall. It still separates the living room/kitchen/bathroom from the bedrooms. It is also made of brick - not the nicest brickwork ever (it wasn't ever intended to be seen or admired) - but worth pointing (like in the kitchen).

For Sandra's office (up in the gallery) it was hard to decide what to do with the back wall. Theoretically I could just have clad the whole thing with slabs and plastered it. Or I could have clad it in timber. That would have meant that we would lose the beams - which did have a bit of character. Pointing the wall and cleaning the bricks (like in the kitchen), however, wasn't really an option either, because when we were doing the roof, the top of that fire wall (the triangle/gable) had to be built up and flattened with mortar at the top, so the roofing felt could lie something and not eventually sag. Without knowing what we were going to do with that wall, and under time pressure, we built up the top of the wall without paying any attention to how flush we were with the gallery side. This mess means that exposing the brick won't work. I then decided to point the bricks and then whitewash the whole thing. This would mean still having the brick effect, and the white colour will hopefully look well behind the black beams.

The decision gave rise to more problems. Uli and Daniel weren't briefed on this when they did the wires. They had proceeded on the basis that the wall would be plastered or cladded - not exposed. Thus, they hadn't paid much attention to how they wires were buried in the wall. This meant that the first job (after scraping out the joints) was to hide the wired, deep in the joints. I also had to remove the sockets and distributor boxes, as they were too far out (again, they were placed for plastering, not for exposed brick).

Right now, I have the bottom bit of the wall pointed and the wires are (hopefully) successfully buried and the sockets/boxes set. The pointing is relatively slow going compared to the kitchen. The old mortar was in worse condition that it was in the kitchen, meaning I have to take out more of it to get a good basis for the new mortar. It looks like being about three or four days work. Other than that, I also managed to get the last two sockets working in the kitchen. By taking up one of the OSB boards in the gallery, I found the connection that was causing the problem. I'm going to keep tipping away with the pointing - an hour or two a night - and see how far I get. I bought the same Hasit 982 pointing mortar for the job (five bags), but once I get through what I have, I'll mix my own cement. The 982 is great for pointing (it keeps the right consistency for a long time) but too expensive at €11 a bag, especially when everything will be whitewashed anyway.

Cleaning up the balcony after building

Paula enjoying the sun on the new balcony

You may remember that we put in our balcony when we finished plastering and painting the outside of the house. There are 43 larch planks (not sure how thick - at least 30mm) with bevels on the top (presumably so nobody slips if they are wet). Larch is quite a nice timber to look at - a kind of orange/red colour. The timber is hard as iron - particularly the heartwood that we went for (hoping it will keep for years). It was delivered and installed untreated.

Filthy dirty planks

Since then, months have gone by - in which we plastered the inside of the house, painted the inside of the house and did hundreds of other jobs. All this time, the balcony was being (mis)used as a kind of storage space or dump for materials. It also got very dirty. Working boots, shoes, spilled drinks, paint - the whole lot. Having moved in, it was getting to be time to do something about the mess - particularly if we wanted to take advantage of our balcony with glass roof in spring at all.

I started off sanding on the east side. It was taking ages. The timber really is hard as iron and sanding it wasn't doing any good - at least not with 60 sandpaper. Anything rougher tended to scratch the timber without actual doing the sanding job. That's when I decided to go get the electric hand sander I used for the beams in the kitchen and in the bedrooms. The reason I didn't start with it is because I was afraid the circular motion would scratch against the grain of the timber. The electric band sander (which always sands with the grain - unless you are very stupid) wasn't working. However, I reckoned I'd need until Christmas to sand it all with sandpaper, so I decided to give it a try.

It worked perfectly! With light paper (120), the sander took off just the dirt and pencil marks (from where I marked in the line so I'd know where to screw down the planks). The timber looked a lot less red afterwards, but at least it was clean. Very clean. I still had to sand the rills in the timber with sandpaper. Luckily enough, there was just loose dirt in there and very little dirt that actually had to by sanded off. All in all, the sanding took about two days.

