It's been nearly a month since my last post. I don't know whether that's because: we're spending so much time at the house that I don't have time to write, whether I'm too tired after working a full week and then working at the house in the evenings and at weekends, whether the enthusiasm is waining a little, or all of the above. Whatever the reason, I found myself awake at the crack of dawn (4 am!) and couldn't get back to sleep because of all of the thoughts going around my head and so thought that I might as well use the time productively and get my thoughts onto... paper?
As it
has been so long since the last post there have been quite a few developments and so there's a lot to cover! In just under a month and a half since we got the keys I think we can be proud of what we've achieved:
We've completed the inside of the bathroom stud wall meaning that we've now got a room to work with. All(!) it needs now is: the roof skimming, the waste pipes putting in, the water supplies plumbing in, the walls tiling, oh and fitting the bathroom suite itself. One slightly disappointing thing, which neither of us anticipated, is how much involvement Building control should have in a project like this. We (as well as most keen DIY'ers I imagine) assumed that if you're doing work internally to your own house and it didn't change the appearance outside in any way, then you should be fine to do what you like. Sadly this is far from the truth... I can understand that building control exist to safeguard people's safety (to make sure that they don't do something stupid like taking out load bearing walls) but it adds a lot of money, time and effort! With the bathroom we've got to consider: ventilation, drainage, soundproofing and whether the floor will be strong enough to support the weight of a full bath of water which it was never initially designed to. I don't think there will be an issue with drainage nor ventilation (considering we have the three biggest windows in the house now in the smallest room), but the floor is going to need some investigation. I can't see it being a problem though as it's next to the outer corner wall, spreading the load across many joists, which are only spanning a very short gap; fingers crossed!
Carrying on with the theme of stud walls, we managed to get the bedroom stud wall up (opposite the bathroom) meaning that we now have a second double-sized bedroom and the corridor which will eventually lead to the future side extension! It's nice to see when things start to take shape.
It's unlikely anyone other than ourselves would notice the amount of light flooding in through the new-bathroom door, but that's thanks to the fact that we've managed to remove the wall of trees that obstructed our view of the garden and blocked all light to the back of the house. We owe a massive thank you to Julian (Friend from work) for giving us his time, effort and skill with a chainsaw for a weekend to get them down! It was quite amusing on the first day when he arrived to try and tackle them as I think I had slightly undersold the size of them to him... We had a 14" chainsaw for roughly 30" tree stumps (whoops!). Even so, Julian was up for the challenge and donned his climbing gear, hard hat and face protector and proceeded to scale the first tree for a good look. It was more than a little worrying to see the manic grin which spread across his face when the chainsaw first started up (and that lasted for the full first morning!).
The first tree came down slowly, branch-by-branch whilst Julian got used to using a chainsaw again (several years after he trained to fell trees at college). Once the first one was down we started making real progress... until we stopped for a mid day BBQ that was. It was an incredible meat feast of around 18 sausages, steak, a full rack of ribs and nicely finished off with a banana filled with molten chocolate. It was worth the break however as it gave us the fuel to carry on for the remainder of the day and get 5 out of the 6 trees down to ground level. We tackled the 6th and largest tree the following day and successfully felled that with literally fumes left in the chainsaw tank. Two days worth of effort, several tonnes of logs and branches shifted and two families (birds...) rehoused and we could finally see that back of the house!
Back to the house internals; we've had to bring in outside help to progress some of the essentials. The gas man has been in to install the central heating system: the boiler is all plumbed in, the radiators are connected, the taps are connected, but sadly without a fully functioning gas connection to the house it's just there for decoration at the moment. National Grid have now put a gas pipe up to the house, we're just waiting on our energy supplier of choice to come and fit a gas meter. Once the meter is in place, the gas man comes back to connect the boiler to the meter and then we should have a warm house and nice supply of hot water!!
