chriswoodartist

For the last week or so I have been doing some long overdue DIY. We moved into our rambling Southsea house over 30 years ago and my enthusiasm for DIY waned after the first 5 years. Work takes over everyone’s lives at some point and as an artist and lecturer I became swamped with work and no time to do anything other than work, eat, sleep, repeat ! Then two sets of parents passed away and I found myself doing full scale DIY in two places but not at home. Next came another project – a wooden Classic boat restoration and as everyone knows who owns a wooden boat – the restoration never ends and this is how I felt about our house !
Over the years I have done bits and pieces and since semi retirement I have had a little bit more time to catch up (but not much).
I digress – my current project began more than 20 years ago, when in a fit of peak, I took out a fireplace in our bedroom. (That was a second kitchen when we moved in). The ensuing hole in the wall was promptly hidden behind a huge mirror that our neighbour kindly gave us and I rather forgot the original intention, which was to tidy up around the hole and re plaster the entire wall. I used to quite enjoy plastering and have taught myself how to skim walls and even the odd ceiling.

What began last week as a re plastering job quickly evolved into building a set of freestanding shelves in the hole and making good around the hole. Now the project has evolved again into revamping the entire room. My main reason for this is purely personal as I had a health scare in the bedroom a few years ago and who knows what the paramedics thought about the state of the crumbling plaster etc !
The story so far : I skimmed over the deep holes with 1:4 cement and sand mix. I waited until the mortar had dried off then, sealed the entire wall with the remains of a tin of stabilising solution and when that ran out, I thinned down some PVA glue and applied that to the surface of the wall. Then, I skimmed over the wall (and the new cement) with Thistle multi finish plaster. This was done during the last heatwave and I did it in several stages as I didn’t want to make a large batch of plaster and risk it going off in the heat. I can usually get a good result but the heat meant the plaster dried very quickly and feathering in the edges was a challenge ! After several days, my muscles were aching and I felt like a change so I began to make the three shelf bookcase in situ and this too was “a challenge” Victorian houses, even the well made ones, often have walls that aren’t square and this can be a real pain when retro-fitting joinery ! I built an mdf sub floor inside the fireplace and the bookcase was made a bit at a time in situ and this was my first mistake ! Today I took out the bones of my bookcase and disassembled it in the garden and rebuilt it and clamped it up and screwed and glued all the components. it is now sat under the shade of my infamous twisted hazel tree and enjoying a nocturnal well earned rest – so too am I !
More to follow. . .