Partyraum Part 5

Now the floor is starting to look a bit better. The self levelling compound did its job and the surface is now smooth. It isn't completely level across the whole area, but it is acceptable and if I put tiles in at some stage, it should be easy to do. There are a couple of places where I think the compound might not last all that long (probably the areas where I filled with cement powder) but it should be easy enough to sand off and redo - if I have to. Once the compound was poured, it was spread with the same kind of trowel you use for laying tiles (the one with the teeth). You can walk on it after two hours - though mine was thick in places and I left it a couple of days before walking on it.

Once it was dry, I had to decide on how to treat it so that oil and grease and other kinds of dirt wouldn't stain it permanently. Still thinking that I might eventually tile it, I decided that a floor paint is probably the best way of doing it. If I do decide to tile it, I can just sand it, treat it with Tiefengrund (Polybond) and then the tile adhesive will hold. If I were to use some other kind of finish, like the acryl stuff, I'd have to do considerably more sanding if I were to tile it later. Anyway, Sven told me there was a shop in Landshut that was closing and he managed to procure two buckets of heating room paint for €1 a litre. Heating room paint is impenetrable for heating oil and is a requirement if you have a room with oil tanks. It just means, if the oil leaks, it won't get into the ground water. You actually have to paint three times for a heating room. As we'll have pellets, it doesn't matter. I used it because it was cheap. The colour was described as 'brick red' but I think it is more terracotta than anything else. I painted it twice and now it looks like the picture. It is a durable, non-slip finish. Dust etc still 'sticks' to it though - i.e. if there is fine, damp dust, like on the underside of a show, it will mark and you won't be able to get rid of it fully with a normal brush - you'd have to wash the floor. If I had applied the acryl finish, dust would have no chance and a brush would clean everything. However, tiling would be an issue.

Now that I have a floor, I set up my table saw. Next project is to make a workbench with a clamp on it. It is way too cumbersome to do anything without one. In the picture above you can see the timber I'm going to use to finish the edge of the gallery - i.e. the top of the wall. The carpenters had to take off the 'cornice' I had on it (only a skirting board upside down) to get the stairs in. I got the timber from Stuckenberger. I'll probably have to use the router to get a bit of a nice bead on the underside of it - but that's also a job I'd rather do when I have a workbench.

Partyraum Part 4

Almost a month ago we put in the concrete. It was ordered a week previously with express instructions to (a) use a chemical delay agent to stop the concrete setting too fast and (b) to ensure that the driver of the lorry had a 6m long slide for the concrete. The reason for (a) was that because of availability of help, we could only start at (planned) 14:00 and 33% of the help (Sven) had to leave for night shift at around 20:00. The reason for (b) was that it was intended that the concrete be poured pretty much in the middle of the room, so we'd be able to spread it easily.

As you might anticipate neither (a) nor (b) worked out. First, the lorry was an hour and half late - meaning we started pouring at around 16:00. Second, the slide was only 4m instead of 6m meaning we had to quickly construct a makeshift extension (which worked but made a bit of a mess in front of the door). Third, it became obvious pretty soon that the chemical agent (if there even was chemical agent in it) wasn't working and the concrete was setting too fast.

Under the circumstances we managed to get it some way even. Due to having to work full out until midnight, I didn't notice until much later that I had a nasty cement burn on my right leg (ended up with six trips to the doctor over the following four weeks and it still isn't right yet and will probably leave a nasty scar). I also didn't really have time to float the floor before the concrete set. The next day I floated as much as possible, wetting the floor as much as possible and using cement to fill in the worst of the holes. It worked out ok-ish. The main thing was that I wasn't too far off on the levels. Checking with the laser it looks as though the maximum deviation from the level I need is about 2cm. Those deviations are quite local though (meaning there are small steps rather than long hills). What was immediately obvious was that a surface will have to go in. There is a self levelling compound that can be poured like soup on to the floor. As a viscous liquid it levels itself like water and the finish is perfect. It is relatively expensive though, at €20 a 25kg bag. I'll need 10-15 bags, but it will be worth it for the finish.

Before the self levelling compound goes in, two things have to happen. (1) we have to run a concrete sander over the floor to remove small steps/ridges and to take the worst of the problems away and (2) the raw surface has to be treated with an epoxy compound so that the new surface sticks (kind of like polybond). The other Sven is going to give me a hand and he knows what he is doing, so come Saturday evening there should be an acceptable finish on the floor that I just have to paint with floor paint.

Partyraum Part 3

Here's the next installment of operation Partyraum (which, according to Eileen, will no longer be called Partyraum when I'm finished). Quite a lot of work has gone on since Partyraum Part 2, mostly on Saturdays and evenings. At the end of Partyraum Part 2 I had removed the upper layers and was getting ready to level. I decided to dig down much further to remove all organic material. When I started I was at 120cm on the laser. This means that when a measuring stick (2m long) is held vertically to the ground, the laser hits it at 120cm. I dug down until the laser hit it at 150cm. All of the clay was wheelbarrowed out and piled high. Compressed (i.e. in the ground) that is about 17 cubic metres. Uncompressed (i.e. dug up and wheelbarrowed out), probably about 20 cubic metres. Luckily enough, two of the neighbours needed fill, so I didn't have to get Hilger to pick up the clay in containers. So much for getting material out - now I had to get it back in.

The plan for the floor was to fill in up to 122cm with 'Frostschutzkies', which is basically gravel from the floor of a river or lake. When compressed it is the best protection against frost coming up from below (which would only really happen during a prolonged really cold winter). After the Frostschutzkies, a thin layer of sand and cement to level and clean, then 8cm of XPS insulation (extruded polystyrene, which is pressure resistant and waterproof), then a 0.2mm plastic sheet, then 12cm of concrete (with rebar mesh at 6cm).

