Attacking the concrete again

Hi Folks,

I have started removing the concrete from the stone wall under the stairs again. I did a bit of work on it on Sunday. I exposed an area where I thought the old window aperture was expecting to find the edge of the window but I just found more stone. I think they just used some old bricks to fill a void in the wall before they rendered over with concrete.

This will probably be a nice wall when I repoint it but I will probably paint over it with line wash. This should allow the wall to breath and inhibit any mould.

Sorry no photos I was so busy doing that I forgot to take any.

KBO

Bathroon finished and more damp

Hi folks,

I finally finished the bathroom, well it needs a heated towel rail but that's a job for an electrician. I could do it myself I'm an electronics tech not a biff but I'm not allowed to. I have finally finished the bath panel. I wanted to make a nice tongue and grove panel in a jointed frame with a fitted 118 mm torus moulded shirting board but I didn't have time. So I bought an off the shelf MDF T & G panel with a 90 mm plain shirting.

I measured and trimmed the panel to size, removed the shirting and replaced it with a 118 mm torus moulded shirting. Then I rubbed the whole lot down with 60 grit sandpaper and painted it with duck egg blue to match the walls. I also painted the back to seal it from any damp. I secured the panel with six bass screws and sealed the edges with silicon bathroom sealer.

I have carried on striping the concrete from the wall under the stairs. We are exposing a lovely stone wall that's a bit damp but can now breath. My daughter wanted to help honest I'm not putting her to work like a Victorian dad. They say at school she needs to improve her eye hand coordination but she picked up that cold chisel and lump hammer and was swinging away like a pro never missed once. I was quite proud my baby's going to be a builder.

It looks like the Delta Membranes system will be favourite for tanking this wall it will let the wall breath and allow moisture to drain down into a plastic drainage channel. Well it will if some knob doesn't drill into it.

Well that's it for today Guy's.

KBO.

Investigating the damp under the stairs.

Hi folks,

This post covers what I have been doing over the last two weekends and brings the blog up to date.

We had a problem with damp under the stairs last year. The this wall joins the house next door, is four feet below grade and was tanked when the house was renovated some years ago. The tanking has been breached by a wrongly installed chemical damp proof course this was high lighted when the gutters were removed from the house next door causing water to run down the back wall of our house and soak into the wall. The wall dried out when the gutters were replaced. This year the rising water main was broken and we had six inches of standing water against the back wall of the house which found its way in. This has caused the plaster to crumble on the back wall and you can smell the damp in the house now. There was also an electric socket in the corner which is now soaking and a bit dangerous to be fair.
It took me the best part of a morning to find where this socket was supplied from, it was a spur from the ring main in the kitchen. I isolated the power and removed it, the cable is still in the wall but both ends are isolated from the supply. This cable was pretty dangerous it had been pieced three time by concrete nails, if the guy who did this had invested a fraction of the cost of his nail gun in a cable detector this wouldn't have happened.

I stripped the top 1/2" of concrete off which turned out to be a skim coat hiding more concrete. I chiseled out two holes 1 1/2" deep to find the stone wall underneath but didn't find it.

I was worried that the old wall had been removed and replaced with a solid block wall but I noticed two drill holes at eye level when I removed the concrete render. They seemed to have a void behind them so I enlarged one and found a void with stone on one side and brick on the other. I think this is the old back window that has been bricked up when the extension was built.

I started stripping away the concrete to find the original stone wall to allow it to dry out. I needed to chisel away an 1 1/2" of concrete to expose the stone which was damp but started to dry out once it was exposed.

I stripped the concrete around the door frame in a band trying to find the end of the wall.

I moved in to the extension to expose the other side of the wall. This would have been the outside wall of the old house. It smells really damp here so I lifted the floor tiles here and found three more layers of floor covering all damp. Underlay; lino and vinyl floor tiles all holding water like a sponge and stinking. So I lifted all of this and removed the wall tiles from this area as well which were concealing damp plaster.

I then stripped the bottom 12" of concrete from this side of the wall to allow it to dry out. I also uncovered a void at the base of the wall in the corner, I think the builder who laid the slab for the extension removed a protruding stone from the wall here. I will leave it open for now it will allow any water to drain away. The exposed stone was very damp but soon as it was exposed it started to dry out.

I intend to strip all the concrete from this wall and re point it with lime mortar. I will fill in the window void will new stone.

I want to observe the wall over the coming winter to see how bad the damp gets and do some research on tanking systems. I would prefer a system that allows the wall to breath and lets the ground water drain away.

