Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Our guest flat in use again

I'm glad I took the pictures for the previous post, showing how very cluttered and messy our downstairs flat was! I'd almost forgotten how bad it was, in just a few days. Our guest arrived in the early hours of this morning, so we worked hard to make the flat presentable again.

First, Richard made 14 of the fibreglass panels, covering them with the bright coloured material from Egypt. I gather they're for sound treatment, not sound proofing, so they won't cover the entire room. There are still several more to make, but he's put up these, matching the patterns where possible:


A lot brighter than I would have chosen, but Tim loves them. I think we're going to paint the wall underneath in a very dark green - eventually!

Richard had the ingenious idea of stapling the frames together rather than using screws. Inspired by some of our photo frames, since these panels are very light and hang on the wall rather like pictures. It made the job considerably faster, but it was still getting a bit tedious by the time he got to the last few. And there are still more to do, but not this week.

As for the rest of the house... well, we moved the rest of the fibreglass, all the painting tools and other general clutter into the front bedroom, which is still awaiting its plumbing and new doorframe:


We gave four boxes of no-longer-wanted books, clothes and other bits and pieces to the jumble sale [which, incidentally, is roughly equivalent to an American 'rummage sale', I believe]. People were sorting yesterday, and the sale itself was today. For the first time since we've moved here, I had no inclination to go to the jumble sale. Perhaps because, now our main living area is mostly decluttered, I don't want to end up with more clutter!

I sorted the downstairs books, somewhat, too. The one currently functioning guest room now has all the children's books - about eight large shelves of them. The living room has other books we don't want or need upstairs, but don't want to get rid of.

As for the rest of the downstairs, I spent most of yesterday cleaning. And wow, it was dirty! Cyprus gets pretty dusty anyway, and I don't suppose I'd dusted or mopped the floors for at least three weeks, as there was so much stuff everywhere. Then all the woodshavings made it worse. Richard swept, then I dusted and swept, then I mopped everywhere twice.

Tim put the 'guest' computer back together, and Richard put up a shelf unit which made a useful place to store CDs for the computer. This is one end of the kitchen:


The kitchen/dining area really is pretty big - we've moved all the downstairs board games into one of the kitchen cupboards, and there's still plenty of space.


Then last night Richard adapted the TV shelving unit he built for our old TV at our other house. The new one he bought inexpensively for downstairs was 2cm too tall and 2cm too wide, so he had to take the shelving apart and redesign it. It took a while, but the TV looks a lot better than it did when it was balanced precariously on the coffee table.


The weather site is predicting thunderstorms and rain for the next few days. If so, it will be the first rain since about May, and will be very welcome. Today is quite cloudy, and a bit muggy. It's slightly cooler than it was, but not significantly.

3 comments:

Carmen said...

I love reading your blogs. That's a great idea to cover the fibreglass pieces with fabric. I'm about to insulate a single room and I think I'll use your idea.

Richard Fairhead said...

The trick with covering the fibregrass with fabric is to find the right thickness... you want the sound to go through the fabric [ie not reflected by it] be absorbed by the fibreglass, reflect off the wall and any relections be absorbed by the fibreglass again. Its rough and ready sound treatment as a sort of 'broadband aborber' to do it properly you need tuned helmholtz resonator absorbers as well... but then you need the measurement equipment too.

Sue said...

They're not rigid fibreglass, they're the kind of thing used for loft insulation (I think that's the rockwool type). Richard made wooden frames to fit the pieces we were given, which gives them a more solid appearance and means he can hang them on the walls as shown in the photo. They seem to work well, though we're just sound treating rather than soundproofing.