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The builder's are coming - floorboard laying

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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby RogerS » 20 Jul 2017, 16:26

Robert wrote:.......
........ and it is hard to understand why it is so short that it catches on the weight.


Because the person that made them was a numpty.

The guys from the joiner company came today to fit some brushes to take up the gap in the top sash. Only to have to go away again as their idea wouldn't work. Back again soon with Plan B.

On the plus side, they came up with a rather clever way of removing the wagtails.

And on the negative side, I now have to tell LOML that the bathroom suite that she painstakingly chose and that I ordered and paid for back in April....website 'two-three days delivery'...after the order placed, told 8-10 weeks delivery....then after that ...get told another 8-10 weeks. Then get told, 'It's on the boat...arriving July 19th'....told this morning..."delivery next week" and this afternoon "it has been discontinued". Lying thieving bastards.

QS Supplies..a company to be avoided. And don't get suckered in by their sister company akva.co.uk.

On the bright side, it is only 34 minutes to opening time.
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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby Rod » 20 Jul 2017, 18:59

Just read your review on Trustpilot

I must have been very lucky as the Laufen basin came very quickly and at a good price.

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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby RogerS » 22 Jul 2017, 16:35

So....

53 sheets of foil-backed plasterboard;
100 sheets normal plasterboard ;
19 sheets of 27mm insulated plasterboard ;
14 bags of bonding
36 bags of Multi-finish (although the plasterers swear blind that I have miscounted)

we are actually doing some painting :o

I am struggling to comprehend that number of boards TBH. One part of me says that half of the boards have gone on someone else's project ! But when you consider that one ceiling in one room took ten boards perhaps not surprising...
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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby Malc2098 » 22 Jul 2017, 16:41

Wow! Result, Roger.

To other readers, I can confirm the likelihood of the the number of boards being accurate. Roger was kind enough to break away from his busy schedule to give me a guided tour last week, while I was visiting Northumberland.
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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby RogerS » 23 Jul 2017, 10:05

Malc2098 wrote:Wow! Result, Roger.

.....


But at what cost, Malcolm?

The climate is vile. It never ever dries out. My wife's plants are rotting and she is bereft. Years of hard work, careful selection of rare and never to be found again plants...gone. Fungal infection is the order of the day. We found the peonies being eaten. Nothing eats peonies. Nothing. Well, that is until we arrived at this God-forsaken part of the planet. Caterpillars drop out of the trees. We now realise why the vegetable beds had been abandoned.

And if the bloody midges don't get you then the bloody flies do. We used to like being outside. Not any more.

It is, without doubt, the worst decision we have ever made.
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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby Rod » 23 Jul 2017, 10:11

Oh dear Roger- what's the plan?
Do it up asap and move?
I watched a programme about Herefordshire yesterday and thought of you - seems a nice area and cheap by UK standards.

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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby RogerS » 23 Jul 2017, 10:36

Rod wrote:.....
Do it up asap and move?
.....
Rod


Possibly. Trouble is it will take a long time to get it into a position to recoup the money we have poured into it. Especially the outside grounds.
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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby Malc2098 » 23 Jul 2017, 11:19

Roger, I'm not very eloquent at this sort of stuff. I can really feel your pain in your posts.

Some decades ago I made a poor decision when moving which resulted in two things; costing/losing me a load of money ( for then about 1.5 years salary in a year) and affecting my then wife's health. There is no contest. Hers and your health comes first.

I decided to move again within a year, which is how I lost that amount, and I carried on working for another 25 years to get to where I am now. But, we pulled back from the brink of her having a breakdown.
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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby RogerS » 23 Jul 2017, 15:16

RogerS wrote:.....
we are actually doing some painting :o

......


Forgot to add that on the plus side we are using some superb paint from Little Green as opposed to the coloured water from Farrow & Ball. :D
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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby Phil » 25 Jul 2017, 08:22

Just to make you feel a bit better .............

11,873
The millimetres of rainfall that the Indian village of Mawsynram receives. This makes it the wettest place in the world.





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Re: The builder's are coming - update

Postby RogerS » 25 Jul 2017, 17:23

OK...back to work. The gable end over the garage needs a little attention to parts of the mortar while the scaffolding is still up. I had a good old poke around. Most of the lime mortar is pretty sound and solid, a few holes need back-pointing.

