In detail: do-it-yourself repairs from a real master for the site my.housecope.com.
Where to start repairing an apartment so that the repair work does not stretch out for an indefinite period, and the end result undoubtedly pleases you, this is what will be discussed in today's article. Renovation of the apartment requires serious preliminary preparation. The most important point is drawing up a detailed plan for future repairs, taking into account the smallest nuances. Consider, point by point, the advice of professionals on the correct organization of repair work in houses and apartments.
First of all, you need to decide on the complexity and volume of future repairs. To make the apartment bright and clean, sometimes it is enough to carry out cosmetic, superficial repairs: replacing the wallpaper, whitewashing the ceiling, changing the old linoleum, painting the walls, etc.
If you want to completely get rid of everything that is boring and old, decide on a major overhaul with the replacement of windows, leveling the walls, installing new floors, modern ceilings. Your home will be transformed and become new and beautiful.
You should not refuse the help of experienced specialists when carrying out major repairs. This is especially true for the creation of a modern design for your apartment, including redevelopment and the demolition of some walls and partitions.
Plan renovations based on your financial capabilities.
First, decide on the interior and design of each individual room that you plan to change in your apartment. You can seek advice from a professional designer, which will slightly increase your total financial expenses for repairs. For rooms where renovation will be carried out, it is necessary to complete detailed drawings of the successive stages of repair work.
Video (click to play).
We recommend that you complete five detailed renovation sketches for each individual room. In the first drawing, display the top view of the room, and in the other four, each wall. Complete each drawing with a detailed description and a plan for the sequential implementation of repair work, which will avoid omissions and inaccuracies in the work.
When drawing up a repair sketch, it is recommended to indicate:
Think over the location of the furniture. Those walls that will be most conspicuous need to be given special attention and use the highest quality finishes.
Think about where it would be best to place lamps and chandeliers so that the light illuminates the room as much as possible.
Given the location of the household appliances, indicate the locations for the outlets. To then correctly design the installation of electrical wiring in all rooms.
Consider the location of the main decorative elements: paintings, mosaics, brick walls.
In the repair plan, you need to indicate the desired finishing option: wallpapering the walls, painting, etc. To divide a room into separate zones, designers recommend painting one of the walls in a different color in order to focus on it and visually divide the room. These moments also need to be reflected in the plan.
According to the advice of experienced specialists, in order to avoid unnecessary dirt and dust during repair work, it is recommended to first of all carry out repairs in the rooms farthest from the front door. The final stage of the repair, it is advisable to choose passage rooms and a corridor through which building materials and tools are constantly sweeping. This is necessary in order not to stain or scratch the finish of the already repaired wall, not to damage the new floor.
An additional protection of the repaired room can be a cellophane film (fixed on the outside of the door), which will reliably protect the room from construction dirt, dust, plaster, paint, and accidental damage.
Do not carry out all repairs yourself. At your request, the execution of all repair work or only the performance of particularly complex repair operations can be entrusted to qualified specialists. Firstly, experience and knowledge will allow them to carry out repair work quickly and efficiently. Secondly, you do not have to additionally buy expensive tools, with the help of which the screed is ideally poured onto the floor or the tiles are laid out.
Even if the installation of an interior door seems easy to you, the slightest inaccuracy is unacceptable here. Of course, you can hang and arrange kitchen furniture, level the walls and paint a little yourself. But trust specialists for more complex repair work so that you do not have to redo it, which can significantly increase your financial costs for repairs.
#one. After the final choice of the design of the appearance of the rooms, furniture and interior, it is necessary to draw up a complete list of the necessary building materials. Their number and total cost depends on the amount of repair work and how they are carried out. If the budget allows you, you need to purchase building materials with a small supply.
# 2. Make a separate list of decor items: holders, shelves, mirrors, paintings, etc. Start your purchases with the selected decor elements. If the planned decor element is not available, you can quickly change or create a new design version of the apartment renovation.
# 3. Make a list of the building tools you need to complete the renovation. To do this, you can use the advice of a sales assistant in hardware stores or qualified repairmen.
