If your here for the adventures, cycling or running, then unfortunately I've got bad news for you this week. If however your here for the projects and other capers, then your lucks in, because all I've got to talk about this week is carpet, and that's hardly an exciting topic of conversation at the best of times! As I mentioned last week, the focus of my attentions over the Easter break has been re-carpeting our house, and that's no small undertaking when you've never done it before. I can however confirm that as suspected the worst part of the entire job has been moving everything from one room to another and then back again. What a palaver! This process has also confirmed that we've got a lot of stuff, and that "The Emma" is a ridiculous hoarder of rubbish. I mean, is there really any need to keep the plastic bags that stuff comes in? And do we really still need 3000 CD's? I know that those CD's cost a lot of money when we bought them back in the 90's and 2000's, but were both using streaming services now and we haven't even got a CD player, so what use are they? That's a battle for another day though, and at least I've managed to get her to throw away the draw full of old batteries that are 20 years past their use by date and totally useless, so that's a first little step in the right direction I suppose. I'm not saying that we need to live a sterile life, free from stuff, but if it's no use then what's the point in keeping it. To me the clutter just takes over your life and gets in the way of the important stuff! Anyway, enough of my moaning, let's have a look at some carpet fitting! Lounge Realistically, and unfortunately, this had to be the first room we attacked, as all the stuff from here had to go somewhere, and it seemed pointless dragging stuff over newly fitted carpet into other rooms whilst we did this one. That was far from ideal though, as I was going to have to try to figure out what I was doing and learn as I went along, on the room that's used the most and is the biggest. Also far from ideal was the fact that we couldn't get the sofa out of the room as there was no where for it to go, so I had to work around it. A feat which required humping and dumping it from one end of the room to the other a few million times, or at least that's what it felt like. I got there in the end though and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. Spare Bedroom I learned a lot from the lounge, but before we got to put that learning into practice there was the small matter of the uneven squeaky floor to sort out. To that end the loose boards came up and were re-seated properly, and every board got screwed to it's respective joist before the whole lot got covered with a full layer of hardboard to flatten out any unevenness. That's the best part of a days work before we even think about getting the carpet back down, but oh so worth it to be squeak and creak free when you wander round the room, and it should have the added benefit of helping with the insulation next winter as all the draughty gaps between the floor boards are now sealed up. Main Bedroom 2 down and were on to the main bedroom. Things should have been getting easier as I got the hang of it. But hold on. Someone decided that we needed the biggest bed you can buy, which whilst being brilliant, weighs more than a small planet. And this time it's definitely got to get moved - Bad back here we come! With all the stuff out it's just rinse and repeat. Floorboards up to mark up the pipe and power runs, then screw the floor down, line with hardboard to flatten out, new grippers, underlay and job done. Now if only it was that simple! Oh, and before we moved the bed back in it made sense to use the extra space to cut all the doors down. There's only 7 to do upstairs! 2 of which are Oak faced and weigh a ton. When I fitted them a few years ago, I lugged them up and down the stairs multiple times, so I know exactly how much they weigh and there was no way I was doing that again. My arms hurt enough from lugging furniture around as it is. The main room doors needed 10mm off the bottoms which just shows how much extra underlay and carpet has gone down! Landing. 3 rooms done in 5 days and I'm getting tired now, but the back of it's broken and the furniture humping and dumping's done. On the negative side, it's all fiddly stuff from here on in which is always time consuming. Either way, there's still work to be done. So, landing floor up for a look underneath. Screw the boards down (that's approximately 700 screws that have gone into the floors of the 3 rooms upstairs), underlay down and crack on. The worst bit here is all the corners and the threshold strips which I seem to struggle with. It takes just as long to do a little room as it does a big one as there's no long straight edges, which is always worth bearing in mind of your getting a quote for work (£XXX for that your having a laugh, it's only a little room!) Stairs The stairs have always been a bit of an issue, mainly because they've always sounded like your about to fall through them as the treads groaned, creaked and appeared to flex under your feet. It's never been very confidence inspiring, and has resulted in some strange contortions when your trying to creep around in the middle of the night (burglars beware, you'll never get up the stairs without us hearing you). Pulling up the old carpets revealed the main source of the problem, the top treads which turn a corner and are therefore wider were cracked (as were a number of the other steps). As you can't access the backs there was really only one solution and that was to fit some reinforcing plates, which seems to have done the trick. Getting the carpet down wasn't easy due to all the bends and twists, but I got there in the end, and to be honest I'm more than happy with the way they came out. Especially as you can now get up and down the stairs without alerting the entire neighbourhood (although now the first I know about the burglars will be when they're getting into bed with me) Hall And that just left the hall, which revealed a nice surprise when I removed the old carpet in the form of a massive crack running the width of the room adjacent to the front door. Looking at it I suspect it's been there a while and it appears to be the result of the floor slab pulling away from the door reveal (or vice versa), which is made up from a solid concrete lintel. It doesn't join up with the floor slab on the other side of the lounge wall and the front of the house is free from cracking, and everything appears to still be straight, true and level, so fingers crossed it's historical and not recent movement. Having set my mind at ease that the fronts not about to fall out of the house, it was just a case of fill the crack and re-screed over the top, to get back to level. Added and unexpected work, but at least I know it's hopefully fixed. While I had some levelling compound mixed up, it made sense to fill all the other gaps where the original floor tiles were missing too. And then it was just a case of more of the same. New grippers, underlay and carpet, and bish, bash, bosh, job done! And there we have it, 6 days for 5 rooms plus the stairs, all done by my fair hand, with more than a little bit of help from "The Emma". Lots of people said that I was mad to be taking this job on. But, I'll stand by me earlier comments that the worst bit of the entire job was emptying out all the cupboards and moving the furniture and then putting it all back again 2 minutes later, and even if we'd payed someone to fit the carpet, we'd still have had to do that.
Plus, I've done significantly more than just change the carpet. I've fixed the stairs and the big crack in the hall floor, I've screwed down every floorboard upstairs and flattened out the floors, and I've rehung all the doors to take account of the new carpet thickness. And they're not jobs that your average carpet fitters going to do, so we'd have probably needed a carpenter too. I honestly don't think that a professional carpet fitter would have done a much better job either. Quicker most certainly, but better, I'm not so sure. There's only one bit that I'm not 100% happy with and that's the tension in the lounge carpet. It's flat, and it was as tight as I could get it when I fitted it, but the rooms 7 meters long, and the sofa was still in the way, so it's as good as I could get it at the time, but not perfect. Now that it's had a few days to flatten itself out, I think I could get it tighter. Pulling it tighter shouldn't be a problem though, so I'll give it a few weeks to finish settling and then see about getting a bit more tension in it. I'll quite happily admit that it was bloody hard graft though. I've got more holes in my fingers from catching them on the gripper strips than I know what to do with and there's aching muscles in my wrists that I didn't even know existed (don't take on a carpet fitter in an arm wrestle). But was it worth the effort? Too right it was! Wandering round the house, I'm more than happy with what we have achieved, and we can look back on this week in the future and say "We did that" and if it's not worth doing a job for that sense of satisfaction, then I don't know what is! Oh. And to all those people that said "You can't do that" - Well "Yes you can" you just need to think about what you doing and get stuck in!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|