Wouter's Blog – Page 66 – Who said it was your cheese in the first place?

Teaching a new dog (old) tricks

When I got hold of Frank to do the stuff around the house, I went to see a reference to find out just what I could get Frank to do and where I would need to employ someone else. I was assured that Frank could do just about anything, but that I would have to watch him “on the squares” — he has a habit of not squaring things up.

Which brings us to tiling. I was (and still am) sort of worried about Frank’s tiling abilities. So I set him to tiling the bathroom floor, both square meters of it. That came out OK (but then again, it’s hard to stuff two squares of tiles up).

But then it came to the kitchen / dining room / entrance floor. Firstly we (Tanya and I) decided to use spot tiles here and there (which I did not think was going to be a problem) and secondly, after a lot of thought (about Frank’s abilities, specifically) we decided to lay the tiles at 45 degrees to the walls.

I explained this to Frank and could see that he didn’t *quite* get it. So I explained, explained some more, figured that the lights were going on. And they were, except that after day one it’s clear that he didn’t quite get the whole spot tile thing.

So I explained some more. Showed him how to use a 45 degree mitre to draw the cut line. Explained that the spot tile is 110mm wide, so the cut line has to be 55 plus a bit from the tip of the big tile. Drew lines, drew pictures.

And told him which tiles to rip out and redo (two of the four at left, the other two just have to be cut straight).

That’s the problem with not using the professionals. I not only have to understand the job, I have to figure out how to explain the job to Frank so that he understands.

But I think the lights went on this morning, we’ll have to see…

2008-06-05 by wrm House 0

Krankenhaus im Fischwinkel

So I stuffed my back up.

Again.

Tall people don’t always have all the fun. The world is not built around (or for) us.

OK, I’m planning to remedy that in my kitchen, but that’s the extent of my control over the world.

Anyway, I leaned over Tanya’s clothes rack exercise bicycle to pick up the camera and… yowch.

Spent the night flat on my back while managing not to snore, which is a feat in itself (Tanya gives me the hairy eyeball and an elbow in the ribs if I dare to snore). 50mg Voltaren and dicloflam are my friends.

But the plumbing will have to wait.

2008-06-04 by wrm House 1

Cheap^H^H^H^H^HLess expensive brass

This is R226 worth of brass fittings from Muizenberg market. A *lot* cheaper than buying from a hardware store.

And this is the progress I made on Saturday.

I cheated by making the frame on the ground, using No More Nails glue to hold it together (I realised that I would need four hands to build the frame in place on the ceiling). Even then it was tricky to get it tacked into position, one hand to hold the nail, one to hold the hammer, so I had to balance the other side of the frame on my head.

After the market on Sunday, Tanya and I picked some paint for the living room (off white) and Tamsyn’s room (a very light shade of purple). Also got a cheap lantern type lamp fitting for outside the back door. We then went past CTM to pick up some more spot tiles for the dining room / kitchen floor, but they’re still not in stock. While there Tanya found some light green border tiles on special, R5 each (normal price is closer to R25). We bought the lot (5 linear meters).

Sunrise from the top of Ou Kaapse Weg this morning. Cape Town is beautiful in June.

2008-06-02 by wrm House 1

Variable Star

Book Review

Variable Star is described as a book by Robert A Heinlein and Spider Robinson.

Bullshit.

It’s a Spider Robinson through and through.

And better for it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a die-hard Heinlein fan. He shaped large parts of who I am. But Spider is better.

Recommended.

2008-06-02 by wrm Uncategorized 0

Looking better

So the geyser (inside) plumbing is pretty much done. I finally found 90 degree 22mm solder bends at Mica in Diep River. Also bought a Ryobi belt sander for R800. The Bosch is far nicer, but also double the price.

I then went on to Builders Warehouse, their saving grace is that they’re open ’till 1900. Bought a 20L tin of primer (almost R800) and a double handful of 22mm brass compression fittings (R500). With a bit of filler here, a piece of copper pipe there, and so forth, this brings my day’s expenses to R3000. Fun.

