Thu, 14 Sep 2006
Well, as seems to be traditional on this blog; here's another post about the status of the ongoing project I call 'home'.
That is to say, here's some new(er) info on what's been going on in my work towards making my appartment more than just a collection of walls , a floor and a ceiling where I happen to have a bed.
We've (dad and me) been working mainly in the kitchen/hall area for the past month or so. Ceiling's been done with water-resistant board, coated in water-proof gunk and then rolled with moisture-resistant structure-paint; should be able to survive a flood by now, if you ask me. Like the rest of the ceiling(s) we've created so far, we've opted for an approach where there's hatches patterned across the surface in strategic places to serve a dual purpose as a light-well (halogen spots, etc) and access to the cabling/piping that's routed above the ceiling. Most, if not all of it, has been nicely hidden out of sight and it really does make weird light-switch/power-routing decisions a breeze to implement.
The floor's been keeping us most busy as of late; the hall and kitchen , being 'areas where water/dirt is likely to fall on the floor a lot' were to be tiled. But, to make the tiling the same thickness as the planned wooden floor in 'the remaining space, we've had to think of some way to raise the floor there. A friend advised using something called 'Fermacell'; a truly lovely product. It's made of compressed chalk and newspaper-fibers; it's heavy as brickwork and very stable (doesnt shrink or expand significantly over lengths of up to 40 meters in one stretch).
We've basically been laying out Fermacell boards on the floor, cutting them to size to fit them in all the weird angles this place has and then proceeded to tile ontop of it (after applying an absorption-reducing agent). Fermacell is also usable to tile on wooden floors without risk of breaking tiles or seams. With the tiles, grouting and glue adding extra weight to the whole thing, it's really one solid mass that won't expand or shift whatever you do with it. Oh, and did I mention it's a lot easier to route piping through slots in Fermacell boards than it is to cut them into concrete ? Gas and electricity sticks up nicely from the middle of the kitchen floor now; right where the stove-island's designed to be.
A note about tiling: one thing that simply 'looks nice' when doing tile-work is to have the tiles on the floor lay in a 45 degree angle with respect to the tiling on the walls. It prevents a kitchen/bathroom from looking like a notebook-grid in 3D; but also helps make an altogether nicer design when floor- and wall-tiles don't have the same sizes (which is most often the case). The seams will end up not 'connecting' all along the line where the walls meet the floor. Doing a diamond-pattern avoids this 'problem' at the cost of a bit more complex tiling-procedure. Having used a few pre-drawn pencil-lines to identify "45 degree axes" in the surface really helped simplify the process. Also, while tiling, keep on 'checking if you're going the right direction'. Tiling-spacers aren't micrometer-precise, not to mention the tiles themselves (and the accumulated mess of glue adding another uncertainty factor).
A short word about grouting: it's a mess... but it'll end up looking better when you've cleaned it... once... or twice... or perhaps you'll need three cleanings.... or four..
Now, the first of the cupboards to be placed has been purchased. I've put it together yesterday; oven and microwave now have a home. Now i've got to wait for some money to find it's way to my account so I can get the rest !
(ps: pictures will be added... soon... ish.)
Fri, 20 Jan 2006
Just a little bit of a status update here since it's been over 1.5 months since I posted anything about the progress behind re-doing the appartment that I bought on the 9th of November, last year (2005).
Things have gone really quick ! And yet, at the same time, they've been going really slow. There's still so much to do still, but at least some projects are nearing their 'good enough to use'-status currently.
Before we were able to start on _anything_ however, first the 'Concrete-wood fibre ceiling-tiles' needed to be efficiently removed and disposed of. Ofcourse, an appartment's hollow ceiling is a regular mouse-heaven!
Which the following lovely images clearly illustrate.
Then, with the ceiling ripped out, all that was left was to... hummm get rid of those nice stairs. Luckily, the stairs were just made of 5 milimeter thick solid steel plating and tubing... And it's only 4 meters tall or something... so that's not too bad, is it ?
