Beautiful stairwell featuring an Ikea PS 2014 light fitting
Beautiful stairwell featuring an Ikea PS 2014 light fitting – taking another week off from work.
Friday 30th April
I got home this evening not in the best sorts, I don’t know why I was just in a bad mood with everything.
It didn’t help matters even that I’d just started a week of holidays, I was just in a fug.
Zillions of jobs to do though, little time and barely any money left, I don’t know what I’ll be capable of doing but the intention is to finish off the stairwell top and press on with the bathroom floor. Ideally I’ll have the bathroom floor levelled, with services in place for all the new bathroom gear and rad’s, the shower boxed off, shower in place and maybe tile backer boards all in ready for tiling. It doesn’t sound much but that’s plenty for a week.
Anyway I needed to get some work done tonight and it was really hard to get motivated. I started with a bit of housework and put in some washing and straightened things out.
Before I knew it I was in a pair of dusty overalls but still the force wasn’t with me, I just couldn’t raise my hand to any DIY.
An hour of solitaire and without warning I found myself with a big bag of multi-finish plaster and soon I was plastering around the loft entrance and as if by magic just after midnight I was cleaning my tools in the bathtub.
Not a great job, actually not even a good job but I’d lost some of my essential plastering tools somewhere and I had to make do with….. hmmm a bad workman and all.
Anyway it wasn’t bad enough to not be recoverable with a bit of filler and sanding, so that was that.
Typing now at 0:48am I need to get to bed as I have a very early start picking Izzi up at 7:15.
Saturday 31st April
Day with Izzi
Sunday 1st May
The house was seriously a tip, something I could ignore but ignore at my peril, you see I’ve found there are ways to getting things done and letting ones home decay into a pit of unwashed socks is not the way to do it. I’ve found that keeping things reasonably spick and span does help and although it eats into DIY time it is worth doing paying dividends in helping one keep perky and up beat – unlike the filthy landing that one has to duck down to on entering under the platform 🙂
So a morning was started with sorting out my washing and getting it into the washing machine and the day was spent feeding various dusty clothes into the washer between doing jobs.
Once the washer was loaded and started I then cut into some serious sanding, my faithful 1/2 sheet sander levelling out the dollops of filler I’d applied earlier. All was going well until the sander started making some familiar “metallic” noises, the noises of a sickly sander, I’d been here before I’d killed sanders in the past and this sander didn’t sound long for his world. Sure enough five minutes of sanding and the noises had become more continuous, loud and accompanied by whiff of smoke from the vents. A dead sander and little funds don’t mix so I resigned myself to trying out a smaller detail sander, hopefully to delay having to buy a new expensive half sheeter. What a revelation, the little sander dealt with filler just as quickly as the flat sheet sander, it was easier to pick out stubborn spots and deal with them and most importantly it was light. What would normally have meant a methodical painful slog now meant a airy wave over the wall, the ceiling was a doddle in comparison to the old sander, it just worked a treat. I had thought that losing the larger surface area would have meant hours more work with the much smaller sander, it didn’t, this sander just took it all in its stride.
Anyway I was moving on to the next stage and needed some test coving and some finishing paint, I’d basically been using white emulsion until now, I now needed my final colour White Mist and some coving to try out in the spaces around the loft hatch.
Homebase is my shop of choice for coving and they were doing a deal on Dulux emulsion so a quick trip to Homebase was made before lunch. As normally the staff there were wonderful, I had realised while down on my hauches that I’d need an assistant in locating some tins of paint and before I could raise myself to my full height an assistant had magically appeared to offer help and the additional help of a very tall young man to retrieve some paint from the top shelf.
The afternoon was spent putting up the coving between the loft entrance and wall, this was a tight squeak and I’d only got one strip of coving to test out the fit. Once fitted I fitted the trip surrounding the loft entrance and I decided the coving was a goer and perfect for the job.
More undercoating and some woodwork painting.
Monday 2nd May
Another shop, first Tesco for some essential food items and then Homebase to stock up on more coving (2x 4 pack of Arthouse Mayfair coving), some panel pins to support it and some adhesive.
