Mirror

Jackie found a mirror in a charity shop and it had some nice deco features despite obviously coming off someone’s dressing table. The mirrors have sagged little off alignment and painting was imminent so I removed the mirrors.

One of the small, side ones was lined with a piece of Kemp’s Mercantile Gazette. The Smith-Premier typewriter appears to be a N0. 4 which went into production in 1901 but was largely superseded by the No. 10 which first appeared in 1908 (an American machine so this might be as late as 1910 but it shows the mirror contemporary with the house which was built in 1907). The headlines referring to coachbuilding, saddlery, and harness trades along with an ad from Eastwood’s Tannery (Derby) also lean toward a pre-WW1 date.

The mirrors cleaned up pretty well and the silvering is good. The copper paint behind the silver (the orange showing behind the KMGazette pages) is not further painted for protection but I didn’t have anything to put over it I was certain wouldn’t damage it (dissolution, oxidation, etc) so I just cut some new backing sheets out of back issues of Private Eye.

Reassembly used the original framing I could salvage and using as many shims as I could make out, supplemented with some small glazing brads.

It still needs a cable or chain to hang it, but essentially this is resting place minus about 36cm:

Linen Closet

The next cabinetry on our list fills in the unused space on the upstairs landing as a linen closet — sheets, towels, blankets, and bog roll plus a space for the cordless vac to charge.

Until this was finished, we had all of those items stacked on some shelves in the office/second bedroom but we needed the space to make room for a visitor in May.

Eventually, we’ll wallpaper around it.

Coat Closet

Following on from the living room cabinetry, we desire to rid ourselves of wet clothing hanging on the doors and shoes piled by the kitchen. The framing of a coat closet takes into account the need for the now-covered wall to ‘breathe’ so as to mitigate mould (I took out a brick and installed a vent then left a 2cm deep path to another vent at the top of the cupboard).

There’s another vent in the floor to help damp clothes dry, the electrical sockets were moved to the plinth and a single was placed at eyelevel inside-left for the cordless vac to charge.

I wasn’t as careful with this one since it is getting painted (the living room ones really demanded precision, this one just needs a light sanding and final coat). But, it works.

Living Room Cabinets

Our little house has a dearth of storage and a lot of wasted space. A few weekends ago, I set out to fix both of these.

Next to the chimney breast in the living room, I framed out two built in cabinets and started populating them with shelves. In here, the stain we used on the floor is, on the cabinet lumber, splitting the difference between the fireplace mantle and the floors.

I bought a fairly cheap router and then spent as much as the motor on some pretty decent bits. This allowed for a bullnose on the top and some quarter-round edges on the doors.

Everything is plywood except the interior walls which are mdf. The framing is 18mm x 45mm softwood. Price tag including the new tools just under £100.

They came out better than I expected.

Debra’s Delivery Dudley Dine Duo Dash

I had some deliveries coming in related to Debra‘s impending visit. I’ve visited with a number of people who’ve come from the States for their own reasons but haven’t been able to cajole any of them to come to the house…visitors in Oxford couldn’t be bothered with a twenty minute drive to Swindon, or those stopping in London for a week or so couldn’t take the Tube out to Ruislip, and so on.

But, our Deb actually isn’t interested in the touristy things and just wants to hang out with us her entire trip — cooking, partying, hiking, boating. But, when it comes to sleeping we didn’t have a second bed in the second bedroom. This probably wouldn’t have fazed her in the least as she would be happy to snuggle in ours with Jimi and both (or either) of us; alas, we are all too old for such shenanigans so we ordered in a futon.

It and some other items key for this trip (it is still a couple of months off) arrived between 7 and 10 the morning I had taken annual leave to work on some of the interior trim so, after tidying, I had the afternoon to myself. I decided the day was too pretty to waste indoors and suited up for a run, had a shot of Bulleit to brace against the windy cold, and headed toward Dudley for a bit of lunch and a couple of beers.