Missing here is a photo-collection of how we got the sucker removed and thrown right into the back garden through a removed window-pane... I'll get them on here as soon as I've got them; ofcourse I was a bit too busy to hold a camera. Somehow I found myself lugging 3 sections of a staircase .... Dunno how that happened.
In any case; once you start ripping stuff from it's proper place, you're stuck with having to having to fix it up again. Drilling 116 holes into the circumference of the gaping chasm isnt a fun thing to do, but luckily I had an expert doing that for me *g*. After that, a sheet of water-proof multiplex got shored up against the underside of the hole and the real work began. After that, it takes a deca-liters of water to make the concrete harden and a tough stomach to dare and step onto the surface afterwards; having only known it as a big hole, before. But, this is what you're left with.
A good example of actual progress would be my bedroom. That is, in the last few months we've worked on several things surrounding that part of the appartment. Mainly it consisted of fitting in beams and ribs of wood to build the lowered ceiling with. Basically made of plaster-board and painted with texture-paint; they've come out rather well.
The walls got a nice layer of paint after a few of them had been 'stucco'ed first to be nice and smooth instead of being the white-washed 'basic concrete brick' texture they were before. The glassblock wall got finished, cleaned, etc, and "all was good"(tm).
Soon after, my parents (bless their souls!) helped me get the floor boards laid nicely , even right below the radiator (we had to disconnect the sucker for this one... learned a few new things about respecting good plumbing).
Ok; next step, the drill! That is; having a nice lowered and hollow ceiling allows you to drill right through it and fit lights right where you'd like them best. Like here and here for example. That allows you to take a nice and close look at the floor indeed.
Talking about light... Glassblocks look really pretty in the right light !
Now, the rest of the appartment has had several things done to it; hall got stucco'ed and painted, one of the walls of the kitchen (the one that is also the hall-wall) got extended a little and stucco'ed roughly from the other side, in preparation of tiling being done on it. Another large brick wall got stucco'ed and painted , the radiators got cleaned, dried and painted (Thanks mom!, they look great!), and we brought in most of the materials to get the tiling of the walls and the floor in the kitchen and hall done in one go. This is all going to be happening in the next month, most likely; after the floor in the bedroom gets a good sanding and finishing.
For those of you curious "where the hell I've decided to go and live", I won't put up my address here, since that'll only invite abuse from happening. However, I _have_ made a few pictures of the surroundings, which you can browse through here.
You can also freely browse through all the pictures associated with this update here.
More soon(ish).
... turned into a whole lot of unexpected events.
Let me start at the beginning of it all, however; on the 9th of November I got the keys to my new appartment. All the papers had been signed (well, all except some of the mortgage papers of the people that were selling the place), and I was handed over two keys.
Two keys, for three doors ?
In fact; the two keys were for the front door and the mailbox; the other two doors had no keys accompanying the congratulations of the real-estate agent before he hopped out of the room at the signing-office.
In any case, I soon got all the cylinders replaced with new ones; all fitting the same keys (of which I have five). All in all, that Saturday on the 13th of November went rather smoothly, apart from me arriving a lot later at the appartment than I first planned.
However, I managed to get the glass-blocks that I needed for one of the walls picked up on the friday before, and on saturday I was able to move about 40M2 of flooring out of my storage space at my old place and into the new appartment.
There's now a fridge, some tables with stuff on them and a couple of couches I picked up from the sidewalk close the appartment. I also brought a couple of fluorescent tube-lighting 'chassis' (with two TL's each) to make working there a lot more fun.
Well, that was saturday; apart from me going home way too late, it was quite an ok day. Even managed to get a wifi-connection there; some joe-random-luser with a crappy-slow connection (sadly) and an open wifi AP (luckily.. for me).
However, it turns out that the cover for the shower-drain's entirely corroded away and the previous owners have solved that problem by simply plugging the hole and making it impossible for any water spilled on that floor (or other fluids, for that matter) to drain away. So , there's a bit of research cut out for me there... It's not stainless steel but some amalgate of copper; nice and gold-colored (underneath all the calcium deposits and paint).
