BT4W about WFH

 

That’s Breaking The 4th Wall about Work From Home, because this is usually merely a semi-public diary and not a conversation.

However, a dozen people (so far, including 2 I actually know and should know better) have asked about the desktop photo on BunnyBox (the ancient laptop which is my only Linux machine and is seen in the foreground — relative to BoboKatz, the more standard Win7 box behind it — of the NBT 11 post earlier in the day).  Glad to see everyone is as bored as I am and apologetic this isn’t more interesting.

The Papal Skins have been the desktop background on BunnyBox since it got converted to Linux in February 2010.  I don’t use it enough to bother updating things because it is slow and only there because I can control what it does — I’ve been that person most of my life so I have a fondness for it … something of a kinship.

Anticipating the next question, BoboKatz has a photo from a cemetery in Rome for its desktop (this changes about once a year despite the near constant use):

For the sake of completeness, Bobo-Office (on which J spends her workday when not on site at one of the hospitals) changes about every 3 or 4 days (daily in some stretches).  It’s our shared box and I usually put things up to entertain the woman … things I found on runs, memes from the webs, and obit photos.  Here’s a sampling (every fifth one from 2011-2018 and a few from this year, then further filtered to minimize overlapping themes):

 

 

Baltika 5 — Neighbourhood Beer Tour #10

At present, the garden is essentially a tip containing the accumulated detritus of the house refurb since the last skip was hauled off before Christmas.  We’ll get another skip, soon.  For now, if anyone fancies an old bathtub, washing machine, or about 1½ m³ of old plaster and other rubble just drop me a line … we’re planning on selling the old copper tubing but there are some functional radiators out there.

We’ll be adding lumber scraps (furring strip excess) and odd ends of plaster board to the pile soon.

The Baltika 5 bottle will recycle, though.  There appear to be endless varieties of Baltika at the Polish market up the street but the #5 is a fine, pale lager … dry and ice cold unlike the weather out there.

Cloakroom and laundry part 1

The bath upstairs has been used, exclusively, for the last month and a half, our washing machine is failing, and we needed something to occupy our idle hands.  Time to convert the old bath.

We already investgated it a bit and decided to keep the toilet and sink but shift the sink to where the head of bath was and to turn the toilet 90° then wall in the resulting cloakroom with a pocket door to save space (we have the bits for this part of the project but it will still be down the road a bit).

The other half of the room is to be a laundry and I started to recover tiles to shift to the bare wall in the cloakroom half that was uncovered by the tub removal.  The tiles were over plaster board which was laid over tiles over more plaster and plasterboard.

The command decision was made to buy back as much space as stripping to bare brick would allow.

It was a metal tub but not as heavy as I expected.

The new supply pipes were sweated in and, later, the waste pipe rerouted to the soil stack.

The mains water cutoff was held by a compression fitting with a rubber o-ring.  This was tenuous at best and, when I attached the new cold supply, the fitting popped right off.  The outside cutoff was under ½ metre of mud so I had to reset the fitting with the full flow rate of South Staffordshire Water system fighting against my efforts.  We put the dehumidifier in the room for the next couple of days after the flood was cleared.

Returning to the walls a couple days later, conductors were strung to the washer and dryer power.  You can see the arch of the original door to the loo from the outside split by the new transition from laundry to shithouse.

Time to tidy up.  The washer and dryer arrive tomorrow.  We’ll get to the decorating when the DIY places start delivering plaster once more (which is in even shorter supply than bog roll, right now).

Warka — Neighbourhood Beer Tour #1

Prologue: Did some retiling in the downstairs bath, some render removal outside, and some candlestick shining* (the last time they were polished was when I was 15 years old so … 1977).

More or less done with chores for the day, I walked to the Polish market for some beers and spotted several crushed Warka cans in the gutters.  “Yum,” I thought; “that’s what I need.”

And, with that I began my magical mystery tour of the neighbourhood beer fridges, an occasional chance to review the many, many options available in the non-British grocers’ all over my buurt.

————–REVIEW————-

Warka tastes like a Northern European beer…ANY Northern European beer you’ve ever tentatively asked for in Holland, Germany, Denmark, or
(guessing here) Poland.  More grainy than American lagers or pilsners but absolutely a welcome treat on a sunny Spring day.  With neither baseball nor cricket to inspire a few tins more of this due to the COVID-19 Lockdown — and with it too early in the day to settle into some baseball-themed-movies or baseball-themed-telly (like my current fave Brockmire outrageously funny and dark and a rare bit of telly I find instantly relateable) — I’m walking away after only one.  But,  Warka is a fine start to this new project.

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*”Candlestick shining” is NOT, in this instance, a euphemism.

