Week 110-111 - Heating in the Residential Area

The big biomass boiler, which I have now named Vlad, or more accurately his full title: ‘Vlad the wood DESTROYER!’ as that is what he does best, was installed along with all the 1^st fix for the heating system and has been running heating the bottom floor of the building for nearly a year now. So what we’re really talking about here is putting the radiators in the flat.

Which is fairly unexciting in itself and I would of just wrapped up in the general 2^nd fix of the flat, however with most things in ‘the makers mill’ we’ve done this the hard way, so I thought we would have a short section for it.

I decided that we just couldn’t have cheap pressed steel radiators in the flat, I wanted some cast iron. You can buy either brand new or fully refurbished cast iron radiators ready to install easily from many places, however we don’t have enough kidneys between us to afford them. So I hit eBay to see what I could find....

The good news is I managed to find enough old reclaimed cast iron radiators for the flat and the gallery and only paid about £50 each for them, the bad news is now I had to find out how and then do the refurbishing of them ourselves.

First they were all sand blasted to remove the old paint, crud etc. and flushed though with clean water. Then we needed to remove all the old bushed and valves and refit for our modern system. We’re only doing the radiators for the flat at this stage, not the gallery, so we are talking about 6 in total for now.

Basically in each corner, top and bottom of the radiator there is a bush, or you could think of it as a threaded bung/stopper. These were all corroded and or the wrong size for our system, so we had to take them all out and replace them so each radiator had attachments for flow/input and return/output (at opposite corners), bleed valve and blanking.

Essentially all this really is is removing 24 (4x6) bolts and putting new ones back in. In reality this turned into a 24hr period were Graeme and I waged war on lumps of metal and very nearly lost. In the process we broke spanners and bent scaffold bars we were using as pivots – it was kind of hardcore man!

Next they needed repainting, which was fiddley as….. well fiddley. ‘Nooks and crannies’ SO MANY ‘nooks and crannies’

All but one of the rads need separate feet to stand on, which either weren’t included when I got them or were completely knackered. Partly as a cost saving exercise, as new feet cost about £40 a pair, and partly as I thought it would look good, I decided to make they little oak feet for them to stand on.

All prepped in was time to install them. This meant carrying them from the workshop, up two flights of stairs to the flat. I cannot stress this enough, these things are HEAVY. Like shockingly heavy!

Honestly this isn’t me being a wimp here….. how the hell are these things so damn heavy!?! Ive made a terrible mistake; we’ll never get them all the way up there! Will the floor even take it????? ARRRRRRRR!!!!!!

So we’ll just skip straight to some pictures of them in place and plumbed in shall we? Pretend it never happened. There’s no photographic evidence of it anyway, so what can you do. However I would like to say thank you to Richard Sharp who helped me in this task – does your back still ache as much as mine mate?

Above have been living room and main bedroom radiators, the bedroom one having its own feet rather than the oak and being extra deep

There are two of the little ones in the hallways and one more large one (above) between kitchen and living

And finally a long slightly shorter one, that just for good measure, in my infinite wisdom decided we would put on the mezzanine in the 2nd bedroom - apparently I either just love lifting heavy things, or I didn't think it through.

Week 99-109 - Residential 2nd Fix

This has been a long stage of the build! I did expect it to be, but I’ll admit it has taken quite some time longer than I estimated and seeing as this is the first major part of the project that I actually have experience in, there isn’t really a good excuse for it… but you just sit back and watch me give them anyway!

Plastering finished we did our wash coat (water and emulsion 50/50 mix) in a brilliantly British magnolia and then started playing with some colours. 

Painting is one of my least favourite things to do. It’s just so dam boring! I always think: ‘this is will be an easy and relaxing day, no stress, just painting away’ then half an hour later: I’ve lost my will to live

So I used the biggest roller I could find

Next came brick work, or more accurately fake brick work: I know, I know! I could hear Kevin McClouds comments in my ear the entire time I was doing it – but here’s my justification.

I wanted the brickwork to give some ‘weight’ to the room, so it wasn’t just a plastered box. We have also only done it in places that ‘are’ actually brickwork behind the plaster. Which I know sounds redundant, but it needed to be insulated and the old bricks looked awful. 

