Ruined

It seems like time has sped up now the moving day is closing in. On the one side we have our housebuyers calling up to ask when the sale will go through, on the other side we have the mortgage company demanding all boxes ticked before we can move our mortgage across. And we’re feeling the squeeze.

This week the final bits of the central heating were finished, and the large radiator in the lounge moved across so there’s space for my future piano.

While having the contractors is amazing, every now and then they do things that make absolutely no sense. This week they pull down all the plastic sheeting from the ceiling of the shower room, which is a painfully annoying job to do. They appear to have done it in order to get their plasterboard on, but the sheeting should be behind the plasterboard…

My first job was to finish off building the frame for the downstairs toilet, previously started by Chris.

Next more framing on the end of the stairs.

Another annoying contractor error had been to cut through one of the uprights in the framework for the stairs. To stabilise the structure I added some smaller bit of wood and screwed the whole thing to the doorframe.

Downstairs Chris was sorting out the electrics in the lounge, that had previous been hidden by the insulation board and doors.

Our bathroom has long been filled with over 100m of ventilation ducting. In order to make some space we decided to move it into the attic, where it would be fed down from eventually. Moving the spagetti monster wasn’t as easy as it at first seemed. Even with me pushing up from below, and Chris gathering in from above, it still looked like an alien had invaded our attic.

Finally, with the bathroom cleared, we did a quick tidy and sweep of the upstairs. We’ve purchased an industrial hoover now, with the intention of starting to cut down on the amount of dust swirling around the house. My lungs will certainly appreciate it.

A frustratingly time-consuming job was filling in the last few awkward spots on the ceiling, requiring a great deal of difficult cuts.

The contractors are supposed to be plastering the external walls soon, but Chris plastered the small area behind the downstair’s toilet, so it could be installed. It’s great to have a flushing toilet once again. With the tiles already down this room already looks the most complete.

Ceilings done I started building the stud wall for the shower. We can now see the layout of the bathroom, with the soil pipe marking where the toilet will go, the stepladder marking the bathtub, and the sink roughly sitting where it’ll be installed. With all this marked out Chris had started to worry it’ll feel crowded, but I think as long as you can move between the various facilities it’ll still be nice.

We remembered this week that we had some royal fritillary bulbs in the garage, which had been brought with the intention of planting them at the new house. However, looking around we realised all the suitable locations were probably going to be complete devastated when we get round to sorting the garden. So for now we’ve planted them in a pot at our current house, with the hope they’ll survive until we can stick them in the ground. For my birthday (in August) I’ve requested a work party from my family to help clear the garden, so perhaps they might even get planted this year.

Three days of DIY is a rare opportunity, and I must admit I felt optimistic that we would get a huge amount done. Yet the weekend seemed to pass with not much accomplished, and a sense of frustration. Yet, writing this blog post I realised we’d gotten plenty done, it was just all fiddly little things, that don’t seem particularly satisfying. Still they need to be done, and quickly.

My first job of the weekend was to plaster the brick wall above the small steel with concrete mortar. This will help to give the slightly unstable bricks a bit more stability. What the task made me realise is that I’m no good at plastering. Luckily we only have loads and loads of plastering to do…

One thing I really wanted that I wasn’t allowed, was to leave the steels exposed. I like seeing the bones of a building and I think they’re quite sculptural. But apparently all steels need to be covered in fire-resistant plasterboard. This is to protect them from a fire… but they’re made of steel, and all our other beams are wood… and the wooden beams don’t need to be protected…

We started building the stud wall around the shower room. The space feels very small at the moment, but that’s probably just because we’ve grown used to it being open. In order to attach the wall to the ceiling we had to attach the plaster membrane first, ready for when we plasterboard it. I’ve forgotten what a painful and annoying job this is.

We then did some more boarding of various stud walls. Some bits still need to be left open to sort pipes and electrics, but there’s a lot of completed walls now.

