2024-03 House Renovation

This month I worked on renovating the spare bedroom and fixing a problem in the attic. In hindsight I took on too much work. I might need a new rule of no renovation projects over winter. Outside was pretty but no significant sunshine yet.

Water damage fix

A sewer vent pipe routed through the wall cavity in the room being refinished. It ran up the wall into the attic and inside an ancient wooden chimney. Where the vent pipe entered the attic, warm air had been escaping around the sides of the pipe. As the warm air hit the attic from the hole, the moisture condensed on the pipe. This lead to dripping on the pipe and within the wall. The house is quite dry, so luckily no rot had developed. There was significant discolouration and the beginning of some deterioration of the wood.

I replaced the damaged wood and used expanding foam to seal the pipe sides. I wouldn’t normally use expanding foam. In an old house, foam can affect the drying direction of the surrounding materials, but for this application it was right. Sealing the pipe exterior stopped the condensation completely, which was great. I got a local plumber to inspect the vent arrangement.

I got the work done to remove the old chimney. The attic is a tight space, with nails sticking into the space from the roofing surface. There’s also no true walk surface up there. I was in full PPE with a facemask, helmet, and headtorch and lots of swearing.

Room Renovation Issues

Usually we achieve what we intended. However, the room renovation is an example of where the project didn’t go to plan.

I prepared two of the original 1940’s house walls by sanding them and oiling them. However, they had significant alterations and marks from later work. The alterations were going to be hard to cover up. It would also be hard to make the walls look in keeping with the rest of the room. We also couldn’t use one of the other original walls due to the sewer vent pipe.

Electrical work was also slow-going. I had to order 3 phase Schneider Easy9 modules from Qatar which took some time to arrive. The electrical conduits all routed within the råspont ceiling, such that the whole thing would need to come down to reach the electrics. One side of the room had a wall built after the ceiling was made, such that the ceiling would also need cutting, not simply pulling down. I had wanted to push ahead with the plan of putting in an electrical subpanel. The aim would be to migrating the floor electrics a room at a time to the new subpanel as renovations went on. Sadly, it was starting to look like a lot of work that I was missing experience for. Every task seemed to need 101 smaller skills that would be obvious to someone with experience.

I started putting a tongue and groove (“råspont”) wall up on the back wall of the room. I knew I was running out of time before visitors would come in May. The building work was also causing chaos in the house.

Long Winter

This winter had been unusually long and dark compared to previous winters. With the house being a giant mess due to the ongoing room renovation, it was a bit stressful. There were also work pressures. I felt like I had no free time and didn’t get to do a lot of the winter activities list snowshoe walking. I was conscious that I had stopped learning Swedish. The social interactions with trying to coordinate some of the trade work were also difficult due to differences in experience, expectations, and rules.

In summary, this was probably my toughest month of the winter. I figured it was best to ask for some help finishing all the work.

Asking for help

I contacted a local carpenter, who was happy to come and look, and less happy after looking. They opinioned that the råspont I was putting up was imperfect and not a modern finish. They also wanted to put in another false ceiling to put the electrics in, as opposed to looking in the current ceiling. We disagreed on this, as there was already two ceilings above. I didn’t want to add another layer of complexity to the building.

Generally everything was a bit wrong and the meeting wasn’t great.

I took the weekend and contacted the electrician to put the wiring back to the original plan. I then told the carpenter I’d purchase a modern wall finish, and I ordered some wood effect wall covering.

Lessons Learnt

It was all really messy in terms of coordinating people, redoing things and not achieving the goals I wanted. I think I’ll know a lot more for the next similar project, however. An example would be to talk to the carpenter, electrician, and plumber early. I should plan out the job and agree on the materials to be used, right down to the smallest items and how it is to be done.

I also need to be careful of any project that takes over the house, and the risk of it dragging on.

Lastly, I need to have a healthy respect for the amount of time a project can take up. I also need to ensure I take enough free time over winter.

Other things

I got the car MOT’d. The inspector walked over with part of a broken suspension spring that fell off. Not a great sign but it was easy to fix. The local mechanic booked me in that week and fixed it. It’s awesome having a trustworthy and fast mechanic nearby.

I got some new goals for the local school whose gym we use for innebandy (indoor nordic floorball) on Sundays. The old ones had been repaired multiple times and the new ones were apparently well received. I had asked permission to get them first, but I was a bit worried about the sizes of the goals being different. In the end it all turned out fine.

Towards the end of the month it was still below zero but there were a lot more hours of daylight (I think we reach parity with UK daylight in the last week of march) and the ice was clearing off most roads. Solar production really picks up towards the end of the month. The low temperatures, sunlight reflecting off the snow and higher electric prices make the panels more efficient and the production valuable.