This coving was a little smaller than my usual Arthouse Oregon coving sitting at 7cm to wall and ceiling in comparison to the 12cm of the Oregon, maybe not as impressive but necessitated by some of the tight gaps around the loft entrance. One thing though, it was much much simpler to fit and being much more lightweight it meant handing a full length was far less problematic and it needed much less assistance in mounting it to the wall plus far less supporting panel pins. I even forgot to use my usual plumb-line as it simply went straight into place and job done it just needed some dodging to hide the joins. By the end of the afternoon the whole ceiling was done.
I later applied my first coat of Dulux White Mist and urgggghhhh, what the Dickens, it was flipping awful, it sapped the life of you, it had to go.
It was just putrid, if felt miserable, despite my match-pot testing it was not the right choice, I needed something warmer.
Anyway that could wait, I was putting Izzi to bed and after a pleasant evening with my daughter it was back to the job and some late night filling up until 1 am, well it had to be done so it would be dry in the morning.
Tuesday 3rd May
Sanding sanding sanding, more work in getting out those imperfections with some 120 grit paper, the key to good paintwork is preparation and that means lots of sanding between coats to get a good key and to smooth out the big and those teeny but noticeable dints and dangs.
Once done I pressed on with denailing the panel pins from the coving and some more filling.
After this a little painting of the fresh coving, not my favourite job but this would show up any imperfections in the joins which could then be dealt with with a bit of skill and filler. A pot of Satinwood in hand then what better to do than the woodwork on the trim surrounding the loft entrance and the loft entrance too.
A bit of lunch then more sanding.
Next to cover up the dreadful White Mist I started with the ceiling and applied a coat of Timeless and to the walls and loft hatch door a coat of White Cotton.
Next a night of adventure, it was getting late but if my plans were right I could get to Homebase, Screwfix and Ikea before the Gateshead Ikea closed at nine (a fifty minute drive).
So Screwfix for a mixed bag of items, Homebase for some White Cotton paint and Ikea for a funky showpiece lampshade.
I arrived at Ikea in plenty of time where I had intended on buying a Stockholm chandelier
as it was seriously funky and had impressed on a previous visit, however this time upon wandering into the lighting section resplendent in my paint splashed overalls I came upon the uber-funky PS2014
which while unimpressive in its promotional pictures is fantastically impressive in the flesh.
So happy was I that on the way home I managed to find my way into the local Co-op with only five minutes to spare and bought a few beers to celebrate my purchases.
Wednesday 4th of May
How could moving a single light fitting take all of the morning and some of the afternoon too, I reckoned on an hour or two at most but it just dragged on and on. Everything took its toll, finding all the tools, working in the attic, rummaging under the really deep insulation to find the wires, it just took an age and at the end of it all well all you have is a light fitting moved a couple of feet to a more central position in the stairwell.
Well actually what you do have is a hole, so a bit of bonding plastering, an afternoon spent filling and painting and sanding walls and once the bonding plaster has gone off, well then more filling, sanding and painting.
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Thursday 5th May
I’d booked a delivery of plywood, timber and some concrete tile backer boards the previous weekend and with one thing and another especially the Bank Holiday and backer boards being difficult to source it had taken until today to have them delivered. I wasn’t really concerned though as I wasn’t anywhere near to starting the bathroom yet so these items could be stored till I needed them.
The problem though with the delivery was me… I was being a bit of a wimp as my arms were still rather sore from my double tennis elbowy tendanitus thingamajig that had been bothering me for the last month or so. When the driver settled outside of my house I made it clear to him that I may not be much help in shifting the boards, he was really understanding and neglected to tell me what a big wuss I was and I then proceeded to get on with helping him with the entire load. I should have just kept my mouth shut.
I must admit I wasn’t as ambitious as he was carrying three boards at a time but hey I still made a good manly fist of the job. We left the boards in the garden and when he left I then manhandled them all into the house on my lonesome. It could have been my manliness cutting through the pain or it could have simply been a pair of elbow braces I had handy from my sculling days, but I managed to shift the full load by myself without having to be hospitalised.
Actually prior to shifting the boards I ambled across the road for a chat with my opposite neighbours, they’re really nice and this was further proved when I remarked on my shoddy builders gloves this was kindly met with a free offer of a bundle of handling gloves and some natty disposables. How brilliant of them.
The afternoon was spent working on finishing the paintwork ready to dismantle the platform and fit the new light fitting.
The contrast between before and after was quite remarkable once the staging was removed, below where the staging had stood was the original awful green wallpaper and above my freshly painted stairwell.
