Friday 29 March 2013

Rub a Dub Dub

For the past few weeks her ladyship has continued with quest to remove every last bit of paint from the staircase woodwork, this includes not only the numerous spindles but the whole beautiful wooden structure of the stairs and hallway. This task cannot be underestimated, so far, it has taken 4 heat guns, 10 scrapers, 2 tins of chemical stripper and 2 wire brushes just to get to the stage ready for sanding.
I think we can safely say that the best way by far of removing numerous layers of old paint is by heat gun and scraper, her ladyship has perfected the technique of heating the paint to a plastic state where all the layers of the old paint "easily" peel away from the wood in one scrape, the paint peelings then fall to the floor, solidify and become brittle ready to be swept up.
 I think we can also safely say that chemical stripper is next to useless, the stuff does not work on the paintwork we are dealing with!
Whilst the task so far has consumed many hours of sheer determination and patience we have to go over the woodwork again with sand paper to get the wood back to its original state. This will be done with power tools, over the last few months we have amassed quite an impressive array of tools specifically for this, we have belt sanders, orbital sanders, detail sanders, sheet sanders, disc sanders, angle grinders, all shapes and sizes of palm sanders not to mention every size and type of wire brush attachments for power drills. So with more patience and determination we can prepare for the next step which will be stain or paint?        
  

Sunday 24 March 2013

Marching on into Spring

Well, here we are in late March, Spring is officially here and we can look forward to lighter evenings and warmer days, the time of year where we all look forward to blue skies and dare I think it, outdoor living with a barbecue in the garden.
That is what you would think at the start of Spring time but this year the reality is somewhat different. As I am writing this blog on a Spring Sunday morning, looking out of the window I see everything covered in 200mm of snow! yes snow, deep snow and I have to take Jack (the dog) out for a long walk soon, phew whats going on here.
 I have listened for years about global warming and we have this? not quite what I was led to believe the effects of global warming were going to be, I have been planning growing a grape vine over a Pergola and tomatoes in the garden without a greenhouse, this seems so unlikely as we are nearly in April and its freezing!
Anyway, enough of the waffling about the weather it`s about time I gave you an update on the good progress to date.
Starting with the master bedroom where Liam has been applying his artistic talents by giving the room a base white paint coat which as I may have said before brightens up the room so you are able to get a better idea of the proportions and how the final layout will be, he has also painstakingly removed all traces of old paint from the window and door surrounds ready for the final decision of stain or paint? the jury is still out.
For the past few weeks much of the refurbishment attention has been on the 3rd floor rooms, after the shock of Dael and Liam stripping the rooms of all the original lath and plasterwork and removing all unnecessary false walls and cupboards, work has been focused on rebuilding, where after re-torching the roof tiles we have taken the opportunity to install Kingspan insulation boards under the rafters before covering with foil backed plaster board, and fibreglass type insulation into any accessible roof spaces. This work is now almost complete in readiness for the finishing plaster skim coat. I have to say there is already a noticeable difference in temperature on the 3rd floor even though we have temporarily remove one of the radiators.
You now start to get a picture of how these rooms will be when finished, these will be well insulated modern spaces without clutter and exposed wooden beams dividing the rooms giving a greater sense of space and modern living.