But, if ever I had any doubts about why pointing with cement on an old stone building is NOT a good idea then they have been well and truly laid to rest. There has been some patch pointing here and there using cement. I decided to hack a bit out to see what was going on underneath and I'm glad I did. The lime mortar was as soft as anything and very, very damp. Needs scraping out and repointing.

So I hacked out a few more pieces of cement and, without exception, the lime mortar needs replacing. A bit to much for me to do what with everything else and so I'm going to ask my stonemason if he has a couple of days spare.
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby RogerS » 21 Aug 2017, 16:54

OK...not had time to post much recently so here goes a little taster.

Galletting. Poking about in the gable and removing cement pointing reveals some holes that are too deep for back pointing. So how do we fix this ? What's the traditional approach ? Any one who says foam goes to the back of the class.

The technique is called galletting where you embed small stones (ideally of similar material to the stone in the wall) using hairy lime mortar. If you lay on lime mortar too thickly then it will crack. The stones in the galletting help prevent that happening (according to my stonemason).

First up is preparation of the orifice. The aim is to clean it out especially any loose bits ...which can be washed out with the hose.

Those areas that can be back-pointed need their sides cleaning up square. What you don't want to see in the hole are tapered slopes of old mortar as the new stuff will start to break away as it has no strength at the thinner parts of the taper. Bit tricky to see in the photos as they are two-dimensional.

From this

Image

to this

Image

When all your preparation is done, wash the wall down with the hose pipe and leave it to dry a little while you mix up mix up the 3:1 hairy lime mortar.

I use 1.5 units of this sand

Image

1.5 units of this coarser stuff

Image

and 1 unit of NHL 5 lime (I use 5 to give a stronger mix than using NHL 3.5). I hand mix it dry in a wheel barrow (wearing thick rubber gloves) and then start to mix it in a bucket with one of those larger paint stirrer thingies that you stick in a drill. When it's thoroughly mixed, I add the 'hairy' part...either goat or horse hair.

It comes in a bag like this

Image

and you have to painstakingly tease it out by hand gradually adding it to the mix. Ideally not on a windy day!

Image

The best way to mix it in is to use a trowel and chop it in because if you try the paint stirrer it acts like a carding machine and wraps the hairy bits round itself pulling them out of the mixture...a rather pointless exercise. My stonemason uses scissors but I think that defeats the object. You need long fibres...not wee ones.

Leave to one side to ferkle away to itself.

Get the tools of the trade ready. Apply some HLM and stick in the stones. That's all there is to it.

If you're back-pointing then make sue you leave a depth of about 30mm for the top pointing coat. No hard and fast rules.
Image

Once the back-pointing has gone off...an hour or so but, again, not critical..apply the final top coat of pointing

Image

But we're not yet done as it's wrong to leave a smooth finish and so we wait an hour or so until it's started to go off and then get out the 'special' brush :eusa-shhh:

Image

and you use it to stipple (quite hard) the top surface until you've bashed the HLM in a bit more, as a by-product cleaned off any whiskery flakey bits round the edges and exposed the rougher stone in the mix.

Image

and you can just make out some of the hair.

I find it quite meditative to do. Some areas are trickier than others and some like this one lend themselves to a very simply job using a wide palette knife

Image

A few odd pictures

Image

Bit of back-pointing

Image


So, to recap, looking at the end to end process for one area.....

We started with this cement blocking up everything

Image

and started to break it away with the hammer drill (if it was a Listed Building than the chances are the Conservation Officer would have insisted it was all done by hand !)

to reveal what was possibly old galletting (but the surrounding lime mortar has not survived the cement treatment)

Image

to reveal great lumps of brick

Image

and finally a great hole

Image

Once cleaned out, we do a bit of galletting

Image

But it's a deep hole so we're in no rush and can let the first layer go off overnight. Then finish of the galletting/back-pointing

Image

Leave this to go off and add the top coat of pointing

Image

Let it harden for a couple of hours and apply the 'magic' brush....ta da !!

Image
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby Mike G » 21 Aug 2017, 17:10

Great post!

That looks like a "where do I stop?" type of job.
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby Andyp » 21 Aug 2017, 17:16

You've got some patience Roger.

When I read the title I thought that you were making the builders some pancakes. :)
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby Malc2098 » 21 Aug 2017, 18:10

Fascinating, Roger.

I saw an Open University programme about this during a night shift meal break a few decades ago!
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby Rod » 21 Aug 2017, 20:02

I thought it was about making crepes

Interesting post

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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby Pinch » 21 Aug 2017, 20:23

Yep, interesting post Roger. 8-)

Cor, imagine doing that for a living. I think it would send me further round the bend. :|

Great patience ole chap.