When the preparatory work has been carried out: plans and sketches of the repair have been drawn up, lists of the necessary materials and tools have been prepared, a decision has been made about the possibility of self-repair or with the help of repair specialists, you will be able to calculate the approximate total cost of the planned repair.
You should not rush to purchase all the materials when you visit your first store. In the compiled lists of materials and tools, put down the prices of different stores, which will allow you to make purchases at a minimum cost. Carefully consider the choice of repair crew services. Pay special attention not only to the proposed cost of repair work, but also to the feedback from your friends about the quality of repair services.
To protect furniture from damage, construction dirt and dust, collect it in a central area of the room. Then carefully cover with plastic wrap. This will free up access to the walls and ceiling. Move expensive equipment and clothes to other rooms.
Repair work should start with the most dusty ones: replacing window blocks, window slopes and installing new window sills. This will avoid dirt and dust during painting work, when it is forbidden to open windows in order to avoid temperature extremes and an increase in humidity. When windows, slopes and window sills are installed, cover them with plastic wrap or hardboard to avoid accidental mechanical damage and contamination.
Mark the installation locations of additional outlets, make the electrical wiring. Do not install sockets or plug them into the enclosure at this point.
In the case of welding work (for example, when replacing heating radiators), do them at the same time in different places of the apartment in order to quickly complete this dusty and difficult stage of work, sometimes including breaking down walls.
Before repairing walls, floors, ceilings, you must check their condition with a laser or water level. Begin by applying the thickest layers of mortar. As they dry out, you can carry out other minor repairs without downtime.
After completing this preparatory stage, proceed with the repair work, performing them in the following sequence: repair of the ceiling, walls, floor. Initially, work is carried out using putty, cement, gypsum mixtures. Then they begin to work on the installation of the floor, doors, slopes.
Final repairs:
Pasting or painting the ceiling.
Wallpapering or painting the walls.
Installation of flooring.
Installation of skirting boards, sills, platbands.
The usual everyday business: the apartment clearly needs repair, but there is little money. How to make an inexpensive do-it-yourself apartment renovation? It seems to be the simplest, obvious way: superficial cosmetic repairs. That is, plywood wallpaper, ceiling whitewash, painting, fixing squeaky floors; possibly - replacement of windows.
However, if we calculate the labor costs and the consumption of materials, it turns out that by increasing the labor costs by half, and the expenditure of money by a quarter, you can give the apartment a completely different look, and for a long time. How much you need to invest specifically depends on the prices in the region, but the general methods by which you can make an apartment cozy and elegant inexpensively are the same.
Saving money when repairing an apartment with your own hands costs, like the Earth in ancient legends, on three whales and a slowly hurrying turtle under them:
We are not afraid of work. Nothing happens out of nothing. Or money or labor.
Wherever possible, we do not change the old, which has lost its appearance, but renew it.
We attribute the maximum savings to the place where it will not affect the quality of work and will not be visible.
We distribute the costs of labor and money in time: having conceived repairs in the summer or autumn, we spend a year on preparation, and then we pile up and quickly do everything. To lay out 200-300 thousand rubles at once is a problem, but breaking them up in parts for a year is quite possible. In addition, there will be time for seven times measure - cut once.
The only area where you will have to invite a specialist is alteration and strengthening of electrical wiring, if it is old and weak. Here, the only way to save money is to negotiate with the DEZ electrician. He will do the work in pieces, in his free time, but the likelihood of hack-work will be even less than that of "branded" specialists: after all, he will then serve all this.
It is better not to save on electrics and wiring, but some points, such as installing sockets, can be done independently.
A good specialized tool makes the job much easier and cheaper. But buying it is expensive. Therefore, it is better to rent a tool as needed. In terms of costs, it will come out a little if you decide in advance on the design and draw up an approximate plan for the production of work for yourself.
The best time of the year for self-repairing an apartment is early and mid-autumn. It's still warm, you can do outdoor work, and indoor work with open windows. And at the same time, prices for building materials will already fall significantly on the eve of the winter calm. Savings without loss of quality can be up to 15% in the sale of summer illiquid assets. If, for example, 200 thousand are postponed for repairs, then the savings will amount to 30 thousand, and this - a hallway or a bathroom - "candy".