Chris spent a lot of the weekend fiddling around with plumbing, including getting the waste pipes in place, running water pipes, and installing an outside tap.

While Chris was busy with water pipes I built my first doorway. Annoyingly we’d completely unnecessarily taken down this doorway when we thought we would need to move the wall to widen the stairs. Sometimes you create your own DIY.

A particular highlight of the weekend was finally selling our massive pile of doors. Having gone through and chosen all the doors we wanted to keep, we then sold a total of 7 full-sized doors and three small doors. Having laboriously lugged the doors from one room to another throughout the renovation it was great to see the back of them.

Since starting the renovation we’ve been bringing Idris with us. Usually he sleeps in the car between coming out for tea breaks and a walk, but with the weather warming up he had to spend a day hanging out in the house. It’s amazing where he can make himself comfortable.

Having already brought our kitchen sink we managed to get a brand new tap for £15 off someone who had ordered the wrong colour and failed to return it.

And finally in the garden I spotted some sweet cecily appearing. I’m not sure if it’s wild or planted, but a lovely addition to the garden.

With a final scurry to the recycling center with a car full of rubbish we’ve hopefully left the house ready for the return of the insulators and the arrival of the plasterers this week. Having the walls plastered will feel like the beginning of the end, though perhaps the last quarter of a marathon rather than the last few feet of a sprint.

Excitingly we made our first electricity this week too. Our final tally on Monday being 20kw. Not sure what that means, but certainly sounds impressive.

It feels a little like Christmas, walking in and finding a load more work completed by the contractors. We now have a fully working heating system, with radiators in every room. One or two small issues arose during installation including the covering over of a few electrics, and a radiator where my future piano is meant to go, but overall it’s been a pretty smooth process. With the moving day now set for the end of May there’s a urgency to get everything done, as anything not completed in time will be something we’ll living with once we move in.

Scaffolding also went up last week, ready for the solar panel installation, meaning Chris was able to pop up and sit our chimney caps on before the jackdaws started nesting.

In the spirit of getting the house liveable we decided to finish off the ceiling panelling. Although 99% completed, what was left was the really awkward higher areas and corners. Myself and Chris set to work, but it soon became too frustrating for Chris, who went off to work on electrics while I carried on plugging away. I managed to get both bedrooms done, aside from the corners where we will need to buy a special trim. Chris isn’t particularly pleased with the result at the moment, but I think once it’s sanded and painted it will look as good as new.

Looking for a more satisfying job, Chris headed outside to install our outdoor lights. We managed to get quite traditional-looking lights to suit the outside of the house. Continuing with the outside theme he also started installing an outdoor plug socket and put in the plumbing for an outdoor tap.

Inside Chris recycled some of our old wood to act as wooden lintles in the two kitchen doorways, to add additional support to the wall’s interior and the ends of joists.

Having looked into the cost of hiring machines to polish the concrete in the kitchen/ diner and found it to be too expensive, we decided to get a quote from a professional. To say the concrete polisher was unimpressed with our attempt at concrete pouring was probably an understatement. Due to the rough finish he quoted a whopping £2,500 for the job. Due to the cost we don’t know if the idea might now be a no-go. We’ll perhaps try to grind the floor a little flatter ourselves and then ask for another quote, but it may be that we end up going for wood or tiles.

Arms dead from working on the ceiling I spent a little time rebuilding the stone around the steel lintle, using the leftover mortar to cover a few more wires.

Up on the roof, the contractors finished installing the solar panels. It’s exciting to see them in place. I’ve wanted solar panels for years, but Chris, with his sensible head, insisted it wasn’t economically viable in a house we weren’t staying in long-term. All we need is an electrician to connect them up, and we’ll be producing our own electricity.

Of course it’s not all good news. The sinkhole in the garden seems to have become even larger, with the hole we filled to the top, now looking almost empty…

Still, with only weeks to go before we move in, big holes in the ground will have to wait. Afterall, there’s no bathroom, no kitchen and no electric yet… Looking forward to a return to the 18th century on moving day.