So this morning the geyser got itself plumbed, bled, etc. Now for the outside work, which will be compression fittings and polycop pipe.

Frank’s also been busy. OK, so the picture on the right falls under “one step forward, two steps back” — the box was in the wall when I realised that I needed a second wire, because I’m running the main light off 220V and the downlights off 12V, and separate switches is the way to go.

And this was the view coming down Ou Kaapse Weg this morning. This shot taken on my mik&druk out the car window, it was a lot more impressive in real life, lemmetellya.

Cape Town. Gotta love the place.

2008-05-28 by wrm House 0

Progress Report

No great strides, but I made a little progress here and there.

After looks better than before, no? I’ve been meaning to relocate the existing hatch in the hallway, since I want to build a cupboard which would limit access to it. Wasn’t planning on having it in the kitchen, but then Frank slipped up (or down, in this case) and I decided to make the best of the situation. I added a crossmember and a few battons, and took a UPS pallet apart for the plywood which I used to build a platform I can sit on while getting into / out of the roof.

A bit of cretestone and paint and it’ll look OK (and the small hole on the wall side will be above a built-in cupboard, so no worries there.

OK, that’s the one step forward.

I originally thought to hang the new geyser on the outside wall, and started cutting the pipes leading to the old geyser in preparation. Then I bought a 200 liter geyser, and then I realised that 200 liter geysers can’t be wall-hung. And the pipes are of the old style, where the 22mm type is slightly smaller than the new stuff, which means that the solder fittings don’t. Fit, that is. So my attempts at rejoining the pipe were futile.

So I gave up, told Frank to knock another hole in the wall for the water to the geyser.

Now I need a hand full of 22mm 90 degree solder type bends to complete the work. I used two 45 degree bends on the hot side — nobody seems to have 90 degree 22mm bends (I can get plenty 15mm and even 28mm).

And then the outside plumbing starts. Rough estimate — For now I need six 22mm Ts, 4 reducing Ts, 4 22mm bends, 4 reducing bends, more pipe… this is another thousand rands’ worth of stuff, because I’m using poly pipe, so I need compression fittings. Doing it the other way ’round is worse — the fittings are much cheaper, but the pipe clocks in at something like R35/m for the thin walled (less expensive, but doesn’t bend) stuff. This is for the kids’ side of the house only, I still have to figure out where and how the pipes are going to run on our side.

And we bought paint, sticking to standard colours as advised by the chappie at Builder’s Warehouse. He advised us to use a roof paint (Bristol Acrylic Roof Paint) for the fascias, and on-special Dulux Weatherguard for the walls. Tanya picked cream (“Flamenco”) for the walls and red-ish brown (“Burgundy Red”) for the fascias. Bought two x 20l of the Dulux, will probably need that much again.

2008-05-27 by wrm House 1

Alice and the Red Queen

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” — Red Queen.

I’m spending about 2, 2 1/2 hours each morning doing (at the moment) the plumbing and electricity. Meanwhile Frank is running out of work to do, he has to tile the bathroom walls, but not before I’ve plumbed the bath mixer tap in and checked for leaks. He has to patch up the wall in the kitchen, but not before I’ve wired up the light switch boxes. And it seems to me that he works more slowly the less work he has, to make sure of his continued employment. Understandable, of course. But that means that I’m the handbrake on the works.

I told him that next week he’s starting to paint the outside of the house. That will keep him busy, giving me time to catch up with the plumbing.

Unless it rains, of course.

The previous owners added the triple garage, and a wondrous thing it is, but they never painted the cement blocks, so that’s where Frank will start. On the shopping list : 20 liters of plaster primer and two rollers & trays.

Meanwhile Tanya is choosing the colours — she doesn’t like the current green & white scheme. Me? I’m a guy. Red, green and blue are colours, Mauve, Lilac and Magenta are characters from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. (OK, I might be mistaken about Mauve and Lilac).