Loft improvements #1

I’m spending a bit of time up in the attic what with the new lighting and plans to put in some ceiling fans.  There’s a remarkable amount of room, as well, and I may be tempted to do a full conversion in the next couple of years…

…but for now the focus is on keeping vapour permeability while reducing the porosity of the volume.  It was literally breezy up there due in no small part to the lackadaisical insulation effort of some past owner.

There were also a variety of antennae mounted in there, plus another buried beneath the blown in (and quite minimal) insulation.  After snow-plowing this yellow horde toward (but not completely over) the 4 inch gaps at the eaves, I started laying modern insulation roll between the joists then covering it all with OSB.   Adding some shelves for storage also helped and I’ve got a couple of old hobbies for which I’m building areas to house hardware.

 

Now it is safe to walk up there without feeling around for a joist (the ceilings below were otherwise unsupported and unsupportive) and the rest of the house feels almost immediately cozier (although that may be psychological).

I’ve managed to tie this part of the refurb to life before Jackie (the Gumby figurine, above, turned up whilst populating the shelves) and to our first few months in the UK:

Next, better lighting…maybe a garden chair and sound system and a bar….

 

More nice household historic surprises

As in The Gift That Keeps On Giving, we found something unexpected and quite nice (considering our geeky interest in architectural history).

With the intention of stripping and staining the doors and woodwork, we used a heatgun to blister the paint to scrub off with a wire brush.  The first chips to come off tested positive for lead and the first door turned out not to have any primer on it — the bottom most layer of paint was resistant to our efforts to safely remove it so I took the door outside where I could safely use higher heat (volatilised lead dispersed to the outside and not in where we would breathe it).

The cool find was the original hardware in good working condition (once most of the paint was picked out of the brass).  We thought the door knobs and trim were probably metal but, on removal, found them lightweight.  Scraping away some of the paint to expose the plastic, we then ran some hot tap water over it and a diagnostic formaldehyde odour emanated — it is Bakelite (ten years after it was patented and 20 before its peak use in manufacturing).

There is still a bit of paint to get out of the latch mechanism and off some of the Bakelite bits.

Upstairs Bath, Fully Functional and Almost Finished

It’s been a long slog.  The coving is painted and still needs to go up and the skirting boards (original) still need stripping and painting and cutting to fit the new room layout BUT the bath is usable and life is good.

We also have some work to do on the door (finish stripping, refurbish the old door hasp and latch — original — before staining and sealing), the towel rail needs fixing to the wall and floor, and the bog roll holder and towel rack (nice, period reflective, John Lewis kit all) still need to go up; but, this is where we are at — £2800 (including over £600 for tools we will use on other projects) for a job the best quote came in at £9000 before “unforeseen circumstances” like difficult ceilings and un-standard sewage connections.  We reckon we saved about £7500 – £8200 …  and only 22 man days out of the 30 the builders suggested.

Don’t try this yourselves.

Related posts (including previous ones, this one and any subsequent):

https://ebpc3.wordpress.com/tag/bathroom/

 

Fireplace Refurb #1

The fireplaces in our house were hideous and evidence of heavy psychedelics mis-use by whoever it was who thought these were a good idea.

They were also eating up the real estate in the dining and living rooms.  We decided that they must go, and so it came to pass that the dining room one was the first dismantled (literally dis-mantled).

The night before the Christmas Skip was delivered, I smacked the hearth with a 4 pound hammer and cold chisel a few times and it separated easily.

Beneath it, evidence of Edwardian Quarry Tiles extending under the laminates.

 

After I finished the skip fill, I found the concrete and tile edifice as easy as the hearth to dislodge if not to shift.

The next day, I filled the corrugated brickwork I had exposed with plaster.  Mixing a thinner batch, I poured a cover for the sand base to the old hearth with the intention of this providing a underlay for the self leveling compound for tiles to make a faux hearth once we sourced a proper cast iron surround.

The bathroom refurb took priority and we continue to live, reluctantly, with this one in this state whilst taunting the one in the living room that its days, too, are numbered.  During this week off to do electrics and (mostly) finish the bath, it too will feel the wrath of the hammer.  For now, this is the state of things.

 

Kitchen Refurb #1

The kitchen is awful but we were initially limited by budget to focusing on the bath and items we could do ourselves.  Longer term (say, going into or, more likely, out of the summer), we plan to

• remove the modern tiling (and, redo the original quarry tiles beneath);
• install sligntly-less-deep but taller cabinets along the long wall only;
• put in subfloor heating to get rid of the radiator;
• shift the washer into the bath at the back (this will soon be a WC and laundry room);
• get a full sized oven and hob (still gas, but modern) with a powerful extraction hood;
• change the sink to ceramic;
• hang much of the cookware overhead on the far wall;
• install a dishwasher;
• and, box in the boiler with a cabinet matching the others.

