Office Make-Over - Part 1

We have had a little shuffle round in the house and decided to move the office out of the guest bedroom, and into it's very own room, which used to be the spare guest room with a single bed in it.

We gave it a quick lick of magnolia paint when we moved in two years ago, but other than that, it was left as it was, and to be honest, it became a bit of a dumping ground.

I also gave the hubby (almost) free reign to pick a colour of his choice, as it would be his office after all.  He had taken the mickey so much out of my Farrow and Ball colour cards, that when he picked a colour I think he was just being flippant.  But to show him I'm not a wimp, and I really can paint our house in a colour other than magnolia, I went through with it.

The colour he chose was Farrow & Ball Sudbury Yellow.

I've never used F&B paint before, and it was eye wateringly expensive - but I wanted to give it a go.  With it being a tiny room, I would only need one 2.5L tin, so there was some damage limitation. (But still, £40!)

Prepping for plastering by removing the skirting board (yes it was screwed on...)

One bit of prep that I wasn't bargaining on was removing this little bugger of a piece of skirting board:

After wrestling with it for quite some time, I realised the reason I could not extract it from the wall, was in fact because it continued THROUGH the wall, (yes, that's correct, through the wall), and into the master bedroom on the other side!  I'm not often lost for words, but that really left me speechless!  I mean, really?!  There is no way this was ever a two bedroom house, there are no other signs that the two rooms used to be one (that and all the neighbour houses are the same as ours) - so why on earth would someone think this was a good idea?! 

They really was no way it was coming off by pulling it, so out came my trusty hammer and chisel, and I chiseled the little bugger off.

And then plastered over him like he never existed...

So next up was, plastering.

I cleared everything out of the room, and put some scrim tape across the minor cracks on the ceiling.  No idea if that's a good idea or not, but I thought I would give it a go.  I also split the ceiling into two halves using scrim tape (which I would peel off after doing the first half) to give me a nice clean edge to work off for the second half.

Half of the ceiling plastered - scrim tape removed to leave clean(ish) join

It took me 7 sessions (each about 3 hours) to get the whole room done.  The room is approx 2.4 x 2m.  Plastering is all about time management, and making sure you have the right amount of time to go back and do the second coat, just when the first coat is at it's sweet spot.  It's all about good prep, setting up all your equipment ready, and making sure the surface to be plastered is clean and has sufficient coating of diluted PVA glue - this is to stop the wall prematurely sucking all the moisture out of the fresh plaster, making it unworkable too quickly.

I found a great solution for plastering around light switches and sockets.  What I did was that I turned the electrics off first, and then detached the front plates of the sockets from the wires behind.  I then cut out some small pieces of cardboard to cover the remaining hole and protect the wires.  I then plastered straight over the top as if it wasn't there, and cut the cardboard out after I had finished all my 'wets' (last finishing trowels). Simple, and so clean looking when it's done - something our plasterer who came in after the re-wire could have taken a lesson in!

Some progress shots:

Prepped (left) and after (right) shot.  The paint on the left is where I had sampled the colour before buying.

The hardest bit for me was around the window as there were so many fiddly bits like the valves for the radiator, and the narrow edges down each side of the window.  It really does look a bit pants, but the radiator does cover most of the worst spots, so I'm not too concerned.

Let's just say my plastering isn't perfect, and when it was all done, I did need to rub over the walls in some places with some really fine sandpaper.  But it's not horrendous!  After sanding I then wiped the walls with a wet cloth to get rid of any surface dust before painting.

I did two coats of a watered down white emulsion and then one coat of full strength white emulsion.  I love Johnstone's premium contract matt - it goes on so well and the coverage is excellent.  That and the paint shop at the end of the road sells it which is very convenient.

Look how huge it is now it's all white and clean looking!

Due to time off work, it was at this point that I decided to sand the floor back.  The carpet in here was the original carpet that the owners before it had left, and for some god awful reason (in terms of god awful points the previous owners have racked up quite a few on this room!) they had decided to fit it in two halves. As the room was so small, I just hired one of the edging sanders to get the room done, and it only took a couple of hours.  Not bad! (Absolutely killed my back mind. Will I ever learn?!)

Halfway through

And done!  Ignore the dodgy plumbing in the back of the shot.  This will get sorted out when we next drain the system down, but as we had just put some inhibitor in the system, it seemed like a bit of a waste to do it there and then.

