…Breaking point, there is no way the Christmas Lights can go up!
Firstly, happy new year I think I can just about get away with that and secondly apologies for the time spent away from publishing new blog posts…
An update from us
We moved into Coltash fully, just after Easter, as we had to make way at Casa BarBar an Richard Hull for the Flavells who were also doing a massive house renovation. I was underwhelmed about the prospect of moving back in mainly due to the fact that it meant we actually had to live there…. all the time up to this point we always had somewhere clean, warm and dust free to lay our weary heads after a days work… but now, we were no longer doing up a house and living in relative comfort. Instead we were living in the middle of the build. Nothing was finished and we had no “sanctuary” against the rubble… floor boards were bare, the floor was cold and uninviting and the doors were all off. It was depressing.
The only thing that made it bearable was the fact that Summer happened… holidays, housewarmings followed by festivals, followed by more holidays meant that the number of days in a row having spent at the house were minimal and filled with BBQs and days in sun. This hazy period allowed me and Ian to forget about the horror of the house itself…
This worked for a while, but feeling like kids going back to school in September – summer was over. The old feelings of helplessness against the massive task we had taken on came back and a familiar feeling of dread returned. There was just too many decisions:
what colors should we paint? what type of flooring should we have? how should we change the fireplace? it was never ending.
Now don’t get me wrong, each of these decisions were fine in silo, the issue was trying to work out what they would all look like together. This indecision meant for a over 6 months that we made very little progress on the to do list.
I say little, as we did do some things, In September we had a Wood-Burning stove and new fire surround fitted. It looks lovely and is extra special as the it comes from my best Friends firm and was designed by her Late Dad. It really looks great as some before and after pictures show…
Out with the old, in with the new…. Fireplaces that is!
The breaking point came in December time, when we went to put up the Christmas tree. I looked around and I could not bring myself to do it… no amount of fairy lights would dress up this place. I couldn’t take it anymore. So quickly I arrange for a painter to come and do the painting in living room and I called the flooring team back to lay the laminate I had chosen few months ago.
Painting Before & Afters:
New Floor – Finally!!
All in about a week or so we made some real progress, and have started to chip away at the list, we have contractors booked for some more work and we have started to get excited again. Hopefully this bust of energy and funding lasts!
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Getting our “home straight”…or at least trying!
3, 2, 1…. Paint
Armed only with our trusty toolboxes, paint brushes, sandpaper and a ticking clock in the last three weeks we have begun to turn the “site” into a habitable home.
Painting, that and sanding, sweeping and hovering is pretty much what we’ve been doing since the builders had their last cup of tea, sent in the final invoices and moved off site. Whilst it’s been great over the past few weeks watching the progress (… well having to pay up being the only downside :)) reaching the climax of the first phase of work though it’s been anticipated it’s actual arrival has been quite daunting. Now the major works have been completed the hard work in my mind starts. It’s become less about practicality and functional change and more about preference and creative tastes areas being a practical logical person I’m naturally less keen about and as if that wasn’t hard enough the balance of work has moved from having contractors doing things to it being us doing more…
Before…
Kitchen “before”
During
…during
New worktops
Kitchen Sink “after”
Ian realising exactly how much painting we have to do…
Ceiling “before”
Living room painted…
Hallway
First fix on the painting!
Ian inspecting my work…. looks pleased (not!)
Bedroom 2 – aka Rays Pad!
The clock is also running out as our time lodging with the in laws runs out! – My sister in law and her family are swapping lives and places with us as the remodelling of their do-er upper begins at the start of May…so we simply must be out!
Things we’ve learnt….
- We don’t like DIY. Neither of us.
- Painting is boring, messy, tiring and did I mention boring.
- Things just take longer….and it’s hard to see the end point when the race is so long!
- I have also become obsessed with local “swap and sell” sites. Everything is on there and its been a god send whilst money is tight!
- Radiators are heavy. Get two people to move them and be prepared to get wet!
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Halfway point…
So in the past few weeks we have made some stellar progress on the house. I think we are officially halfway, with a few more ticks in the box in terms of jobs done.
Its been really exciting watching the progress and I’m normally surprised to see how much work goes on each day as I pop in daily to check on the house, take pictures and fill up the coffee, tea, milk and biscuits.
Since the last post, what’s been done?
