Home "Improvement"

This weekend did not go as planned.

The idea was to finish cleaning the walls, prime them, and paint them. Sounds simple enough, but I am not what the Brits call, "Mr. FixIt."

After a month of looking at bare, mismatch colored walls (which was an improvement over the previous wallpaper), it was time to get them painted. With some difficulty, we moved the wardrobe that came with the flat into the spare room. It isn't a very nice piece of furniture, which may be why it was left behind, but it also doesn't fit into the hallway while assembled, which is another good reason to abandon it. After an hour and a half of taking apart and putting back together, it was out.

The room was now empty minus the bed, which we could work around. The only major piece of the puzzle left was the removal of the radiator. We watched the YouTube videos, bought the proper tools, and got a late start at it.

Things went wrong pretty quickly. The draining of the radiator wasn't too difficult, but when I tried loosening the other side of the radiator, the nut wouldn't budge. It was so tight that the entire radiator shifted and bent the water pipe, which caused it to leak. The leak started off slow, but became worse as I tried to fix it. I couldn't get it to stop and I couldn't get the connector detached. I turned off the water supply to the flat and drained the pipes as best I could, but the heating system was still full of water.

After trying in vain to find the right tools around the house, I made a run to Asda just before it closed in order to buy something that could make the leak stop. Asda is more of a grocery store, but it is also open until 10:00pm on Saturday, which is 5 hours later than just about anything else. No, they did not have plumbers tape, but I picked up a hose, some zip ties, a sealant strip, and a bottle of wine.

When I got home, the leak was still going, unabated. Without having much of a choice, we decided to take the whole radiator off by disconnecting it where the pipe met the radiator rather than where the connector met the radiator. This meant there there would be an exposed pipe with no stopper.

My right arm, newly out of the cast, is still not completely usable. I disconnected the radiator as quickly as I could while Kate moved to cover the pipe. While we did try to be quick, there is only so much you can do with a hundred-or-so pound radiator and one hand. As I pulled the radiator off, my right hand gave way and a 4' high fountain of sludgey radiator water spouted from the pipe. I tried to cover it with my right hand, meaning an even more tenuous hold with my left. Kate swooped in and she covered the fountain, but not before getting sprayed all over. The next two minutes we spent trying to stop the water while somehow propping up the radiator that was still connected to the wall bracket on the opposite side. It was fairly difficult.

The first thing we tried was to use the cork from the wine bottle to plug up the pipe. In my haste to get the cork out of the bottle, I mangled it a bit. It was also too big for the pipe, so I tried to whittle it down to size, which meant more mangling. On to plan 'b.'

Due to the high pressure of the water, there was no way to get anything to plug it. Maybe if we had a proper rubber stopper, yes, but corks and towels, no. The hose was the only other option. We cut it up and rigged it with the zip ties so that the water would flow through the hose into the bathtub. That somewhat worked, but we ended up losing a lot of water and couldn't get the hose to sit on the pipe properly.

We used various methods to catch the water and get it out, all of which were somewhat successful. In the end, the water pressure abated and we were left with a soaked carpet and detached radiator. By this time, it was about 1:00am. I turned on the electric heater and dehumidifier to try to help with the sopping wet carpet and we passed out.

The next morning I was up by 6:30am (the days are getting longer once again) and I checked the carpet. The heater didn't work at all, so I moved it closer and waited for Kate to get up. She woke up a while later to the smell of burning plastic. I had put the heater too close and it started melting the carpet. Remember, the water supply to the house is still off at this point; good thinking on my part. On the plus side, the carpet was still so wet that it would have a hard time burning. At the same time, it's polyester and highly flammable, so the water may not have stopped it from setting ablaze. Luckily, all that came of it was a few scorch marks. The carpet needs to be replaced, though, due to the water. It seems futile to attempt to get the water out from under the carpet and carpet pad we stopped trying.

The next day I still couldn't get the connector off of the radiator. The pipe was still exposed and the water supply remained off. It's amazing how disgusting having no running water can make you feel. When the stores opened at 10:00am, I was there to try to find the proper equipment.

Plumber's tape was easy enough to find, but they didn't have the right pipe covering. That would mean more time with the water supply off. I got home and ended up using a candle to heat the original connector. That, in combination with my over-priced, over-sized spanner wrench loosened the nut enough to get the piece off. A little plumbers tape and a few turns of the wrench and we were ready for running water and a non-leaking radiator pipe.

From there we finished up with the walls, took some furniture to the tip (garbage dump), and started the priming. The priming experience was a major disappointment. Due to the number of small cracks and unevenness in the walls, I purchased a product advertised as a simple and effective primer to smooth that all out. It was expensive (GBP 30, or about $50, plus an additional GBP 8 for the special applicator), but it looked so easy, it had to be worth it! Nope. It was nothing more than extremely expensive drywall mud. Thick, difficult, and messy mud. The idea was to cover the entire room with this stuff and basically create a new layer of wall. Terrible idea; I wish they would have been more clear in their advertising. Liquid would have been much easier.

So, after an hour of struggling with that, we gave up. Kate did some gardening and I went to get proper primer. While getting the primer, I was talking to the sales associate and, with a can of primer in hand, I asked was the difference was between what I had and the item next to it called "basecoat." He said that the other stuff filled in small cracks and covered discoloration better. Perfect! That was what I wanted; and this stuff was liquid and half the price of the drywall mud. I put the primer back and got the much much better basecoat.

I got home, read the can, and discovered it was basecoat for metal and wood. Not for plaster. Epic failure. At that point I decided to give up for the day and take a nap. The house remains full of clutter, the walls look about the same as they did before we started, the carpet is ruined, the radiator is sitting outside in the garden, and it is 11:00pm on a Sunday night.

I'm not sure how, but money-saving projects always seem to cost a lot for me. There may be a lesson in all this, but I'm going to try to ignore it. Next weekend we will be re-attacking. Hopefully something akin to magic takes place and we are in a better place in a week from now.