Category Archives: House

Second coat (part II)

Another segment of ceiling plastered today.

Two, probably three, more pieces to go.

And then the walls.

Second coat (part I)

Today has been, mostly, been spent plastering the newly joined ceiling. I’d managed a first full coat before Germany, but I was a little over ambitious and attempted the whole ceiling.

I’m a slow plasterer and it’s a large ceiling, so a full coat of plaster in a single day was never going to be fun. It took me six hours and the result was rougher than I’d hoped for, but it was only intended to be a first coat to join the two ceilings together.

So, today, I felt it wise to split the job into segments. With a better outcome.

The picture’s fuzzy, but I’m quite happy with the second coat. That’s a quarter of the ceiling done, with part two tomorrow.

Yesterday was more pleasant, with a walk along the Tyne.

Home

Whiensthephan. In the Head of Steam, after a pretty strange train journey from Peterborough.

It was good to return home to have a traditional British beer.

Spare bedroom(s)

While I’m some time away from completing the conversion of two bedrooms into one, the huge gap between the two ceilings is no more. After delaying for too long, I finally got around to a first full coast of plaster yesterday.

It looks a little rough, mainly because I’d grossly underestimated the time I’d need to cover the whole ceiling, but I’d always anticipated a second coat.

It’ll be another couple of weeks before I can do that (one has a life outside the spare bedroom), but I’ve decided on dividing the whole into managable chunks to make sure I’ve time to work with the plaster before it goes off (the tartar sauce tip proved to be an ineffective method of slowing down the hardening process).

The cupboard under the stairs

We don’t actually have a natural cupboard under the stairs. We have one created in the 80s; it was originally meant to be an open space. So we do have a space under the stairs which resembles a cupboard. Without a door.

The doorway (which seems briefly to have had a door in the mid-80s) is around five seven high. Which means I need to duck when entering the space to access the fridge or freezer (we don’t have anywhere else to out them).

So moving the freezer deeper into the depths of the under the stairs/cupboard under the stairs space might not have been the best idea.

The end result is that, to access the freezer, I must now stoop to a degree which is wholly unacceptable for a man of my age.

I don’t actually use a lot of stuff from the freezer. Linda McCartney sausages for hangover Sunday morning sandwiches (with a liberal amount of brown sauce), a loaf of bread, or the occasional leftover chilli; that’s about the limit of my freezer mining (I should have said, it’s a chest freezer).

I’m left with two options:

1. Wear a cycle helmet while attempting to access the freezer.

2. Avoid the freezer.

Oh, I forgot about the mandatory work option:

3. Do nothing.

Ceiling

It looks a little rough, but the two ceilings are now fully joined.

A full coat of plaster is next. I have to admit to some nervousness; I’ve not previously undertaken such a larce ceiling.

Â£618

After submitting meter readings a few days, we’ve received a new energy bill. The previous readings/bill had reduced our monthly electricity and gas costs to just Â£34. While it was clear that the new stove would have reduced our energy costs, we realised that a drop from Â£120 a month was unrealistic.

So, I’d intended to pay above the Â£34 to avoid a sharp increase after another winter. However, that didn’t happen, and so I’m now faced with another change in payments. A drop to Â£25 a month.

Taking into the cost of firewood, that means our last year’s energy costs have been an impressive Â£618. Better still, taking into account the new decrease, that could be around Â£510 for the next year.

Pre-stoves, our annual costs were around Â£1,440. Which gives us a saving of at least Â£798 over the past year. I’d not actually anticipated saving anything overall, so this is a nice bonus.

Of course, this has been a mild winter, so we`ve needed only six tons to firewood. But it does mean that the new stove has already paid for itself.

And, since wood is a carbon neutral fuel, our environmental impact is looking pretty good.

The wall

During the process of buying our house, a survey revealed minor structural problems. One of these involved the rear wall parting company with the rest of the house.

The necessary repairs were made, but the cracks which had appeared over a century or more were still evident. If one knew where to look.

While working in the spare room, evidence of the degree of movement could be seen.