It seems like everything has suddenly sped up this week at the house. With the contractors starting installation of the heat pump and solar panels on Monday, we had a list of jobs we needed finished before they appeared. Luckily, we got an extra pair of hands for the weekend, in the form of my older brother Tom.

Our first job was to continue building the new stud walls around the bedroom. It was surprisingly hard to match the edge to the wall, which still curves nicely.

Having clad the interior of the walls we then had to fill them with insulation. This is for soundproofing, rather than its heat trapping properties.

Downstairs, Chris prepared the utility room for the installation of the air source heat pump. He’d already removed the old cupboard and work surface, the last remenants of the old kitchen. Next he took apart the two old doorways that sat between the kitchen and utility. We’d always intended to remove one but we had to remove the second as it was damaged and needed replacing.

With all the rubbish out the way, Chris mixed the self-leveller and spread it on the floor. We’d hope to lay the tiles before the installation, but haven’t had time. This means the machinery will sit directly on the floor, but as it will probably sit within a cupboard it’s not the end of the world.

Next Chris started building the low wall in the old doorway. We need a wall here for a radiator to go on, as the rest of the room is taken up with windows, doors, a fireplace and stairs. We’ll leave the top portion open in order to install glass bricks to let light into the room.

While waiting for the mortar to dry on the first level, Chris started on connecting up the downstairs sink.

In order to add a separate tap for filling buckets, Chris started to build the stud wall for the downstairs toilet.

Finally, he rebuilt some of the stonework surrounding the doorway from the kitchen to the utility. Note the health and safety brick, carefully balanced on top of the hessian.

Meanwhile, myself and Tom tidied the house, ready for the contractors, and loaded the car with rubbish to take to the recycling center. Unusually, I came back from the recycling center with someone else’s ‘rubbish’. As we were leaving I saw a man about to chuck away a stack of gardening tools. As they seemed in good shape I asked if I could have them for the community garden. I find it hard to see anything not broken thrown away, and nearly took a set of badminton rackets off him as well, purely so I could rehome them, but I was worried it would start to look like a robbery.

Outside in the garden we even did some planting. It being mine and Chris’s 8 year anniversary I’d brought him a climbing rose to grow up one of our fruit trees, an idea he’d had since we first had the house. Hopefully it will like it’s new home.

With the weather improving we even managed to do some outdoor cooking… though it was just a microwave sat on the doorstep.

And of course, all fancy houses need a gargoyle or two, so Tom added his own face to one of the pieces of plasterboard, to scare away evil spirits… and possibly anyone else that comes to visit.

With that we’re ready for the contractors, and hopefully they won’t run into any unexpected problems. If all goes well, within a week we might actually have a fully working heating system.

Something you often don’t appreciate is how tiring crouching is. Bending, straightening, bending down again, somehow seems to sap the same amount of energy as a sprint race, by the end of the day.

Having completed the main block of tiling last week I now needed to measure and cut the edge pieces before attaching them in the same way. Though a comparatively small area, measuring and cutting the tiles took a fair bit of time, as most needed to be cut differently to their neighbours due to the lack of straightness in the walls.

With the tiles in place the next job was to remove any bits of tile adhesive that sat too high for the grout to cover it. Finally, I was able to add the grout. Having waited for it to dry a little I sponged the worst off before returning to it the next day to clean off any remaining grout marks on the tile surfaces.

Although there are one or two places where the tiles aren’t as flat as I’d have liked, overall I’m pretty pleased with them. Chris, with his characteristic perfectionism, offer a, ‘Well they were never going to be perfect’…

While I was busy with the various stages of tiling, Chris was getting frustrated with electrics. I’ve never had to plan an electrical circuit round a house, but according to both Chris and his brother it’s where motivation goes to die.

