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xXsephirothXvillasXx In other news, cost so far on rendering is £160 above the renderer's estimate for the entire work, with probably a grand more to go.. Cost £1,560.00 Total so far £152,526.71 Pretty much all my money is tied up now through to October.
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Jun 15, 2018 11:51
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Jaded Villas £152,526.71
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Jun 15, 2018 21:31
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My dude I would be delighted if the number stopped there such that it could be literally set in stone.
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Jun 15, 2018 21:46
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like this
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Jun 15, 2018 23:12
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Yeah that looks about right, with a mural of calvin pissing on the stone from the side
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Jun 15, 2018 23:17
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peanut posted:like this 
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Jun 15, 2018 23:17
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Alright so as of last post here is where we are with the rendering, just the gable end to go (and no money to pay for it)  Takes a couple of weeks to reach its full whiteness. He's done a generally good job but why couldn't he clean up properly?   Which brings me to a small rant. The more I look closely at parts of the work done by the original builder (and some of the other trades here and there) the more small fuckups I see. I'm staring down the barrel of having to learn how to plaster to finish up the last bits because otherwise it'll take months for me to be able to pay someone else to do it and keeps all the interior on hold until I do, and much like with the too-short door linings there's plenty of issues raised by plasterers I've had round for quotes. I might call all that out later but I was just now looking at one of the "simpler" bits of work that needs doing and look at this bullshit      What's plumb and level, precious? I'm going to have to remove that entire lining as well, and probably half the boarding. And why don't these plug socket locations match?   Different wall constructions maybe? Nope. Both corners were built the same at the same time, plastered the same, wired at the same time. It's like I'm the only one here with any goddamn attention to detail.
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Jun 16, 2018 20:21
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This is going to sound bad and you might hate me. But I am so happy and pleased to see your photos of wonky walls, bananaering plasterboard and unlevel everything else. I've been building my own place and it is whack as gently caress and I've been beating myself up and lamenting not spending money on professionals to do things to at least have things straight and level so the later things I do are so much easier. So its great to know paying professionals to do poo poo ends up with roughly the same problems I've got anyway just without quite so much money having gone.
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Jun 16, 2018 23:22
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To be fair, it’s luck of the draw. My renderer also plastered my kitchen ceiling which is a solid 42sqm and it’s completely flat and level. Turns out hiring shoddy workers gets shoddy work. Or good workers who’re having a shoddy day. Or good workers who’re employing shoddy workers etc
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Jun 16, 2018 23:58
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One of my examples is I've left a gap for a big american fridge freezer to go. It is perfectly correctly dimensioned. If they sell fridges this shape: ____ \ ....\ . \.... \ . / ..../ /___/
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Jun 17, 2018 03:02
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Jaded Burnout posted:Which brings me to a small rant. While the basic idea behind plastering is simple, getting the flawless finish that you clearly aspire to is definitely not simple and takes years of experience and practise. Pay someone good like your renderer to do it! I am much much less of a perfectionist than you and am working with a cheap lovely house with lots of artex and walls with blown plaster rather than an expensive blank canvas like yours (so its hard to make make mine worse) and have attempted to plaster a few walls. You will not like your results...
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Jun 17, 2018 12:23
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Tomarse posted:While the basic idea behind plastering is simple, getting the flawless finish that you clearly aspire to is definitely not simple and takes years of experience and practise. Pay someone good like your renderer to do it! Very possible which is why I’ve not tried it so far, but paying someone isn’t an option, I’m out of money. TBH if I try it on a wall which already needs fully redoing and gently caress it up then I end up with the same wall that still needs redoing minus some money for a float etc.
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Jun 17, 2018 13:08
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Have you considered prefab paneling just for that back section? Surely they've got something like fiber cement, hardyboard, shingles etc. in the uk.
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Jun 17, 2018 13:37
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peanut posted:Have you considered prefab paneling just for that back section? Surely they've got something like fiber cement, hardyboard, shingles etc. in the uk. Unfortunately that's only a portion of the work that needs doing, we're talking about a bunch of little jobs that add up to £1300 of plasterer time.
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Jun 17, 2018 13:45
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This is why I dread building. I don't have the time to do it all myself, but I also don't have the time to hover over the contractors and make sure they don't half rear end it.
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Jun 17, 2018 14:33
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Even if you do have the time you can't physically watch work in four rooms at once. And for me at least the work I was watching was often beyond my ability to tell good from bad.
