Last Summer Karen decided we needed to remodel one of the bedrooms so Zoe would have a new room when she starts school. Here are a few photos from this little adventure. Keep in mind that it started with the idea or replacing the wooden boards on the cieling with sheet rock…
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Well after making up minds on that it would be just the cieling, and we would add a few extra lights because the room was dark, Itook off the box to the “Rolladen” (roll up shutters) that are common here in Europe. I decided that this would be great time to modernize it with motor. They shutters would normally roll up with the band that is displayed on the left of the picture. It is now obsolete.
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This turned out to be more work than meets the eye. First I hard to replace the big silver tube, because the motors for the industrial tubing that was there are tripel the price. At $100 a piece that smarts. Then I mounted it using the existing holes. This caused it to sit too low on the motor side. The I found out why it was crooked one that side to star with. There is a piece of rebar as thick as my thumb running vertically through wall exactly where the hole needs to go. So, not wanting to drill out the rebar and tap it for a bolt, I drilled an extra set of holes and did some concrete patch work. We will see how long it holds. The electricty for this we needed to run as well.
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I decided we could run the electricity from the light switch. Now keep in mind the original swith was a single switch. I had to modify it to be a double switch. No lie, that meant 85 minutes boring through concrete with this “speical” drill bit big enough to handle a new light switch. Then I bought two split switches. One switch will control the cieling fan and center light. The other half of that switch will control the new yet to be installed lights. The the bottom switch will control the rolladen, one up, one down. You can see the rough plaster i put in to fill the extra space in the hole.
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The real blessing here is that there was enough extra space in the conduit running from the switch to nearly the cieling to handle the extra wires for the switches. After looking at it closely I was able to chip out this huge hole that someone else had put there and filled with plaster. From that I cut a channel with high speed grinder and dimond masonary bit. I was able to lay another piece of condiut and cover it up with plaster. It looks a little goofy, but that will all be under the cieling, eventually.
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This is actually the second go at this hole wth plaster. the first round I put too much on, so I neede to chip it off and start over. In the junction box I put the wires for the lights and the rolladen.
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In the next few images you will see that we needed to suspend the cieling. This is the first step. We will put cross boards on shortly and then start fitting the sheetrock. The lights a temp because as summer started fade away so did the light.
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Another bright idea. In the corner there is a chimney for the heating unit on the ground floor. I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to run a set of cables from the ground floor into the attic where I can further connect them to the rest of the upper floor. So, I bult these rails to push out the wall 12cm. I then drilled 3 holes as this as my thumb. Two went to the gruound floor and one went to the attic. I then ran conduit to join them.
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While I was at it, I added an extra electrical outlet in the corner to go with the phone and network jack I am installing.
Next is to start putting up the cross boards on the cieling. I will probably then build out that little flase wall and then start sticking up the sheetrock on the cieling. I am learning a lot. Mainly why normal people pay to have this done. the motivating factor here is that I start training for another “adventure” when I complete this endeavour.
