Category: House

We have been spending the month of January in getting the Entertainment Room all finished, including putting up our 43inch Television!! But, before that happened, we carried on from where we left things before Christmas, with the task of putting carpet up on the walls etc.One of the first task to do was to slice out the Utility Channel all the way around the room. We had previously marked where the horizontal zone is located in this room, as it is not at the normal height because we had deliberately lowered the flooring to accommodate the lowered ceiling. We used our trusty track saw to guide the circular saw and carefully slice through the 18mm OSB board, to produce a 100mm wide slot. We stopped 60mm short of each corner so that when the carpet gets fixed up onto the walls, the gap between the end of the Oak covers will be a nice distance from the corners.

The next job is to trim a little thin recess, only 1mm deep and 12mm wide, on all the top and bottom edges of the Utility Channel and we then glued a thin narrow strip of steel. We had some old computer cases which were made of steel thin plates so we sliced that in our mechanical heavy duty guillotine machine and glued them so that we ended up with a general purpose magnetic surface so that we stick on our Oak covers into place, without having visible screws etc.

Oh yes, we rounded the edges of the window, the two vertical edges, using our largest round cutter so that the carpet can bend smoothly around the corner when it goes into the window hole. The horizontal top edge of the window was turned with a smaller radius cutter, just enough to get the carpet to bend around.

Now we were ready to start the next big task of sticking our carpets to the walls!

We started on the TV end of the room, the narrow wall, opposite the window and we got our 2.4metres by 4metres piece and then painted both the wall surface and the back of the carpet with the latex rubber glue. We had already determined that this glue works very well and it just needed to dry while the surfaces were pressed together. Another advantage of this glue, is that it dries fairly slowly and keeps moist, which gives us time to paint the two surfaces, but also, time to man-handle the carpet up onto the wall and move it around until we got it pressing tightly up to the ceiling. To help with that process, we stapled a couple of pieces of narrow strips of OSB boards on to the front of the carpet so that we had a good grip to help lift the carpet, but also to keep the carpet stretched out in a straight line as well.
We then temporarily stapled five more strips of OSB, to help hold the carpet tight to the wall and the glue. Fortunately, we had loads of these narrow strips that we had accumulated over the years and so we could use them to press the carpet to the glue. The staples were 35mm long and fired using our compressed air gun. Another thing we did at this stage, is that we avoided gluing the last right in the corners because we needed to be able to trim the carpet carefully right into the corners later on, after the glue had dried.

We then carried on with the next wall, the long wall opposite the door, which was a 2.4metres high by 5metres long piece this time. We proceeded like before but we discovered that this type of carpet, which has a woven backing, instead of the felt-like material the first piece had, we hadn’t put on enough glue to ensure a thorough contact area. This meant that we had to reapply extra glue around the edges, going along the top (near the ceiling) and also around the Utility Channel cutout as well, plus the bottom edge near the floor. We stapled on lots of OSB strips to clamp the carpet down so the glue had a chance to dry stuck together.

We then did the smaller portion of the wall to the left of the doorway, and remembered to put on more glue this time. It was easier to handle the carpet because it was in a smaller piece and we managed to get it up with little trouble. We repeated for the other side of the door and then did the section over the top of the doorway. We even put a piece of carpet on the ramp going down into the room! Now, we turned to the last wall to do, the Window wall. This time, it went up in one piece because we wanted the carpet to be continuous underneath the window sill. We carefully cut the carpet along the bottom edge of the window and then bent the carpet around the corner to do each vertical sides of the window. We took off the excess and glued these flapping side bits into place. Finally, we had a piece of left-over to go along the top edge of the window and that got glued down as well.

