Building a new room

I should probably have blogged about the pellet central heating before, but I didn't. I might do it later. For now, it's worth writing a post about the new room I'm building downstairs. You'll have seen from the last post that I had a floor in downstairs and had started work on a workshop. Since then, we decided that we could fence off a piece of the workshop to make a new room out of it. It could be used for ironing or as a spare bedroom. After all, there is a bathroom with shower downstairs too, so it makes sense.

Originally, I thought I'd do it with drywall - quick and easy with slabs. However, I'd have had to screw the bottom timber to the floor and I was almost sure I'd hit one of the cables which are embedded in the concrete. As well as that, the ceiling has arches. It would be a particularly nasty job to have to drywall it. Instead of drywall, I decided to go with Ytong (gas concrete or whatever it is called). That would keep the wall relatively light and it would be easy to cut the curves with a saw.

The first row of blocks need to be set with normal mortar and need to be leveled perfectly. Working with Ytong is easy, but there is no room for mistakes because the mortar that you use makes joints that are only about 2mm. There isn't much room for leveling there. Once the bottom row were leveled and plumb, the rest of the job was fairly easy. There was a lot of cutting involved, but with the Ytong saw, that is quick and easy. The wall is tied into the existing walls on every block with stainless steel wall ties. Before starting, I cut the plaster away and used Tiefengrund (polyfil) on the bricks to make sure that the blocks would stick properly to the wall with the mortar. Now that it's finished, it seems solid enough.

 

A few odd jobs around the place

Following up on the last blog post, I found a whole lot of photos which I had taken but forgotten to upload to Google Photos. There is a short comment on each one by way of description.

OSB box for the concrete foundation

The concrete foundation finished (65x65cm)

The position of the concrete foundation on the west side of the house

The finished floor (with step)

After painting the same colour as the workshop floor

The other thing that I was busy doing was tidying up the workshop. To get this done on some kind of a permanent basis, I needed storage solutions. Due to lack of those, everything was left on top of a single shelf, or on the floor. I decided to go with a tool wall. To do this I cut MDF board and screwed it to the wall. This was easier said that done because the wall itself was gas blocks. It was easy to drill the holes but it wasn't easy for the screws to get a grip. After a bit of manoeuvring and filling, I managed to get a secure fit. What you can see on the picture to the left is the boards already fixed to the wall. There are four red screw storage boxes attached on rails already. I have another three rows of two smaller boxes and two rows of big boxes ready to go in. That will fill up the space to the left of the steel support. On the right I'm getting ready fixings for saws, bits and chisels.

To make the fixing for the chisels, I used offcuts from the MDF boards. There are nine chisels at the moment, and I decided to leave room for twelve altogether. If I need more, I can make up another fixing fairly quickly. The chisel fixing was actually simple to make. A 15mm forstner bit for the holes and that a quick touch with the table saw for the slots. The only complication was the chunky chisel. The steel shaft was way to thick. The solution was a less secure fixing for it. It won't fall out without a lot of encouragement but it is nowhere near as secure as the rest of the slots. It isn't fixed to the wall yet. I used my new dowel tool (the dark grey and green tool to the top left of the workbench) to attach another bit of MDF as an angle to the chisel holder. Once the glue is dry I can screw it directly to the wall.

Another thing I got done was a drawer for my workbench. I was always looking for things like the small square, the calipers and pencils. That probably has to do with the lack of a working tool wall, but things like the pencils and the small square are used so much, it probably makes sense to keep them in the workbench anyway. I got the plywood from Holz Balk in Vilsbiburg. The sides are 16mm ply and the bottom is poplar plywood, 5mm thick. Once I had everything cut to length, I cut 5mm slots towards the bottom of all the sides. The bottom of the drawer ran nicely into those. The drawer sides are dowelled and glued together. It seems to be a fairly good fit overall. Since taking the picture on the left, the drawer got a coat of linseed oil. It now looks much the same as the rest of the workbench. It sticks a bit when opening or closing, so I'll have to find some way of dealing with the tracking.