Now that the first fix on the electrics has been done and most of the structural work its slowed down a little bit as our contractors have moved on to other jobs whilst the plastering work is completed. So its been the turn of the damp proofing and plastering team from Surrey Hills Preservation to complete a few tasks:
- Skimming Lounge Ceiling (now we’ve had spotlights fitted)
- Filling in the electrical chases in all rooms for plug sockets and switches
- Remedial works required following the water damage
Back to brick work
Living room… Plaster knocked back halfway due to water damage
Hallway
This took 1 day!
Plaster knocked back and ready to be filled
Buckets of water for mixing up the plaster…
Chases to be filled
Chases, filled in with bonding
boiler chimney removed
Filled with bonding
mid way!
mid way!
Kitchen switch…
living room…
Smoothed over and new fresh plaster
freshly plastered
had do the full wall here…
Ceiling now skimmed
Kitchen wall
drying out…
drying out!
The team took about a week to knock the plastering to brick level on the downstairs walls, and apply a number of layers of treatment to ensure there was no additional issues after the flooding. Since then, we have just been waiting for the fresh plastering to dry.
All the radiators have been removed, and the old boiler has been taken out so its been a few weeks now without heating or electricity… so really looking forward to next week when we should be getting the power back on.
We might even be able to move in soon 🙂
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Week one on the big build…
So phase 1 has started, on Monday the house became a hive of activity with both the electricians and building contractors arriving on site to start work. We’ve got a long list of work in this first phase so its great to finally have the work starting.
Whilst the weather has been nice, we have been really lucky the past few days it meant that the builders have already made a great start on some of the jobs we need doing. So far in under a week, we have had all the chasing done for the electrics with some work starting already with the wiring. The old guttering has been been replaced with shiny new guttering and we had the rotten barge boards replaced. We have also had the boiler chimney disconnected and part of the chimney taking from the roof. Most importantly we have also learned that caramel digestives are more popular than the chocolate ones!
Check out the before to see what’s changed, and there are some pictures below of the first week of work
Starting the week with the important things…
Empty Skip!
So dusty…
Chasing out walls
Chimney is no more and new guttering
New Barge boards
“We got…wires…”
new plugs!
slightly fuller skip!
This is just the first week, check out the Phase 1 list to see what our plans are and how well much we’ve got left to do.
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Taking down the “wall” (…and a Tree)
Last weekend we started on our first bit of external “modernisation” and removed the small wall between the house and the back gate. It had been flagged in the survey as dangerous and since our original visit we realised it was one the first jobs that needed to be tackled.
In my official role of site manager I gathered my motley crew of assistants (Ray and Ian) together and we started work. It took them pretty much all day and I got a bad rep for not making enough tea, but the fruits of our labour look pretty good and already makes a big difference…
Before – pretty much being held up by sand.
Removing brick by brick
almost out…
Putting in the last nail
Finished!
and the gate even works!!
Earlier this week we also had arranged for a team from enjoyyourspace to come and take out a two large conifer trees. These trees were huge and blocking a lot of light in both ours and the neighbouring gardens.
It took the team just over 7 hours to take down the tree, chop all the logs and remove much of the debris. A lot of the wood was chipped on site and with the team going back and forth through the garden gate each time so it was lucky we’d replaced the wall the previous weekend .. It would’ve definitely fallen over if we hadn’t!
Before (not the best picture)
During… “No Ian, you could not cut this tree down!”
Making logs!
Gone.. now we have light!
Finally, in preparation for the work to start soon, we have taken out all of the carpet yes sadly the pub carpet is no more and we don’t have the bizarre lino bedrooms or retro tiles in the bathroom. We are undecided on keeping that bath panel though…
Gone is the pub carpet…
Tiles, gone! Might keep that panel
blank canvas
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Bills… Bills… Bills
Having never had to renovate a house before and our our only knowledge of interior design having been gleaned from the myriad of home improvement programmes. We spent the last few weeks have this week being trying to nail down the costs for all the work we need to do during this first phase of work.
Now all we have read says to get 3 quotes and compare them… We have quite tight budget, having recently purchased the house, so its been really tricky to balance the books especially as there seems to be so much disparity between all the the different quotes. makes sense, but is actually impossible to do for a number of reasons:
- Tradesmen are very busy. So hard to get through to on the phone, hard to get appointments with and in some cases, some fail to even show up even after you have managed the first two tasks.
- Quotes are not in plain English. We tried to make it simple for us to compare by putting together a spec of what it was we were asking each of the contractors for (it also included pictures and locations of where plugs, switches, radiators etc needed to go.