Wanting a break from the headscratchings of the electrical world, Chris decided to busy himself throwing the old concrete from our floor into the sinkhole in the garden. Recently more of the ground has sunk down and he’s worried if we don’t start filling it soon it will collapse in on itself. Though it doesn’t look very big on the surface, throwing a rock down at the right angle results in a clatter…clatter…clatter…bang…bang…bang…roll, indicating something much deeper than feels comfortable.

Having lost all the concrete in the hole, Chris returned to his electrics, and I began to add the half bricks. Having moved perhaps half a dozen wheelbarrow loads of half bricks, the visible floor of the hole hadn’t gotten any higher. Our initial plan had been to sell the full bricks on but now it seems they’ll serve us best below the surface.

Although having a sinkhole in the garden is a little off-putting, it’s far enough away from the house for us not to be too concerned. It does however (from the sound of the echos) appear to go under the road, which is more worrying. We did inform the council of this, but so far they don’t seem particularly interested.

Having finished the floor I set to work plastering over the worst of the unevenness in the internal walls, as well as covering over Chris’s wires. Plastering is a very slow and very boring job, not to mention exhausting. I’m looking forward to seeing the back of it.

In order to prevent the plaster drying out too quickly we had to cover it in hessian. We have a very large roll of hessian, which was one of the first things we brought for the house. Having spotted it very cheap on Marketplace, Chris decided to pick it up, despite knowing we wouldn’t need it for quite a while.

Another bargain-buy of the week is out new ceramic kitchen sink, only £26 off Ebay.

Once more tired of electrics Chris decided to start plumbing in our downstairs toilet. It’s exciting to see our first room slowly coming together.

Outside, the garden, still full of rubble, broken toilets and scaffolding, is nonetheless looking nice, with lots of spring blooms.

Unfortunately, not every fresh shoot in particularly welcome, with the young Japanese knotweed already appearing. We’d hoped last year’s treatment had seen it off, but we’ll simply have to treat it again this year. So far only one patch has reappeared, so maybe the rest has gone afterall?

It’s the long Easter weekend and we’ve got four whole days off DIY. With a big family celebrating taking place, we decided to down tools a join in. However… though we’re looking forward to the rest, we do both still feel pretty guilty that we aren’t using the extra days off to knuckle down and get some stuff done. Therefore, to ease our guilt, we decided to take a day off on the Thursday and do some pre-weekend-off work.

Immediately after my extensive house clean the whole place got filled with rubble once more. With the final wall coming down the house was once again covered with dust and grit. We spent some time scooping up and bagging the waste. Even being only a small bit of wall we easily filled over a dozen bags. While I ferried the first load to the recycling center Chris took out of few more of the supports and layed more bricks on top of the steel.

On my return Chris decided that seeing as we were already creating a mess we might as well strip the last of the plaster off the bedroom wall. This internal wall had originally been designated as good enough just to touch-up, but it turned out we were being optimistic.

While I waited for Chris to bash enough off to start filling bags I went through a stack of wood from the old staircase, that lay hidden behind some insulation board. I found quite a bit of paneling suitable for the ceiling repairs, and more wood for building partition walls. Unfortunately I also found quite a bit of floorboards, which we had forgotten had been part of the cupboards above the stairs. These would have been handy for our floor repairs, but perhaps they can be kept safe in case of future repair work.

And lastly we decided to get the insulation up on the shower room ceiling, something we’d been holding off till the wall was down. Because of low wood supplies we’ll probably just put up plasterboard on the ceiling in this room.

So that was it, time for a mini holiday. The good news is we’ve finally got a date booked in for our air-source heat pump and solar panels to be installed. As with the external wall insulation we are getting a government grant for these items due to the very poor EPC rating of our home (G). We were told we would be eligible a long time ago but the final decision has dragged on. I think until they are in neither of us will really trust we’ve got the grant, but a date at least gives us hope that in a few weeks time we might actually have some heating.

It’s much more pleasant working in the house now things are warming up, though there’s still the occasional chill in the air.

