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Monthly Archives: August 2013

fly on the wall…

17 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by grtescp in apartment

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

apartment, design, fire alarm, fly, jalo helsinki, wish list

… today I finally stripped the last of the wallpaper…

… the plasterers are in, finishing off the walls, patching them up, priming and painting faster than I ever could do by myself. They let me have a go at plastering one day, and quickly went back over my attempt, smoothing my fumbling, lumpy strokes…

… this week they should bring the sanding machines in and start work on the floors too… things are moving, but there is still so much to do and I hope to move mid-September!

… we need to work out whether we can remove the radiators to fix the walls behind them (and probably paint them while we have them out) and I hope an electrician will come and sort out the random cables the other electricians (who are now on holiday) left behind, television, telephone and doorbells, inter-phones and who knows what!

… somehow searching for not too ugly doorbells, I ended up looking at fire alarms… it is early days yet, I don’t have a finished ceiling to attach one to, but I think I am decided, when I do have to buy my fire alarm, this is the one I am going to get, by Jalo Helsinki…

Jalo Helsinki Lento smoke detector

a scrappy cocoa scout…

11 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by grtescp in sewing

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

grainline scout, hot cocoa, jersey, knit, raglan sleeves, sewing, t-shirt

… I knew immediately I would use it for a t-shirt…

… at the Belgian bloggers swap, Jo had a couple of old baby blankets she was offering to a new home, double layers of soft jersey, I took the green and turquoise one…

… back home, looking at t-shirt patterns, I printed out the Kirsten Kimono tee, it was going to be perfect…

… then, procrastinating one day and I stumbled on this gorgeous t-shirt…

istillloveyou-sewing-chiffon-raglan-baseball-tee-8

… yesterday afternoon I took out the tiny scraps left over from my pyjamas turned scout, and laid out the sleeves of the Dixie DIY hot cocoa sweater on them… I could get a pair of short sleeves from what I had left…

… they were cut out, then I cut a green front and a turquoise back from a combination of the hot cocoa and the scout, using the raglan sleeves and neckline from the former and the length and hemline from the latter. I sewed them up, added a green neck band, top stitched the neck down and sewed the hem with my fabulous double needle…

… if (when?) I make another one of these I will make the sleeves wider, this pair are a bit tight on my upper arms, but I still love it…

… so, thank you Jo for the fabric, and see, Margot, there was enough fabric to make a t-shirt!

scrappy cocoa scout @ grtescp scrappy cocoa scout @ grtescp scrappy cocoa scout @ grtescp

the art of wallpaper removal…

09 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by grtescp in apartment, diy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

apartment, fabric softener, renovation, wallpaper, wallpaper removal

… close to 300 m2 of wallpaper, over 80 years of decorating history…

… not just one layer, but three to five layers, sometimes painted between layers, everything painted over the final layer…

…initially I thought I could just paint over the paper, and make do until I decided to redecorate, one room at a time, but the electricians cut deep channels in each wall, often taking entire sections of wallpaper with them. Other places you touched the wallpaper and could feel the decades of wallpaper paste crumbling behind the armour of paint and paper…

… I started peeling off corners here and there, then became more systematic, working one room at a time, hiding in the small bedroom as the electricians were cutting open walls and you couldn’t see across the living room for the billowing dust. I have found endless “treasures” hidden behind the paper, the inevitable sums and calculations, a quick sketch of a street map, a child’s drawing of a face, I think it might have been a bear… that was between layers, impossible to salvage or even photograph in it’s entirety. The biggest mystery has been two dates – was the apartment first decorated over the Christmas of 1930, is it dates of birth, or heaven forbid the life span of a lost infant… I will never know.

wallpaper removal @ grt*escp wallpaper removal @ grt*escp… initially the whole place was wrapped in a delicate flowery print, when that got too filthy and too subtle it was replaced with metallic golden swirls, impressive, but probably very oppressive. Typical Belgian architecture has the three main rooms in a row, “en enfilade”, meaning I have a 17m long main room, but the middle section doesn’t get any direct natural light. With all those gold swirls it most have been so dark! Later years the swirls were papered over with a more subtle beige textured paper, and then later the final layer was added, in some rooms this has embossed flowers, in others it is plainer. We will never know what the colour schemes were.

