That 'big project' I've been banging on about for a few years now....

[James Harrison]

Another couple of square feet of flooring exposed and sanded down.  In the words of one of our supermarket chains, 'every little helps'.

In a very real sense this is about as far as I can go with the floor without having to move heavy furniture around.  And, naturally, I want to do as little of that as I can get away with.  So when I've finished cleaning down the last bit of skirting board I can reasonably reach, I'm going to shift focus toward re-papering the back wall and staining some trim. 

In fact, I think I need to be getting that back wall about as close to completion as I can reasonably get it, and then move the furniture around and start again on the next wall along. 

The issue I'm finding I've got to grapple with is that unlike the downstairs rooms, which I could just empty out and get on with the job, the upstairs rooms I have to try and work on whilst keeping them habitable.  And that makes the whole thing take several times longer and require a lot more thought and effort. 

[James Harrison]

Well, I lied.  There is a substantial chunk of the front wall that I can be stripping down without needing to move furniture.  So this week I was working on that.



A bit more paper removed from the terrace end wall.  Happily, that didn't reveal any more nightmare ET mural. 



The front wall to the left of the window.  I've about removed the paper up to the wardrobe.  You might also see here that the edging around the sash window has also been taken down. 



I've only just started on the right of the window, again taken up to the wardrobe, but on this side I've got about 6' in the height still to strip down. 



And the window edging had to come off because when it was fitted, back in 2020, it was just laid on top of the existing paper. 

So this coming week I'll be carrying on with that, then stripping down as much of the skirting board as I can reach, and then there's another strip of carpet and flooring I can get to so that will be torn up and sanded down. 

It's probably going to be early March before I actually start redecorating anything.

[James Harrison]

The reality of trying to remodel a room that you've also got to live in.  It's slow, dirty, frustrating and exhausting.  You spend half an hour moving things out of the way to clear some working space and then within 10 minutes of starting the work you're having to stop and move things out of the way again.

This week's little victories then. 



A bit more skirting board was sanded down. 



Just about all of the wallpaper that I could get to on that final wall is now gone.



And a bit more of the carpet has been taken away, also the window sill has been sanded down and you can see still more skirting board sanded. 

There's still a lot of tearing down to be done but right now it feels like I'm chasing diminishing returns, until I can move something worthwhile out of the way and give it another go. 

Therefore I'm now thinking earnestly about what I can reasonably start redecorating.  An obvious win is the skirting board from the fireplace, along the backwall and up to the doorway architrave.  With that done I can then size the backwall, paper it and install the wainscotting I have in mind.  When that section is painted, I can then think about returning the bed to its proper position, taking down the radiator (as by then it will be late March/ early April and the heating should be off) and moving the furniture in front of that wall so I can get that side progressed.

[morozow]

I keep forgetting to ask. Are there ghosts in your house?

[James Harrison]

I keep forgetting to ask. Are there ghosts in your house?

I wouldn't definitively say 'yes' or 'no' to that question. 

What I would say, is that there have been one or two things happen, especially just after I moved in and just after I started the renovation work.  Things of the order of odd bangs, squeaks and rattles.  They stopped after I 'had words' with the house. 

You have to remember that the house is now 120 years old and inevitably has seen many events in that time, some happier than others.  I subscribe to the view that some of those will have left an echo or imprint behind. 

The house has an welcoming air or feel to it, there's no underlying hint of malice or menace - this contrasts with my parents house, which was built in the 1970s and often feels like there's 'something' on the staircase about to push you from behind. 

[morozow]

Can a brownie live in a house like this?  Or are they only in rural areas?

[James Harrison]

Can a brownie live in a house like this?  Or are they only in rural areas?

I'm not quite sure I understand you. Do you mean something in the way of an imp or faerie and that sort of thing?

I'm not sure to be honest, it's not something I can claim to have done any particular reading or research about.

