fluffy's new howse - dev blog

[annikk.exe]

Day Eleven


Battling on :>






Haven't shaved in days...








Tony prepares some exterior caulk cartridges for the task ahead...








When we first arrived, we noticed water had been getting into a crack on the side of the building, and leaking into Simon's room through the floor.

We need to seal that seed up.  Just repainted, dont want that getting ruined.. :>  Hence the enormous ladder.









Smokey volunteered to climb the alarmingly wobbly 10 metre ladder, while Tony and I braced.
Then he used the caulking gun to fill the gap all the way up.

I couldn't take any pictures of Smokey when he was up at the top, as I was rather busy doing my damndest to keep the ladder ultra-stable.  It wasn't exactly Cliffhanger, but still, a fall at that height would have been nasty.








Smokey has returned to earth, the job complete.  Now Tony is collapsing the ladder again, ready for its journey home.








The shiny line you can see up the wall is the gap into which Smokey inserted his caulk.  :>  Still drying...








Back inside, Smokey set about the task of de-mummifying the phone from its masking tape bonds, and then scraped it very carefully with a toothpick-sized screwdriver to remove any paint.
Half the paint on it was from when the previous owners did the place up.  They were really bad at DIY, a lot of the stuff we are doing is just tidying up after their sloppiness.







I joined in and demasked and removed paint from some light switches.
Attention to detail, y0 !








Meanwhile, Tony busied himself attaching some of the blocks he fashioned the day before onto the ceiling.
These will act as additional supports for the false ceiling.  They screw directly into the beams above the real ceiling, so there is plenty of structural rigidity there.

















More blocks still to come...

Thankfully nobody was injured today, and although there was a new crisis, it was a pretty minor one and didn't prevent us working, and was easily sorted.

[annikk.exe]

Day Twelve




Today the panels that we prepared in the workshop arrived on the back of this trailer.
The 10 metre ladder is off home.

In this picture, Tony and Iain are talking shop.  The panels have already been moved upstairs...







We just leaned them up against a wall in Simon's room.
These "blank" sides will be the ones facing downwards once they are fitted.







I hold them up for a sec, so you can see the other side.  :>





.







This screw (or one just like it) damaged me.







Hurt a bit.  Seems to be healing up fine now though.







More blocks up.  :>







Tony did a great job on this.







We masked up the skirting boards and door frames in the corridor, in preparation for gloss paint.







...and removed all the doors, so we can paint in behind them.








Many doors.
We attached stickers to each, and wrote on them, so we know which door goes where.







...more masking tape...







We chilled out at the end and played some guitar and had a singsong.  'twas nice.. :>

[annikk.exe]

Day Thirteen



Last night, Tony's drill died on us.
He wasn't able to finish the ceiling blocks.


So we went and bought a new one.
Witness Makita Mk II, on the right of this picture:







No more screwing around...













Within about 20 minutes, the rest of the blocks were up.
The new drill made light work of them.








We touched up the glossing on a few skirting boards, and that was all we did for today.



Enough preparation.  Tomorrow we start putting fibres in panels, and panels on the ceiling.  Finally, it is gogo time.  :>

[Bonobo]

[..] played some guitar and had a singsong. [..]

Care to tell us what songs you sing?

And: I’m very curious how your ceiling lighting is going to look!

Greetings, Tom

p.s.: Hey, that really should’ve been a goal (though I’m not a futbol fan)

<edit>

BTW re: that crack in the wall—shouldn’t that have been repaired by the landlord?

</edit>

[annikk.exe]

Some Smashing Pumkins, a little Weezer, etc..

Also, I am the landlord.  I bought this place.  :>
The crack in the wall was left when we removed one of the internal doors.

[Bonobo]

Some Smashing Pumkins, a little Weezer, etc.

Not bad

Also, I am the landlord.  I bought this place.  :>

Uhm… then, as it is an apartment, is there no consortium of flat owners that is responsible for repairing greater damages?

The crack in the wall was left when we removed one of the internal doors.

Huh? You remove an internal door(way?) and then a crack in the outer wall appears? I can’t understand.