Late at night, I remembered that I had been invited to a party that me and a colleague/friend of mine made a nice Led-lighted hat for (don't ask; long story). Dropped by there for a bit and made it home even later.
So, the next morning, it takes me some time to get showered and dressed, pick up a small ladder and some other supplies, and get to Amsterdam to pick up a tuner and DVD/VCR combo that he was going to throw away since he was scheduled to move to a new appartment , the next monday (the next day).
When I came there, it turned out that he had gotten himself into a bit of a pickle; asking me to stick around for a bit since it turned out that he had locked himself out of his new appartment by leaving the keys on the kitchen counter...
Since I'm quite happy to inform people about the wonderful world of security (and how to circumvent it's enforcing measures), I decided to try and help him out by seeing if we could perhaps get a key to fit the lock and produce a bump-key from that key (we couldnt, since the only key-shop we could find could only create exact copies of any key you had; no re-shaping of any key there). Attempts to open the door with pieces of semi-stiff plasticard failed, sadly, even tough the locksmith we got to look at the lock used pretty much the same technique to manipulate the latch as I was trying with the plasticard; sadly the plasticard was just a little too brittle and it kept on snapping in two. The stuff the guy brought was quite a bit better, however. In the end, that cost my friend 135Euro, since it was on a sunday, at night, etc.
Well; with him living in the middle of Amsterdam, it was perhaps not too much of a surprise when I got back to where I had parked my car to find that it had gone missing. It got towed away by 'stadstoezicht'. Turns out that the sign next to the parking-strip I used meant 'Parking ONLY for taxis, from 19:00 to 07:00' instead of 'Taxis parking only between 19:00 to 07:00'..
All in all, that cost ME a coolk 229Euro to get my car back...
Yay
And then it was nearly 22:00 and I had still to get my ass to my appartment and get my car unloaded and do some actual work.
When I got there, a lady with a dog steps through a door close to my backyard and we greet and introduce eachother when she finds out that I'm to be the new owner or the bottom floor of the building she's 'Building Representative' for; the 'Toren-Vertegenwoordiger' for the Commitee of Owners (hereafter referred to as 'VVE' which is the acronym for it's dutch title).
She turns out to be a pretty nice lady who will help me get all the relevant rule-books/guides/etc concerning the building. She also reminisces a bit about the people that used to live in my place; how their house used to look, etc. It turns out that this guy apparently was an architect (I knew that), who had been working on the Amsterdam Opera building, aswell as some other constructions in Berlin, etc. (I didnt know that!).
Next thing I know, she explains how he used to have a few Andy Warhol paintings on this and that wall, etc.. completely boggling me! I must try and find out some more about this previous owner; might be interesting ; will keep you posted on that.
She then tells me that some of the trees that are currently overshadowing my backyard will probably be taken down in the next three years; I can't wait! The trees apparently are only meant to be there for a life-time of 28 years or so; and that's soon approaching.
Well, then, the mess continues a little when I find out that for some forsaken reason my laptop's wifi-capabilities decide to utterly fail functioning the way i'd like them to, so I'm stuck having to spend a bit of time getting that fixed again (tomorrow!). Deciding that I'd better get some useful business of my agenda, I start working on parts of the ceiling with a crowbar (yes, it's 23:00 or so now).
The ceiling turns out to be the usual mouse-graveyard, combined with all the perks of having had those little critters as pets; a gallon of expanded styrofoam granules, a cup of mouse-droppings, perhaps 5 mouse-skeletons, dust.. dust.. dust..
The good part is that the construction that's above it is pretty sturdy and I might be able to put some of the main beams there to continued use as ceiling-support beams. Pictures of the mess will follow, later on.
Meanwhile, I find out that there's one electric-group that for some reason doesnt seem to have any wall-socket connected to it; I pull the switch in the closet and absolutely nothing happens.
Then, there's another group which seems to have something to do with the heating-system. I have this feeling that, when I pull the switch of that group, some background noise , originating from one of the heaters, seems to cease. The 'Tower-representative' didnt know of anything like that and was quite sure that this was not 'standard'. Oh well.