Just past Great Bridge I sensed a presence and realised I was being shadowed by another runner, a fellow in his mid-40s (why wasn’t HE at work?) jogging easily at my pace. He was speaking in my direction and, after checking that no one else was at my other side, I removed one of my earbuds so I could answer with out interrupting the storyline of my podcast. He asked how far I was going and I told him Dudley and back ‘there’ whilst pointing vaguely toward West Brom or, possibly, Barcelona. He told me where he was going but I wasn’t listening and just said, “ooo, that sounds nice” and replaced my earbud. He said something else and I bit my lip and nodded in my least reassuring way then he said loudly to have a good day. He sped off and I hope he realised that my pace would have probably caused him injury had he kept to it.

In Dudley, my target pub, the Castle, has closed down so I got some fish at Sofi’s Plaice across the street and ate it as I wandered toward the Dubliners about a fish gobble away. After there, I headed toward the canals via Bunns Lane (a name which makes me happy) and stopped en route at The Wonder. But, the canal path I intended to use is closed and under repair so I had to make my way back through an industrial park.

On my return, Jimi had already claimed the futon as his. At least Debra will have someone to cuddle.

Dining room repaint

We’re not decorators so Maple Haze, the deep autumnal burnt orange we painted the dining room a year and a half ago, was a bold choice. Bold and ill-informed. Returning from a night out in summer or anytime after 4 pm in winter, the lights expose you to the fiery pits of Hades. It has been long overdue for replacement.

We went with Almond White which matches the beige in the fireplace tiles almost perfectly. The above photo shows the penultimate coat. It is definitely less oppressive than before.

Kitchen replacement — execution

The hard lifting done on the kitchen replacement, we moved toward completion (with just a wee bit remaining to do) starting with painting enough to cover the exposed bricks and new plaster but leaving the rest to transpire moisture (yes, I am still banging on about the house ‘breathing’).

Ikea boxes, durable foods, dishes, and cookware were scattered all over the veranda, living room, and dining room much to the delight of the kitty. He has been a massive help as our supervisor during the ordeal but the effort sometimes wears him out:

Last Sunday, we finally mounted the first cabinets on the wall and shifted a bunch of the pile of kitchen shit back into a less temporary place. A little progress on this occurred each night thereafter heading into our 5-day-weekend push to finish. Doors, shelves, lighting for the worktop beneath the tall cabinets, and the over-the-fridge cabinetry were mounted during our usual television-sloth periods Monday and Tuesday.

Thursday, the tiles arrived for the wet- and cooking-side of the galley and the sprint was on.

With wall cabinets hung and under-cabinet lighting installed, we moved on to the base cabinets as the population of Ikea boxes in the rest of the house dwindled.

Jimi, ever the helpful one (the cat is absolutely bomb proof and fears nothing/has interest in everything and just wants to be like his dad), supervised cutting the worktops.

We still have to source skirting boards and coving but most of it has already turned out how we hoped. Better than, to be honest.

There was one major fuck up in the whole effort. I blame Jimi since, as I mentioned, he took the lead on the work tops. After carefully cutting an opening for the sink and tap, I flipped it over to discover the meaning of chirality when those features were on the right side but rotated 180 degrees (sinister when I wanted dexter).

The replacement arrived a week later. The built in dishwasher door was also a struggle since there wasn’t a cabinet on the left to mount the door hinge on. We used some spare panelling to fashion an enclosure for it:

Trim panelling up and knobs in place, all the remains are the aforementioned skirting and coving installs and regrouting and sealing the quarry tiles on the floor. At last….

There is a spices/oils/vinegars drawer between the stove and small cabinet; the wee door on that worktop is to hide and provide access to the boiler plumbing.

All that remains are minor details to be completed over the Hanukah break (Jimi is still too destructive to bring a Christmas tree in the house so we’ve decided to raise him Jewish).

Kitchen replacement — prep work

The kitchen was always going to be the most stressful room to refurb (even though the bath was an absolute logistical motherfucker). But, there had been no planning done in the kitchen design as we bought it and the stress of living in this poorly thought out galley (I’m in the kitchen several hours per day) built up over the nearly three years we focused on the rest of the house. We had been picking away at it when we converted the old bath to a laundry and when I was de-Artex-ing the gaff but the first signs of the potential came with tearing down the plaster on two walls and removing a spurious cabinet over the BUN paint tester spot:

That was over a year ago and other things got in the way until late summer this year when we finally pulled the trigger and bought some better appliances then cabinetry to surround it (Ikea out, Ikea in, but Ikea has a solid kitchen reputation).