[annikk.exe]

Yes, there is a communal stairwell which is paid for by the residents, of which I am one.  :>
But this was an internal door, within the bounds of the flat itself, and so nothing to do with the communal areas.




The door pictured here:

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4377/48228736.jpg


was ripped out, leaving the hole pictured here:

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/104/70803354.jpg



But we fixed it, so now it looks like this:

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/1702/93129036.jpg

[Bonobo]

Thanks for your reply, but I still can’t imagine how removing an inner door could cause such a crack in the outer wall.

<alarm siren> “Scotty to Bridge: We have a breach of the outer hull!”

[annikk.exe]

It's not an outer wall at all, it's the wall of the corridor inside the flat that has a hole in it.


...



Picture a corridor.
There is a door splitting the corridor in two.
As you might imagine, it has a door frame too.

We removed door and frame.  When removing the frame, it was basically a case of bashing it out with a hammer.
Some parts tore off.  They took some of the plasterboard from the wall with them.  :>
IE, part of the plasterboard from the corridor's wall.



If you still can't visualise this I am not sure how else to explain it...

[annikk.exe]

Day Fourteen


A day of finishing things off, and starting the fibres.






Sleepy.  Waiting in the van, outside Tony's house.







First up, we moved all the stuff from the main room, into Simon's room.







A few final touches to skirting boards...








The parental unit kindly helping out again.  :>  Kitchen done now, apart from the skirting boards...







The frame for holding the ceiling is totally complete.  The floor is cleared.  Iain just arrived (not pictured) and has started messing about with the electrical stuff, such as this until-recently overhead light which is halfway plucked from its socket.  Need to get a power supply sorted for the light, colourwheel and LEDs.







Good to go.







Here's the fibres.  Not yet fully out of their packaging...










Notice how it needs 2 power cables?
One powers the light itself, along with the fan to keep it cool.
The other powers the colour wheel - a sort of wheel of different semi-transparent acrylic lenses, to make the stars change from blue, to red, to green, to orange, to white... etc..
Turning the colour wheel power off means that the fibres are always shining the same colour.  Turning it back on means they will cycle colours.







So we need to source power from this light socket, which will be ripped out to make room.







Anyone have any bright ideas how we would do that? :>







Thankfully Iain has the mad skillz.
In the mean time, Tony bangs on some blocks.







Iain did a great job, this was going to be a big obstacle for us which he sorted out completely in less than an hour.  :>







Two power cables emerge from where the light socket was...







One of the cables travels over to the nearby rail, and into a pull cord...
This will be to toggle the colour wheel on or off.









.






Did a few bits and pieces while we were waiting for Iain to finish up.
Removed the toilet roll holder and the towel rail from the bathroom, and removed the massive gloops of white paint that the previous owners left on it.









Moved the fridge/freezer back to its normal position, now that the paint is dry.







Time to get the first panel through, and tack the light into the roughly the right position (so we can get a good idea what length of fibres to use for each hole).







Oh, and I whapped this door stop into Simon's room also.  I'm sure you're fascinated.







The light is tacked up, with the fibres trailing down.







Cool huh :>







The first panel has been populated with fibres.







But try as we might, we couldn't get the panel onto the roof with just the two of us (everyone else had left by this point).







Tony began constructing a deadman to help us lever the thing up into position.







...and, not to give too much away, he finished it.
But we still couldn't get the panel up with just us two.
So after a while we had to give up, and organise a bigger team for the following day.

[w4tc]

that will be cool with that fibres, i had just the same idea xD for to do later in my house

[Bonobo]

Hahaha, wasn’t there that phrase “Geek minds think alike.”?

[annikk.exe]

Day Fifteen
Part 1





Sheena came to help.
With a 3rd person, it was no problem to get the first panel up.  :>


Mark came over later on, and then Simon arrived a bit after that.
It's the exciting bit now, lots of people are up for helping :>









































































First two panels up.  :>

[Bonobo]

Ha! I recognized Cassiopeia (must be one of the easiest).

Are you going to cut off the fibres at the point where they come out of the panel?

BTW nice girdle you’re wearing

[Alex]

Looks like it's going really well!