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My husband and I bought a fixer upper. Background first: We bought a duplex in 2010, which we've since paid off and put a lot of time and improvements into. It was never a permanent home though because of the size, layout, and location. After scouring real estate listings every 3-4 months since 2010, this gem came on the market and we snapped it up. The house is a poured concrete basement level of 50 square meters, and a two floor timber house with corrugated metal roof and siding (a traditional siding here in Iceland, and a desire of mine to own as a transplant to this country). The house frame is in fine condition, the roof replaced in 2000, but the siding and all windows need replacing, all plumbing and wiring started again from scratch. Our plan is to do it mostly ourselves. Oh and the house sits on 3,000 square meters of land, which just doesn't happen here in the capital area. The majority of people are lucky to have a balcony, and "generous" gardens when they even exist are around 500-800 square meters. The house as we bought it:  Here is an aerial photo from 1974:  One half of the roof is painted, and the scaffolding for the taller back half is now built. This image shows the red after painting:  View from the top level of the scaffolding, with my husband painting. I built hooks from plywood to hold the extension ladder on the peak of the roof, and we paint it in strips before moving the ladder:  Mid level, I'll use this to replace the siding and windows.  View from the back garden. It's taken a while to tame the grass but it makes the house feel lived in, instead of looking like a rumoured witch's house.  My favorite feature is the flagpole, the base was cast in 1980 to commemorate the year of the tree as declared by Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the world's first popularly elected female president.  All four sides stitched.  Previous project threads: Shed: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3815092 Sun-room: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2819334&userid=75533#post482211560
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Aug 27, 2018 14:37
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 06:06 |
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We got the new electrical box built and delivered by my uncle who is an electrician. We have the last house in the capital with aerial power wires, but the next task is to get it buried and into the new box. We will have two meters, one for our top levels we will inhabit, and another for the basement we plan to rent out. They will have their own circuit breaker box for all the fuses but the master. We're also about to cut out all the old spaghetti plumbing and start over with pex pipe. Currently I am planning the layout in 3d of the interior and calculating the amount of siding we need. I work 80% and my husband full time, but we both have weekends off and spend the majority of our free time there renovating. Luckily for us, a major hardware store, a glass supplier and a plumbing supply store are all walkable from our location.
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Aug 27, 2018 14:44
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Calculating how much corrugated aluzink siding we need, as well as the dropalista (not sure the English, it's a wooden rain overlap between the corrugated level and the concrete below to keep the rain from dripping down the concrete). We could choose between pre-colored or unpainted, and the unpainted was 1/3 cheaper plus a more durable material. The downside is that we have to leave it unpainted for at least two years, and then the labor of painting. The siding comes in 107cm wide, 99cm coverage with overlap of the next piece, and can be ordered at any length. By creating the house in 3d with the windows which require cuts or interruptions in the siding, we can hopefully order exactly what we need with little waste and no ugly top to bottom seams, a problem on the original from when the lengths were of preset and shorter maximum length. Under is a layer of tarpaper to break the wind, and the siding is fastened with special ringshank nails that have wide heads and rubber washers. One must predrill holes and sink the nails through the raised part, not the dips. Luckily I've already completed a small roof on a shed using this same material, so it's not a total new experience. 
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Aug 28, 2018 14:32
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This is very cool!
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Aug 30, 2018 03:08
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I've never seen a house built in this way before. I can't recall ever noticing that whenever I've been in Iceland. Is this fairly common, the whole corrugated thing? I love Iceland so much and I envy you that you get to live there. Such a beautiful place.