Next, we installed ten round lighting units up in the ceiling, plus two odd square ones we had lying around, to populate twelve of the holes , four rows of three lamps. A light switch went into the Utility Channel near the door, and then put eight double sockets distributed around the room as well. We used pieces of 11mm OSB boards to make the covers and got them magnetically attached over the Channel. This is a temporary measure but we will replace with proper Oak covers later on.
We used two 3mm thick by 10mm diameter magnets, superglued together to form a 6mm single unit. Then we put four of these magnets in the four corners of a cover where there was only one mains socket in the cover, six of the magnets for a two set of socket, and eight for the last cover that had two double sockets plus the light switch. We discovered that just having four magnets was not quite strong enough to reliably hold the cover in place, especially after the electric cables were threaded and screwed into the back of each socket as well. Magnets are very good, visually speaking because we can avoid unsightly screws etc. but unfortunately, the initial experience is suggesting that we would have to add a dozen more magnets for those covers that have a mains double socket in them, especially if you tried pulling a plug out and accidentally ripping the whole cover off as well. We will have to explore this further, and maybe come up with a different method of attaching these covers without visible screws.

We then made a window seat, again a temporary one so that we had a neat cover over the empty void in the bottom of the window. A useful place to sit on now.

Because we had decided that this room, the Entertainment Room, is going to temporarily be the needlework room, to allows us to sort out things like curtains etc. So, towards this aim, we created a large work table, 8foot by 4foot and standard dining table height of 720mm high. We used one of our 12mm thick MDF boards and glued a circumference of 63mm CLS planks around the edge, with an inch gap. Then, put on four legs.

Then, we created two sets of shelves, each one having six shelves, measuring 300mm deep and 1220mm wide. We managed to use two sheets of our 18mm thick OSB boards and sliced it up into twelves pieces and then slice eight 50mm wide longer strips to serve as legs. We ran the router over all the pieces, to chamfer the edges, to remove splinters and make it smoother. Both were assembled so that each shelf had a bit over 300mm gap between each self. Then, both the shelves and the work table, plus also, the window sill seat, got a coat of varnish, to make sure that all the tiny splinters are glued down and after rubbing with some sand paper, it is all nice and smooth.

Next, we created our special sound deadening door. A very heavy door, made up with 30mm thick of cement boards as the core, covered up with 9mm hardwood plywood sheets. To maximise the strength of the whole thing, we found a piece of thick Oak plank, with minimal knots in it, measuring 2.7metres long and 150mm wide. It is 65mm thick. We established one straight edge by using our track saw and then planed it flat on both sides, ending up with a 48mm thick plank. We then, sliced it into two narrower pieces, with a 15degree angle down the middle. The last step in working these pieces of wood, is to trim off a recess on both side, to form a 30mm thick “tongue” which matches the thickness of the cement core so that the plywood covers can overlap both the cement core and the two Oak vertical edges. The cement core was built using three layers of small left-over pieces of 10mm thick boards, arranged so that every piece overlapped each other with plenty of surface. We used an epoxy resin glue to ensure a very strong joint between every piece. Because of the random nature of all the smaller pieces, the resultant “core” is rather misshapen but we knew that we wanted to slice the core down to a precise size later on, including putting a 15degree angle on the narrow top and bottom edges as well. Finally, we assembled the two Oak strips and one of the plywood fronts, used PU construction glue and a dozen screws to anchor the Oak and plywood together. At this point, we mounted the hinges and mounted the partial door into the wall for testing purposes and making sure everything is ok. Now, turning it over, we then used plenty of PU glue all over the back of the plywood and very very carefully lowered our concrete core into the middle. Then, the second plywood board came in on top, again, with lots of PU glue spread out evenly across the cement surface and screwed the plywood down tight on the Oak edges too. We loaded seven large concrete blocks on top to pressurised all the layers together and stop the glue pushing the layers apart.

You might be wondering to how heavy this door is??
Well, we got our bathroom scales and HAULED it up onto it .. ..
95kg!!
15stones!!
O boy!

This is why we are having four ball bearings hinges!
They are rated at 120kg for three of them so we thought we better put in that extra one, just to be on the safe side, plus also, the hinges comes as a pair so we didn’t want to have one left lying around.
It is recommended that one puts two hinges at the top of the door, one in the middle and one near the bottom. The double set at the top has to take a good portion of the weight as the door swings out. So, we mounted the hinges to the door frame first, cutting little rectangles of carpet away so that the hinge can go flat solid against the oak strips we have previously inserted into the wall structure. Each hinge has four screws in each half so there will be a total of 32 screws holding up this 100kg door!

