Manlab Progress - Sunday

Today was a case of just mixing 50/50 PVA and liberally applying it to all the holes in the wall...

The place looks like a small arms fight went off, you really start to appreciate how messy war is on your plaster walls when you come to remove a eight decades worth of rawl plugs and full their holes...

There's a good machine gun layer above the window where various curtain rails have been stuck up, cracking the plaster in the process... Then they even had those annoying hooks to hold the curtains back... There's of course the smaller window too, and it's got the top left corner totally missing, so I've built it back up in Bonding.

No big problems really, though my bonding mix was a little lumpy, so I have rough patches... But, I'm going to smooth the walls down with wet & dry anyway, so that'll get sorted.  I'll also get a chance to smooth the rebuilding by the second window too.

I suppose one thing which got me was that I had cleaned most all the holes out, even use the vacuum cleaner to remove the dust the moment the wet PVA hit the old plaster it oozed horrible mixes of dust and PVA, it looked for all the world like these many holes were bleeding ready brek.

Over the rest of the week I hope this bonding goes completely off, and I can clean up any drops on the skirting, mask the skirting, put up the skim bead and tape the inner corner... Then I might even try my hand at the skim coating plaster on the two minor walls...

Oh, and I'm going to have a nicer door fitted, going to get the father-in-law to hang it, maybe three for all three upstairs rooms, cus these doors are crap with a side order of WANK.

Man lab Progress - Saturday

I'm writing this post Saturday - well the wee hours of Sunday actually - just as a quick missive about the man lab, today I've spent like 3 hours stripping wall paper - and about the same time cleaning up - which thanks to a steamer machine was not as painful as previous plaster stripping endeavours were.  However, said wallpaper was covered in cheap emulsion paint... And the paper itself had a sort of plastic sheen... So the unless you scratched the paint and top surface off the paper was impervious...

But the heat from the steam would melt the paint, so there was this thick slick of pink shitty paint heading down the wall.

The walls which had the damp on them from the ingress of water however, when I steamed over them, they sort of bled black... Mould I assume, the plaster looked okay, just a little darker than other areas.. but the steam really bought out the spore I think.

The room smells a little funky right now, second hand... But I'm excited to prepare and try my hand at plastering... I may even get to try tomorrow on the two smaller walls...

Also, the walls were just utterly full of old rawl plugs... Like every other foot a plug... I'm down to 1920's plaster on lath backing, clean and paper free... removed three layers of paper, and this emulsion.

So, I have one large wall to fill and put the skim bead up on the corner, then there's two walls at 90 degree's to one another, which are the left and back of the alcove where the desk will be built in.  Then the main front wall, which has two window openings... Now that front wall needs so much bonding and smoothing, there are just dozens of bullet like wounds in the plaster going into the wooden window lintel.

The walls have had to be let to dry out and I've pulled all these plugs out, and I've cleaned up... So all the shreds of paper are out, the window sills are clean and the skirting board clean...

Tomorrow, which is today, which was Sunday... It'll be time to mix up bonding and patch all these walls, the main bonding area is going to be in the corner at the elbow 90degrees between the two small walls in the alcove, because that needs fixing after years of neglect.

Hopefully though, with the bonding on I can put the skim tape up in the corners, and then go get a second skim bead to cut to size and fit around the windows.

The only thing I'm thinking about now is how dry the walls are, they clearly sucked all the moisture out of the paper when it was hung, so I'm thinking PVA it.... And then PVA it again just before the plaster skim coat...?

On, and I'm NOT taking the radiator off, they seem to use a custom/rare tapping connector, and since changing the heating is not a priority, its staying as it is... But I have taken the inside curtain rail down, so both front windows are down to just cheap, see-through roller blinds.  I may not get much lie in...

Finally, if I do do the two smaller walls in plaster, I'm going to look at fixing/buying a floating corner shelf to hold the printer up there out of the way, that could get fitted when the plaster is set... Alternatively, it'll have to wait for the large front wall.

The wife wants me to delay plastering until xmas, but I'm not up for a delay, to be honest I think I got a LOT done today, tomorrow is the final prep, and then I'll maybe try to do one wall, and then next weekend do the rest.

In other news, I may at sometime over the next week get some very good news... Or some very bad news... work related... if its bad, expect me to vent, if its good I may not be able to tell anyone much, so I'll just code word it... lets agree the code word is... "Juggling"... so if I'm "Juggling things in the office"... You'll know its good, and I can tell you the good news probably after Valentines 2014... Yes it is that secret.

Manlab Progress

Man lab area update, the hole in the roof has been sorted, the roof lead fixed, the hole plugged with new board and its been bonded into place with a swathe of well... bonding...

The corner where the main desk will be has been stripped and is partially ready for plastering, but I need to next move the power supply, there is a dual plug precariously placed just down the wall from where the desk will be, so I'm going to chisel out a channel, run a new power cable from there and power it up... Or perhaps lift the floor boards (but this will be a pain) and check what cables go where.

I plan the sort the power, prepare the walls and then re-skim plaster (just an all in one coat which I'll polish) to make the corner flat and even, and the two main walls flat and then around the two windows flat... The ceiling is an unknown quantity, as I remove the paper off of the other walls I'm going to check the ceiling.

Either way, I'm going for flat painted walls, and for now leaving the build in cupboards and stuff - despite their being older than me - and I'm going to fix my desk to the wall as a permanent fixture with 2x1's and also float a shelf above the desk for the printer and paper to sit upon out the way.

The final thing might be to get a long drill bit and bring a dedicated network wire up from the hub in the front room, but that's a while away in the plans.

The other little job I still have yet to finish is wiring in the outside light, this thing was a pig to put up, because the kit it came with was basically so cheap (the whole thing cost a tenner) that it took my own rawl plugs and my own screws to actually fix it to the wall, because the kit supplied ones were so shite.