Our new balcony - also known as the perils of starting one "small job"

So we have now owned the Crooked Cottage for two years.  Actually I think today is the anniversary day of when we settled.  And after the initial push to renovate before we moved in, followed by a period of extreme dislike of building work, I've swung back to wanting to get stuff done around the house.

The quest to get the balcony fixed started last year, when I got a builder to quote on fixing the railing.  We hadn't been letting people go out onto the balcony, even though we do have a little view of the city, and can see the fireworks at New Years - but the balcony rail was quite low and not sturdy so we wanted to fix it.

Seemed simple enough.  But nothing is ever simple here!

This is how the house looked when we bought it.  Those palms are long gone.  But as you can see, the balcony railings quite clearly do not meet any safety requirements.

Builder turned up. (bonus).  Looked at railing.  Bounced up and down on the decking.  Looked underneath.  Pronounced the boards to need replacing.

Ok - so we will replace the boards too.  Good idea.  New balcony.

Then he looked under the base.  Our balcony doesn't have any support posts - which means the joists are cantilevered under the floor of our bedroom.  The joists were also pronounced rotten.  So suddenly the "small job" of fixing the railing height had become taking up the floor in our bedroom, putting in new joists, new decking, new railings....  And the numbers he was "quoting" me kept climbing - first $5000, then $9000 then maybe $12000 - but all rather vague.  He never did send me a detailed quote.  And I didn't chase it up.

Then this year I spoke to our neighbour who had replaced our fence.  Asked his opinion on the matter of the dodgy balcony.  He had a look, agreed with the first builder and called a builder he works with.  So this time I got a proper quote.  The floor would be taken up, new joists put in, new decking (the right way up this time - it was pointed out to me that the ridges on the decking should go on the under side but people think they go on the top side for "grip"), new railings with regulation height and also no child sized gaps for anyone to stick their head (or entire body in the case of the old balcony) through.  Plus as the weatherboards had deteriorated these would be replaced.  

Not sure if it is very clear in this photo but previously there was quite a large hole under the balcony.  Also, the joists had been "fixed" by a second piece of pine attached to the first joists.

So we went ahead.  And as usual, Sydney's unseasonably dry weather stopped the day work was meant to start - we lost probably 4 days in total to rain.  

I didn't actually take any internal pictures, but for a few days it was very painful removing all the stuff out of our cupboards to allow access to the roof space and under floor.  But the results are complete (apart from painting - still waiting on quotes for that!) and I'm so very pleased!

The joists were cut off, and floor inside pulled up.  Weatherboards were also removed.

New joists were put in place and remain cantilevered so the balcony remains the same form and size - but is no longer rotten!

I tried to take some photos of the joists that were removed to show how rotten they actually were - very glad now that we didn't let anyone out there before! 

Base all framed up nicely, with the decking down, and new posts going up.

The finished product!  Looks so much better (and will be even better when we get it painted).  A nice sturdy, safe balcony which meets requirements.  I might even be able to sit out there sometimes and watch the world go by!

Of course, the problem is that now the upstairs looks so good I have to do something about the downstairs.  So next project will be replacing all the weatherboards and architraves at the front of the house.  And of course painting it a new (non bright blue) colour.  Won't be long and the Crooked Cottage will be one of the best looking houses on the street!

That really floored me

One of the things I liked about the house when we bought it, and something that is often referred to in real estate speak is "original floorboards" throughout.  We could see that there were floorboards in the spare room, lounge room and dining room, and although it was covered up with a fairly new looking laminate floor we were pretty sure there were floorboards in the kitchen too.  

Quite a good shot to show the old floor in the dining room and where it met the new floor in the kitchen.  The high shine part was laminate type floating floor. 

The old floor boards were not in great condition and had a lot of dirt and paint but they were still sound, no breaks or holes in the boards themselves.

So we decided that it should be fairly straightforward to lift the floating floor ourselves, and we had assumed that we would find the same floor underneath.  The laminate had been laid in a fairly slap dash way, the edges were certainly not what you would call professionally finished.

As you can see some small pieces were added at the end of the floorbards and then just a strip of metal or wood nailed down to "finish" it off

This was as we started to pull it up - a lot of small pieces of wood and the boards themselves were ripped up.  

