Formwork plywood for cabinetry.

Instead of going with a cabinetry service we have decided to save some money by building it ourselves and entirely out of a good quality material. What we decided to use is the pre-finished waterproof birch plywood made in Finnish technology and typically used in construction to build forms for casting structural concrete. It has a standard brown finish fenolic semi-translucent film that is strong and waterproof. Depending on the film thickness it can be cherry brown to almost black.

 

There are numerous factories in Poland that produce good birch plywood with this kind of finnish. We have tested many samples but eventually decided to go with the Finnish company Koskisen Oy for several reasons. PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) certified and offered a considerably superior quality to everything else we had seen.
Here is their story in pictures:

It says it all, doesn't it?

They also offered a slightly better per-unit price for larger 3m x 1.5m formats than the common 2.5m x 1.25m. It was a good deal for us as our ceiling height is 2.9m. so that way we were able to make full-height panels. The last good reason was that the company had a large format CNC milling service located in Poland. At that point we were designing the main feature of our design which was the suspended ceiling above the kitchen which is integrated with the living space and a dining space. (That area can be further expanded by connecting one of the bedrooms.)

For all of the cabintery (all closets, kitchen cabinets, wall panels, operable wall partition panels) we have ordered approx 50 sheets weighing more than 3 tons. The apartment is on the third floor and the elevator was not big enough to fit such big sheets. Carrying a 60kg board up the stairs 50 times would have taken at least 2 strong men at least an entire day and would most likely end up causing a lot of damage to the walls of the staircase and to the wood itself.

So we have hired a power line service crane to hoist the boards and hand them over the balcony and through the windows. There was only one person operating the crane so one of us had to sit in the basket and hold the boards. We were able to take only 2 boards at a time plus one person to fit in the 200kg-limit. The whole operation took 3 hours and the cost was quite reasonable.

The wood was stored in one corner of the apartment and hence the rest of the space has become a wood shop for the next few months.

Bathroom tiling

While saving money in other places we invested in decent bathroom tile. We found a Polish company out of Poznań called Ardea Arte that produces handmade ceramic mosaic. They have an incredible choice of extraordinary colors and textures and a variety of sizes and patterns.
Below are some examples of color and surface treatment that we were looking at. They are pretty amazing.

There are some drawbacks to this tile too. Although the colors are beautiful they are achieved in a pretty organic proces. There is a lot of variety within each color and the actual product may differ quite a bit from what you expect.
Also because the mosaic is handmade in Poznań the wait may end up time-prohibitive in case of many projects. Both of these problems happened to us. Instead of expected 4-6 weeks we waited 14 weeks which messed up our schedule tremendously. Also one of 2 alternate colors we picked for the guest bathroom ended up dramatically different than what we expected from the samples. Fortunately (although with a lot of effort and time) we were able to matte the surface of the color with fine sand paper to get rid of the shiny gold that was supposed to be rusty textured brown.

We hired a new contractor to do the tiling which ended up quite an arduous task. Each element of the mosaic slightly differs in shape and size so even though they come glued on a 30cmx30cm mesh sheets you have to cut out nearly all perimeter pieces of each sheet and reposition them to avoid big gaps and uneven grout width. It required nearly constant supervision as the tiler had a very hard time with this job especially in the beginning.

The diamond shape mosaic for the guest bathroom came out excellent. This patterns has more chic charachter and a very nice unusual snake skin-like texture.

 It has 2 alternate colors. One grey metallic with a slight iridescence and a patina rusty copper. Before ordering the tile we have tested several pattern options with available 2 and 3 alternate colors that you can choose at no additional charge.

But after trying about a 100 most complex combinations we ended up with the most simple 2 color pattern.

 The other pattern that we used in the master bathroom with a single greenish-grey color caused even more trouble. It has a nice unusual small rectangular shape but is also very irregular in terms of size and tile thickness. It is extremely tedious in application and requires a lot of care and coordination. After gluing the tile several pieces had to be taken out and repositioned again. It is not perfectly aligned but it is part of the character of this tile.

We have also underestimated the area an ran out of the mosaic. We had to reorder additional 2 square meters to cover the wall and top edges of the bathtub and wait for them for several more weeks. The color and the variety within the color was much stronger than the original batch but luckily the transition happens at the corner of two perpendicular wall surfaces and under the sink in the most inconspicuous place. We have laid and grouted that last part ourselves as we have learned the process while working with our original contractor.

We have used linear cove lighting in both bathrooms that emphasizes the 3-dimensional surface of the mosaic tile in both bathrooms. We have applied it from top to bottom and on all walls, which we were able to do it also because of the compact size of both bathrooms. In general we are very happy with the bathrooms. The mosaic gives them a very distinctive character and is among more interesting features in the apartment.

Since the concrete job in both showers and the raised floor in the master bathroom were screwed up we decided to tile the shower floors and replace the cheap drains installed by the first contractor. It required breaking the concrete around the drain. We have installed the new floor drains and completely sealed the showers floors with a special heavy duty rubber-like surface used for sealing balconies and roof terraces.

We have also recreated the threshold to the shower in the guest bathroom. The threshold was made out of cast concrete in a custom form made out of laminated particle board up-side-down. After curing we have placed the new threshold in the shower before sealing and tiling it.

Concrete floor

While waiting for the mosaic tile we planned to finish the concrete substrate floor made by the developer of the property. It turned out to be unsuitable for the finished floor. We were planning to stain it and seal it. Unfortunately the concrete was of such a poor quality and so brittle that we were forced to pour our own layer of self-leveling fast curing concrete.
It is a very simple process but extremely easy to screw up. The concrete cures within 20 minutes and that's the maximum amount of time you have to spread the mix around and smooth it. That means from the moment you pour the water into your concrete mix. We have divided the space into major areas and had a concrete mixer rented to speed up the process. We were not able to mix it all at once so we had to carefully plan every move and layout for every bucket poured, pre-measure batches of water and concrete and with a help of extra family members we did it in the course of 3 days.
Before we had to clean the floor of any loose material and prime it.
The floor was not perfect but good enough for our purposes. Some imperfections added to the character.

Priming:

Pouring concrete:
The last batch we had to mix by hand because it was already 11pm and we had a visit from the building security with a complaint from our neighbors about strange thumping sound from the rented concrete mixer.


Before staining (about 2 weeks later) we did several color tests with different intensity. We used an acid stain and seal product from French company Ezchem Europe that also provides a wax for final finishing. The results can be really beautiful but also quite unpredictable.

Final look:
The scoring of the surface was done before staining. We did it along the control joints that had been done according to our plans by the developer on the original floor. Having our own floor done on top of it allowed us to straighten the lines that were very crooked, sometimes missing the point by a foot!

Construction phase 1.

As I mentioned in the previous post - choose your contractors carefully. A red light already lit up while discussing the process of shaping bathroom floor and showers out of concrete. Unfortunately the light was too dim and we ran into some trouble.

We had the master bathroom floor raised to accommodate radiant floor heating that we used instead of a towel-hanger wall radiator. We used the same connection but routed the pipes in the floor. The floor was supposed to be a compacted, waterproof concrete with a depression in the shower.
The result were terrible!

We have also had a base created for mounting the bathtub faucet. After this we decided to demolish it and integrate it with the sink cabinet.
We had some of the drywall work done, plumbing for the toilets and shower mixers and were supposed to have the bathroom tiling done. The beautiful hand made mosaic did not arrive in time so we decided to let the contractors go and look for somebody else in the meantime.