[James Harrison]

Well, as you can see I've started staining the woodwork.  So far I've done the bits around the fireplace and then worked my way back to and around the doorframe and architrave.  That probably needs another coat (maybe two) and then I'm going to stain the door itself. 

When that's done I'll size the wall (at the moment I keep putting that job off, because the wallpaper paste only gives instructions for how to mix a 4-gallon batch of it and I probably need only a fraction of that to do the wall I can actually work on). 

I'm going to have to have a think, sooner rather than later, about the tools and materials I need to start papering this back wall. 

[James Harrison]

The woodwork got a second coat of stain, and then this morning I mixed up a small batch of wallpaper paste and started sizing the walls.

The instructions, as I said a few days ago, only give a batch size for mixing a whole 200g sachet and that ends up giving you 9 litres of the paste.  Which is far, far too much.  I used about 2.3 litres of water and a quarter of the packet and that was enough for me to do the entire back wall, the fireplace reveal and across the front of the chimneybreast.  In fact it was slightly too much and I ended up throwing away about 300 or 400ml when I finished.  But it gives me a useful datapoint to estimate with when I finish stripping the next section and have to size that. 

Last night I bought a few rolls of lining paper which I think should be enough to do the back wall and that inglenook. 



Now the debate is how close I want to go to this corner when papering.  There is a radiator to take down and when that is out of the way I have woodwork to clean up and wallpaper to strip.  So there is a real risk that if I go right into the corner, I'll end up damaging my work when preparing for a subsequent phase. 



My current line of thinking is that I will start at the doorway and work along the back wall to the far corner, and around the inglenook, and aim to finish this first bit somewhere on the fireplace. 

The goal remains that I'm aiming for something reminiscent of the Vienna Secession, this was the inspiration;



Especially the overall colourscheme and the wainscotting.  I've actually just bought a 500-some-odd page coffee table book of the work of that particular architect (Joseph Maria Olbrich), unfortunately it's in German so all I can do is look at the pretty pictures (I don't much want to be putting it through a translator one paragraph at a time...)

[James Harrison]

I've found a new activity to hate.  I thought painting walls was bad enough, but that has nothing on this. 



How it started on Monday night.  It was a bit of a struggle and the paper kept trying to make bids for freedom, but a lot of effort and swearing and a litre of wallpaper paste later and I thought I was getting somewhere. 



After a night that featured an unappreciated 2AM wakeup call, this is what greeted me when I stumbled out of bed the following morning. 



Last night I managed to actually salvage the paper, and this is what I was left with after saturating it with water and pasting it up again. 

Tonight I deployed the nuclear option. 



If the paper has to be wet, let's make it absolutely sopping. 



And that led to this, the situation right now.

From this point, I'm intending to work my way around to the fireplace.  Then I'm going to work back to the doorway and do the top metre or so.  When I have done that, I'm going to put another layer of paper down on top - laid horizontally this time - and then I'm probably going to have to work over it with filler and sandpaper to get a completely satisfactory surface.

I hate wallpapering.  It's slow, it's cumbersome, it aggravates my temper and I hope I don't have to do it in any other rooms. 

[The Bullet]

I feel the same about wallpaper in general. Removing it or putting it up is nothing for me.


Bad Joke coming up......

Spoiler: ShowHide

Wallpapering is a quick task if you use the electric staple gun.

[James Harrison]

 

I'm rapidly losing patience with it.  No matter how much paste I use, there's always at least one corner that decides to come adrift a few hours later. 

[James Harrison]

This week it will be no surprise to hear that I've mostly been doing battle with wallpaper paste and lining paper. 

Well, it makes a nice change from stripping walls down (actually, that's another battle with wallpaper paste and lining paper, isn't it?)

And although it's been a bit of a trial I do actually have something to show for it and - whisper it - I think one of the walls is now turning the corner at least. 