Special mention should be made of non-liquid assets. A significant share of the cost of repairs will be spent on finishing materials: plaster, putty, floor leveler, assembly glue, sealant. All of them have a limited shelf life, so construction companies, which clearly do not have leftovers from the season to spring, are selling them at a bargain price. Therefore, look everywhere in advance for advertisements on the sale of building materials.Professionals do not need 50 kg of Aquaslay for leveling the walls, which expires in a month, but they will be enough for two rooms for you. The savings will be 70-80 rubles. everything, but the hen pecks by the grain.
Find more ideas on how to save on building materials here.
A sore point for cheap self-repair is the replacement of plumbing. If it is still "alive", only filthy, then it can be cleaned and painted. How to do this will be described below. But if there are chips and cracks, then whether you want it or not, you need to change it.
For such a case, here is information for you: new settlers, especially in houses above the budget category, often immediately start major repairs at the entrance, and excellent, completely new faience and cast-iron plumbing ends up in a landfill. Landfill operators (simply landfill scavengers) have long turned this circumstance into a profitable business.
They do not make direct contact with strangers by office phone, but it is quite possible to reach them using word of mouth methods. The rate is from one third to one half of the factory price for a household item. And do not think that you will be taken to the dump and shown where it lies. In the back room you will be offered a choice of clean, carefully washed products, which you can sit on even right away.
The next sore point is the removal of construction waste. The operation is not cheap and requires a lot of paperwork. Exit: a basement, a barn, a summer residence or a closet and a few used bags of plastic sackcloth, bought for a penny. Construction waste does not sour and does not rot, it can then be poured into a container in a house trash can. There is nothing illegal in this.
For lathing, various ancillary work and sewing large surfaces, you will need wooden battens and plywood. You can buy slats not planed, but a slab - waste from sawing industrial wood. The croaker is on sale raw, but if it is purchased in advance, in March-April, and kept in a dry room until autumn, it will not be inferior to edged timber in terms of the quality of wood.
As for plywood, waste packaging plywood from disassembled used containers can be turned into water-resistant in the following way:
We buy a 10 l canister or two PVA putties; it looks like a very liquid PVA glue and is cheap.
We cover the floor in the country house, in the shed, in the attic or in some other non-residential premises with plastic wrap. The air temperature is not lower than +13 degrees.
We lay a sheet of plywood on the floor, pour a puddle of putty on the center of it and disperse it with a brush.
We cover the plywood with plastic, lay the next sheet, putty in the same way, etc.
We put heavier oppression on the plywood soaked in PVA; better - dispersed over the area: bricks, pieces of metal, concrete, old TV, etc.
After a week, we repeat the procedure, turning each sheet over.
After another two weeks, the smooth, waterproof plywood is ready for use. Additional exposure under pressure will improve its quality.
Boards and large pieces of thick timber can also be obtained from used containers - pallets for cargo. Advertisements for their sale are not uncommon.
A very economical option for repair is to cover the walls and ceiling of living rooms with laminate; for thrifty owners richer - MDF. When cladding on a wooden lathing from a slab, in 80% of cases, alignment of walls and ceilings is not required, which already excludes large expenditures of labor and money.
You can save even more by sheathing the walls up to your waist or up to your chest, and pasting them up to the ceiling with non-woven wallpaper. The work is simplified and cheaper, and the bottom of the walls, which breaks and gets dirty the most, will be reliably protected by resistant material.
The most economical floor covering option is marmoleum. Floor preparation for it is not required in 90% of cases. But marmoleum is not suitable for a bathroom and toilet; here you will have to fork out for tiles, especially since you will need a little of it.
If you want to have a plank-like floor in the rooms, then laminate flooring will not be much more expensive, but the floor may need to be leveled.
The walls in the bathroom can be covered with laminated hardboard instead of tiles - it is hygroscopic and does not require surface preparation.