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Aug 30, 2018 09:00
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Nice piece of fish posted:I've never seen a house built in this way before. I can't recall ever noticing that whenever I've been in Iceland. Is this fairly common, the whole corrugated thing? There is a definite divide between the "super poor" times of pre-Marshall Plan and modern construction. From the early 1900s on, nearly all the houses, definitely all the bigger ones, are out of poured concrete with rebar, but prior to that, only government buildings got such expensive imported materials. Anything older than about 1920 is more and more likely to be timber with corrugated metal, the Icelandic word is "Bárujárn" or "wave iron". Fun fact, there is a building downtown out of timber that was built 4 years before the declaration of independence was signed, making it older than the USA. Icelandic weather is brutal, it is so often precipitating, windy, and cold. The shorts weather sunny days are a rarity and to be cherished. Now that I'm getting into construction, I notice on vacations when locales have easier weather, like in Tasmania where one can plan for only 8-10cm of snow load, whereas here we have to consider 50cm, hah! Additionally nearly all of our building materials are imported. We have no forestry industry, no glass production (just cutting), cement and metal is imported. We do smelt aluminum for the Russians with our cheap energy, but other than rock and moss, it's a fairly devoid of raw material island. That said, I'm finding the Icelandic construction style very sensible, not so difficult to follow, and doesn't require too many exotic tools as long as one is doing a residential house. I got two books yesterday, one is more a leaflet, but definitely helps with figuring out the icelandic specific way of building windows (which I think is shared in Sweden and some other nordics).  And here is the "window timber" section at the hardware store, where lumber can be bought pre-routed into the standard shapes.  As a bit more information, the capital area of Iceland is having just as crazy a real estate market as Sydney, Montreal, London, or NYC, with rent and purchase prices outpacing normal people's ability to buy. We got really lucky with our first purchase, right after the global recession of 2008, when markets were slumped, everyone was upside down, and no one was lending. That said, as much as we like our original purchase, it was a "starter house" in terms of space and amenities that we want for our lifestyles, and on far too busy of a street with a young child (not to mention the uptick in traffic and jams at rush-hour with all the tourists of the recent years). We saw from our research that the only path to a single unit house with land would be a fixer upper, so we've been honing our construction skills in the interim with renovations and building projects with the space we do have. I would *not* feel comfortable with a project of this size as a first go, it's daunting enough as is. Luckily my father in law and his brothers are all engineers or electricians, and the older men at the hardware stores are helpful enough that I've got resources to go to when I'm out of my depths. We've also arranged a barter with a couple, one half interior decorator, one half experienced builder. This house will sit empty til at least May because of what works best on our end, and we found someone who needed a place to stay in the capital willing to trade 20 hours of work a month for that exchange. The best part will be the experience of them both to run things by, but they are also undertaking a reno project of their own, so having like minded people to compare progress with will also be really enjoyable. Most people are lucky to have a long term rental, let alone a purchased small apartment, so renovation projects among my peers are few and far between.
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Aug 30, 2018 10:35
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Small update: got the whole house modelled in 3d And now planning the plumbing, having the house in 3d is helping immensely in this stage.  
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Sep 11, 2018 18:06
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poopinmymouth posted:Small update: got the whole house modelled in 3d Everything so far is good and interesting (congrats on the land, it's the main thing you can't add later) but this is fantastic and I can't wrap my head around people who do big jobs without this level of planning. Excited to see how this goes.
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Sep 11, 2018 21:42
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cakesmith handyman posted:Everything so far is good and interesting (congrats on the land, it's the main thing you can't add later) but this is fantastic and I can't wrap my head around people who do big jobs without this level of planning. Excited to see how this goes. Thanks! Plumbing planning is mostly done, just have to finish the oven hot input system, but it will follow the output, so not too stressed.  Demolitions beginning, taking out all the old pipes, which were a self circulating system that required tons of coal to heat, and super thick pipes.  Lots of the pipes came up in random places, since the basement was used as a basement (we plan to make it a nice apartment to rent out) so it was no problem to have spaghetti pipes everywhere, but we want modern pex and all enclosed and not visible, so out the old stoo  Lots of exposed walls as we are tearing all the internal drywall off to make room for insulation (none currently) vapor barrier, plus a void for the electrical wires and pex pipes.  Hubby proud that we got this out. This was part of the old drain system for the toilets, and was so incredibly heavy and thick that it took me 45 minutes with a combo of sawzall and angle grinder to get through it. Incredibly heavy.  To save money, instead of renting a dumpster (1,000 USD buy in, plus paid by the kilo to take away) we borrowed father in law's car and trailer, and are doing small trips as we go, which only costs 25 bux a load. Did four trips today and the house is empty of garbage. About 200kg of pipes and 2 rooms worth of drywall, plus a toilet, sink, and bathtub.  We met with the power company, as we have the last house in the capital area where our power comes in the air. They are going to install up to the house for free, 3 phase, but we have to have a master electrician hook up the box, but before that, we need the new fuse box mounted into place, and before *that* we have to bore through the walls and have the 5cm tube already laid out with no snags. So this week's project is to get at least one temporary radiator hooked up so the few indoor pipes don't freeze, and the tube for the electricity main to come in. We decided to build out the wall a bit with a bevel. Clear is the new built out wall, green is the fuse box which will be partially embedded in the wall, and the protruding bit will have a hinged mirror door like a bathroom cabinet to conceal it. 
