The bedroom

I’ve been very lax about blogging this room… I’ve been working on it for a couple of months now, but a simple thing like picture uploads not working from my phone can so easily stop me from blogging at all. That’s sorted now, so here’s a catch up post.

The big alcove is an odd size for using for much, too small for a bed, too big for many wardrobes, and we don’t really like a lot of furniture in our bedroom, so we decided to build a small walk in wardrobe there. This was a fun project, and really approachable, you could probably do it all with hand tools if needed, all I used was a hammer, a jigsaw, and a drill,

The radiator had to go, fortunately I’d already unplumbed it and put the new one by the door, so that was an easy enough job to undo the pipes. One Gumtree ad later and I got £15 for the pleasure of someone else coming to get it out of our flat!

I measured up and planned out a wall frame, then ordered some 2×3 CLS framing timber, some 75 and 100mm bright nails, and some plasterboard from our local builders merchant. Many careful measurements, and a couple of mistakes with cutting too short, I had the frame laid out on the floor.

I nailed it together as I went (nails through the side of one piece into the end grain of the joining piece), and cut many of the peices too, which helped to get the lengths exactly right, but almost all the lengths were exactly as I had planned anyway. It took a day and a half, which wasn’t bad for a first try, in my opinion, but next time will be quicker.

The moment of truth was great- it didn’t even brush the ceiling as we lifted it, and stood the planned 1cm shorter than the height of the room. I temporarily screwed it to the floor and ceiling, then drilled holes to screw it into the wall before taking it down to drill into the wall and put in wall plugs. 

Back up it went, then some good quality screws into the walls, and nails into the noggins I’d added in the floor and ceiling, and we had this!

Next up, we had the electrician in to move the sockets out of the skirting boards, move the lightswitch to the other side of the door so that we can swap the hinge side, and add lights in the wardrobe. 

The plasterboard went on the wall next – this was nice and easy, just make sure you have a good drill driver and several Philips size 2 bits as they get a bit chewed up. Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the boarded wardrobe, but I’m sure you can imagine it.

The walls were in pretty bad shape.. all sound, but loads of holes and damage, and some poor patching on the ceiling from when the lighting was first fitted, so I had decided to skim plaster the whole room. I wanted to do it myself, as it would be a really useful skill, but when I worked out the time frames it just seemed as though it would push out the whole project until about the end of August, and six months out of our bedroom would be pretty ridiculous. Also, it’s definitely a skill to do it well, and our bedroom didn’t seem like a good room to practice on. In short, well worth spending £600 to get it done sooner and better.

Once all our walls were lovely and smooth, Paul from Plaster Crafts came round to fit the new run of cornice across the top- really cool that he could match it all up so neatly, when it’s painted I think it’ll look like the wall’s always been there.

I’m off this week, and for the first dusty half of it, I’ve been sanding the floor, which I finished off yesterday. Here it is with the first coat of varnish- I’ll do another tonight, and then various bitty jobs in final preparation for painting at the weekend. Just need to choose the shade now 😉