It would be a shame to cover this lovely stone wall over again but I may have to reinstate the tanking but only to just above grade above this I want to leave it bare so it can breath.

A lot of hard work has gone into stripping this over the last two weekends using a lump hammer and cold chisel. Slow work but it doesn't damage the stone.

KBO.

Broken shower

Hi Guy's,

Next post of the day I'm catching up this ones from two weeks ago. I have almost finished the bathroom just need to make a bath panel and get a heated towel rail fitted. We have no central heating so we could do with one. However the shower packed up after after all that effort to make sure it fitted ok. A temperature switch on the outlet burned out so we only had cold water.

I didn't want to go to all the hassle of upgrading the supply cable and the circuit breaker so I brought the new equivalent to the old one. It has the same 7kW power rating and cold water feed and power connections. The only difference was that the hole for the bottom wall fixing screw was in a different place so had to drill a new hole and seal the old one.

It looks ok and we really couldn't do without a shower. Our hot water tank is quite small it doesn't provide enough hot water to fill a bath. That's another job to have a bigger tank fitted.

Well we'll knock them off the list one job at a time.

KBO.

Wonky wall

Hi folks,

I haven't posted in a while been so busy doing jobs to the house I haven't had time, so the next few posts will cover what we have been doing over that month.
We have a wonky breeze block wall in our garden which surrounds the patio. I use the word patio loosely to describe the patchwork of badly laid concrete that passes for ours. The guy that built the wall couldn't have known what a spirit level or a string line was because the walls as straight as a dog's back leg. The photo says it all.

So I knocked it down over a couple of weekends. I think I will build a new wall from Cornish granite and relay the patio with stone slabs but that's a job for the summer. Also I need to do something to hid the gas bottles.

KBO.

Lino Down

Hi Guy's,

Just a quick update nearly there now I cut and fitted the Lino today. It has a small tile effect like a roman mosaic. I made up a template from lining paper and using a marking block I transferred the outline onto the lino. I cut this out leaving a bit of spare that could be trimmed back when in place.

After I had trimed it to fit I rolled it back halfway across the floor and applied a contact floor tile adhesive to the floor using a spreader. This was left for 30 minutes to go tacky then the lino was rolled back down and smoothed out.

The other side was rolled up to the glue point and the whole process was repeated. Then a bead of silicon bathroom sealer was run around the edges to prevent water from finding it's way underneath.
It looks quite good just got to make a bath panel and its done one room finished.

That about it folks.

KBO.

A bit of painting and some taps.

Hi Folks

Just a quick update I have finally got the painting done. Mate white for the ceiling and the coving. For the walls I used Dulux Blue Reflection or "Duck Egg Blue" to the rest of us.

I also painted the door surround and skirting in this colour as I matt finish on the woodwork and it looks simple and unfussy.

Karen wanted a traditional cottage feel to the bathroom. A bit difficult to achieve with a plastic bath, modern basin and lowflush toilet. We can't quite stretch to buying a new bathroom suite but Karen found a good online supplier call Victorian Plumbing where we could get some traditional looking fittings.

We bought some nice reprodution victorian taps and a white tongue and groove toilet seat. Which go well with the Torus moulded shirting boards to give us the feel we want.

I don't want to put that nasty flimsy plastic bath panel back on so I'm going to make my own. Well if I can build a boat I can build a bath panel. I plan to reuse the battens I used for tiling to make a frame. I want to cut a rebate in the inner edge of the frame to fit some tongue in groove paneling. This should help with the cottage feel of the room. I bought extra shirting to fix to the bottom of the panel which will tie into the existing skirting.

Hopefully I will get it sorted next weekend.

KBO

Bathroom

Hi Guy's
Haven't done any work to the boat as usual but done lots of work to the house. I have two weeks holiday where we plan to sort the bathroom out. This was going to be a quick three day job just strip off the old tiles and retile and paint right, no wrong.
Just scratching the surface just turns up problems, one of the previous owners had just just stuck tiles onto the window board which had a beveled edge it just looked naff. So I removed the tiles, splash back and window board. This took a chunk of plaster and a couple of bricks with it. I had to mix up some mortar and cement them back in.

Once the bricks had set I bonded the window board back in with construction adhesive. I have cut the bevel edge off flush with the wall so we can tile the entire wall and window surround. One problem I found when I removed the splash back was that the skim coat of plaster was not bonded to the wall. I didn't want to tile onto this as I could see the whole lot falling off the wall. So I removed the plaster down to the scratch coat this shouldn't be a problem as I'm going to tile the whole wall.