If you intend to glaze and insulate the balcony, then it is better to do it separately from everything else and in advance: from the end of March to the beginning of May. Outside, the balcony is decorated with siding, but inside it, instead of traditional MDF or lining, you can sew it up with plywood, pasting it with self-adhesive film.
When deciding how to make an apartment renovation economically, you need to pay special attention to windows and doors: they account for a significant share of the costs. As for windows, here is the most economical option: self-installation of wooden window frames. It is more expedient to buy them in March-April, when prices for commercial timber fall, and to put them in late spring - in early summer, when the tree dries out and shrinks properly. The technology of installing wooden windows into openings is quite affordable for an average home craftsman.
It would be better to update the doors. Remember your homemade waterproof plywood? Here it is sheathed both sides of the door, on mounting glue, laying the door removed from the hinges on a plastic mat and under oppression. At the same time, at the same time, you can cover the window in the interior door, if it is not needed.
This will make the door thicker. Two options are possible here:
Reinstalling the hinges is not the best way for the lazy.
Remove the old lining from the door; it is most often made of building cardboard or thin fiberboard, and put on a new, plywood frame. In this case, the chipped corners immediately "go away".
In both cases, the new door is pasted over with self-adhesive wood or with a different texture and varnished. And you will be surprised (nicely, of course) with her new look. And the hard plywood cheeks will ensure the door's durability. It is better to cover the slopes of the doorway with doborks from the same plywood: it will come out cheaper and more beautiful than re-plastering.
Dirty plumbing, if intact, needs to be cleaned. The rather expensive active detergents recommended for this can be replaced with much cheaper table vinegar - after all, it is also a weak acid - followed by washing off the sagging deposits with the most common washing powder. Just do not use abrasive detergents - they will scratch the glaze and objects, especially the toilet, will get dirty very quickly.
For cleaning with vinegar, make kvash - a knob made of a rag on a stick. Vinegar is poured where it does not leak, or sour milk is dipped in it, and the drips are cleaned with circular motions with pressure. Particularly "stubborn" spots in the grooves are removed with small kvash and technical hydrochloric acid. All this, of course, is done with latex household gloves, a plastic apron and with doors and windows open. It is also advisable to wear a respirator, at least a cheap "petal".
Tiles that are not chipped or cracked can be restored using a method well known to motorists; they renew the worn-out plastic spoilers and bumpers in this way:
The entire lined surface with my pemolux; it is impossible to use active acid detergents! For a bathroom in "Khrushchev", 1 liter is enough; on a larger - respectively more.
After pemolux, we wipe it with a rag, abundantly moistened with the same table vinegar: pemolux is alkaline, and the vinegar neutralizes its residues.
We wipe it several times with a wet cloth "to a clean cloth"; now we got rid of the dirt stuck into the surface.
We glue the edges of the tiles with masking tape ("paper tape"), except for the seams.
We paint the seams from a spray bottle with nitro paint in two layers; the second - after the first is completely dry.
We remove the tape, splashes and drips of paint on the tiles are removed with a cotton swab moistened with solvent 646 or 647.
We buy a can of liquid silicone grease at the car market or in a car shop, and properly spray the tiles with seams.
If the grease is absorbed immediately, you will need to spray it again.
If after 2-3 days silicone is still "taken" on the tile, wipe the surface with a rag moistened with vinegar.
The meaning of this treatment is that the silicone tightens microcracks and pores in which dirt accumulates. Processing is enough for 3-5 years, and then it can be repeated.
The cast iron capital bath can be repaired with epoxy or acrylic resin. Complaints about its fragility arise from a violation of the technology for preparing the coloring composition and its application. With strict adherence to the technology, the restored bath will serve for another 10-15 years.
It is not at all necessary to change it to an expensive stainless steel or brass and make a bypass (bypass) for it. The heated towel rail is cleaned to metal after cleaning the bathtub for painting with the same cord-brush in the drill chuck. If no fistula is found, it is painted with the remains of the compound from the bath painting. The look will be no worse than modern branded ones, and the durability is like a bathtub.