Now the next trick was to move the door itself and walk it up several layers of pieces of board, and sit it on the top layer which has two air cushions underneath it. We could then squeeze the air bulbs to pump in air, which in turn slowly lifts up the door so that our hinge screw holes can line up with the holes already in the door, from our earlier quick test we did before we put in the heavy cement core. We got it all screwed in and let go! The door is swinging nicely and it goes home very nicely too.

Next, is putting in the latch mechanism and the handles. We had to find a longer square metal bar because our door is 50mm thick, especially with the carpet on it as well. Talking about the carpet, we decided to cover the entire door in cloth and carpet materials, to hide the various construction joints and materials, to end up with a smooth single texture on one side, using two fleece blankets, and three left-over pieces of carpet on the room’s side of the door. The fleece material was wrapped right around the whole door and stapled into place on the carpet side, and then we put on the carpet, to cover that up. But, the carpet had a ragged edge as well, so we went off to find some more Oak and create some thin slightly curved strips which we mitred around the edge of the door, to hide all the ragged edges.

That is one half of the doorway done, the main sound proofing door which opens into the room and is flush up again against the rest of the wall. There will be a second door on the Hall side of the doorway, to provide a second sound barrier to reduce audio leaks. We did some tests (once we had installed some speakers etc.) and the loud music could be heard quietly when one stood near the door but a lot quieter around the corner. Which is not surprising because the main room has 100mm thick concrete blocks and the door only has 50mm total thickness, with only a 30mm concrete core!! Hence why we probably will mount the second door on the hall side!

As mentioned just now, we also installed some loud speakers we had in our old living room, plus also taking the 43inch Television and mounting that up on a wall bracket. It looks rather small in the grand scene of things so hopefully, we will upgrade to an larger model when we can, along with much better quality surround sound speakers too. We installed a Raspberry PI to act as a media streaming device for the television, which will allow us to enjoy music and videos we have got stored in our library.

The last thing we did, was to find some old underlay, and some old carpet we inherited from the previous place we were living in. It only covered the first 1.9metres of our 5metres room and that will do for now. It makes that end of the room quite cosy and the sound quality is very pleasant indeed, very soft and warm!

Oh yes, nearly forgot about the little control screen and its buttons that sits just left of the door and about shoulder height. We 3D printed a black plastic surround, with four buttons vertically on the left and right side and a row of five buttons underneath, surrounding the touch sensitive 7inch screen in the middle. This will provide access to various information that is happening in that room, and beyond, but, it will have menus to allow you to configure how you want the temperature to be set at, how the lighting units should be set in various patterns, to suit your moods, and so on. It is the link to the rest of the house, including communication, security and other helpful services like shopping lists etc.

That pretty much concludes the work on our Entertainment Room for the time being. We even put in a fan heater so it can be kept warm so we can go in and sit down at the table to do some needlework, or watch the TV!

We decided to have a go at finishing the Entertainment Room after we had finished the ventilation system. So these last few weeks, saw us sort out the ceiling. We wanted to build the complete ceiling, which means putting in the conduits and channels to allow us to thread wiring and cables from each of the light placement to next light placement. The ceiling is a solid concrete blocks affair on concrete beams so there is very limited space up there. We had already mounted beams of 63mm CLS timber up underneath the concrete blocks (we screwed 6inch long screws down through the entire concrete block and glued the wooden beams up as well) and these beams are just large enough to clear the concrete beams too. We decided that we can have seven lighting units per controller, and that we will have four lamps in one row, with its three siblings in the next row over, staggered. But, in order to feed the power cable from the controller board, we needed to mount aluminium channels up across the wooden and concrete beams. We tried to cut away a bit of the wooden beam, a diagonal slot but we discovered that quite a bit of the concrete beam needed to be grinded away to make room for the aluminium channel as well. That was far too much effort, and also running a risk of disturbing, and weakening, the strength of the concrete beams. So, the solution was to cut up a load of old left-over pieces of our 11mm OSB boards, into narrow 40mm wide strips and staple and glue them up on the underside of the CLS beams, deliberately leaving a gap for the aluminium channels to be glued up, going diagonally from the first three lamps, to their siblings.

