Setting up for the Dommakes ...

Spent today setting up our friends "The Dommakes" wedding - its going to be FAB :)

Before...

After!

Yay us!

And not only did we manage to do DIY this weekend .. we also managed to make some apple crumble .... mmmm... so easy to make ...

Freshly baked apple crumble with custard as starter (why wait till dessert???)

And mash ... I luuuuuurve mash... and vege sausages and onion gravy ...

I'm not sure whats going on with the mash pointy-boobie towers there ...

With work and DIY I tend to end up doing the bulk of the cooking round the house ... this was very much a joint effort though ... I love cooking with Sunshine ... must do more baking!

Hallway Part 9

Wall painting in our house is a surgical operation!!! Hahaha ... actually, I look this ridiculous because we went to the Scrapstore the other day and found lots of rejected medical supplies for sale. Got ourselves latex gloves, some operating sheets (those things you put over the patient when you operate on them... has a hole in the middle which you position over the operation site - they're massive, and are seen here as the big blue sheet on the floor doubling as dust sheet), and some surgical gowns that work fab at keeping the paint off your clothes ...

We've done the first coat of white paint on the upstairs bit of the hall, and also caulk and first coat of paint in the porch bit of the downstairs bit of the hall. The rest of the day we spend tidying the upstairs front room by packing up a lot of the office stuff and moving it downstairs; moving the sofa bed up into there (this room is going to eventually be a guestroom / chilling room); and tyding the DIY stuff out of the rest of the house and into the front lounge. Its so nice to have the house back to being in a bit more of a livable state!

Hallway Part 8

And while Sunshine was downstairs doing the front lounge, I was upstairs 'caulking' any gaps/unfinished edges in the upstairs half of the hall. Caulk is a silicone based sealant - much like the Mastic that you would use in the bathroom. Nicely covers small gaps between walls and skirting boards; walls and door frames; and bits of wallpaper that haven't quite come togther flush. Some of the skirting board and door frame gaps were a bit bigger than the caulk could manage so I had to fill with plaster first, and then caulk over when the plaster was dry...

Picture above is the bathroom doorway - left, with gap - right, caulked. Tommorow ... paint!

Front Lounge Part 9

Not a lot has happened over the week house-wise, but today Sunshine sanded the edges on and put down the rest of the available floorboards and nailed them in. This is what it looks like - notice that a full sand-back and re-stain will be required on the floor; and because we had broken boards and used the ones from the far side (bottom right of picture) of the room to fill in the gaps on the other side of the room, we now have missing boards on this side. We've put a few chipboard widths to cover the major holes but the plan is now to leave this room as is and come back to it at the end.

It is eventually going to become our studio/office. But now it will serve as storage and as a staging post for the rest of the DIY. The current studio/office is in the front room upstairs so we're going to move the office stuff down here, and any other stuff from any other room as and when we need to. We're setting up an area near the door of this room where we can pile all the DIY tools/paints/miscellaneous stuff for easy access (but out of the rest of the house). So no more front lounge updates for a while ...

Front Lounge Part 8

So where is this insulation you keep talking about?????
Ahhhhh....

7. Remember yesterday's netting? Well then, you cut your insulation (recycled glass bottles) to the desired width (scissors and/or bread knives work best), and suspend them in your netting "hammocks".

8. Lay over some semi-permeable membrane (draught-excluding but lets moisture get through).

9. And last but not least - top off with floor boards!

And this is what it looks like - all the layers: joist; with netting; with suspended insulation; semi-permeable membrane; floorboard; and foot (as can be seen peeking in on the bottom right).

Our floorboards had shrunk and got quite 'gappy' over the years so we tried to get them as close together as possible. Useful to have a spare piece of 'tounge' board to use to bang all the boards together. We've nailed them down with some oval lost-head nails (that Sunshine's folks seem to have left over - a whole massive tin-full - from a previous house building project!).

We've done the room in two halfs (so we had a solid platform to stand on whilst doing the second half of the room - SO precarious walking on joists and trying to avoid stepping into the insulation/netting as its suspended about 10cm off the concrete subfloor. As you can see we have the insulation down on the other half of the room. By the end of the day we had the membrane and floorboards down too. Just got too late to nail them down (don't want to annoy the neighbours at all hours!). Sunshine took the day off work today - that's why we managed such a lot. Think the last of this will have to wait till the weekend when he's about again.

Front Lounge Part 7

Even more things to do before insulating underfloor:

5. Secure loose pipes to joists with gaffer tape.

6. Lay down garden netting and staple into the joists creating a net "hammock" ... I can't begin to describe how annoying using a staple gun, on netting, on vertical surfaces is ... aaaarrrggghhhh ..!!!! Why not staple on top, you say? Leaves big lumpy metal things where the floorboards are going. What is the netting for in the first place? Come back tomorrow and find out!

* Netting doesn't take the whole day to do - but Sunshine was at work today so we could only do this in the evening when he came back ...

Front Lounge Part 6

More things to do before insulating underfloor:

3. Check all floorboards are OK - glue broken tongues/grooves/bits-of-board as necessary; and sand down where needed. Notice blue tape and clamps - that's floorboard-repair for you.

4. Lay them all down to make sure it all fits together and assess what needs replacing due to getting broken when being taken out. Pre-insulation pre-prepping is key!

Front Lounge Part 5

Things to do before insulating underfloor:

1. Check joists are level. Even more fun with a Laser leveler.

2. Insulate radiator plumbing.

Hallway Part 7

So now we've now lining-papered the bulk of the hall - only a few bits left (where the exposed wires need re-plastering into the wall; where we have yet to box in the utility meters; and a bit of downstairs ceiling). Still have to cleanup all the skirting boards and other woodwork - doorframes etc.; caulk (don't know what this is about but apparently its like using mastic in the bathroom); change all the old light switches/plug sockets; and PAINT!

Leaving the hallway for a bit to get back to the front room floor.