Thursday 27 June 2013

Paving and Setts - Part 2

At last! My paving stone has arrived, after getting stuck in a container at a dock somewhere in India I think it was.  I've taken delivery of the first 17 sq m, and have been having fun laying them down between the setts which were set in cement weeks ago. Happily,
all my careful measuring has paid off and they all seem to be looking good, with no large gaps anywhere. Here's the first lot (right) of 19 slabs, laid in about two and a half hours.  I'm glad that I chose to bed them on sand; having helped lay the 18 sq m of pretty similar stone in the kitchen in 2011, and then done another 12 sq m in the rebuilt extension all by myself, I knew that getting the level was surprisingly difficult, and so I wanted to retain the option of lifting and re-laying a slab later on.  There are a couple of those set in mortar that I would love to be able to do again!  In fact, when laying large slabs (60cm square, or larger) on mortar, due to the suction it is quite difficult to lift the slab even when you have only just laid it, never mind when it's all set.

The annoying thing about the delay was that I didn't trust my ability to measure accurately enough.  Hence I wanted to get the first half or so of the paving laid beside the house before I turned the corner (literally) to do the back.  Now that the first lot is done almost to the back, I will be able to prove the positioning of the end of the setts; then I can work from that edge and lay the remaining setts accurately beside the half-finished wall. 
That will then allow me to work across the back of the house on what will be our patio; in fact that part is almost a sunken garden due to the high walls, but it still catches the summer sun almost all day even though it's on the north side of the house.  Here's another view (left) from the other direction; the "patio" is at the end and then on the right out of sight behind the brick extension.


I'd just done those first pavers and was thinking of a cup of tea when a light shower started which decided the issue! So I took these pictures and decided to update the blog instead.


Sunday 16 June 2013

Doing Things Again

There are lots of things on this house that I did myself, and I had to learn a lot on the job.  Now, two years since we moved in, I have found that in some cases there were clearly things that I did not appreciate or understand at the time, and so some things are having to be re-done.

The first of these is my back gate; it is actually an old ledged and braced back door.  This was made redundant when we re-built the extension as there was no point in having two back doors.  I had a vision of re-using it as half of my back gates, and was delighted to acquire a partner as a swap for some old glass.  Both were the same hand, so all I had to do was to change the braces on my old one and sort out the surface finish.  They came up a treat with some gloss black which matches the front door, and now provide some security by solidly blocking the way to any passing ne'er-do-well (see photos here).

However, late last year I saw that some of the paint was flaking off my old door, on what used to be the inside. Now, it is looking very sad indeed, and clearly needs attention.  Noticeably, the paint is not flaking where I replaced the braces (the slanting bits) - they were old bits of bare floor board and are still looking good with their coats of primer, undercoat and topcoat.  The problem is with the old ledges (the horizontal bits).  I suspect that, despite my best intentions, the door was not fully dried out when I re-painted it, so at some stage soon I shall have to strip that side and start again.  I really didn't want to have to do things like this again.

Another similar example was sort of my fault where I was misled by the term "transit primer" which was the only finish available on the new bits of soil pipe which I bought (see here).  I happily applied black Hammerite on the top before we installed them, and 18 months later I saw it was all flaking.  So this time, up a ladder, I have removed all the old paint and this grotty primer using a wire brush and Stanley knife; then I coated them with red oxide before adding more black Hammerite.  Hopefully this lot will last longer!

Then there's my kitchen worktop. We bought a new kitchen from W----s, and chose an interesting bamboo worktop (see photos at this entry) which requires occasional recoating.  There's nothing in the literature to warn about any possible problems but 'Er Indoors has recently demonstrated the corrosive properties of caustic soda.  She did not realize that some had been splashed onto the worktop near the sink; we only noticed these spots when wiping the worktop and seeing spots appear before our eyes, as the water from the cloth sank into the wood and darkened it!  I have tried sanding and re-applying the coating but the problem is still there.  Now all I can do is to find a way of neutralizing the alkali (with some acid, I guess) and then re-apply the coating after sanding the whole lot.  Another waste of time.

Now there are some more doors: the specially-made (i.e. expensive) 2 inch thick pine front door replaced an older, rotting one, also in pine.  I paid extra for kiln-dried wood but even so it has warped and at some times of the year becomes difficult to open; I have not been able to use the mortise lock since March.  In the same way, the cheaper internal door to the loo in the rebuilt extension has warped - at least that only cost £50; bl---dy W----s!  Finally, the external door in the rebuilt extension is rejecting its paint and starting to look mottles and streaky.  I can only presume that the undercoat did not like the stuff that T----- P's supplier had covered it with, but what do I use now to fix it?

On their own, none of these are going to cause me huge grief, but taken together, when I still have plenty of work to do, I really could do without this additional workload.  What really gets me is that one of my deliberate philosophies in doing this rebuild was that I expect to be here for 10, 20 or more years, so I wanted to spend that bit more and get things right first time; I did NOT want to be in exactly this position in that time, and certainly did not expect it in such a short timescale.