Hilger brought the Frostschutzkies - altogether 31 tonnes, which I also had to wheelbarrow in. Sven helped me with the second load. The Frostschutzkies had to be compressed with a 'Whacker' (which I think is a misnomer for 'Wacker', which is the company that made them first) every couple of centimetres. A heavier whacker would probably do it all in one go, but I would never have got it in the door. As it was, I could pull the 80kg whacker down OSB boards.

As of right now, all of the above is finished, the rebar is in, the pipes are laid (so I can pull electric cables through once the concrete is set). The concrete is coming tomorrow. 6.5 cubic metres are ordered, which should be enough - should actually be a bit too much, so I dug the foundation for the rest of the granite kerbs so I have somewhere to put any excess concrete.

Partyraum Part 2

Since the last post on Operation Partyraum, I did a lot of donkey work with spade, shovel and wheelbarrow. Not to mention sledge and crowbar. The reason for this donkey work is that, underneath the mouldy OSB boards and the plastic sheet, there was a huge volume of sand/gravel, clay - and concrete.

It was difficult to figure out what kind of a system the existing floor was laid out in. Sandra told me that she remembers where the cows stood, what direction they were facing and where the calves were. This corresponded (more or less) to the concrete that was still there and to a concrete trough that went down deep into the ground (you can see it in the picture on the left). Like for the rest of the concrete, I used an angle grinder with a diamond blade to cut the concrete at the wall, so I could belt away at it with a sledge, without worrying about cracks.

I ordered a 7 cubic metre container from Hilger. Their policy is to give three days for free and then charge something like €4 a day after that. Obviously, you have to pay for the actual debris itself as well (even though you probably end up buying it back off them later as gravel).

The container arrived early on Monday (27th July) and I spent most of Monday evening filling it up as much I could. It was actually about three quarters full on Monday evening. Tuesday, I was too busy to get anything substantial done, so I had to finish it on Wednesday evening.

By the time they came and picked it up today (Thursday), it was full to the point of overflowing. I got all the concrete floor into it, lots of broken bricks (which were under the thin concrete on the right hand side) and a huge volume of the kind of sand/gravel mix that you find under concrete or bricks. There is also an old sink from Harting 10 that I broke up to get rid of. This all counts as 'Bauschütt' so I could probably have gotten rid of it bit by bit (for free) in Hohenpolding. Down there, they only allow you to drop off 100l a go though and they are only open on Thursdays and Saturdays. Seven cubic metres at 200l a week would take way too long.

Once I had the debris out of the way, it was time to decide where the finished concrete floor should actually go. The obvious way to go about this was to take the level of the bottom of the door (which cannot be changed) and project that level around the room. What is normally done is to go up a metre from whatever finished floor level you want and project that height around the walls. This is called a 'Meterriss'.

You can do this the hard way, with a normal level, or builder's line. Or you can do this the easy way with a laser. All you do is set up the tripod (the laser itself is self-levelling) and slowly turn the handle to raise the laser line up to exactly hit the metre mark (above the bottom of the door). That is exactly one metre above finished floor level. The laser projects 360° around the room. I used a bit of laminate floorboard about 15cm long into which I had cut a slot with a circular saw. With a can of spray paint, I sprayed short lines 'onto' the laser line all around the room. In about five minutes, it was done.

The next job was to get rid of the ridiculous, pointless step that was in the room. I don't know how many people stumbled over this in the past - and it means you can't really arrange things in the room as you might like. I had already gotten rid of the concrete from this step and a layer of bricks as well.

The 1m line that I drew around the room showed that I needed to go substantially deeper and getting rid of the step was the way to go. It was all compacted subsoil with broken roof tiles and bricks, so it was easy enough to shift with a spade and a shovel.

I now have one step less but one huge heap of clay, which I have to get rid of. If nobody takes it, Hilger will take it in a container. It can stay there now for a few weeks though. I've enough done.

Operation Partyraum

You may or may not know that the so-called 'Partyraum' has a serious problem. The problem is damp and mould. In 2009 a sheet of plastic was put down on top of (on one side) old concrete where there used to be cows and (on the other side) directly on the clay. OSB sheets were put on top of the plastic, using lats to level them. The lats were supported underneath by old timber beams (i.e. underneath the plastic, in a sand/gravel mix). Obviously, this is a recipe for disaster. Disaster happened over 2013/2014/2015 but was only really discovered in 2015. Between the OSB and the plastic underneath there was immense fungal spread. Going in to the room you would be hit with a wall of dank mould smell.  In the photo above you can see the dry rot that completely ate away the timber.

I decided to prioritise this as it seemed like it could be a health hazard as well as being generally a 'mouldy' situation. To get going, Yvonne cleared it out, leaving only the OSB boards. I demolished the bar and got rid of the OSB boards, the plastic sheets and the mould. I decided that the best outcome would be to have a completely level concrete floor, professionally done following all the rules of the trade. This meant removing not only the existing concrete, but also all organic layers - right down to the subsoil. This wasn't all that easy at all. There were cables and water pipes criss-crossing in the sand/gravel waiting to cause emergencies. I used an angle grinder with a diamond blade to cut a deep slice into the concrete all around the room. This way I could belt away with a sledge, without worrying that tiles would be falling off the walls upstairs.

The current status is that there are huge heaps of concrete, bricks, sand, gravel and general dirt piled up in the room. A container will be arriving on Monday, which I intend to fill as soon as possible. I have a feeling that seven cubic metres will not be enough. If it isn't, the rest of the debris will have to wait until the end of August. I will also have to fix up the electricity (all those cables will need to go into proper casings and should be arranged properly) and the water (the pipes will need to be sunk deeper). 

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...