Holiday chaos

Given the weather and impending public holidays, personal and family comitments have meant the 'project' is on hold until normal service is resolved.

Thankfully we're away for the festivities, so will not be eating turkey amidst this chaos.

Kitchen progress

S spent the weekend with the tile cutter, and managed to produce this:

Pretty good eh? Actually starting to look like a kitchen.

The 'feature wall'

Earlier in the week we had an attempted delivery for the glass blocks, so thursday evening we took a detour on the way home to collect them from the delivery depot.

So today I got the glass blocks out, as you can see by the photos about a day will get you a glass block window. Its constructed with the bocks on extruded PU spacers that are glued in place with a funky smelling adhesive. It'll take a couple of days to cure properly, but even freshly built it's quite sturdy. I'll probably grout it next weekend, but in the meantime I've got a few gaps & holes to fill around the frame. There's also about an inch gap at the top which I'll try to wedge a bit of wood into and then fill/plaster over. The blocks are slightly narrower than the wall thickness, and also don't run parallel to the wall (the wall is far from straight/vertical) so there's going to be some creative plastering going on in that corner.

The last of the demolition?

Got my favourite tool out on sunday - the SDS drill/chiseller.

The intention was to prepare the hole/opening along the side of the stairs for a glass-block panel. Before and after photos follow:

Irritatingly an overgenerous mortar joint messed up the third 'step' but beyond that I found that the cinderblock is actually quite easy to work and get a fairly accurate cut

So the steps are pretty much where I want them. However it has yet to be seen if they are where they need to be. Glass blocks should arrive this weekend, then I'll find out.

Now that this has been done, the theory is there's no more messy/dusty work to be done. Apart from a small amount of plasterboarding, and lining the 'narnia' cupboard with timber & insulation. Oh, and levelling the floor.. hmm.

Plastering!

Despite my desire to plaster in daylight, it was dark by the time I'd started. Small details like trying to find enough drywall boxes, then going out and buying drywall boxes, clearing enough space to work, disconnecting and removing light switches and sorting some unrelated electrical niggles, all conspired against me. Despite this by the following morning plaster was drying nicely.

Yeah.

Master bedroom boarded

I'm definitely getting quicker at this plasterboard business.

Master bedroom done in 2 evenings. Admittedly it's not the most challenging of walls, with only 6 openings for sockets, but it's good to get it done, and all the leftover board back downstairs.

This means I can plaster on saturday, in daylight for a change, hopefully with outside temperature above freezing, I don't fancy cleaning my buckets & tools with ice.

Another milestone: another room done

Finished the 3rd bedroom last night!

Finished wall papering on sunday evening, then the floor was put down on monday evening - cheapest laminate possible, but went down quick enough, over a foil & foam underlay. The last row was fun as it was against the wonky wall - over the 9ft length of the room it runs out by over 3". Skirting went down last night and tuesday. So now the room is useable. There's a few snags, but nothing that can't be sorted retrospectively. The room barely had time to 'settle' before I'd started filling it with boxes:



Moving some of the junk that was in the master bedroom into the 3rd bedroom means I can start on getting the plasterboard on the wall in there, then a skim of plaster, wallpaper and we can get the electricians back to finish second fix.

We need to collect the living room chairs this evening, as we've been putting it off for months and Furniture village have finally given us a deadline as they need the space for christmas stock.

They'll stay in their boxes until the living room floor is down. Hopefully before the holidays though. We'll see how the weekend goes.