Insulation is in and the plasterers are at work - 30th Jan 2009

Spent the day getting the living room ready for the plasterers coming later today.

Got the earth bonding finished, a light put in under the stairs and the insulation put in the living room ceiling. Also had to knock the plaster of the chimney breast so that the fire could be boarded in properly. The plumber hadn't left quite enough room when he installed it. It took ages to clear up the mess!



They are there at the minute boarding the ceiling, bless them it must be freezing! I have left them a heater but I don't think it will help that much!

We finally have lighting - 28th Jan 2009

Hooray we finally have lighting in our house. As we are having a full re-wire the old circuit had been removed and we have been without light for about 4 months!

The living room is now ready to be plastered so the plasterers are coming Friday to board the ceilings and then the walls at the weekend. It should be finished by the middle of next week! One thing I do need to do tomorrow is insulate the ceiling before it gets boarded. Should have a lovely snug house after its all been boarded and insulated!



We need to move the number though as it wasn't in the middle! That's a job for Stuart at the weekend!

Kitchen Plans

I've had a go at designing my kitchen using the Ikea kitchen planner! I think it looks pretty good, just need to pop to Ikea for them to have a look at it and check its practical.

What do you think?



The floor will be oak engineered wood and I like the idea of having a red wall and the rest cream! Definitely want red in there somewhere.

There is going to be electric carbon underfloor heating throughout downstairs because there isn't really room for radiators now that we have removed and moved the walls about!

I've got house magazines coming out of my ears at the minute! There is far too much choice out there!

Underfloor heating is laid in the bathroom - 24th January 2009

This weekend we have almost managed to rig up the lighting. We need to test it works before the ceilings are boarded downstairs. Once we have light again we will be able to do much more work in an evening. Still no heating but if we work hard enough it's not too bad! We will be finishing off on the lighting on Wednesday hopefully.

We managed to lay the underfloor heating in the bathroom:



Stuart stuck in down really really well so that when we put down the tile adhesive it doesn't move around!

While he was doing this I scrapped all the 'snotts' or splatters (that's what the plasterer told me they were called) off the plastered walls in preparation for painting them. On Wednesday I plan on wiping down all the walls and start to paint the first couple of layers. We managed to get 2 big tubs of crown white emulsion from B&Q for £10 each, cheaper than the cheapest white emulsion!

Time to cut the tiles for the bathroom - 18th January 2009

We had a little break from the house over Christmas (naughty I know!). We have done lots of clearing up and tidying up as I have never seen so much mess in one place.

The electrics are almost finished. Only got the two extractor fans, underfloor heating and electrics to the garage to do now!

We have bought our tiles and they arrived on the 15th. Picked them up on the 18th and started to plan the lay out and get them cut to size. We were going to get travertine but they were too heavy for the plasterboard walls and were too thick for the floor once we had ply boarded. There would have been too much of a step up into the bathroom. The ones we have chosen are porcelain that look like travertine.


Stuart was very pleased with himself after managing not to break a single tile!

Bedrooms all plastered - 19th December 2008

The rooms upstairs are now all plastered and looking good!

Bathroom fitted - 19th December 2008

The bathroom has now been fitted and it looks amazing! I was really worried that it would look too cramped as it is a tiny bathroom, but I actually think we've done a pretty good job planning it out!



We got the bathroom from Bathstore. It wasn't cheap but it does look very nice and its really good quality too!

The towel rail came from an internet site but the plumber has informed us that it will not output enough heat to keep the room warm, even though I worked out the BTU's for the room. The plumber told me that towel rails do not come under regulations like radiators so they can state that they produce any output when in reality the boiler would have to be pumping out 90 degree water for it to reach an adequate tenmperature.

Little bit annoyed about this but its fitted now. We've decided to fit underfloor heating to make sure the bathroom is warm enough! It will be quite nice to get out of the shower and step onto a warm floor!

More plastering - 15th December 2008

The front and back bedrooms are next to get boarded and plastered. Its all coming together!



Front bedroom almost finished.



Back bedroom boarded.



Pantry lined and boarded.

Pocket doors get built - 15th December 2008

The wall we took out downstairs is being moved back a couple of feet and a pocket door installed into a stud wall. I originally bought the door kit in metric measurements but this proved a real pain to find doors for so I took it back for old school imperial measurements.

We found lovely doors fairly cheap from B&Q.

Here's what it looks like:


I'm so pleased with it. It looks lovely and saves loads of space by the doors sliding into the wall!

An extra little job for the builders - 2nd December 2008

We have a pantry and outside toilet stuck on to the end of the kitchen. Its single brick so needed something doing with it. We decided to knock out the wall between the pantry and outside toilet and brick up the door. This will give us a utility room to put the fridge freezer, washing machine and tumble dryer.

The builders are going to board it out for us and insulate it.

Scaffolding goes up to line the chimney - 2nd December 2008

Today the scaffolding went up. We are having a lovely gas fire installed in the living room but needed to have the chimney lined first.