We did four sets of seven lighting units, plus half a set of just four units in the last odd row, finishing off the ceiling. There are a total of thirty-two concealed lighting units, each one with a fully controllable white brightness level plus some splash of colour too.The next job was to install our fire suppression system up into the ceiling space as well. We already had a 15mm plastic pipe threaded up through the wall into the ceiling space so we simply just took some 10mm plastic water pipe and threaded that down inside the 15mm pipe (the other end appears under the floorboards out in the hallway) and then put on a couple of T-junctions to split the water supply off into three different directions. One hovering near the window, two feet in. One in the middle and the third one nearer the back of the room. They all have 90degrees bends on them, going into a short piece of copper pipe, this goes through a small chunk of CLS timber and connects to the end cap which will have the spray nozzle fitted later on. We got these wooden blocks done now so we can reach up later on to screw them into place when we are lifting up the ceiling boards up into place. We tested all the joints by pressurising this section with compressed air and squirted washing up liquid around each joint to make sure that there weren’t any bubbles coming out.

Talking about ceiling boards, that is our next step. We took six sheets of our 18mm OSB boards and laid them out in our Great Room, lifted up off the floor with several full lengths of CLS timber. But, before we did that, we had all six of them stacked them up in a pile, on our work table. We proceeded to cut tongues and grooves in the appropriate edges so that the six sheets will fit together into a single combined ceiling, three boards wide and two boards long in the 8feet direction. The room is basically 12feet wide and just under 16feet long. We assembled them into that pattern on the floor and then tied them together using ratchets and straps to draw the tongue and groove together nice and tight, as if they were fully engaged up on the ceiling.

Now we can mark out where we want all the lighting units, plus also the air ventilation port as well onto the boards. We knew that the distance between each of the concrete plus wooden beams is 520mm, and each one occupies approximately 200mm, which means that there is a space of about 300mm that we can lay out and position our lamps. We decided that we would randomly shift each lamp position around a bit so that we do not create a ?boring? grid like pattern. We used our Tungsten carbide tipped core cutter measuring 95mm in diameter, and we made short work on drilling out 33 holes, especially using our mains powered Black & Decker electric drill!!

We are nearly to mount these six boards up to the wooden beams, but first, we had to unscrew the top horizontal rail off the concrete walls because it is in the way of the OSB boards going up, plus also the carpet we are going to stick up later on. But, we realised that the top rail that is going across the window is completely glued in, and the wooden ceiling beam is hidden behind it, where we needed to screw up the ceiling boards. This meant that we had to chisel away a fair chunk of this top rail, to increase the gap above so that we can slide in our 18mm thick OSB boards plus the 11mm padding layer we have put up on all our wooden beams. What a fuss!! This is what you get when an original idea didn?t quite work out completely correctly. But, We made it.

Oh yes, one of the last thing to do while the ceiling is open, is to glue up some pieces of concrete blocks up around the metal air vent pipe that is sticking downwards, ready to be attached to the pretty vent cover. There is a gap between two neighbouring concrete blocks so we needed to fill in that gap with more heavy mass material, to reduce the amount of audio sound waves escaping out of this room. We found some left-over pieces outside in our swimming lane, sliced down to the required dimensions and then glued it up into place using PU Construction glue, and a tall prop to hold the block up while the glue set.

The next job, the big one, of putting up each OSB board up to the wooden beams, screw and glue them into place. We got out our massive board lifter mechanism we bought ten years ago and it effortlessly lifted these 27kg heavy boards up with ease. We carefully aligned the long edge against a set of marks that represented the wall surface and shoved the short end into the gap above the window. It got all glued and screwed in at that point.

We then put up the second board along that line, after slicing off about 120mm off the end. We engaged the tongue and groove joint, made sure that it was very straight and then also glued and screwed that one up too. We repeated this twice more to put up the remaining four sheets. It was jolly hard work but we made it !!

We remembered to drill a small hole to let the fire suppression spray nozzle through and glued liberally the nozzle into place with PU construction so that we could undo the nozzle cap later on. We screwed the wooden blocks to help lock them in tight.