The first layer was not too hard.  The laminate flooring clicks together and also clicks apart, so with the help of a crow bar (well like a crow bar but flatter and smaller, not sure what the technical term is but I called it our lift bar) and a mallet we were pulling them up easily.  Note I said "first layer".  The kitchen guys had already measured up our kitchen and had mentioned that there was 20mm difference in floor height from one side of the kitchen to the other.  As everything in this place is so crooked we didn't think much of it initially.  Turns out, it could have been any one of the 5 + layers of flooring under there which was uneven!

Not the best focus but this shows the second layer (and our mallet) -  lino tiles.

These are lino tiles, so each square is a piece of lino which was glued down.

So second layer - lino tiles.  And who knows how long ago they were stuck down, but the glue was still pretty sticky!
We started ripping this up, which mostly just involved getting and edge and pulling.  
  

The lino tiles were stuck down onto a type of chipboard.  Note the damage around the stove, probably old water damage.

Another shot of the first layer of chipboard, with some of the lino tiles still stuck.  There was water damage around this wall as well.

The chipboard was hard to get up, it was in larger sheets and was quite heavy.  

Next layer was another layer of lino.

We were starting to feel a bit like we were unwrapping babushka dolls - a floor under a floor under a floor (and repeat).  This layer was another layer of lino, a kind of yellow colour with a pattern on it.  It was full sheets of lino, not in tiles.  It had been stuck down directly onto a third type of lino, I don't think I have any photos of that one as the glue was still quite strong and as we ripped up the yellow lino we took the other one with it.  The final layer was another layer of chipboard.  By this stage we were getting tired and cranky - what had been expected to take us an hour or so maximum was up to 3-4 hours.  And we hadn't found the floorboards yet!  But as the chipboard came up we found - 

Finally - we found floorboards!  And in surprisingly good condition, especially considering the water damage we had seen.  Maybe all the layers were good protection.

But another snag - there were only floorboards under 3/4 of the floor - the rest was this large piece of board, put down over what was probably previously a verandah.

So we finally found the floorboards - with two fairly major issues.  The biggest one was the lack of floorboards in one whole section of the floor.  Can't exactly polish up a big piece of board and hope no one notices.  We needed to put in a floor and we needed it within five days, as I had already booked the polishing in!  The other issue was the staples in the main floorboards.  Thousands of tiny little staples which all had to be removed by hand, without marking the floor.  

The first issue was solved by the company we had already booked to come and polish the floors.  I rang them in a panic to ask what we could do, and they sent me Julius.  Julius is a very deaf carpenter, who we struggled to communicate with  - but since he could see the problem fairly easily when he arrived we didn't have to explain much.  And he worked magic.  He sent my husband to buy reclaimed floor boards from a local timber place - Rozelle Recycled and Ironwood - they have a number of different timber and stone retailers there, including one that sells reclaimed boards - a great place to look for building materials.  And then Julius was able to come in to do our floor the next day, and built a floor for us from scratch.

Underneath the piece of board was only rubble, no joists or any support at all - no wonder the floor was at different heights in different places.

The joists were built with treated pine.  The rubble we removed by hand - although I didn't touch the mummified rats we found under there, those were shovelled into the rubbish!

And once it was done, you could barely see what was "new" floor and what was old.  The use of reclaimed floor boards (these are cypress pine and about 85-90mm wide) meant it blended in.

In this picture you can see a little more obviously where the floor was built - however later when it was polished you can't tell at all.

I can't speak highly enough of Julius and the fact that he saved our floor - and us!

The staples were another question.  We all took turns at trying to prise them out, and gradually removed most.

Each of those little marks is a staple, many with chipboard still attached.  I guess whoever put it down didn't plan on ever seeing those floorboards again.

I have no idea why they used so many staples.  But they all had to come out to be able to polish the floor

The staples were prised out gently using long nose pliers.  I tried other tools, particularly after requesting suggestions from my friends on Facebook.  I think my cousin gave one of the best pieces of advice when he said 

" With each job there is an easy way and a hard way. You can never have enough tools. Take this dilemma down to your local hardware store find the oldest fella with the roughest looking hands and ask him for advice"

Pretty much was what I followed for the whole renovation process! (Thanks Ben)

The next post will cover the polishing of the floors - and how they came up in the end!