After sanding, I gave the boards a coat of this stuff. Now this is the strong fungicide that we used for the exposed timber in the roof. It ain't cheap but it is very effective. It soaks into the timber quite quickly and should prevent any black fungal growths. Apparently larch is very resistant against rot and fungus anyway - even untreated. I had the fungicide left over anyway though, so I decided it's better to be safe than sorry. Even though the balcony has a glass roof (i.e. it is not completely exposed), I do notice that some condensation drips down - especially in the morning - and the wind can blow rain in too.

After the fungicide came the real fun with linseed oil. Since painting almost all exposed timber inside with linseed oil, I have become a big fan of this stuff. It has a huge advantage over standard varnish in that it actually soaks into the timber rather than forming a sealing coat on top of it.
For a floor, it made sense to do it this way - varnish might look great for a couple of months· but eventually feet and weather combine and it starts to flake, making it look terrible. Oil doesn't have that problem. Every so often I can just scrub it clean and put another coat of oil on top. Oil also has the benefit of allowing the grain of the timber show its colour again. Have a look at the "before/after" photos below.

The boards on the left are sanded but not treated with anything

Finally finished treating. The further away boards are still wet

A few small jobs

Last weekend I managed to get around to doing a few small jobs. A couple of things were annoying me - not just because they hadn't been done yet, but because there were boxes of stuff lying around and I wanted to get rid of them. The first job that needed doing was the fire extinguisher. I don't know how many times I knocked the box with the extinguisher over. We had a bit of trouble deciding where to put the thing at all (we have a small one in the kitchen, so it didn't necessarily have to go in there too). In the end we decided to put it on the back of the chimney stack - i.e. in the corridor between my office and Eileen's room. It is now pretty much hidden from 'normal sight' (come to think of it, maybe that isn't such a good thing) but it is still easily accessible. Hopefully we'll never need it, but as they say, it's better to have it.

Another job - or rather two jobs - that badly needed to be done were the lights on the outside. Uli had left two cables through the insulation on the outside, so all that really had to be done was to install the lights themselves. One of the lights was a sensor light, which only comes on if (a) it is dark enough and (b) somebody passes by the front door. The problem here was that I had to turn off the electricity at the fuse box as there was no switch (with a sensor you don't need a switch). Once I figured out which fuse it was, it was quite easy to install the light. The other light is to the left of the balcony door (looking in). Luckily, there is a switch there, so I didn't have to turn off the electricity - just the switch. The light itself was pretty much the same as the one by the front door (except for the sensor) and so it was equally simple to install. The end result is quite nice, I think. The bulbs are E27 800 Lumen LED - both 11W. I don't imagine they'll be on all that much - although in summer, if sitting outside, it could be on for quite a while on some nights.

Electrics, planning and a polish blacksmith

We are still not completely finished with the electrics. As I wrote in the last post, we are running on two of three phases - which is entirely possible and plausible thought not desirable. We want all three. Plus, I'm not sure whether or not the damage to the existing (and hidden) main cable is limited to one or two phases. For peace of mind, the replacement cable needs to be installed. This morning I tackled the job of threading the cable into the main fuse box. This was in no way easy. The cable itself is too thick and stiff to thread through the small hole, so I had to strip the protective insulation skin off it and de-tangle the five wires. I could then thread each wire individually through the hole. After a lot of pushing and shoving I finally got it through. Thus, it should now be relatively easy to actually connect up the replacement cable.

As well as that, I just ordered more linseed oil varnish - the same colour as what I used on the beams in the kitchen and in Eileen's room and the guest room (a kind of reddish brown). The idea is that I will varnish a leftover beam (it needs to dry first). Then I will fix it to the wall in the corner of the kitchen (vertically, floor to ceiling). Then I'll bore deep holes into it every thirty centimeters - the idea being that a wine bottle could be pushed in to the hole and it should stay suspended in the air - almost horizontal, but not quite - so the cork is covered with liquid and doesn't dry. The leftover beam I have is not quite long enough, so I'll have to join it to another beam. Then I'll need to figure out how best to fasten it to the wall. If it works, we'll (a) hide the gap between the white wall and the brick wall in the kitchen and (b) get ourselves a useful wine rack.