The long tall wall - the one that gives me the most work - is now papered over.  It's a bit rough and ready so I've got to place another layer over it - horizontally - and that's what I'm doing right now. 



The horizontal sheets I'm making a lot smaller, which makes them easier to handle.  There will be paneling of a sort on this wall so I'm aiming to hide the joints behind the timber battens.



And today, in better light, after I've done a bit more of it.  The ruckles and bubbles in a few of the sheets should fall out as the paste dries.  As an experiment, several of the sheets this morning haven't been pre-soaked, but rather pasted directly to the wall.  I'll see how that goes. 

[James Harrison]

Achievement; the longest, tallest wall in the bedroom is now completely papered. 



And I also managed to get around that little alcove. 

That took three rolls of lining paper and two packs of wallpaper paste.  Hopefully the remaining walls won't need quite so much because they're either shorter, or shorter. 

What I'm planning to do now is to leave it a few days to fully dry out, then I'm going to sort any spots which have bubbled or failed to stick.  Then I'm going to put filler over each joint and sand back, to get a really neat finish, and then I can move on and think about the paneling and painting.

Meanwhile, you remember that wall I was chipping concrete render off?

[James Harrison]

The first thing on the 2025 Programme to be completed is...



... taking the rendering off my side wall. 

Those bricks are pretty badly shot up, and would definitely benefit from being repointed in the short term and wholesale replaced in the medium to long term.  I don't much want to have to prop up the house to do that, I do have an idea how it can be done without either needling through the wall or taking the whole thing down and rebuilding it.  It just entails stretching the job out over at least several weeks.  But not yet, eh?

[James Harrison]

Well, it's taken five and a half months - with a few breaks and side quests along the way - but I've gone from having a papered and painted wall in October last year to having a papered and (at least partly) painted wall in late March this year. 



Because the room still has lime plaster I'm eager to make sure I'm using materials that will suit that.  Broadly this means that anything that goes on the wall has to be breathable - moisture permeable - to hopefully avoid any issues of damp, mould, rot etc occurring.  This then means that I'm having to use a specific type of emulsion.  I won't advertise the brand but I will say it comes in reddish-brown coloured tins at a cost of about 3 times what you'd pay for shop-brand vinyl paint.

With hindsight, even though the rest of the house (so far) seems to be modern gypsum plaster, I wish I'd used this stuff throughout - more for the hairshirted 'I'm claiming this is an Edwardian house so I'm going to use era-appropriate materials' thing than anything else.  Maybe one day if/when other rooms have to be taken back to brick...

At this point I was starting to wonder if I'd spent £60 on a tin of a colour that I didn't like.  It was supposed to be blue. 



Nope, still not seeing it if I'm honest.  And it's not my eyesight because I had my eyes tested this weekend and got given a clean bill of ocular health. 



In natural light it looks like a greenish-tinged sea blue?



Ahh, there we go.  You only get the colour on the swatch if you cover enough of the wall. 

I've also started buying in and cutting timber for the paneling.  I'm somewhat disappointed at the quality of the wood considering how much the store charges for it.  I've bought seven lengths over the last three weeks and only one of them is even approaching square and true.  The others warp in some direction or the other and I've had to make my cuts to scrap the worst of each length. 

[Sir Henry]

Coming on nicely. And fascinating the way the paint appears to change colours; in the first picture you can tell that the colour 'correction' on the camera is affecting the whole picture because the whites aren't white, but the other two just look odd. Glad it turned out as you wanted.

As to the warped timber, you are going to the builders' merchant/timber yard and picking them yourself, aren't you? The first rule of woodwork these days is 'Never let the supplier choose your wood' because they will fob you off with the stuff they can't sell otherwise. Places like Wickes let you choose the pieces you want and then deliver them later if transporting them is a problem. Or at least our local one does. Same with the local timber yard. It makes life so much easier.

Looking forward to seeing your paneling - I suspect it will be very different from the paneling I'm planning for here.