2008-05-22 by wrm House 0

Lights

How much light does one need in, for example, a kitchen? The answer is “lots” but if you’re the main contractor that doesn’t help much :-)

I found http://www.lightingplans.com/lightPlansDesign102.html which tells me that a kitchen needs 1 to 1.5 watts of CFL per square foot, which translates to about ten times that per square meter. (work-in-progress warning) The kitchen is 10.5 square meters total, of which around 6 meters is floor space. Call it 90 – 150 watts total. Looks like four to six downlights loaded with 13 watt CFL bulbs for task illumination, coupled with a central light for general illuminiation, will do. Along with that I’ll use some kind of undercounter lights, probably LED technology from LEDzShine. There’s no sense having a gas stove but still having to cook by candle light when Eskom does it’s inevitable thing — I’m planning to run the 12V lights off a battery charged by the mains, sort of a lighting UPS.

On the living room side of things, we have no idea what we want to do. I installed four light points in the ceiling, dividing the length and the width roughly into thirds. It’ll have to do.

We also bought (see “We’re Not There Yet” on Tanya’s blog :-) two chandeliers for the kids — a purple glassy thing for Tamsyn and a black gothy thing for Jessica. R599 and R699 from Mr Price Home.

Tanya saw this one at Builder’s Warehouse. For “our” bathroom. Expensive… but nice.

2008-05-21 by wrm House 1

Chaos

I feel that things should be coming together around now. Instead, it feels as if the chaos is taking over, like in The Never Ending Story. We’re still busy chasing pipes into walls, making holes for plumbing, and so on — I think mostly because of lack of planning on my part — I’ve not been able to visualise the process properly, to make sure that things get done in order.

OK, some of this is due to plans changing on-the-fly, but still.

On the upside, Colin helped me out with the kitchen layout over the weekend. We sort-of decided that the counter tops can’t be postform, mainly because of the 400mm prep counter with the 600mm bump over the dishwasher, a constuct like that has to be something expensive like granite or Corian or something simple like Formica with wood edging. Provisional choice is cherry.

The ceiling in the living room is in, being cretestoned and corniced today. That at least counts for progress.

2008-05-19 by wrm House 0

Floors and flooring

Some decisions are easy. Kitchen, bathroom : tile. Tamsyn’s room, can’t be carpet (asthma) : tile or lino or wood. Other decisions are more difficult. Living room : carpet or tile? Tile is great when it comes to cleaning up red wine spills, but it’s hard and makes a room “ring” very easily. Carpet is quieter.

When we pulled up the existing carpets we found quite nice wooden floors in all three bedrooms. That makes it easy, sand down the wooden floors for Tanya’s activity room (the old small bedroom) and Tamsyn’s room. Carpet Jessica’s room and the space outside the bedrooms / bathroom.

The living room floor is half wood and half slasto (slate stone / leiklip). You can’t tile over a wooden floor. So carpet it is. But you shouldn’t carpet straight over slasto, although the previous owners did. The slasto is uneven, and the carpet will wear on the high spots (thanks Mike). A levelling screed is required. One that can be worked to a feather edge.

So then the question : bring the kitchen tiles out into the dining area / foyer, or bring the living room carpet out into the foyer / dining area? I’m going with the tile idea for now. (Edit : the dining room floor is also slasto).

(And in case you’re wondering the old activity room / new master bedroom has a nice wooden floor which we’re not doing anything to).

Anyway, we bought some tiles from CTM this weekend.

2 square meters ASA2010A San Marco Grey @ R45.90/square : Tamsyn’s bathroom floor.

14 square meters CCL20B1A Cleo Grey @ 59.90/square : Tamsyn’s bathroom walls.

32 Orchid Grey Listello border tiles @ 24.90/each (!) : Tamsyn’s bathroom wall border.

3 Orchid Grey Spotter @ 90.90/each (!!!!!) : Tamsyn’s bathroom wall.

I really should leave Tanya at home when it comes to buying tiles.

10 square meters LC680 Bahamas Beige @ 64.90/square : Kitchen floor.

4 Tunis Corner (110×110 inset tiles) @ 29.90/each : Kitchen floor.

If we tile the dining area etc I’d probably need another 13 squares of the Bahamas Beige.

Edit : Bought another 14 squares Bahamas Beige.

2008-05-12 by wrm House 0