With all the parts in the house (and the dangerous and tiny gas cooker replaced by a very well reviewed induction hob with two fan ovens), we set about dismantling the old — appropriately enough on the day before the Queen’s funeral.

The pipework for the underfloor heating was partly assembled then finished and leak tested once the quarry tiles were removed.

Installed one week, we were able to start the flow through them the next. Jimbo seemed to approve of the warmth despite some tile clean-up, polishing, and sealing still to do by the time this snap was shot:

The de-rendering last month was mainly meant to expose the brickwork around the window we were replacing. The old one stretched down to the drainboard and sink and was fitted unsympathetically and asymmetrically into the original casement frame. All of that was pulled out.

It is a double brick wall so I had much more masonry to lay than expected (not to mention that it was the first bricking I have done since 1978 on my uncle’s dairy). We are painting the outside when we finish the repointing (probably early Spring) but the new brickwork and window look okay.

The tiling we planned for the wall with the new window would be a struggle to hang directly on the brick, so I installed cement backer boards while Jackie applied some base coat paint to the portion of the opposite walls that will be exposed between the hanging and base cabinets.

It is still a wreck, we’re prepping meals and drinks on the old worktop which is balanced on sawhorses, the dining room is cluttered with flat packs and hardware (much to Jimi’s delight), and food/dishes/small appliances are scattered hither and yon. But, we can start to see it coming together at long last.

De-rendering a brick wall

A previous owner — probably the idiot we bought this house from — had render applied to the brick walls around the kitchen and what was then the bath. I had to remove a little to change the size of one of the windows and since it came off relatively easily I went ahead and chipped it all away.

These houses were meant to ‘breathe’ to protect from damp but people with no other recourse (for lack of a damp course) sometimes apply the layer of mortar to act as waterproofing. Here’s what I think happened.

The walls are two bricks deep with a small air gap to allow transpiration. So, outside moisture would rarely have any impact on damp internal walls. But, the quarry tiles that we uncovered in the kitchen were sealed with porcelain tiles so that they could no longer allow ground moisture to pass except at the walls where the tiles stopped. This made the internal walls damp and mouldy. This was also the case, as we found it, under the plastic sheeting beneath the laminates in the dining room (now covered with limecrete-adhered limestone tiles, compatible with making the entire house damp proof).

Rather than get someone reputable to investigate (or, more likely, rather than correcting the source of the problem as we did a couple weeks after taking ownership), she found someone willing to stick this crap on the walls to keep external moisture — remember, this wasn’t even a problem — out of the internal walls. Our damp problem ceased as soon as we removed the porcelain tiles and we have now uncovered a few other nice features like the 90 degree turn rounded brickwork at the corner.

There is some pointing and repairs to do, to be sure. We are also re-routing the gutters to the back drains and reduce the number of pipes emerging by turning the boiler overflow toward the ground and combining the sink and dishwasher overflow. There are breathable masonry paints available to finish the wall (but we are installing a shorter kitchen window to allow a backsplash, so painting will wait until the new brickwork is done).

Swinging a hammer all day has me tired.

Rail Runs #64-65 & 2022 Commute #33: to Edgbaston Village Metro and from Brindley Place Metro

Having already done one of the three new tram stops (Five Ways metro) for the ongoing Rail Run Project, today’s commute — planned to avoid the travel chaos of the current one day industrial action against the rail companies — involved a dead-reckoning jog to the end-of-the-line Edgbaston Village metro stop then, after enjoying a burrito packed for lunch on the ride to Brindley Place metro stop, a slightly shorter effort into the labs.

Traffic was heavy in some places (again, due to the rail strike) but I managed a lot of new ground just by taking a chance and failing then recovering and doing it again. The Commonwealth Games open tomorrow and there was CG themed hoarding hiding some depressing urban renewal zones that I really need to get back to check out closely after the closing ceremony and the subsequent clean-up (or, rather, return to bleak).

Yesterday, I also did the bog-standard commute home and noted signage on one section of canal to the effect of “caution, the Queens Baton Relay is passing thru” but the dates were for Monday and I missed it by precisely 24 hours. Volunteers lined a lot of my final approach to the campus, today, for the relay to pass through there, as well. Two weeks of chaos loom.