Electrician and Skirtings

Yay! the electrician came today!!! I love the LED down lights they are so bright and do a terrific job...

I have put up the skirting boards and architraves in the lounge room too.... personally i love them.... photos not doing them justice.

All ready to paint and put together!

Well as always the holidays go by very quickly. The first few photos are of the old weather boards i reclaimed from when i redid the east facing wall. It was a lot of work as they were first covered in red oxide then oiled who knows how many times. I washed, scraped, planed, sanded, sanded, sanded, sanded and sanded, then had to clean all my tools! but i think the end product is pretty amazing. I love how the old sump oil stained the wood and i still kept a hint of the rough saw marks. I didn't want to keep all of the saw marks as it made the room look too stripy. I love reusing the old timber, saved me a lot of money. These holidays and I think the second time in all my life i maxed the credit card out! So i will be glad to start school again next week and watch my bank balance recover... until the next holidays. 

This is a dummy run of my apple crate book shelf.....

I decided to paint my second storey doors..... when i did down stairs and was faced with painting 12 it was too daunting.... for some funny reason i made the bathroom door 720mm wide... when a normal door is 820mm wide.... the room is 2.1m by 2.5... so i didn't really need to do it but i am sure i thought i had a good reason at the time.... oh well...

Plasterer is now finished! So now it is time to paint. I am not overjoyed with some of the joins but with all the set joints at funny angles to each other it is pretty hard to do. I purchased some thing called StrainghtFlex which did a terrific job on the joins and i would recommend it to anyone wanting not to use cornices but he ran out and used paper tape instead which didn't give such a good finish.... oh well c'est la vie.  Just don't look to hard when you visit : )

So the doors are painted, architraves and skirtings are ready... all i have to do is paint and put it all together!  

Meet Bill and Bob

Hello everyone, I would like to introduce to you Bill and Bob. They are terrific workers, they do what they are told and are dirt cheap. These two handy T frames made out of stud pine helped me put up my raked ceiling up in the second storey with no one else helping. I wish i could take credit for the idea but it was father in law. Great idea Ian! 

Evolution of the Arch

The hardest part of the arch was plastering the internal arch. I managed to break about 5 of these long thin pieces as I tried to squeeze them into place. The first few attempts I had even wet them over night using a spray bottle. Eventually James, my plaster, came over to look at the job and said that he usually placed the internal strip over a round object and leave it overnight if it was a tight arch. So that is what I did. I used the plywood cut out of the arch to get the shape and placed the plaster over the top. I then sprayed it with water a few times and left it over night. 

The next morning it was pretty good however it hadnt gone all the way so i wet it some more and leaned some weight on the sides and vuola!

It fit perfect and is held in with only stud adhesive. Today I purchase some edging made out of plastic for the arch. The edging reminds me of those toy snakes, it never stays still! I love how my bedroom is coming together! Plasterer starts tomorrow!!!!