I now have the knack of decorating, it really is preparation and though you may find it tiresome the best results are obtained by sanding down between coats. Not only does this key the surface for the next coat but it also removes all those tiny bits of dust and streaks that may have adhered themselves to the previous coats. The newly found beauty of the palm sander in favour over the half-sheet sander has made this job much less tiresome too. A wall can now be sanded and despatched in a matter of minutes and it’s no way as tiresome as a full half-sheet jobbie, one waves the sander around with abandon and with a 120 grit sheet the paint is left nicely keyed and free of imperfections.
So anyway an afternoon of final filling, final sanding and polishing and one last coat, a bit of work on the woodwork too.
Once I was happy I fixed up the curtain rail hangers, I wished I’d bought white on reflection however the black ones fitted would probably blend in once I’d fitted the dark curtain rail. Actually this job too wasn’t simple the plugs I’d planned on using meant that the screws were too big for the hangers, I had to rifle around some jam jars to find suitable smaller heavy duty plugs and smaller screws. The curtain rail hangers by the way are my favourite Ikea ones, they’re solid as anything and for a few quid one can purchase a second hanging point should one need a second rail, they’re just brilliant and a fraction of the cost of other hangers. Just use really good plugs and screws.
The rest of the week….
Having been a lazy beggar I lost most of my notes for the the rest of the week….
I can tell you that I took the Sunday off but on the Friday and Saturday I did manage to finish off the paintwork and get the staging down.
The paintwork involved a bit of bodging and sanding on the walls and ceiling but the real slog was working around the doorframes, loft hatch and coving. The doorframes took forever and once they were onto their final coat I reckon I’d spent an entire day just working on this sole element.
Taking down the staging wasn’t too much hassle, the light fitting did need some covering to stop it getting dusty but the staging was simple as the bolts were very easy to remove.
I did manage to lose an entire half day of work on the Saturday, I administer a website for my sister and early on the morning I committed to doing my weekly backup of the databases it employs. This is a pretty routine affair involving an FTP program and half way through the process a number of files were deleted by accident. I say by accident, really the FTP program became unhinged and as I looked on in horror it just started slicing through directories.
The whole of the rest of the morning was spent gingerly restoring files and setting up new systems to defeat any future occurrences. It was not a good day, however I did manage to retrieve all the files and I downloaded a better FTP program too.
Saturday afternoon and I finally got around to working on the bathroom, job number one, cover the old loft entrance over the thermal store… first some lengths of timber cut and fixed into the hatchway and then a bit of plywood cut to size and screwed to these timber battens. This was then covered with a liberal application of bonding plaster around the edges.
All done and a couple of hours in my bathtub cleaning down all my paintbrushes, buckets, rollers, trowels etc.
Week done.
Notes on taking a week off to work and how to get work done
- Have clean clothes every day and make sure they’re appropriate to the job, it really is depressing to get into tired unwashed and cold clothes
- Have a shower/bath each day, try not to get into the habit that as you’re covered in sh** each day it’s not worth getting cleaned up only to get dirty each day, a good clean kip each night is worth the effort
- Carry a tape rule, knife and pencil at all times on your person
- Wear safety specs at all times, at least park them on the top of your head ready for wear, I always have a pair of builders gloves in my pockets too
- Try to keep organised with ones tools – I’m pretty guilty of breaking this
- Get some easy to prepare but filling meals ready to pump into the microwave
- Wear safety boots at all times too, you may not be doing any heavy lifting but you might just stand on a nail
- Knee pads built into trousers are great
- I’d like to recommend a tool belt but I’ve not used one yet
- Carry your mobile just in case you should get your arm trapped under a rock or something
- Try not to work on your own, if you do it’s best to have someone check in on you each day, a phonecall would do
- Disposable gloves are a must when doing dirty wet work
- Music or Podcasts are great, pump them directly into earplugs under ear defenders if doing heavy work, it passes the hours
- Try not to have any alcohol if you wish to get some work done the next day, don’t have alcohol and use tools
- Start early and don’t take huge breaks, try to do at least two hour unbroken stints
- Always wear a full respirator when working with dust or fibres or noxious fumy things, when not using the respirator put it down so it’ll not fill up with dust
- If you’re going to keep a diary then do it each day, leave it over a day and you’ll forget what you’ve done… well I would anyway