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Jun 17, 2018 15:25
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I used to professionally remodel and tile bathrooms. When building back up I have NEVER seen a square wall or level beam.
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Jun 17, 2018 18:15
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Jaded Burnout posted:Very possible which is why I’ve not tried it so far, but paying someone isn’t an option, I’m out of money. You will understand my post 3-5 days after you attempt that wall... when your plaster fully dries and you first get to really compare your finish to the finish on the other walls that the pros have done and you realise just how much skill there actually is in plastering!  Ill dig out some of the better YouTube tutorials that I watched for the last bit I did (100% covered by kitchen units and tiles!). Is your wall currently bare brick?
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Jun 17, 2018 23:19
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Do you have (permanent) stairs in your house (yet)?
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Jun 17, 2018 23:20
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peanut posted:Do you have (permanent) stairs in your house (yet)? No, that's another £4k I don't have and in any case needs to go in after the painting which has to happen after the plastering.
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Jun 18, 2018 03:36
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Jaded Burnout posted:Alright so as of last post here is where we are with the rendering, just the gable end to go (and no money to pay for it) You're so close but so far!!! This is my nightmare, being stuck mid-construction without the funds to continue. Sorry you have to live it.  Do you have plans for after October?Jaded Burnout posted:It's like I'm the only one here with any goddamn attention to detail. This. This gets me every time. Sometimes the detail isn't even like a tiny detail, it's like a blindingly obvious detail. Jaded Burnout posted:Even if you do have the time you can't physically watch work in four rooms at once. And for me at least the work I was watching was often beyond my ability to tell good from bad. Do you think you would have benefited from engaging an architect to help you oversee the build, especially with inspecting and signing off at the key milestones? I think the information asymmetry is honestly the worst thing.
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Jun 18, 2018 06:43
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I had plans for the house this weekend, in that around Friday afternoon I realised I'd gone too hard that week and wasn't going to be able to do a lot of careful physical work, and that perhaps I should redirect my energies into immediate concerns as a method of self-care. As you may have noticed I've been having a bit of a bad time of it lately. So I looked at the things that were causing me stress and two popped out. 1. my kitchen / temp workshop area is a loving bomb site and I can never find the right tools 2. the cladding was sat outside from when I unloaded it (my back is recovered now) and I was concerned about the bottom layers getting damp and lack of drying after the rain, plus the top boards were starting to season in the UV of the sunlight which is fine in general but was causing some trucker's suntan on any boards that were sticking out. A couple of pieces were also warped and/or warping. So the plan was to tidy up the area and bring in the cladding, with the latter being a priority but at least some of the former needing doing to get there. Before:   I don't really have an "after" because I was more wiped out than I thought and didn't get to it until Sunday, but I gathered a bunch of the tools and cleared the right hand side so I could do this:  I've never done 60 deadlift curls and sets of a 3m long barbell before but that's pretty much what this was, quite the workout. The most frustrating part was the kick in the teeth at the end where I had to bring 10 5m long corner pieces in through a 4m wide entryway. I had to cut up and trim all my remaining sawn timber to use as spacers, but that's fine, I wasn't likely to use them for anything else. I ended up with a compromise where they're stacked in twos so one side of each board is always exposed to air. I'll continue tidying that area piecemeal, moving tools and such around until I have a better environment to work in. Leng posted:You're so close but so far!!! This is my nightmare, being stuck mid-construction without the funds to continue. Sorry you have to live it. Depends how I get on with the plastering. If Doomsayer Tomarse's portents come true then first on the list for spare money is a plasterer, then painter, then stairs, then kitchen, carpets, other flooring, then furniture. Beyond that is back outside for garden stuff. The last bit of rendering I need to get done while the weather is still good. Leng posted:Do you think you would have benefited from engaging an architect to help you oversee the build, especially with inspecting and signing off at the key milestones? I think the information asymmetry is honestly the worst thing. Architects don't know poo poo about building a house beyond the broad strokes. A foreman maybe, but how would I know I had a good, knowledgeable foreman? There's a bootstrapping issue there. And it would've cost a fortune.
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Jun 18, 2018 07:58
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Unfortunately it sounds like you just have to remain positive until you've money again. Start freecycling plants for the garden?
