Day 37 - October 16th
It's time for some inside work - something Anne and I have been dreading! We were about to descend into a world of concrete dust, grit and grime and holes in the walls and ceilings that you could literally squeeze your whole body through. First...the staircase......
The original staircase was fine - except that the treads were very narrow and varied in width and slope, there was not enough headroom and anyone over 180cm tall knocked their noodle every time they descended the stairs, and they were so far from complying with the building codes of today that it wasn't funny.
The solution was arrived at by Nadine, our designer and by us independently. When Nadine presented her idea to us, we proudly announced that we had also come up with the same idea! The solution was dead simple and damned hard to do.
You simply cut out a part of the concrete floor to open up the stairwell and give more headroom and redesign the stairs to have additional winder treads (those that make the stairs change direction) at the bottom and wider treads as the staircase climbs up beside the wall - you'll probably understand better when you see the final photos as the new staircase isn't built yet!
But it's not quite that simple - to make this happen you have to:
The remains of the linen cupboard - love the holes in the ceiling!
The new doorway into the third bedroom. Our office is a tad more airy than before as the window in the outside wall is also missing and temporarily replaced with plywood sheets and building paper.
The original staircase was fine - except that the treads were very narrow and varied in width and slope, there was not enough headroom and anyone over 180cm tall knocked their noodle every time they descended the stairs, and they were so far from complying with the building codes of today that it wasn't funny.
The solution was arrived at by Nadine, our designer and by us independently. When Nadine presented her idea to us, we proudly announced that we had also come up with the same idea! The solution was dead simple and damned hard to do.
You simply cut out a part of the concrete floor to open up the stairwell and give more headroom and redesign the stairs to have additional winder treads (those that make the stairs change direction) at the bottom and wider treads as the staircase climbs up beside the wall - you'll probably understand better when you see the final photos as the new staircase isn't built yet!
But it's not quite that simple - to make this happen you have to:
- remove some of the walls in the lounge room
- cut the current linen cupboard in half
- cut the wardrobe in the office/study/third bedroom down in size
- cut in a new doorway into said bedroom from what is now the passageway to the back door
- seal up the original doorway into the bedroom
- connect the petrol driven concrete saw to the garden hose and generally flood the upstairs bathroom, the stairwell , the garage and the second bedroom in the flat - oh.. and cause the sprayed-on finish to the downstairs ceiling to detach from the ceiling thereby necessitating the installation of a new gyprock ceiling - all at additional expense, I suppose.
The remains of the linen cupboard - love the holes in the ceiling!
The new doorway into the third bedroom. Our office is a tad more airy than before as the window in the outside wall is also missing and temporarily replaced with plywood sheets and building paper.
Now comes the time for the floor to be cut and the flooding to begin. Chris does his very best to shield us from the inevitable mess - he uses an extractor fan and flexible ducting to whisk away the dust and he wraps the entire are in a huge plastic sheet.
But...there's no escaping the water and the concrete slurry that the cutter generates.
The old banister and hand rail lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. When the carpet came off the steps, it revealed just how dodgy the staircase actually was.
The destruction zone in preparation for the floor to be cut. Ground zero....
The floor took nearly 4 hours to cut and a further 3 hours of jack-hammering to remove the concrete and the metal sheeting that the concrete slab had been poured on top of.
The result - a bigger stairwell.
Note the flooding down below. We also decided to jack-hammer some of the bricks out (right hand side of steps) to open up the stairs and create more light.
That's the beauty of doing a reno and having a great builder - spur of the moment improvements.
Just don't ask about the plumber's adhoc decision to relocate the vanity in the new rear bathroom meaning we'd have to glue the vanity mirror to the inside of a window to be of any use!
No comments:
Post a Comment