Onto the next essential item: Electrics. We're lucky enough to have an electrician friend from School Sam (STW Electrical Services) who's been in to re-wire the entire house. It was worrying on the first day when I got a picture message from him showing the melted(!) consumer unit which was a house-destroyer in waiting. I'm glad we made the decision to go for a full re-wire as who knows what else might have been lurking under the floor boards! We've now got nice shiny new wires installed throughout the house and we're just waiting to get the rooms plastered before he comes back again to put in all of the fittings.
The final essential (for now) was to get the house watertight and that meant dealing with the roof. I guess it's to be expected with old houses that you might get a leak from time-to-time, but the roof seems to have caused us the most problems so far. Alex the builder came back to put felt under the pitched roof after patching the flat roof didn't solve our problems. Unfortunately, before Alex managed to get all of the roof tiles back on, he was rained off. We had about three solid days of rain which meant that we had water literally coming down the walls! Thankfully I managed to fashion something out of scraps of plastic lying around the house to catch most of the rain. There was no real damage done as the water only really affected the plaster and we're having the walls re-skimmed anyway.
Once the tiles were back on, there was still another problem: Ridge tiles. In the process of removing the existing ridge tiles to get at the roof tiles, two of them broke. Normally this wouldn't pose too much of a problem as you'd just go and buy some new ones to match. The problem was that these were a rather old design and no matter how hard he tried, and no matter how many reclamation yards he visited Alex just could not find any replacements. This is where we meet another of our lovely neighbours (Ian) who came to our rescue with some spare that he had! Problem solved and touch wood we now have a water-tight house!
Not only did Ian provide us with some spare ridge tiles, but he also provided us with maps that he'd found over the years showing that the house is actually a lot older than we first thought! The survey estimated the house as being built in approximately 1920 but it turns out that the houses go back at least another 25 years if not more!
With the Electrics First-fit being completed, it meant we could get on with some of the little jobs which had been frustrating me that I couldn't get on with, mainly the floor boards in the Study. The joists had all been prepared, all I needed to do was level them off and screw them all together. It went better than expected and half-an-hour later I was looking at a room again!
The next big ticket item on the list is the removal of the Chimney breast (I hope it doesn't mean taking up the floor again! We had a good quote from an old school friend Phil (Lancashire Land & Property LTD) and he was quick off the mark when we said to go ahead with it. Within a week the steels had been ordered, manufactured and arrived and tomorrow they should be starting work! Fingers crossed that'll be two more rooms that would be on the finishing straight!
Our planning permission application is in and several of our neighbours have had letters through their letterboxes to see if anyone has any objections. I think we've been nice and friendly enough to people that they shouldn't have anything to complain about! I think the decision date is due 25th June; fingers crossed!
On the theme of keeping the neighbours happy, we've been installing false walls filled with insulation for sound proofing on the joint wall. It's only a couple of inches lost into the room and if it keeps everyone happy then it's a small price to pay.
The soundproofing walls aren't the only places we've been using plasterboard, we've been sticking it everywhere! It's amazing how it can make a rough and cracked lath & plaster wall look like a nice shiny new room. The ceilings are quite literally a pain in the neck, but we keep spurring ourselves on by repeatedly telling ourselves that it'll be worth it in the end.
I guess the last thing to talk about is the problem of bathroom drainage which I started to work on this weekend. We've had a plumber come out and quote us for doing a first fit for the bathroom with a view that I'll put the rest in myself. The quote was fine, but what was still an issue was where the bathroom waste would go. We had to do some detective work to determine which drains at the back went where. Several buckets of water and an open septic tank later and we had deduced that the drain we wanted to use was indeed connected to the septic tank - Bonus! the was the good part, the bad part was that we needed access to the drain which meant a hole needed making through 4" of concrete, 6" of hardcore and a further 10" of compacted earth... It was a physical day on Saturday, but after a lot of blood sweat and fortunately no tears, I managed to get the drain exposed enough to hopefully make it workable.
I started this blog on Saturday morning. It's now Sunday evening. Ever since we bought the house time just seems to disappear. For now though it's time for some well deserved (and needed!) sleep.