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Jun 18, 2018 12:46
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cakesmith handyman posted:Unfortunately it sounds like you just have to remain positive until you've money again. Start freecycling plants for the garden? The garden needs a full topsoil replacement  I've got plenty to be getting on with with the cladding.
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Jun 18, 2018 12:57
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Had my spread round to wrap up a couple of bits on the rendering and we got to talking, I mentioned that out of a bit of desperation I'm going to have to try my hand at it. He was supportive but suggested an alternate plan, whereby I do all the prep and he comes in just for the skim, saving me money and him hassle. So that's the plan. He walked me through what needed doing, I'll get on it when I'm not cladding. In other news the Other Guy whose project was being hosed by the mutual builder has finally kicked him off his job, being that he only managed to get him in for 5 hours last week. I spy a lawsuit in their future because they're probably 30k behind on paid-for work, but that's their business not mine.
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Jun 18, 2018 17:15
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I had the best of the best and they did such a magnificent job “plastering” a wall the guys at the paint shop were in awe. Same guys who added a second bathroom I can literally see the drywall tape and it is poo poo.
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Jun 21, 2018 05:51
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Doors are acclimatising, along with the just-arrived new door linings.
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Jun 21, 2018 12:40
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Hello, doors!!!!!
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Jun 21, 2018 14:38
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I’m happier with their design too, when I bought the other one it seemed good enough, but this style is simpler and more interesting at the same time. Still haven’t picked out an architrave profile. I did have one in mind but then I learned a detail about how they’re fitted that changed my mind.
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Jun 21, 2018 14:44
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One advantage of not having a bunch of money to throw around is I don't have anything more booked which means I can have a few days (or weeks) of relative peace from not having to be dealing with trades and deliveries.
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Jun 22, 2018 12:23
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Alright so today my plan was to get some edge pieces on the back extension. After some hard thinking I decided that doing the crossbar above the main back doors would be the best start, because I need to use it as a starting point for boards going directly above it. If I started at the bottom or top of the wall there's no guarantee that the boards would line up with the edging when I got to that point, whereas I have some flexibility to trim boards at the top and bottom if needed. First I dug through all my (5m long) edge pieces looking for the one in best nick. It's going to be just above head height on the most visible extension so making it a nice one is important. Here's the best one. No significant nicks or dents on the edge, no visible knots.   The rejects which I'll use elsewhere.  It's not the straightest board in the world but it's good enough and I only need a 4m length of it, so I'll start away from the bend.  Next up I moved the cutting station outside.   I then eyed up the place where they were going to go, and remembered that my original plan (butt the edges right up against the door frame and use the existing batten) isn't going to work anymore because I needed to switch to thicker batten to accommodate the reduced thickness that comes from hidden nail boards. You can see here the original plan   vs what I'm going to have to do   As you can see there's quite a large gap which I'm going to have to fill for the sake of the visuals somehow, perhaps with rubber seals? In any case it requires removing this batten and replacing it with the thicker batten I have. I didn't really see why he bothered to run the batten all the way around the framing vs just using the bottom of the vertical struts, but I don't know exactly what his plan was. In any case I'm doing it my way.  By this point I'd been out in the sun long enough to warrant some sun protection, so I kitted up with a sweatband (where have these been all my life), a hat with a neck covering, and these lycra arm coverings that keep the sun off and wick sweat.  Also dug out my tool belt, reconfigured it from sockets & wiring to hammers & nails    The hammer holder is also perfect fit for holstering my impact driver which is great because I can't be bothered to track down the holster that came with it. Off comes the existing batten   You can see the original colour, this has been exposed outside for a very long time now.  Toolbelt doing work.  You can also see that the height of the roof has changed since the original batten went on. These two layers of wood are now permanent additions, the fibreglass meets the top on the other side, so the new batten needs to go all the way up.  I needed to drill holes for the new batten which is at slightly different positions. I'd bought an SDS drill for this purpose, I knew it was cheap but turns out the chuck is really crap. Oh well, it just about does the job.  Finally realised what this bit of plastic is for, it stops the reel from reeling if you don't want it to.  Drilled the new holes at the same thickness as the body of the concrete framing screws I'm using, predrilled the batten and tried to fit it, and then discovered that once again the dense block this wall is made of is going to thwart me and the holes need to be bigger and/or I need to switch to rawl plugs. By this point I was out of energy, packed up, left some stuff outside, and closed up for the evening.   This reel has been annoying me so I sat down and sorted it out, then cleared some of the grass that had been getting caught in the doors when they closed.   Feet up with some cake.  I'll have another go tomorrow, I've extended my goal from today to this weekend. Bonus blurry rat pic 
Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Jun 23, 2018 |
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Jun 23, 2018 18:13
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dicks out for jaded burnout!