[James Harrison]

Yes, I learnt that mistake the hard way last year with the bathroom floorboards 

The problem is when you go to the DIY store and every single plank is warped to some degree or another and it becomes a case of trying to pick out the best examples of a bad bunch.  I would go to their competitors but the other place is the other side of town, as compared against a 15-minute walk away. 

[Sir Henry]

Is it a case of finding out when the next delivery is and turning up shortly afterwards then?
Though that requires them to have sold all the previous delivery that no-one wants to buy, so maybe not.

Best of luck with future purchases.

[James Harrison]

I split it up over several weeks (I'd have cried paying £80 for timber in one go), buying a plank or two at a time.  Which is also a bit more equitable than turning up on delivery day and taking the best 7 or 8 pieces right away.

One thing that is an unwelcome shock is that even though this room is 'just' a repaper, repaint and some paneling, it's running up the bill quite quickly and more than I thought it would. 

[Cora Courcelle]

Whenever I hear a particularly demented howl from the workshop I know there's a good chance that my Dearly Beloved has found that one of the (rare) straight boards he managed to buy has decided to become a banana board...
Really it's much better to buy them only as fast as you can use them - although he has perfected his own way of straightening them which is fairly successful (well, most of the time).

[James Harrison]

It is possible to season wood of course, and indeed unwarp it, but the view I take is I shouldn't have to.  If I'm paying for a product I expect to be able to use it.

Well, this week;



Spot the difference!  I've finished the blue areas, and made a start on the cream upper third.  The wooden battens have been stained and they're now waiting their turn to be fitted (soon). 



You may remember that last year I took up a strip of the lawn.  In January.  When it was frozen.  This year I've decided to repeat that and draw it back from the neighbour's fence.  Unlike last year though I've waited for the weather to at least be favourable and I'm using a tool better suited to the job.  I'm finding a small mattock brings the grass and the roots up well whilst leaving most of the soil behind.  Which is great, because I don't have masses of storage for clods of turf and topsoil. 

[James Harrison]

This week I've mostly spent climbing and descending a ladder in the pursuit of painting the top third of the bedroom's back wall.  It's good exercise...

That done, I lost patience and decided I wanted a change from painting.  So I fitted the paneling. 





It makes a surprisingly large impact and suddenly I can see this phase being close to completion.  There's still a lot to be done - let's not forget each of those panels now needs to be infilled - but it's gone from feeling like there's no end in sight to more like being nearly there. 

Realistically it's taken 6 months to reach this stage and I'm starting to doubt this room will be finished this year. 

Otherwise, the effort to remove a complete strip of the paddock lawn is still coming along.  Just one fence panel left to go and then I'm at the spoil heap.

[Sir Henry]

What are you planning for inside the panels?

On the panels I'm planning, I'm going for stencilled damask patterns in bright, dark blue and deep purple, sprayed on (because I found my old paint sprayer  ) with slight colour differences to try to make it look more like material. The stencils should be easy to cut with the laser cutter.
Not sure if it will work, but it should be fun trying.

[James Harrison]

What are you planning for inside the panels?

On the panels I'm planning, I'm going for stencilled damask patterns in bright, dark blue and deep purple, sprayed on (because I found my old paint sprayer  ) with slight colour differences to try to make it look more like material. The stencils should be easy to cut with the laser cutter.
Not sure if it will work, but it should be fun trying.

That sounds a great idea and I'm looking forward to see how it plays out.  I've done stencilling before - by hand, with stencils made from cereal box card - and it took ages.  Looks really good, but took ages. 

For these panels I'm planning to do something a little different. 

What I'm aiming for is something along the lines of the pattern / mural that Joseph Maria Olbrich proposed in one of his Vienna Secession / Darmstadt Colony projects;



It won't be exactly the same of course because the size and ratios of the panels are different, and a literal copy would be somewhat compromised as a result.  But that gives me opportunity to introduce something of my own into it.