There’s also a hatch thru the ceiling that is essentially unusable as it is at the lowest part of the slope of the roof — thus allowing head or arms through but resisting shoulders uncharitably.  To install this section of the plumbing from the new bath required flexibility of body that I frankly didn’t think I still had (and my body’s response to employing it seemed to confirm this as a reasonable assumption).  It will shift a few feet at which time I’ll re-insulate the loft; the hatch will probably never be used again but will be there for access to this plumbing and some of the electrics if needed.

We HAVE done one day of work on the kitchen, though.  Until yesterday, it was lit by a bare, fluorescent tube with a failing ballast, yielding an orange-y light equivalent to about a 25W bulb.  We ordered some lamps to replace it and installed them after spending a day removing the Artex from the ceiling — which still needs a sanding and several coats of paint (add that to the massive list at the top of this page).  I expect delivery of some filament style bulbs to complement the modern design of the lamps in a few days; but, for now we can see what we are cooking in the dumpy galley.

Upstairs Bath Stage 5

With the sub-floor laid and the plumbing tested there were still myriad tasks before us on the bathroom refurb.  I had the ambitious task list prepped for the next two weeks ready but during lunch, Monday, I read through some of the documentation on the tiling adhesives in order to find out how long after laying tiles and grouting we would have to wait to put in the toilet.  A mild panic took hold when I read that after the initial 24 hours each for the adhesive and grout to cure only light foot traffic would be allowed for 12 more days.  We pushed floor tiling to the top of the list and spent a couple hours per night after work getting a start on it all.

First, we wanted to set the plumbing into the wall with plaster before moving ahead.  The first mudding was thick and sloppy and would take a while to set completely.

After work the next evening, I started cutting and setting the cement boards meant to act as the substrate for the floor tiles and some of the wall tiles in spaces left open after removing skirting boards.

Once laid out, numbered, and mapped they were pulled up to lay down some thin-set adhesive, re-set, and screwed into place.  Jackie started priming the walls earlier and I moved the scaffold in to sand the ceiling while the backer board adhesive set.  There will also be more (finish) plastering once the electrics get installed.

Going into the first weekend, Friday night, I explored the attic above the top floor for the first time.  ENORMOUS space (but, access is shitty and it is probably only suitable for long-term storage).  Anyway, the ceiling electrics were there and I was able to alter them so that we now have a double switch — one turns on the overhead and the exhaust fan (timered, so it will continue to run 5 minutes after the switch is off); the other turns on the vanity lights and activates a power socket with residual current protection.

The weekend was devoted to tiling.  We planned on 2 or 3 hours to lay the floors, starting at noon.  Difficult cuts and holes were rife and we finished at 9 pm (7:30, but the cleanup was ENORMOUS).

We had to wait 24 hours before grouting so we took the opportunity to reorganise.  Tools had diffused to all bounds of the house and everything was covered in dust from, variously, cutting holes in brick and ceiling, sanding, mixing grout and plaster, etc; some of the dust was kicked down from the attic via the access holes and is almost certainly a century old.

While in the attic, I finished the soil – and grey-water plumbing (which involved cutting new access through the kitchen ceiling causing further delays).  We were now missing a key milestone: neither toilet was yet on the new stack but the stack was ready and waiting.

Around 7 pm Sunday, the floor grouting started.  Grouting is something of a magic trick wherein you completely obscure — literally, in this case — a pedestrian object then, with a few swipes of the hand, voíla!  It is back but enhanced.  In our case, we were pleasantly surprised the tiles we chose which have a white grout border dividing the four quadrants took up our black grout filling both the spaces between and within the product.  It draws the eye away from our amateurish work and looks frankly marvellous.

At this point — a week into the items in this update 40 calendar days since we bought the tub and toilet — we had consumed about 14½ of our allotted 30 work days.  Bruised, abraded, battered and utterly exhausted, I took a day off the refurb although Jackie put in another half day with painting and grout cleaning.

I took annual leave the next day to tile the walls.  This was especially difficult as the levelling work was as good as I could get.  We will probably have to redo the back in a few years, but the side wall looks okay.  Before grouting the walls, the room looks something like an abattoir, albeit one with a nice floor.

Planning on grouting the next evening, Jackie put in a change-order to surround the window with the remaining subway tiles and plans to put in a cornice around the top.  So, I focused on building the toilet and attaching the supply fittings to it and the sink.  Jackie had the lurgy and painting had, as a result, been back-burnered.

There’s still a lot to do beside the grouting: painting, the tub, a cabinet, the lights, and shifting the sink drain 6 cm so the sink can get hooked up.  Soon, but for now there’s a bottle of prosecco waiting.