Geek in progress

This weekend I’ve put up the insulation and the gyproc of the ceiling in the living room. To facilitate the job, I leased a special elevator, which can lift one plate of 3 by 1.2 meters without much effort. It also allows for near perfect placement so the plates can nearly touch each other. My father-in-law lend me a hand, and we had most of the work done by 6 pm. As usual, the bits I did alone took a bit longer, and we finally managed to wrap it up at 22:30 pm, which included vacuum cleaning and putting most of the furniture back in place.

We still have to decide which lights to put up, but we at least agreed on the positions they should be put up at. We chose three circuits in the lounge space, and a single circuit in the food-fest room.

Found the problem, originally uploaded by Itkovian.

When we arrived home yesterday, it was pouring cats and dogs. I ran inside, fearing the cellar might have been flooded, but everything was ok there. I slowly made my way upstairs, to fetch a dry t-shirt. Passing the bathroom, I noticed a puddle of water in the middle of the floor, unconnected to any wall. Fear gripped me, as I remembered the water that once poured through the ceiling into the office space, wrecking the laminate on the floor. I figured the roof was leaking again.

Checking upstairs, I saw a large puddle, growing rapidly. I never raced that fast down the stairs to fetch some buckets and some towels. I yelled to Veerle and her dad to come up and help, getting a very fast response. After we managed to stop the puddle from growing larger and reaching the vent shaft of the bathroom ventilator, we looked for the problem in between two periods of heavy rainfall. Clearly, the plumber who put in the drainpipe from the roofs frontside to the back, made a slight error. Not only was the output hole of the pipe partially covered, the plate attached to said output hole was much too small to withstand any backfiring water, causing the pressure to spout the water back into the attic.

We managed to fix it by leveraging the stone covering the hole, and by climbing onto the neighbouring roof once the thunderstorm had passed on. Sadly, the water had made it through a crack in the floor to the bathroom (hence the puddle I noticed), filling up the space on top of our new shiny gyroc ceiling. Luckily, we used green gyproc, which is supposed to be able to withstand a lot of humidity.

We’ll see what the insurance guy says when he comes by. In any case, we need this fixed soon. So far, we didn’t notice any permamanent damage, but this might change as the ceiling dries out. Luckily the new bathroom furniture was not affected.

I managed to do at least some work around the house during the past few weeks. We’ve had the MetalStud delivered to construct the fake ceiling framework in the living room.

First task was getting the edges put up, in a decent and horizontal fashion. Because we’ve got a lot of things to mind when planning the final height of the ceiling (audio connections, other electrical boxes hanging near the (real) ceiling on the wall, concrete slabs bridging the gap between the dining and slouching rooms, …) I decided not to fiddle around with a XXX, but I went out and bought a nifty laser equipped tool that calibrates itself horizontally and draws a 360 degreee laser arc on the walls. It went flawlessly. The only drawback was the fact that the device came with a tripod that could raise it to about 1m50. Whereas we needed it raised to at least 2m60. I know that once you have a horizontal line drawn on the wall, you can easily add height, but that would mean walking around, trying not to miss anything and measuring repeatedly to get the final height right – the exact problem we wanted to avoid by purchasing the laser in the first place. Two tables stacked on top of each other neatly circumvented that particular drawback. So we ended up with a red line, we coved with pencil markings. Took us 15 minutes, costing €180.

The edges went up pretty fast, after I went out and bought the rings to prevent the screws from bending the metal too much. That was the end of afternoon one.

The second afternoon, we cut the crossing bars and put them in place. The cutting went slowly, until a friend brought his electrical saw, equipped with a nifty metal cutting blade, that went through the MetalStud like it was (almost) nothing (which, of course, it is). We did the bars in the slouching room and the first half of the dining place. So far, so good.

Then came the toughest part: bridging the gap between the kitchen and living room. We ordered a few plates cut in a local store, and lo! swiftly the wood went up, producing a nice frame. the idea is that the frame is strong enough to attach a few open cupboards underneath it, to store our glasses.

Finally, we put up the remaining edge against the frame, and cut the crossing bars and put them up.

The kitchen remains undone for now, because I suspect the store not having delivered the correct MetalStud bars. We have one edge (4m) and eleven crossing sections (4m each). We need to cover a place of 2m by 2m80. The crossing bars should be places 30 cm apart. So do the math and discover that either we miss one edge, or that we have three crossing bars too much.

It seemed like a good idea to post a list of thing I’ve got to do. That way, certain people who provide gear and stuff can see what they need to order and bring along. So, in no particular order:

• Toilet downstairs
• Cover the walls with plaster
• Put in a new door
• Cover the plaster and toilet coverage with nice wall tiles
• Paint the ceiling once more
• Put in the light
• Finish with a nice paper on the walls
• Garden
• Prepare boxing for the concrete
• Fetch iron raster
• Order concrete
• Order floor tiles
• Order flowers and plant them
• Bathroom
• Put fiber against the wall
• Paint
• New furniture
• Place wall tiles around furniture
• Living room
• Order gyproc and metal-stut for the ceiling
• Locate laser equipment to determine ceiling position
• Put up ceiling
• Order lights
• Paint ceiling
• Basement
• Order floor tiles for the storage room
• Place floor tiles on the floor in a nice checker pattern

Ok, that should keep me occupied during the summer. Anybody experienced enough not the render the place fubar is invited to help. I’ll provide the food (BBQ preferably, weather permitting) when the job is done.

Ah well, I’m about to have green grass and I already have a pretty girl, so the song must apply. Since Friday, June 16th, I’ve noticed small patches of grass coming through the topsoil. Three days later, the leaves have grown immensely, and more than a green shine is clearly visible. I am wondering though, if the lawn will be covered uniformly, because the rain of the previous week has put a few dents in my carefully levelled land. One can now see leftovers of footsteps, the handle of the rake going back and forth, etc. Most grass leaves are visible on the higher ground, not in the valleys, so to speak. We will see what happens in the next few days. We still have eleven days to go.

Nine thousand five hundred kilo. Six cubic metres. Dirt. Three wheelbarrows. Two Shovels. Three men. Four hours. Thirty minute break. One pizza. One bottle of Coca-Cola. Goal: levelling the land.

Those are the statistics of the evening hard work, when we moved the new earth to the garden. The neighbours were friendly enough to come and chat, but none offered any help. Ah well, so be it. In the end I think we would have too much earth, but as thing turned out the next day, I was sadly mistaken. It took me a whole afternoon to clean up the twigs from the bushes, and level the earth some more, pack it, using a concrete wheel thingie, and rerake it.

On Sunday, I levelled some more, planted sticks and attached bags to keep the birds at bay. Finally, I got round to sowing grass seed, sufficient for 100 square metres (we only have about 60 square metres for the lawn). It was also very hot, so I had to give water twice a day. I ended up with this:

The garden fence is up. Now we await payment from the neighbours, who promised to pay half of the costs we made to make sure we can no longer see each other.

If anybody needs some rocks, stones, or junk to burn, drop me a line. There’s plenty of it still awaiting removal.

Next step is the final levelling of the land. Tomorrow 9.5 tons of garden earth (6 cubic metres)will be dropped on our porch.