And covered up with a plastic dust sheet to protect whilst painting commenced.

This is where I will leave you with part one. Join me shortly for Part 2 - the paint!

Using Frogtape - Top Tips

I haven't used masking tape much historically, but now I have found Frogtape, which is really quite a revelation. I've learnt some lessons from it though, and made some mistakes.

Here's the pros and cons (and how to avoid them) of using it:

This is when I used it on the hallway - on the floorboards and the walls.

It's really important to smooth it down really well at the edge otherwise it's still possible for some paint to get underneath.  It's a bit tricky though if you have a random bump or lump in the walls, but do the best you can.  

The difficulty I found is that when I was trying to put it on, if I went slightly off course, the instinct is to pull it off quickly.  Why do we have this instinct?!  You want to pull it off before it sticks?  No idea, but it's completely unfounded, yet somehow I can't stop myself doing this! It's this quick ripping action which does no favours for the tape, and on some sensitive surfaces, can pull off the paint from the surface beneath.  This was my problem.

It's easy to tear however, and once you have smoothed it down, very easy to paint over.

To pull it off, do it whilst the paint is still wet, and do it slowly.  Pull the tape almost back on itself for best results to prevent it pulling off the paint underneath.  It's the 90 degree pull off that's not good:

But some fine sandpaper, and a little touch up, and all is forgotten:

You'll notice I mostly used the yellow tape - this is for delicate surfaces.  As I was running out of yellow tape I started using the green tape on the floor and it was absolutely fine.

Both the yellow and green tapes are for emulsion paint and water based paint (which my Johnstones Acrylic Eggshell Paint was), but there is also an orange tape for oil based paints too.

Frogtape has definitely changed my life - my DIY life anyway!

What products have you used that have changed your DIY adventures for the better?

Preparing and Priming the stairs

Progress has been a bit slow on the hallway as of late, so I really needed to do something to give myself a boost.  Little effort for maximum benefit.

The stairs really needed painting as the old yellow and mustard coloured paint look was really starting to get tired!  But first a little prep...

There were some big old gaps between the steps and the steps had taken a battering with the amount of staples and nails that had been put in them over the years.

So, I started by filling them in.  Some of them were really quite large so I started with Gripfill, hoping that might do the trick.  Some also needed some stripwood to fill the gap as it was that large.

Unfortunately, even in areas with a small amount of filler, it shrunk quite a lot on drying and it all cracked up.

Round 2 of filling.

I went back to my trusty deep gap filler from Toolstation.

There was one particular hole which wouldn't retain any filler.  So I got a little crafty.  I cut out a small section of foil from a foil tray (narrow enough to just be able to fit through the hole) and pierced a small hole in the middle.  I then got a pierce of string and knotted it underneath.

[It just happens there was a big hole in one of the stairs, and one hole in the floorboards on the landing - the following photos are of the landing, but I used the same technique for the stairs]

I then put some gripfill on the upper side of the foil (the side with the longest length of string), and carefully poked it through the hole.

Once I had poked it through, I used the string to gently pull the foil up  and make contact with the underside of the floorboard.  I used a piece of tape to secure the string just whilst it dried, and then added a little more gripfill to try and fill the gap a little bit to start with.

Once dried, the string can be cut.  The hole on the landing I topped up with wood filler as this would be stained to match the floor, but the hole on the stairs, I filled with deep gap filler as this would be painted.

I intended to use Johnstones Acrylic Eggshell Paint in Brilliant White as it claims to stay white and not yellow over time.  I will see how it lives up to those claims in time.  But to use this product it advises you use Johnstones Joncryl Acrylic Primer.  A bit of a sand of all my filler first and I was good to go.

What a difference a bit of paint makes!  I also LOVE the contrast between the white and the wall colour. Yum!

I also discovered the joys of masking tape, specifically yellow Frogtape (for sensitive surfaces).  It has paint block technology to give a really clean edge.  I'd never really had much success with masking tape and it always bled paint underneath.  Confession - I always figured it was for people without any skills to paint a straight line.  That is until now! I LOVE it!

It saves so much time.  Rather than faffing about - just tape on, paint (not even taking any particular care), tape off. Done. I'm sold.

That's only the primer on the steps, I still need to prep  and paint all the spindles and banister on the stairs (a job I'm putting off as I know it will take ages!), as well as properly paint the steps with the top coat, but progress is progress nonetheless, and I'm chuffed.