Often a balcony in an apartment is an additional small room in your monastery. A beautiful and cozy balcony is a great place to relax. When you do not want to turn a balcony room into a warehouse, then make it attractive by repairing the balcony yourself. You can develop a design to your liking or look for a good solution on the Internet. The main thing is to approach the work responsibly, paying special attention to insulation and finishing.
The purpose of the balcony room and repair of the balcony
A small platform with a ledge, attached to the wall with beams, is a balcony. For urban residents, this area is especially important. It makes it possible to increase the living space. Those times when clothes were dried on the balcony and household rubbish was piled up are long gone. Nowadays, such a room with designer decoration is not inferior to other rooms of the dwelling.
Of particular value is the balcony for those who have a small living space. The inhabitants of small apartments always try to glaze and insulate the room, give it a beautiful appearance, making the finish. Use the useful area of the balcony in different ways. It directly depends on which room it is adjacent to.
If balcony placed near the bedroom, it can be converted into a wonderful boudoir or a secluded place where you can spend time with your soul mate. Many balconies near the bedroom are converted into a spacious dressing room, while the rooms are separated by a sliding door.
The balcony space next to the kitchen is most often used as a seating area or a small dining room, where you can even build a bar counter.
What to create in this small area depends on the imagination. The balcony can easily turn into a magnificent winter garden, as well as a modern music room or other useful space. A few simple tips will tell you how to make repairs on the balcony.
Getting ready for renovation
It is very correct to carry out repair of the balcony with your own hands in stages.
At the preparatory stage, you need to remove all unreliable partitions and remove the old coating. Cemented surfaces should always be checked for voids that should be cleared. Sometimes a balcony can be strengthened by creating a metal frame from corners or a channel.
The panels outside the balcony are only a decorative element. Many owners change them so that the balcony looks beautiful from the outside. When repairing a balcony, one should also take into account the fact that the design of this room is not designed to withstand heavy loads. So it is possible to build new walls, if redevelopment requires it, only from lightweight materials.
When you want to sheathe a balcony with MDF (fine fraction) or clapboard, in preparation for repairs, you need to fill all visible cracks with mounting foam, and insulate cracks from the outside with silicone. If there are large holes, you can lay bricks.
Choosing a finishing material
In the building materials market, the range of products for finishing is quite wide. There are many options for decorative panels, various types of tiles, plastic panels, decorative plaster in assortment, wall paneling, paints and wallpapers. So it's really hard to make a choice. However, it is these finishing materials that are great for balcony interior decoration.
It is also necessary to take into account the fact that the balcony is the outer side of the building. Therefore, in order to protect the room from the influence of precipitation, gusts of wind, it must be thermally insulated. Therefore, when choosing materials for repair, you need to take care of the insulation. Mineral wool is best suited for a balcony room.
It has excellent performance and physical characteristics. The plus is that mineral wool is a relatively inexpensive material for thermal insulation.
Glazing types
In order for the insulation to maintain its effect, the balcony must be glazed. There are a lot of glazing options.
Traditionally, wooden frames or metal-plastic structures are installed on the balcony. The first of them are in no way inferior to products made of polyvinyl chloride.
However, modern technologies offer us new types of glazing:
- cold - aluminum frame with inserted single glasses;
- frameless - a kind of cold glazing, the only difference is that this design does not have vertical partitions, however, despite this, it is quite durable. In addition, tempered glass in such a structure is attached to the profile with special rollers. This type of construction allows you to glaze a room of any shape;
- warm - a frame made of plastic or aluminum is attached to the parapet, and sealed glass bags or profiles with thermal inserts are used for glazing.
balcony slabs
As a result of excessive loads, balcony slabs can collapse. It may be necessary to repair the concrete slab even when the installation rules are violated, that is, the slope of the concrete slab is incorrect. Cracks also appear when there are no grooves at the bottom of the plate for draining water.
Flooring
You need to start repairing the balcony with your own hands with floor insulation. For this purpose, a polystyrene foam plate is used. Its main advantages are light weight and strength. In addition, polystyrene perfectly retains heat. Extruded polystyrene is used even when laying the road surface, because it is able to withstand the load.
When insulating the floor of a balcony room, the surface is leveled and plates are glued onto it with a special adhesive. After preliminary gluing, the plates are additionally fixed with plastic dowels. When it is possible and the depth of the floor allows, the insulation is made with expanded clay, which has heat-shielding properties, which is poured with a cement mixture. Finishing such an insulating layer is recommended to be done with ceramic tiles.
Some apartment owners, when insulating, put wooden grates on the floor, fill the free space with insulation, and stuff 10 mm thick plywood on top. In such cases, a moisture-resistant laminate or linoleum can become a finishing material.
Wall and ceiling decoration
The most practical and cost-effective material for finishing a balcony is lining. It has excellent performance. Lining is a natural material, environmentally friendly, which looks great.
Wooden lining is made from different types of wood. The most demanded pine lining.
The lining is mounted on a frame base, which is made of metal profiles or wooden planks. Expose the frame over the entire surface of the walls and ceiling, avoiding distortions. When using lining in the decoration of a balcony room, work begins to be carried out from the area ceiling. When the frame is made, they make insulation and lay a layer of waterproofing and proceed to laying the finishing material - lining. They fix it with special nails, pay special attention to finishing the corners. If the corners do not look very nice, they are covered with a special plinth.
Wall decoration from the outside
The balcony of a city apartment is a component of the architectural ensemble. To make it look good, exterior finishing work must be done with special care, adhering to certain rules.To date, outside the balcony is lined with profiled or corrugated metal sheets, as well as siding, clapboard and plastic panels.