wallpaper removal @ grt*escp… real decorating risks were taken in the small bedroom, and this was where I had most layers to contend with, there was also a period of navy blue and green tartan, and a yellow paper (with the child’s drawing)…

… other finds under the paper included unwanted electric sockets. It seems if you no longer wanted a socket, you just papered over it, usually removing the metal plate from the outside, never disconnecting wires or removing the “innards”. That explains why my electricians found a number of wires in the walls that no amount of pulling would budge!

wallpaper removal @ grt*escp… before starting paper removal I did my research, spending more than an evening with the inexhaustible sources of knowledge and wisdom: google and youtube… I read and assessed the pros and cons of steam vs. fabric softener, mechanical vs. physical effort, and concluded for my walls the best approach was:

  • remove as much of the painted outer layer of paper as possible dry, sometimes other layers came off too this way.
  • once I had the “waterproof” painted layer off, wet the walls with a water and fabric softener mix and wait a while – this is the hardest part, but the waiting really makes a difference!

… initially I followed the recommendation to use hot water and a 1:3 ratio of softener to water, applied with a paint roller to small areas at time… the first rooms took me almost a day/wall.

… I quickly dropped the hot water as I didn’t have a hot water source, or electricity, so I was heating a pan of water at a time on my camping stove… I decided “to hell with this” and switched to cold water and saw no noticeable difference.

… then I spoke to the plasterer who is going to fix up all my walls and he told me to go out and buy a cheap garden spray pump… he told me I could use the cheapest washing up detergent I could find if I wanted, but I already had 2 bottles of (hypo-allergic!) fabric softener, so I have stuck with that, but at a much lower ratio than 1:3. He told me just to spray the whole wall, and get it nice and wet, and wait… and he was right! Less fabric softener water splattering me in the face than with the roller and I have been “zooming” through the place ripping wallpaper off walls at the rate of almost a room per day…

… only the two small entrance halls left to go…

wallpaper removal @ grt*escp wallpaper removal @ grt*escp

tackling plan B…

01 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by grtescp in sewing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

cotton, grainline scout, sewing

… it was an extravagance, but it was perfect for my pyjamas…

… it was just a shame there wasn’t enough…

… ever since my pyjama fail I have been thinking how I can use that tiny piece of gorgeous, expensive fabric – a mere 1m x 1.1m. Following the Belgian sewers meet up, I was going through patterns and ideas, planning how to use some of the fabric I brought home that day, looking at some of the patterns I have downloaded and saved…

… the grainline scout woven tee jumped out at me – surely it couldn’t take much fabric, I didn’t even try converting the fabric requirements from meaningless imperial to metric measurements, I just taped and patched together the printed pattern pieces, worked out my size, cut the pieces out and spread my fabric out on the floor…

… I folded this way and that way, lay the pieces one way and the other, and worked out if I included a smidgen of selvedge in one side seam and lost a 1cm square from under an arm I could cut front and back out, and get the sleeves too. The fabric was cut, and sat on top of my fauxdenza for a week or more, taunting me to sew, teasing me to just get the sewing machine back out…

… my machine had been packed up, taken for a service, and once collected kept in its case as I knew I didn’t have time for sewing at the minute… but the scout pieces taunted me.

… one evening, when I should have been reviewing technical progress reports for a contract I am working on, I decided instead to take some time out, and just sew the damn scout! It came together easily, except the binding on the neck which seemed too short, maybe I should have stretched the binding and eased the neck in, I just cut a new, longer length of bias binding. The bias binding had also been bought for the pyjamas…

… it is really pretty, maybe a bit too pyjama-y, I am not generally a huge pattern fan (except for pyjamas!), I generally prefer solids, but it will be light and cool, perfect for the warm weather forecast for later this week, but I think the cotton might drive me crazy, it is already wrinkled from trying it on after I made it…

… give me a knit any day!

scout woven tee @ grt*escp scout woven tee @ grt*escp

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