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Jun 24, 2018 00:41
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Jaded Burnout posted:I needed to drill holes for the new batten which is at slightly different positions. I'd bought an SDS drill for this purpose, I knew it was cheap but turns out the chuck is really crap. Oh well, it just about does the job. Haha, your 'Katsu' drill is a rip off of the Bosch one even down to the case! 
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Jun 24, 2018 09:45
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Tomarse posted:Haha, your 'Katsu' drill is a rip off of the Bosch one even down to the case! Hah yeah I noticed that. You know what you're getting when there's five different branded versions of the exact same product on Amazon, definitely someone just bulk ordering off alibaba. I can assure you it does not come with the quality, no matter how bad the bosch one may or may not be. The plastic separators in the case are already snapped, the plastic tubes for the bits feel like those plastic tube drinks we had as kids, and the chuck has a design flaw where the screw holding it on self-destructs if you use a non-SDS+ bit in hammer mode.
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Jun 24, 2018 10:14
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Spent the day a-workin'. No photos unfortunately; I didn't have my phone on me and was enjoying not being tethered to it. I waited until a considerate hour before starting drilling, it being Sunday morning and all, and then procrastinated a little bit more. Handy that I did because just as I was on the way out the back, the SDS+ bits that I ordered yesterday dropped through the door. After about an hour of loving around with different drills and different sized bits I finally got a consistent workflow that meant I could use the tools for what they were designed for, namely drilling out a large enough hole two handed with the SDS so that my impact driver could get the screws in one handed while holding the batten in place. A bit of finessing was required to make sure the bottom of the battens over the doorway were level, though I guess it's not a huge deal, that's what spacers are made for. Likewise getting the uprights level took some doing, especially with the tricky nature of having to use two drills and an impact driver yet still line up the holes. One other catch was that I needed to set the bottom of the uprights to the exact height of where I want the bottom edge of the cladding to be (and I've just realised I forgot to trim the thickness of the edge piece off so I'm going to have to pull them off and trim and put back, no big). And the level I wanted it to be at was the lower level of the rendering on the other side of the house. So, how do you do that? You can't measure from the ground because the earth isn't level, and can't really rely on any of the other fittings. So I pulled a level block & line around the corner and marked it, then used a long level to mark all the way across underneath the entrance. All in all I got the battens above the entryway done and the uprights on each side, so I can finally start putting the edge pieces on next session, whenever that is. I'm jiggered, yo.
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Jun 24, 2018 17:28
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Any work like that on your own is a parade of going back and forth, up and down dozens of times. Not surprised you're knackered.
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Jun 24, 2018 19:46
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cakesmith handyman posted:Any work like that on your own is a parade of going back and forth, up and down dozens of times. Not surprised you're knackered. You're not wrong, though setting up a work table outside and judicious use of a toolbelt can cut that down mightily. I don't think I would've lasted otherwise.
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Jun 24, 2018 20:12
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Jaded Burnout posted:They seem to be historical, usually [something] villas, which I take to mean "large-ish single-family detached home". Ordnance Survey have a data set of place and building names which could answer that. Oscar Romeo Romeo fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jun 26, 2018 |
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Jun 26, 2018 00:03
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Oscar Romeo Romeo posted:Ordnance Survey have a data set of place and building names which could answer that. I'm not 100% sure but I think that's the same royal mail dataset that gets used to populate addresses on various websites, and the house is just numbered in those, so I suspect there's nothing there. You inspired me to go looking, though, and the 1911 census shows this (the house was almost certainly built in 1908):  No house name (I'm wondering it ever actually had one), but some interesting things about the occupiers. A bit more looking and there seems to be a connection with New Zealand and the Bull family. Land Registry does seem to sell historical title registers and deeds, but at 30 quid a pop I'm not going to jump on that right now.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:25
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Weird coincidence: I actually wrote the import handler and merger for that exact data set for Google Maps - the ordnance survey one, not the royal mail. Royal mail is a bit different, but not that far off. Anyhow, if you can't find it on Google Maps you're not super likely to get it from reading the dataset yourself - that import was pretty complete.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:57
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