The shower pipework and wiring runs under a piece of conduit that turned out to be a piece of plastic guttering another bodge. Using a diamond cutting disk for my angle grinder I cut a slot 2" wide and 1 1/2" deep to chase the services to the shower into the wall. I fitted an 18mm piece of heavy duty conduit for the electrical supply and made up a new copper pipe for the water supply. Once this was done I cemented it in flush to the wall.

Ran out of mortar had to get some more.

I stripped the rest of the tiles off around the bath only to find that the plaster only went down to the level of the bath. Below this it was just bare plaster board which was damp because the tiles and the bath seal was leaking another bodge. I didn't want to remove the bath but I might need to replace the plaster board so I had to take it out.

I left it overnight to dry out and luckily it did. It didn't look too bad so I gave it a coat of PVA and a scratch coat of plaster.

It dried quite nicely.

Right the bath's back in and tiling battens are up. I have fitted the border but can you spot the deliberate mistake, well not deliberate I didn't notice it until Karen pointed it out. It should go dark, light then white but I put dark to dark a couple of times but its too late to change it now. I'll put that down to inexperience.

Sorry guy's I was so intent on making a bit of progress I forgot to take some pictures but basically I tiled around the window, this was a bit time consuming as it required a lot of measuring and cutting. Once I had that done I tiled around the bath surround, it was a bit fiddly around the shower supply pipe and cable but I still got quite a bit done.

Now the awkward bit I have to tile behind the toilet and wash basin. I need to measure down from the existing tiling batten and set a new batten. Once the new batten fixed I removed the toilet and sink to tile there.
As you can see there is an awkward bit around the soil pipe. This was another bodge it had been framed out with pieces of 2" by 1" timber nailed together to make 2" by 2". Why didn't he just go and by 2" by 2", he when boarded this out with pieces of plaster board which he tiled. All of this was damp because the tiles leaked. So I ripped it out and made a new box to cover this area from exterior
grade plywood and 2" by 2" timber. I coated it with PVA before tiling it. Job done I grouted this area before refitting the toilet and sink.

The I grouted the rest of the area around the window and the bath, then fitted the shower. Sorted I now have a toilet and shower again. Karen and Georgie will be so pleased they can come home. Yes they decamped to Nannies and left me to it.

I finished tiling around the window ledge, surround and grouted. Sorry forgot to take pictures again. I had to strip the paint off off the stud wall around the door it came of in big sheets and didn't seam to be bonded to the wall at all. I found this out when I took down the coving just after I had replastered the bath surround. The coving was that nasty polystyrene stuff, when I pulled it down it took the paint with it. They can't have used PVA before they painted, another bodge, I'm starting to see a theme here.

On the main external wall in the picture the paint was coming off easily until three feet from the floor where it suddenly became almost impossible to scrape off. So I just sanded the whole area and took care to feather in the edge of the paint. There were lots holes with plastic wall plugs that had been badly filled all over the wall. I drilled out the plugs filled and sanded down until smooth.

Once the walls were sanded I fitted the skirting boards using 140mm softwood skirting with a torus moulding. This gives a nice deep shirting with a tradition feel which will suit this old cottage. I would have used 200mm but this was the deepest I could get and it still looks quite good.

Jobs to do:

Paint the ceiling and new coving.

Paint the walls.

Make and fit a bath panel.

Move and replumb the toilet. ( It uses the pipe work from and older toilet and doesn't fit well)

Fit new lino.

Fit new taps and toilet seat.

That's about it guy's this entry has just seamed like a long list of jobs. This is because I did it in a short two week window when I was home on leave. I have taken photo's when I could and have written this up in one go to get something on here.

Hopefully we will get this squared away over the bank holiday weekend.

That's about it folks

KBO

Damp

Hi Folks

Well miraculously the house is drying out. To be fair I can't do alot to it as I work away durring the week and I can only do things in two day windows at the weekends. I fitted a loft ladder, new loft hatch and surround over the Christmas break. I did this mainly so I can get up there to check if the roof is leaking. All the repairs I did before I went away last year are holding and the loft is dry but the roof will need reslating at some time.

On the downside my garage is springing leaks everywhere so I had to cover it with tarpaulins. I couldn't get a tarp large enough to cover the whole roof so had to use two. Its alot dryer in there now. I'll need to sort this in the summer as any work I need to do for the house I'll do in there.

That's about it really

KBO