Plus these technically aren’t fake bricks, they are just really thin! They are made in exactly the same way and from the same material as standard brick; they are just only 1cm thick. You stick them to the wall just like tiling and then point between them with mortar – just like real bricks!

Anyone convinced yet?

Then we laid the slate floor in the kitchen and hallways. I did it at 45 degrees like this for two reasons. First, I think it looks cool, second as this is an old building the large main living space isn’t actually that square, so running the tiles at this angle makes sure you are not drawing attention to this.

Now comes the wooden flooring for the main living area and one of the main reasons the timescale of this stage over ran. I, in hindsight, rather stupidly decided it would be a good idea if I made some fancy 3D effect parquet flooring.

I also justified it to be a brilliant idea based on the fact that in raw materials, it would actually be very cost effective, deliberately ignoring the time it would actually take me.

We started with 10 sheets of marine grade 12mm birch ply which was then cut up into narrow strips and divided into three piles. One pile was given 1 coat of a grey wood stain, 1 pile 2 coats and the last pile 3 coasts. 

Everyone keeping up so far?

These strips were then cut into 3 different shapes: two parallelograms (mirror images of each other) and a diamond. There are over 6 thousand small little bits of wood in the photo above. Each had to be cut and sanded – it was an ordeal

Then it was time to lay them, and as you can see, the 3 shapes put together are meant to create a 3D cube effect across the floor.

The edge pieces had to be cut in to the line of the wall and allowances for radiator pipes etc

Floor completely laid and getting a first coat of wax oil

Finished floor. I am very pleased with how it has turned out but am in no hurry to ever do it again. Yes it may have been cost effective in terms of material costs, but it took 2 and half weeks of endlessly repetitive tasks to do it. So not really cost effective at all!

Having not learnt my lesson at all, next was the doors, which I also over complicated. (These are my excuses for why this has taken so long by the way…. My own stupidity)

I decided we should have pocket doors - when the door slides back into the thickness of the wall, rather than swinging open on hinges. The good reasoning for doing this is because there are 3 doors right next to each other in the hall, going off into separate rooms and it could have got messy and cluttered with all the doors. The real reason I did it however – is because I thought it would be cool – and I was right

Photo above shows the doors being painted down in the workshop, you can also see all the oak architrave work in the painting rack ready to be oiled. Each door in the flat is a different colour (I mean… why not) corresponding to the accent/feature colour of the room it leads to.

The oak surrounding works around each door (architraves) were made more complex because these are fire doors. Put simply you have to fit a strip into the frame of the door that in an event of a fire will swell and stop smoke entering the room.

Problem is they work by swelling against the thin side edge of a door, but when you have sliding doors this would just push the door open. Which would be… you know… less than helpful. So I had to work out a system where we now have strips facing the inside and outside faces of the door instead, pushing against each other. It’s all very boring to be honest, but it took some time to achieve

Door in its fully open position fits flush with the frame filling the thickness of the wall. You then use a funky little rocker pull to get it out to reveal the handles

The 3 pocket doors all closed

Finished door in the bedroom

I have also made some semi-louvered doors for the large hallway cupboard that will house the washer and dryer (hence the airflow) and the teal door leads into the bathroom (this is a standard swung door)

Right, some overall shots:

Living room with finished floor and brickwork

Still in main living space looking over to where the kitchen will eventually be. Brickwork left short of floor as it will be covered by kitchen units

Looking across the main living space to the door out to the bedrooms and bathroom

(below) Main bedroom with velux windows and plug points spaced for bed underneath

(below) 2^nd bedroom with mezzanine level over the stars below. Here you can see how the door colours match the room

The lighting and electrics have also been all but finished in this area during this stage. I won’t bore you with pictures of switches and cables. But you may like to see the light around the big skylight in the living room. At plaster stage I fitted an aluminium track that was skimmed in flush with the ceiling. This then has LED fitted in it giving a halo effect around the window. I kind of love it to be honest and cant stop playing! You can change the colour and everything!