Sandra ordered a metal tree from a polish blacksmith. I was a bit sceptical of the whole plan, but when the piece came, it was clear that it was quite good quality. It is a kind of a clothes rack, shaped like a tree. It had five metal rings through which screws fasten the whole thing to the wall. It took me about five minutes to fasten to the wall - thanks to the Makita drill with hammer action.

Lastly for today, we're still planning the gallery. As well as the linseed oil varnish, I bought 20L of whitewash for the brick wall at the back of the gallery. I have to scrub the wall with a wire brush first, to remove all the loose dust. Then I'm going to point it - roughly the same as the kitchen. Then I'm going to paint it white. It needs to be painted because there are too many bad bricks and gas concrete bricks in it. Hopefully, they'll all disappear underneath the whitewash and I'll be left with a nice white brick wall, with blackened beams crossing it. We'll see...

A month on...

Now it has been over a month since we moved in. A couple of 'teething problems' needed to be sorted out and still need to be sorted out. For example, getting the heating working properly was a bit of an issue. The heating company made a reasonable decision on how to heat the radiators (our second heating zone, the first being the underfloor heating). However, they hadn't reckoned with Alois. He heats downstairs with timber - an oven in the kitchen and a stove in the living room. Because he likes it toasty warm downstairs, immediately upstairs (the bedrooms and office)  get warm as well. Coupled with the radiators, it was too much, so now the radiator zone is turned off. It is still bordering on too hot.

Another issue with the heating system is coupled with a problem with the electrics. After Christmas we started having power cuts. It turned out that the main conduit from the electric meter downstairs up to our separate electric distribution box (the one with the fuses) was somehow damaged. Two of the three phases were shorting, and constantly tripping the main (50A) fuse downstairs - i.e. cutting out the power

completely. Since then I bought another cable to do the job - a big thick stiff cable which was wicked hard to bend, but which should easily deal with any power running through it. Whereas I was able to run the cable along the floor of the gallery (still OSB) with the other pipes (i.e. pretty much hidden), down through the hole in the corner of the living room floor (with the rest of the heating, electric and network cables), along the floor of the party room and out through the wall to connect up with the rest of the cabling, I still had to cut a channel about a metre long into the freshly plastered (and painted) wall (you can see it in the picture). I also had to cut through the outside plaster to get the cable to the box. Petermaier will have to come and plaster it up again as soon as the weather gets a bit warmer.

Other than that, our shower is finally finished. It was finished well before Christmas, but the glass wall was missing, meaning that it was hard to use. The week before last, the company came around to put it in. It was very heavy.  The cats have discovered that the underfloor heating is warmest in the bathroom (probably because of the tiles) so they are almost always to be found lying on the floor near the shower.

The next delivery is going to be our couch(es). I called up the company the other day and they confirmed it is going to be calendar week 8 - roughly the middle of February. It's a bit unfortunate it took so long - I can't hang the television on the wall until the couch comes. Otherwise I won't know what height to hang the television at. We got a new television about three weeks ago. The old one (a 32") is going to go into the guest room (also hanging on the wall). I need to get the right screws for it though.

Other than that we put up some pictures in Eileen's room and generally made it look

more like a child's bedroom. I also ended up painting a bit of a wall again, after Eileen coloured it red with crayon. We started working on getting the guest bedroom into shape as well. The shape of the room made is a bit of a puzzle as to how to turn the bed and the presses to make is some way logical. The presses are the old ones that were in the house before we started renovating. A bit of a cleaning and they were ok-ish. I still think they need to be stripped and re-varnished. My office is also pretty much finished. There is still to much stuff in boxes there for my liking (waiting on their final destination), but it's fine to work in. Below are some pictures.