This week I’ve been doing a bit of tiling. First room is the cold store; it needed a floor. I’ve been picking up cheep tiles on offer at the DIY store, and thought I had enough to do a nice checker pattern. Two nice tiles: one a grey blue, the other an off-white. First thing – check the tiles are the same size. Oddly enough the white ones are 5mm bigger than the blue ones. Second – check you have enough of both colours. It was a small room, I could have just laid them out on the floor to check….So I got half way through and realised I was short of 1 while tile.

So after a quick trip into town I got the floor finished. They are ceramic so don’t cut using the scoring / snap method. I used a diamond blade in a 4″ angle grinder.  If you don’t want chips along the edge of the cut, best to put masking tape along the line of the cut, and cut through the tape. Turned out quite well, and the size difference in the tiles doesn’t look too bad!

Next I had a window sill in the boiler room to do, I had some odd sample tiles lying around so thought I would try to alternate them in a random pattern. Thought I would save time by scoring and snapping – bad move! I ended up going for the crazy paving look, and dropping the tiles on the floor the get more pieces.

I’m quite pleased with the effect, even though it wasn’t how I’d planned it!

I spent the weekend putting up the plasterboard in the new spare room. I’m trying to get a room completed so guests don’t have to sleep on the living room floor.

I’ve got the ceiling, and most of 3 walls done. The only wall left is the window, which makes it a bit harder.

We have now switched over to our new boiler and solar panels. The boiler heats up the two tanks

The heating is then run from these tanks (we’ve disconnected the old oil combi). The hot water cylinder is heated by the solar panels and then topped up from these tanks. We burnt about a barrow load of wood to get the tanks up to about 70: 24 hours later they were down to 50 ( the hot water was topped up from this one) and 60. The solar panels have been doing well considering the time of year, yesterday we got 40  and today we got to 60 degrees.

The wood boiler is supposed to be very efficient, it burns very hot and gassifies the wood which is then burnt to heat the water. After all the wood we burnt there was very little ash left.

They have started plumbing in the boiler room/ new boiler. Two enormous water tanks to hold all the heat from the boiler. I didn’t realise it was going to be so crowded in there, barely enough room to get them all in.

Cecilia says they look like darleks! They think they should be ready to fire it up next week!

Arfon came up to help on the barn this weekend. We got loads done; finished off the plumbing linking the new hot water pipes into the old system (with a valve so it doesn’t flood the barn), and put up the stud walls for one of the bedrooms.

And just after Arfon left the boiler man rang to say he is coming tomorrow to start installing the solar hot water cylinder and the boiler.

As a finishing touch to the airing cupboard, I gave it a coat of paint. It seems like big step to start getting paint on the walls, as though we are nearing the end! However its just one little room..

I did some more plastering this weekend, in the bathroom where the bath is going to go. It feels like I’m starting to get the hang of plastering. Still not 100% but its getting better.  I needed to get that done so I could run some pipes along it. I didn’t finish all the plumbing I had planned but I got enough done so that the boiler installation has enough pipes to link to. We are splitting the heating circuit into 3, old house, new barn, and bathrooms. This means lots of pipes connecting though to the old part of the house. The installation of the boiler might happen next week, but last time we spoke the man was waiting for the last bit (tanks), so we’ll have to see.

The boiler has been delivered, our nice Atmos log boiler, its a DC32GS. The accumulator tanks should arrive next week, and it will be installed early September. Means I’ve got to finish all my piping for the heating next weekend!

I’ve nearly finished it – just needs a coat of paint (and some doors but they can wait until the tank is installed). I managed to plaster all the wall and ceiling in one go….never again…one wall at a time. I spent half the time scrapping the plaster off the wrong walls.  Still its done, I’ve laid a bit of floor and some skirtings. The cold water feed needs to go through – its all cut out just needs a bit of soldering.

I’ve spent most of this week getting things ready for the new boiler. The room needed plasterboard, plaster, and some plumbing. The pipes on the ceiling are to feed the central heating in original part of the house.

The right hand side was the first to be plastered, which turned out rather well considering my last attempt at plastering was a very lumpy ceiling. The other wall wasn’t quite so good, but hopefully I will be passably good by the time I get to the bedrooms. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve got a new door where we knocked through to get into the barn. Hopefully it will keep Cecilia happy by keeping most of the dust out of the house. You can also see a bit of my plumbing – new pipes to join the existing central heating up with the new boiler in the barn.