Then other thing we did up on the new ceiling, was to enlarges the ventilation hole. We did only a 95mm hole because we knew that we could be slightly off position and we wanted to see where we managed to get the original position. We were pretty close actually! It just needed a slight shift by 5mm away from the window and we cut out a new 220mm hole, ready to take the ventilation cover.

Now the next job is to put up the carpet!!

We ordered five pieces of carpets, the cheapest ones we could find and ended up paying well over £350!! We were going for a darker shade of colouring, but our head of the household put her foot down and selected a paler set of colours!! We ordered a 4.8metre by 4metre width for our ceiling, in a steel blue speckled colouring. It has a felt backing. We knew that it will glue just fine because we had previously got free samples and we tried various types of glues, to see which one is practical to use, to see how each one dried and see how strong the bond was afterwards. We tried wallpaper paste, a latex rubber glue and a contact glue. The wallpaper paste completely failed to stick at all, the latex rubber glue took absolutely ages to dry and wasn’t sticky enough to do the job of holding up the carpet while it finished drying. In another test, we did successfully use this latex rubber glue to stick a piece of carpet to the wooden board very well indeed which will be good for the walls. Anyway, we settled on the third type of glue, the contact glue (Evostick), because it dried very quickly within 10 to 15 minutes and we could press the two halves together and proved very strong. We tried ripping the sample carpet off and it started tearing the carpet itself instead of the glue. So we knew what type of glue to use.

Just a quick note about the cost of the carpet mentioned above. Yes, it is an extra cost to our overall build, but actually, it is not that high an extra, because we saved money by not having to put up our high precision plasterboards, which would have cost about £250 (13 sheets worth) so the extra on top is only £100 .. We Can Live With That!

The next trick we had to perform, is to get this twenty square metre carpet up onto the ceiling, upside down! We built a tall mobile wall with a shelf to hold the excess carpet in a fanfold arrangement. We needed a flat vertical surface so that the carpet’s backside is laid out flat, ready for the contact glue to be painted on. This flat surface is almost the entire width of the room (3.6metres – 12feet) and we decided not to paint to the very edge because the carpet is still at its original 4metres width and it needed extra room to ‘flop’ down.

In order to make sure that the very first attempt of pushing up the first edge of carpet goes on flat and without any wrinkles or ruts, we stapled on a 3.6metre length of 63mm CLS timber to the very edge of it, with equal amount of excess carpet left and right. We pulled the carpet up and draped it over our mobile wall so we had about 1metre dangling down. The mobile wall was then shifted so that it was about a 1metre from the end wall (furthest from the window). Once we have painted a strip about 900mm wide on the back side of the carpet, and a similar width up on the wooden ceiling with the contact glue, allowing it to become tact-free, we could lift up the CLS timber above our head while we stood on a ladder and a foot stool. We deliberately positioned the CLS plank against the surface of the concrete wall, sliding it up against it. We had previously marked the concrete wall near the ceiling so we knew where to position the plank so we arrived at the ceiling with the carpet and press hard upwards to get the two glue surfaces to bond together. Now, using a second similar plank but a bit shorter so we didn’t jam up too badly on the side walls, we used this piece of timber to press the carpet upwards continuously, bit by bit, moving further and further away from the completed section.

One aspect of this task of putting up all this contact glue, is the very strong chemical solvent smell coming off all the painted surfaces. So, we had to bring in a giant fan to stuck out as much of the fumes as possible. Also, we connected up our 6inch fan to the purple 100mm pipe out in the hallway, underneath the floorboards, and blow in fresh air via the ventilation outlets (four of them) we got in the room. Plus also, we opened the front door and the side door to allow clean fresh air into the house too. We even turned on our main ventilation fan we had previously installed and got it to stir the air around the entire house.

Now, we could duck under our mobile wall, and paint the next section, another 900mm strip, on the carpet and again the ceiling as well, wait for it to tack-free and then move our mobile wall along that 900mm. It was a wiggle, keeping the carpet straight and flat but we got there. then, we then ducked back under to the other side and picked up our rolling CLS timber, to continue pressing the carpet along bit by bit until all the glued strip is done.

