Coming Together

With the window fixed and two of the walls covered, the room is starting to look less like a building site and more like a bedroom.

Just Like New

Gareth has finished fixing up the windows and has done a fantastic job. He has made a new casement from cedar, replaced the bottom of the mullions and made a new sill from heart rimu.

Batts in the Walls

To make the room nice and warm we are installing Pink Batts insulation in the walls. First we stapled building paper to the weatherboards and then put the batts between the studs. Finally we screwed gib plasterboard over the lot.

Walls

This weekend Tracy's dad and I are putting the walls back up.

Bye Bye Rot

Gareth, the joiner routed out the rot on the windowledge. I treated the exposed timer with Metalex tanalising compund. This is a powerful fungicide and wood preservative which should kill any remaining rot.

Rot

Unfortunately stripping the bay window revealed some pretty bad rot. It was caused by condenstation running down the window. This is tricky to fix so I have hired a joiner to machine some replacement pieces and install them. Looks like he has his work cut out.

All Done

I finally finshed stripping the bay window. Took about two days from start to finish.

New Brighton Pier

It was a cold crisp autumn day at New Brighton. James loves it when I take him for a walk along the pier. Its high up so he can look at the waves and the seagulls. We had a good time watching the surfers and the fishermen at the end of the pier.

Kite Surfer

I took James to the beach and we watched the kite surfers.

More Stripping

The outside of the door frame has been painted with modern water based paint. This does not respond well to heat. Luckily the coopers paint stripper just eats through it. I just sprayed it on, waited a couple of minutes and the paint just fell away in strips. I didn't even have to scrape. Note the rubber gloves though. The stuff is pretty corrosive and hurts if you get it on bare skin.

When I'm Stripping Windows

Stripping the windows is a big job. I use an iStrip (pictured) which is the fastest method I have found. I stripped the whole bay window in a day. The iStrip is also very safe. Old houses were painted with lead based paints. Sanding scatters lead dust everywhere. A blowtorch would burn the paint and release lead fumes. The iStrip uses a lower heat applied for longer and allows large areas of paint to be scraped off in strips which can be easily disposed of. The low heat stops lead fumes from being released.

Just one question, it is a great gadget but why on earth is it called an iStrip? It can't play MP3s or connect to the internet.

Paint Stripping

Over the past year I have become something of an expert at paint stripping. The picture shows the window architraves from James's room at different stages of paint removal. I start with an i-Strip heat lamp (top) which heats the paint allowing it to be scraped off. This leaves a thin residue (middle) which I remove with steel wool and meths. Finally I use coopers paint stripper to remove the last stubborn bits of paint. This is a great product which lifts the paint right out of the grain (bottom).