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Sep 23, 2018 00:05
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Made a lot of progress with jackhammering out the channels for plumbing, but hit a blocker waiting for some things in that area, so switching over to the door and windows now. I looked at a lot of door designs and not many struck my fancy but then saw a sliding barn door I liked and decided to turn it into an exterior door design. The blue triangle will be glass. This is the entry door for the basement apartment, and I'm reusing the frame, so the door is locked to 186.5cm high by 76.75cm wide. I'm taller than that by a few cm, but I will rarely use this door. Our entry way door will be over 2 meters tall, and have both upper triangles filled with glass. All the interior doors will match but without any glass.  Here is how it looks set into the house  I've managed to get the main frame and diagonals cut and fitted. I'm working on the boards that fill the triangles now, and hope to be ready to order the window this week. 
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Oct 28, 2018 21:50
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Door is done. I still need to lacquer the frame but it's currently too cold. Here is a quick animation of the various stages. The only screws in the door are to hold on the window trim, the weatherboard at the bottom that keeps rain from running in, and the hinges. The door itself is all overlaps and glue with dowel rods for the six main frame pieces.  Next project is to finish the first window. I've knocked out the old single pane glass, now I have to cut out a bit of the concrete frame, and attach this just finished cutting wood with screws, then lock it into place with "frame screws" which I'd never seen before but think are pretty neat design. The head and thin end can rotate independently, and the special key tool has one side that rotates them both 1:1 and the other side only rotates the long thread.  
poopinmymouth fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Nov 28, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2018 19:39
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 06:06 |
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My task currently is getting the bathroom in the basement fully functional. I don't have great photos of the bathroom from before, but it was the central room of a potato cellar. No windows, no features other than a fuse box and wires all over, dingy with a bare lightbulb, no water outlets or drainage, and one corner of the room had the bottom of the stairs to the first floor exposed.  Here is the room in 3D as we bought the house, showing where the stairs were.  Stairs have been ripped out, drainage pipes have been laid down and concrete channels cut, wall channels for the bathtub faucet and shower have been carved out.  Snow shot! I bike 6km from my downtown house to this location to do work before my job every week day. Luckily I have the car on the weekends.  Concreted over the pipes and installed the hidden tank toilet frame, then built a wood frame around it and attached Marmox board  Got the bathroom radiator mounted and connected. The radiator feed and return share the channel that the drain pipes are in, plus I embedded them in the wall so as not to have anything coming out of the tiles. We made sure the bathroom floor will be very easy to clean, no feet on any of the items for grime and gunk to collect around.  Tub is in and installed  Then we decided we wanted a custom sink and cabinet as a centerpiece and because we could use a lot nicer durable material for the same price. undermount sink  bird doors (the cardinal is the Virginia state bird, where I was born)  testing the unit fits  Testing the doors work before lacquering. The handles are ocean pebbles my husband and son found, I used a diamond bit to drill a void for a screw mount.  Interior black trim, plus a view of how the lacquer finish ended up coming out.  now laying tiles  It's surreal to remember how empty and gross this room was, and while there is still a lot of work, the functional end result is in sight. Finally I'll be able to poop in my own home. :-D (the true sign of livability, imo)
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Mar 18, 2019 11:56
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