The fire we have bought is this:



I love it so much! Here's a video of it in action: http://www.stovax.com/popup_movie.htm?pid=418&cid=2&enc=U3R1ZGlvIEVkZ2UgR2FzIEZpcmU=

The chimney liner had arrived but was damaged so had to be replaced. When it finally arrived it was fitted but a few other problems arose. The chimney was in such a state that when they fitted the liner 4 courses of brick came loose. We got a brickie in (the next doors son in law) to have a look and he said he would re-set all the bricks for us! It was in a really bad state and some internal bricks needed replacing and the pots on top re-setting.



While the scaffolding was up we also put up a new digital aerial. The roof isn't great and will need replacing soon but not just yet. We want to get the inside sorted first!

We took some pictures of the area while we (well Stuart went up, I was too scared) had the scaffolding up.

Bathroom & Boxroom plastered!

Hooray we have two plastered rooms and they look fab! Not the best of piccys but you get the idea!



Its starting to look like the inside of a house again!

Plastering Time - 30th November 2008

We have got a plasterer lined up and bought all the materials ready for them to start upstairs.



All the electrics have gone in upstairs apart from a light in the loft.

I couldn't wait to see a room plastered, it would make me feel like we were finally getting somewhere!

Time to rebuild - 7th November 2008

All of the big messy jobs have now been finished and the builders are starting to build the house back up.

They put the supporting stud up between the front and back bedrooms.



The plumbing is underway and all the gas pipes are being replaced and my Dad has just started the re-wire! Stuart's helping my Dad out pulling wiring up in the roof!

The day the chimney came down - 7th November 2008

We decided to take out the rear chimney breast as it took up a lot of space and would not serve any purpose.

It only took a day to remove but created quite a lot of mess! It was supported in the roof while the steel support was being built.

The last wall to come down

The last wall to come down was the one between the kitchen and dining room. This one was supporting the joists so needed an RSJ putting in. I had a colleague from work do the calculations for me and then submitted them to the council for building regs approval. It took about 5 weeks for the council to check the calcs and one site visit to check they were happy with it.

It took the builders about half a day to put in the supports and knock out the wall and then another half day to fit the RSJ.

Ceilings down - 26th October 2008

The ceilings in the house were not in a very good condition so we decided to pull them all down. They were the old lath and plaster and were starting to crack badly.

It took about 2 days to pull down the upstairs and 2 days to pull down the downstairs ceilings. The mess was unbelievable! Stuart pulled down the ceilings while I cleared up the mess! I regretted choosing to do the clearing up!


Me looking happy before I saw the mess I had to clear up!

Final wall comes down.

The last wall to come down was the one between the kitchen and dining room. This one was supporting the joists so needed an RSJ putting in. I had a colleague from work do the calculations for me and then submitted them to the council for building regs approval. It took about 5 weeks for the council to check the calcs and one site visit to check they were happy with it.

It took the builders about half a day to put in the supports and knock out the wall and then another half day to fit the RSJ.

Time to dig up the drive!

We wanted to remove all the lead pipe from the house which also meant replacing the lead pipe to the stop cock in the drive. Unfortunately we have a really long drive so it was a big job! Took two of us two days in the end so not too bad! I ached a lot afterward though!

The builders move in - October 2008

I have finally got the quotes back and appointed my builder. It took two and a half months to get to this point! I was so shocked at how long they took to get back to you with quotes.

I ended up choosing a building company that could do the building works and the plumbing. They were the cheapest and it would also save me hassle finding separate contractors.

My Dad is an electrcian so he is doing the re-wire for us, thanks Dad!

22nd October 2008 - The first wall comes down

This is the wall between the front and back bedrooms. We had to take this wall down and build a supporting stud wall so that we didn't have to have an RSJ downstairs.



Then the wall below it between the living room and dining room.



I didn't want to put the wall back up once it was down, the space was huge!

New Windows and Doors Mid September 2008

New windows and doors installed and looking lovely! I wasn't too keen on them to begin with as they seemed much chunkier than the neighbors, but I love them now!
We had the original top lights copied as they were so pretty. I wanted to try and keep some of the original character



The french doors let in so much light and make the room look much bigger.
We had to have a lintel installed as the company who installed the double glazed window originally forgot to put one in! The weight of the back of the house had been resting on a cheap double glazed window!!

One thing I would change if we did this again would be to install the lovely new windows and doors after the builders have been in. I've got a mammoth job ahead of me trying to clean them now!

The destruction begins 1st August 2008

The list of things that we are going to do is a long one, here goes:

• Remove load bearing wall to create kitchen diner

• Remove chimney breast in dining room

• Move wall between living room and dining room

• Replace 2 bay windows, front and back doors, small window in the pantry and install french doors in the dining room

• Re-plumb

• Re-wire

• Board and plaster everywhere

• New bathroom

• New kitchen

• Decorate

• Furnish

We have a lot to do so we get cracking with all the straight forward things like wall paper stripping and pulling out old units and the lovely bathroom suite while I await quotes from 8 builders.

Turns out that the bathroom tiles are cemented onto the walls and the cast iron bath has been bricked in! Not such an easy job after all!



The random hole in the wall had a wooden cabinet in it that had been wall papered over!



Wall paper stripping was fairly easy as it was sooooo old!