- Some can start soon others the waiting list can be really long!!
Despite this, we still managed to get a few quotes that were not within range of each other!
Cheapest doesn’t always mean the best, and we’ve found long lead times for some contractors.
Hopefully, we’ll be in a position to confirm everything soon… really keen to get a start date!
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We won the battle… now starting the war!
After almost a month of debating and arguing. We finally got the news this week that we had been awarded the full retention for the full amount to pay towards the re-plastering costs.
It’s been a massive relief that we are finally rid of these horrid people and we can start to move on.
So now the war begins….
Not literally, but it feels as if getting the house and finally being rid of the vendors is just one of the tasks on the world’s longest to do list. At this point we have yet to have a confirmed start date for our building work. This is a biggest piece of the jigsaw puzzle that we need to slot into place and it feels as if we are on pause. Navigating through all the quotes and start dates is very daunting but we know we need to start soon other wise we will be living at the mother in law for ever!
Our first upcycling…
After the all of the drama we’ve still had time to start preparing the house for the upcoming work… and even managed a bit of freshening up of the old kitchen cupboards…
Before on the left… After on the right
Coving down and floor tiles up…
Like I said… start of the war against bad taste 🙂
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Three Sisters, One Husband and a damp meter…
As part of the compensation we had to hold a second inspection of the water damage a few weeks after completion. In all honesty I hoped that we’d been able to avoid re-plastering given the difficulties we’d had negotiating the settlement in the first place, but as in instructed I arranged for the expert to come out to do a further assessment.
I arrived at 2 pm and our expert was already there. We waited for the vendor to arrive and expected the building expert from the other side. Around five minutes later they pulled up and we began.
Essentially the readings hadn’t improved significantly and the recommendation was to re plaster. Surprise surprise the “builder” – who I am sure rocked up in a gypsy wagon and had actually no damp prevention experience what so ever didn’t agree. Rather he proceed to debate that we should just let it dry out… even though it might be months before it would do so and re decorate.
My Surveyor was astonished… and remained calm in the face of the attack as he had to defend his recommendation and his qualifications – even his day rates to this complete loon.
On top of this, the sisters even tried to start the “well we’ll have to negotiate on what we offer card…” Sorry no, we already did that – two weeks ago, you changed it three times and the final agreement is that you pay 50% of the costs based on the results of this survey…. divs.
Argggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh neeeeeeed wine now!
Cal (my guy) then said it could have been mitigated slightly by removing the skirting boards, which he advised them to do to weeks ago….. they then questioned me as to why did I not take them off, I said :
1) I only got the keys last Wednesday, up until that point it was your house
2) As if I am going to make any changes which you would have then said I caused the need for re-plastering.
It sounds like estate agency haven’t been very helpful to them with telling them who had access and when… but honestly that’s not my issue, and if they want to pursue them for damages feel free, but give me a flipping dry house why they do it.
The following day, I supplied the quote to the solicitors for review. This was challenged by the expert from other side who supplied a break down akin to “War & Peace” as it disputed the drying properties of timber and gypsum plaster. I was surprised he’d been able to make such a detailed assessment. Considering he only visually inspected the walls and bought no actual equipment to take any readings?!
Unfortunately for them this was inadmissible as this independent expert was the husband of one vendors!! The solicitors of both sides could not believe they’d even had the cheek to try this. They have even gone so far as to stop responding to correspondence?!?
So as things stand, as results indicate the work is needed we should be receiving our retention in full next week.
Let’s see if that actually happens!!
Now we are past the survey. We’ve taken the decision to remove the skirting boards. O M G…. It was completely gross….
So….You think this will dry out ” Mr Husband / Builder???” I don’t think so….
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“I have the power….”
…Well technically it’s just wifi, tivo tv service and a phone line, but writing that dosen’t sound as cool.
Yesterday we had Virgin Media installation booked between 8 and 1. Nothing like a fixed appointment! I needn’t have worried the team from Virgin Media were very organised and gave me a much needed phone call 30 mins out to say I was next on the list…. shame I has forgotten about this when I asked my poor brother to stay in all morning… oops!!
After a few hours it was all installed… 150 mbs all over the house…. most importantly this meant our Tivo box was back online and able to record my must see shows… ex on the beach & celebrity big brother etc 🙂
All in all it was fairly pain free and we are now connected… the installation team were great, friendly and left an easy to do understand guide to explain the new set up.
One job ticked off the massive list at last…
Teaching an old house new tricks... 