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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby MJ80 » 21 Aug 2017, 20:54

I need to start doing the same round the cowsheds plinth
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby RogerS » 22 Aug 2017, 14:35

Mike G wrote:Great post!

That looks like a "where do I stop?" type of job.
You've hit the nail on the head there Mike. If I had the time I would have done it all.

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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby Doug » 22 Aug 2017, 17:46

They are doing a similar thing on Lindisfarne castle at the mo Rog, went there last week, be glad it's not a castle you've got to do :shock: :D
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby RogerS » 01 Sep 2017, 13:11

Last week the granite worktops were due to arrive.

The terms were 50% before the guy came to do the templating and 50% before the men arrived with the worktops.They didn't take credit cards. Neither did they take debit cards. BACS transfer only. Naturally I wasn't too happy with this and after I explained my concerns that for all I knew they were going into liquidation and so I'd lose my money, they agreed cheque when the guys came.

Monday morning, the van arrived with the worktops. The builders helped carry them in...longest was 3.2m. After 30 minutes or so, the granite men called me.

"We have a slight problem" they said. The problem? One of the worktop pieces was about 6mm thicker than the others. :eusa-doh:

"We'll have to take this back" they said. And off they went.

So I took a peek at the rest to discover that the scribing at the rear was pretty dire.

Image

Image

Chips and a rough edge

Image

Normally these wouldn't be a problem but, as we'd made it very clear to them, we did not want upstands, tiles or silicon.

One of the ends had a curve

Image

The gap expands again (out of frame at the top of the photo).

Underneath the overhang the reinforcement/carrying protection mesh had not been removed and was really rough to the touch..especially along the chamfered edges at the front of the worktop.

Image

Images and email duly sent and Monday afternoon, they came to take away the two remaining pieces leaving the island worktop behind. But before they did so, they were asking me what bits did I need them to remove at the rear to improve the scribe using a green highlighter. After about 10 very frustrating minutes I could see this going TU and in exasperation told them "I'm the customer. I've paid your company to do this job. Not me'. So they took them away.

'We'll work on it today and tomorrow and re-install on Wednesday".

A chase-up call to check progress on Tuesday resulted in "We've re-CNC'd the rear. The mesh is not something that we usually remove as it's a factory job". My response ? What template are they CNC'ing to as it seemed to me (and the fitters) that the actual scribing template was wrong and needed re-templating. Removing the mesh was a doddle as I'd anticipated their response and used my Mirka CEROS to remove the mesh in under 10 minutes from the sink cutout.

Reluctance to re-template but they offered as gesture of goodwill (!!)to remove the mesh..not only from the long run but also the island unit. Which was collected from the house on the Wednesday !

Monday the following week, it all came back. The scribe is tolerably better. The join is still curved. But at least the mesh has gone.

Image

The guy also pointed out that the island unit swayed. At first I couldn't work out why since the design was identical to our last kitchen. But then I remembered that in that kitchen, the island unit sat on some very substantial aluminium framework but that this had disappeared from the kitchen suppliers catalogue. The fix will be to make some square boxes that will be tightly fitted underneath each unit between it and the floor.
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby TrimTheKing » 01 Sep 2017, 13:18

Bloody hell mate you're not having the best of times with this are you!

That scribing was shocking, but that join? Where in the run is the join? Surely they can't look at that and deem it acceptable...?

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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby RogerS » 01 Sep 2017, 14:24

TrimTheKing wrote:.... Where in the run is the join? Surely they can't look at that and deem it acceptable...?

Cheers
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In the middle. Highly visible. TBH by this time I'd lost the will to live. They said that they'd put a square on the ends. Your post prompted me to get out my steel edge. Lying *******. The ends of both pieces are slightly convex. They did SFA to either end.

You're right. I should have rejected it.
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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby Rod » 01 Sep 2017, 17:24

Oh dear Roger your tale of woe continues.
When we had ours done, the firm laser surveyed it and cut it out by cnc - perfect job.
No sign of any mesh either.
What are you going to seal the joint against the walls with?

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Re: The builder's are coming - Galetting

Postby RogerS » 01 Sep 2017, 18:15

Rod wrote:....
What are you going to seal the joint against the walls with?

Rod


We never do. Guess we're not that messy in the kitchen ! Not suggesting that you are, by any means. :D
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