We repeated this process another three times and arrived at the window. We discovered that the supplier had given us another 500mm of carpet because it turned out to be the end of their roll so they just gave us the excess for free? very nice of them!!
We had to prop up the last bit of carpet with three extending legs because the weight of that excess carpet was heavy enough to make it not stick up on the glue properly.

We then dismantled our mobile wall, and then went around trimming all the excess carpet off the edges. After that, it was the case of finding all the round holes, all 33 of them, and cut out the carpets, one by one. Oh yes, we also located the three water spray nozzle points and carefully cut around the little metal plate.
And then, finally, we went around the edges of the ceiling, to apply glue to the dangling bit of the carpets and stick that up to get it all finished.

We then remounted the top horizontal rail back up on the wall, making sure that the rail was levelled with the lower rails, by using our six foot long spirit level. We had to drill new holes into the concrete and adjusting the piles of wooden shims, to secure the rail dead flat.

The next job, before we put up the wall boards, is to insert the little plastic hanging hooks up inside the Utility Channel, every 12inches or so, right around the whole room. These hooks will hold up the high voltage mains cabling so that we can supply the old AC electricity to a socket if we need some equipment to be powered by AC power instead of our 50V electricity from our solar or batteries. Plus also, we inserted a length of 20mm white plastic conduit pipe going from the Utility Channel in the far corner furthest away from the window, and threaded the pipe up behind the other horizontal rails, and with a 90degree bend, poked the top end up inside the ceiling space towards the first lighting unit hole. We now can reach in with a hand and grab the cables that will come up from the Utility Channel, to supply power and network connections to our lamps.

Now it is time to insert the sound deadening material in between the wooden rails, plus also to spray PU foam behind each rail plus also the Utility Channel too. We pulled out rolls of our 100mm thick glass wool and cut lengths off, folded them over and stapled them in each gap, hanging down. The space we needed to fill is about 50mm thick, sometimes as much as 100mm in some areas so we realised that putting up double layered of the wool, will bulge out a great deal. This is what we were looking for, in order to increase the density of the glass wool, to help absorb the sound vibrations.

Now it is the turn of the 18mm OSB boards, to be glued and screwed up onto the rails. We decided that we would not employ our normal step of cutting tongue and groove in the vertical edges, to lock the boards together, to make a smooth surface. This made it very much easier to put up each board, especially considering the swollen glass wool all over the wall! We did glue each joint with our PU construction glue so it was locked together after all. But, we did notice that the joint isn’t as smooth as we normally get. We will solve that problem by sanding the joints with our belt sander and then the carpet will go over it, which will hide all these tiny bits of imperfections!! We went around our walls, putting up three sheets on the side wall, then almost four sheets along the long wall, went around the window and finally, two whole sheets on either sides of the doorway, plus a couple of shorter ones to go up and over the door hole. We wanted extra bits around the door because we needed to sliced into the edge with a 15degree angle, in order to remove a chunk of the OSB edges, to replace it with a strip of solid Oak timber instead. We knew that we are going to be hanging a very heavy dense door and we needed to make sure that the hinges will stay put when screwed into the wooden material. We found a plank of Oak in our garden shed (measuring 95mm wide by 30mm thick and a good 2.4metres long), sliced it in half and sanded all the old weathered surfaces. We glued two strips on both vertical edges of the doorway because we haven’t quite decided on which way around the door will be hung. These Oak strips were glued and screwed into place, including lots of large clamps to ensure the glue joint is squashed as tight as possible.

We finished off the week of work, well actually, finished off a whole year of work, by enclosing the window’s alcove with 11mm OSB boards, to hide the last parts of the concrete blocks. The two vertical sides got covered up from front to back, touching the window frame itself. And we put half a piece up on the top surface including several pieces of 1mm thick steel plates, glued to the backside of the 11mm OSB material. These will serve as magnetic attachment points, to hold up the ?lid? that is covering up the mechanisms for the automated blinds.
And finally, we glued on a narrow strip of 18mm thick OSB board, 45mm wide, to go over the top of the window hole, to bring it up to the same level as the rest of the wall surface.

This concludes the work for this year. But, we haven’t finish by a long shot !