Quick update

 It's been awhile since I posted anything. That's not because nothing was done, but rather because nothing was finished. At the start of February I thought I'd get the bathroom floor done downstairs. The aim was to have a solid floor put in, so I can then move the washing machine from the bathroom upstairs to the bathroom downstairs. I can also install a dryer there - I already planned the electrics to take care of that.

I thought I'd pull out the tiles on the floor (it was only half tiled anyway) and then level everything with self-levelling compound. As usual, nothing went as planned. The floor under the tiles was anything but level and it was pocked and cracked in multiple places. I went for the nuclear option and ripped it out. Like in the workshop, the concrete floor was actually just a thin layer on top of bricks, so it was easy to get rid of.

I dug down into the clay and installed a layer of 8cm Geotherm insulation. You can see in the picture to the left that there is a bit of concrete left over in the corner. I didn't want to kango that out because there are water pipes in it and because it is also the foundation of the walls. The concrete is so hard and so deep that I'd almost definitely shake the walls up too much (gas concrete walls) and end up having to rebuild them too. Instead, I'll put the wash machine over there.

Other than the bathroom, I also had to get moving on the heating. I had to figure out where to pour the concrete foundation for the chimney outside. The plumber had already marked a circle on the wall inside, where the chimney would go out through the wall. With the laser it was easy to transfer the vertical height of the centre of the circle to the outside. By measuring back from the window and then out from the window on the outside, it was easy to get the horizontal position on the wall and thus the exact centre of the circle. With the laser, it was then easy to see where the chimney would end up on the wall.

In the picture on the right it looks like the laser is a bit near the top window. In reality it still is a good 40cm from it. The chimney will have to be 10cm out from the wall. This is because it has to be at least 5cm from combustible material. Where the wall meets the roof overhang there is a beam right at the wall, that runs about 5cm outside the wall. I have to go 5cm out from that, so 10cm out from the wall. This means that the chimney might be just visible to the right of the big window, but only if you look from the very left of the room at the most acute angle possible. I can live with that.

Building a router table (continued)

Routing the rebate to hold the Dibond plates

At the end of the last post I was about to put the centrepiece of the router table together, so I could fix the router up to it and start routing. Well, that didn't go so well, for a number of reasons. First, I had to rebate the table itself so as to make space for the 8mm Dibond plates I had stuck together (yes, it is Dibond, not Dieboldt). After setting up guides for the router, that went fairly well. It took ages though, as the router was hard to control when cutting 8mm in one go. I got it done eventually, without too many mistakes. After that I had to cut out a round hole in the rebate itself, so as to be able to get thr router up as near to the top of the table as possible (otherwise I would lose 20mm height if I just fixed the router to the bottom of the tabletop itself.

The router is fixed (it is possible to raise the bit up way more)

Once everything was cut, it was time to fit the Dibond plates and make sure they are absolutely flush with the top of the table. This actually worked out better than I thought. A little bit of chisel work around the corners and the plates fitted perfectly. This was about the last thing that worked easily though. I bought the right screws from Liebl in Taufkirchen. These are sinkhead bolts which are coutersunk into the Dibond plates, so the surface of the table is smooth. Countersinking without the right bits is a mess though, especially in Dibond, where you cut up the plastic in the middle of the sandwich too much. After a while I was able to fix the router vertically and securely and was able to the first routing work with the fence I had made. It worked out quite well - give or take for the chipping (which you would have against the grain anyway). I wasn't altogether happy with the overall setup though, especially because it takes ages to get the router into position.

I decided to take another stab at it. The changes are that I bought a new router - a fairly cheap one from Lidl - to sit permanently in the routing table. The Lidl router is solid enough but it doesn't have the features the Bosch has. That doesn't matter though, because it is never going to be used outside the routing table. As well as that, I'm going to put legs on the table. I originally planned on clamping it to the workbench, but that is neither practical, nor is it secure. The clamps get in the way of the sliding fence, and the weight of the router tends to pull the table off square to the workbench as well.

