Scaffolding

This week also heralded the construction of our scaffolding. Erected over three days (the access to the site isn't great when it comes to lugging steel up from the road), we now have access to every inch of the walls.




So now Matt is spending this weekend trying to remove the remainder of the ivy (you can see the demarcation in the above photo) which he couldn't reach last weekend.

I, on the other hand, am finishing painting the cupboards in the spare rooms. Turns out we chose the wrong green. What old Karen Walker named "Beryl Green" should simply have been called "Mint Green". Urgh. It looked really bad. I tried a patch with a test-pot prior, but somehow you couldn't really tell the full effect until the first whole coat had been applied. Now we're going for a shade called "Washed Green", which looks much better. I will post photos when it's done.

The window sills

Finally, back with broadband! Some updating to do:

Although things felt like they were moving frustratingly slow, we have had a very big week. It took four days, but we have the sills re-tiled. After washing them all last weekend, when the tiler arrived on Monday I spent the day cracking old grout off the tiles.


Then the backs were ground down with an angle grinder to remove old adhesive and clean them up.. this process alone took the poor guy helping the tiler over eight hours (actually, there were two guys - the first one on Monday did about five hours, but couldn't come on Tuesday because he got heat stroke - true story, last week Christchurch got it's whole summer jammed into five days).


Finally, the fronts of all the tiles had to be scrubbed with turps to remove paint splotches that had gathered during some slap-dash paint job in years past. I don't have a photo of this, as I was the one doing the most of it - it was about 30 degrees outside, my ankles swelled like footballs, my hands were shredded by turps and scouring pads and I got sunburnt. Don't need a photo, as I'm sure you can imagine how attractive I looked.

This took hours and hours. About three hours in I really started to question why we didn't just buy new tiles. They don't make them anymore, but they make ones that are very similar....

Anyway, while we were prepping the tiles, the tiler was sealing the sills.


And then the real action started:


Finally, at the end of day three, tiles were laid.


And on day four, the grout was applied..


New sills! Hoorah!

The best news is that that's not all we achieved last week - more to follow shortly!

Leaps and Bounds

Things are moving ahead at great speed this week, but we are having internet issues and are back on dial-up speed so it is far to difficult to post photos! Aaargh! Should be sorted by the end of the week and I will reveal such things as: scaffolding! New window sills!

Stay tuned....

Cleaning..

We were lucky enough to have house-guests to put to work this weekend (be warned any who are thinking of coming to stay - board is provided in exchange for hard labour!)..

Sam and Ang got to work with the waterblaster and scraper to help clear the ivy residue:



Despite the bleak forecast, the weather was hot hot hot again, great for our purposes. It is hard work clearing this stuff - scraping, then blasting then scraping again.

But as the before and after photos below show - it's well worth it.


Now hopefully the painters can come in a couple of weeks and paint without the need for too much prep.

Meanwhile, I attacked the sills - removing all the tiles (which mostly fell off)..

..scrubbing them all (they don't make them anymore, so we are going to try to re-use them)...


...and scrubbing the exposed sills in preparation for the tiler who is coming Monday morning...


All in all a very productive weekend, with (hopefully) a very productive week to follow. We are supposed to be getting scaffolding erected tomorrow, but are having a little hitch which I may explain in due course, depending on how things pan out..

Things are really about to start happening..

Nothing really to report, except that we had an underfloor heating guru come visit this week, and now the underfloor heating works which means we may have the first warm winter in years..

I have spent a great deal of time on the phone organising the logistics of scaffolding the house, and commencing work on the exterior. Among the things we will be attempting:

Replacing the gutters (yes, that is sky visible through the gutter there):


Painting the exterior (we are going to try removing all the ivy remnants ourselves with waterblasting and a paint scraper):


Re-puttying the windows (and replacing a few sashes which are well rotted):


Re-tiling and waterproofing the sills (and removing what may be some type of asbestos lining in the process):


And while we're at it, we're going to put in a new sliding door in the living area - one that actually opens, and doesn't have a rotten frame.


We have had three weeks of uninterrupted sunshine which has come to an end today, and I fear this will stymie some of our plans for the next few weeks as everything seems to be 'weather permitting', but I guess we just have to see how things go.

First things first - we need to remove all the loose tiles from the sills and clean them up in preparation for the tiler's visit on Monday... there goes my Saturday morning.

A bit more water blasting..

Sunday was just as warm as Saturday, so Matt got back into the water-blasting.

This is our back courtyard a few weeks back:


..and Matt yesterday, being oh so manly:


And our fresh new clean courtyard today:


That thing is amazing.

The rest of the cork tiles..

Over the past two weeks I have been slowly replacing the cork tiles in the laundry and toilet downstairs, and the upstairs toilet. Although it's not something I have previously aspired to be, I am now a total pro at cork tiling.


Obviously, this is the floor before we moved in.



Unlike the bathroom, the laundry tiles were laid onto concrete slab, which proved a bit more time consuming to prepare...and more disgusting.

Many of the tiles simply lifted off, and there was dirt and dust underneath. Some tiles were almost unrecognisable as cork:



Once removed, I had to scrub the floor with a wire brush. Twice. Then sand down the concrete. Twice. Then wash it all with sugar soap. Three times. Then it was just smooth and clean enough to lay the tiles.

I know it's not obvious, but the photo below shows the floor after this process...


Because we were a bit silly, we didn't embark on this before moving, which meant I had to work around the fridge and washing machine. I ended up doing one half of the laundry first, then moving everything over on to the completed half, then doing the rest.

The photo below shows me half way through the second half.


A few coats (three actually) of polyurethane later (no, I didn't do that bit - not good for growing babies apparently), and we have a new (improved) laundry floor:




It's not perfect, but it's a MASSIVE improvement.

And finally, the upstairs toilet - just a quick before and after photo to sum that up:



Voila! We can walk comfortably around the house without feeling sick! And Maatt has almost finished the quarry tiles downstairs too.