I'm sure I forgot to mention a few other things here, like having to arrange a 'Ontheffings-verklaring' for the little parking-spot next to my backyard so that I can use it for parking my car whenever I bring in heavy materials from that direction. That I should still pay my car's repair bill after it got broken into last time, aswell as fill in the right forms for the insurance to get it reimbursed.
For now; bed-time. Tomorrow I'll suck the pictures of the ceiling from my camera and either add links to this article or dedicate another precious blog-posting to them.
Update: 2005-11-14, 2:52
I found the guy!
Pi de Bruijn; a really famous architect, it turns out; just take a look at this list of stuff he did while employed at http://www.cie.nl/!!!!
Now sleep!
Tue, 11 Oct 2005
Okay, after various twists and turns, recently, I've succeeded in finding an appartment!
A short summary of the situation: I wanted to find an appartment that'd allow me to spend less time on the road to my work @ XS4ALL, and so I looked for a place in the neighborhood.
There's a few demands I place on an appartment, and that is that it should be quite large (80m2+) and be on the groundfloor (i want cats, they need to be able to go out ;). So, after a while I stumbled upon something that looked suitable and even affordable, too! 120m2, groundfloor, 3 meter high ceilings; perfect.
Well, not quite perfect, since it had no furniture... or rather, it has nothing, no kitchen, no real floor, no.... well, you get the idea. However, it had one thing : a spiral staircase leading to the appartment above it... (?).
The deal: this appartment belongs to two appartment being sold at the same time; somebody lived there with his family and used both appartments. All fine and well, since they also were allowing me to bid on just one of them so I contacted a real-estate agent to take care of the bidding and advise me, etc. . After a bit of work (low bids, tests for Asbestos contents in parts of floor, etc), I put my bid down and waited.
The story: after a day, we get a reaction: sorry, erm.. we're selling both at the same time to somebody who was juuuust a little faster than you. Arggh; the lab-results for the asbestos-test had taken a bit too long and so I was too late with my bid and paid for a useless asbestos-test.
Bah..
having paid my real-estate agent, I settled down to wait for a bit until I got the 'appetite back' to try again. However, a week later we get a call from the selling estate-agent that the deal had been blown off at the last moment.
So, I was free to bid again!. yay!
The history: this appartment had been bid on 2 times prior to my bid, and nearly sold, too. The first time the deal was blown off at the last moment too. The second time the building-commission they (understandably) weren't so happy with the idea of allowing the 'Problem Youth Council' to use these two apartments for their activities. The third time had been my mysterious competitor in my bidding.
Now, I bid on the appartment again and was able to get it a littttle bit cheaper than what I bid for it the first time. Happily, I finally won the bid and recently signed the temporary 'contract of purchase', etc.
However, the selling estate agent comes with this jewel: another party, who visited the appartments about 6 months ago, recently (days before I signed) contacted him again and wanted to place a bid again on both appartments...
So, after 2 years of having been bid/sold twice.. now suddenly everyone bids on it like crazy..
Weird-ass stuff; they even bid me 500 Euro's to forfeit my bid and let them take it. What's more, they already LIVE in the complex and have two appartments joined side-by-side that they now wanted to swap for two that are situated ontop of eachother.
What-ever... Now, however, it's gonna all come down to getting all the things sorted out that need to be sorted out to get this appartment into livable condition. I'm lucky that the toilet and bathroom work, but it'll need:
- A floor (120m2 of it!)
- A kitchen
- New mains-distribution cabinet (esp. EARTH!)
- Walls in different places to make rooms out of the two 60m2 sections that now make up the appartment
- Existing walls will need to be repaired/stucco'ed/painted/etc
- It'll need ceilings with cable- and air-ducts going over it
- It'll need some serious lighting/network infra-structure
All in all, more than a few months worth of pure, un-adulterated, honest-to-god, get-down-to-the-nitty-gritty, heavy hardcore DIY..
I can't say that I'm not worried about it, but I'm somehow looking forward to 'making my own home'. Keep checking here for developments on this front. I'll get some pictures/data online some time soon!