One last thing I got done today was a mortise for the angle slide. I decided to cut the same mortise as I have on the table saw so I can use the same angle slide as I have on it. It has a bit of strange dimension, so rather than adding an aluminium slide (which I couldn't find anyway for the Bosch guide), I just cut straight into the chipboard, like I did for the guide rails for the fence. The chipboard is really compact and heavy, so it will hopefully keep its form. Now I'll give it a rest for a day or too until the new Dibond plate comes as well as the router itself.

One last thing I needed to do was make sure the fence runs parallel. I had originally routed four slots into the board. The aluminium tracks were on the bottom of the fence. The issue was that either not all four tracks were perfectly parallel or not all of the slots. It might only be a millimetre, but it was causing the fence to stick. I was thinking of leaving it but that would mean that every time I had to move the fence I'd be stuck with the problem. Better to get it right for once and for all. I solved it by fixing two more pieces of board to the outside of the table. Luckily, I cut that perfectly square (even though I didn't think I had to). After checking again with the big square, I decided to go for it. The fit is quite tight, but it slides ok-ish. I might sand the outsides of the fence a bit to make the fit better.

Building a router table

Router table with fence. Router insert not done yet

One of the things I wanted to get done quickly was to build a box for my circular saw. There are various box systems that you can buy. Makita has one, Festool has one and Bosch Professional have one (the blue Bosch). The green Bosch (DIY) don't seem to have anything for circular saws. You buy the saw and it comes in a cardboard box. You can't really take it anywhere. Given that the saw also has a guide, various blades and assorted bits and pieces, a box seemed a good idea.

The first thing that I got was 6mm plywood. That is strong enough to easily  hold the saw and any bits and pieces as wells. 6mm is not enough for dowels and screws though, so I decided to go with finger joints. They are strong as hell and in a different league to dowels and screws anyway.

Had to improvise a bit to get the router to cut circles

Plus I wanted to try out a couple of techniques to see which would give me the best joints. In Youtube there are a whole load of videos of americans cutting finger joints with dado blades. Easiest thing in the world - you can build a jig for it in minutes and get straight to making box joints. The only issue is that you are completely at the mercy of your dado blade. Your joint has to be the width of the dado blade. As well as that, dado blades are banned here - at least in the industrial carpentry, but because there is no market for them professionally, there is also no DIY market for them. The next best thing is a table for a router where you can turn the router upside down.

I started off with a chipboard wardrobe door that I found.It was coated in some kind of hard plastic lacque, which means that anything at all would slide across it easily without resistance. I cut it to length on the table saw. The next thing I needed was a fence. This is particularly useful for running long pieces of timber through - e.g. cutting a profile for skirting boards. I decided to let the fence run in four grooves. I put aluminium runners in the outer grooves. Threaded bars in the fence reach down into the profiles. With wing nuts you can tighten the fence down to the profiles so it can't move. I originally throught that that would be enough but there was too much play. I cut two more grooves parallel to the outer ones, towards the middle. On the underside of the fence I stuck pieces of the aluminium profile. They run in the corresponding grooves and keep the whole construction parallel.

A circle cut out of one of the Dieboldplatten with the router

At the moment I am busy trying to figure out how to actually fix the router to the bottom of the table. Obviously, I can't just screw it to the bottom of the chipboard table, because it is 20mm thick. With the router blade just hanging in to the router (which is highly dangerous), that would let me cut at the most about 5mm above the table (25mm total) and that wouldn't be worth the effort. So the objective was to find something as stiff as possible and as thin as possible. The answer is Dieboldplatten. These are sandwiches made of 2mm aluminium, 4mm plastic and then another 2mm aluminium. I stuck two of these together, giving me 10mm total. It is stiff as hell. Tomorrow I'm going to cut down 10mm into the chipboard so to rebate the Dieboldplatte. After that I'll still need to figure out how to safely fix the router to the Dieboldplatte.

Two Dieboldplatten stuck together