In order to get the house ready for the mortgage inspector we need to get the downstairs toilet ready. We set it out with the sink and toilet to check the spacings, marking out where the washing machine and drier would go. Chris was worried the sink was too large but I think it’ll work well. Plus it was free, always a bonus.

I set to work filling the gaps in the wall by the stairs. Chris had already filled the easy to reach holes, but in order to reach those further up we placed scaffold boards across the stairs, a slightly precarious but workable platform.

With the holes filled I used the remaining mortar around some of the switch boxes.

To make things more precarious on the platform I had to add a stepladder to reach the top of the plasterboard to add a few more screws.

Chris in the meantime got to work setting the padstones in place for installing the final steel. We had decided the remove this small section of wall to join together the tiny bathroom with a pointless section of corridor that had no useful purpose. However, as the purlins sit on the wall we couldn’t simply take it down.

Downstairs I started laying our new floor tiles. It’s a little out of order decorating at this point, but it made sense to tile before installing the sink and toilet, and we needed these in so we could move the mortgage. We’d expected not to have enough tiles for the full floor, as the person selling them had said there was only enough for 2.2m2 and the floor was 2.8m2. However, the seller had actually given us more tiles than expected, making it exactly enough for the full floor.

The padstones having set, we lifted the steel into place, and Chris began to fill in the gaps, and dismantle the wall. With the space opened up we were both surprised how big the room looked. Eventually this will be a shower room. It feels extravagant for us to have both a bathroom and a shower room for just the two of us, but we’re planning ahead for when the house will be fuller and busier.

Having finished his work Chris started on some tidying. Despite having cleaned and tidied the whole house only a little while ago it’s already a mess again. It’s difficult to keep any sense of order when things are changing so quickly.

With the wall down we’re finally ready to have the plasterers back, which will be exciting to see the rooms look like rooms again for the first time in months. Maybe soon the house might even be liveable.

This Saturday I had my monthly volunteer day, meaning Chris had to head to the house alone. Luckily, Jay had once again volunteered some free labour.

Having spent a busy evening getting plasterboard up on the study wall, Chris was in the mood for more partition wall building. The boys set to work creating the wall encasing the staircase.

Chris isn’t much of a photo taker, so this is the only picture he took of the wall building pre my arrival…

Previously the area above the stairs had been a huge set of shelves. A sensible use of space, but it also made the staircase feel small and cramped. We’re opting to have the full height above the staircase open.

Sadly almost all of our recycled wood has been used up, meaning Chris had to order new wood for this bit of building.

Jay’s photo offering. Chris receiving professional guidance.

Having built the frame and attached the plasterboard it was amazing how dark the staircase looks. We had wondered about adding a high thin window between the room and the staircase, to let light through, but we decided a sun-tunnel in the roof is probably a better option, though slightly more expensive.

With my volunteers disappearing at lunchtime to attend a football match, I was able to join Chris and Jay (and supervisor Rosie) at the house in the afternoon. Leaving them to their construction project, I started on the jigsaw puzzle of filling in the wooden boards above the windows. As we were getting low on wooden boards to reuse I tried to utilise the smaller pieces that would be no good elsewhere. As always, finding the rafters to screw them into, under layers of plastic and insulation, was fun and games.

On Sunday, with Jay returning to more sensible weekend activities, I carried on with the windows while Chris set to work on levelling the downstairs bathroom floor.

Our inspection by the house valuers had ended up as a flop. The valuer had told us he couldn’t value the house until it has a kitchen sink, a toilet and bathroom sink, and electricity. Apparently we don’t count as habitable just yet. Therefore getting the toilet and sink in in the downstairs bathroom is now a priority. Unfortunately, the kitchen needs to wait till we can polish the floor, which won’t be for a few weeks yet. The electric, Chris assures me, isn’t far off.

Self-leveller left to set, Chris got to work filling the final two gaps in our study floor.

And then busied himself on sprucing up the secondhand toilet and sink (yes I was still messing around with window boards).

On our way home we stopped to pick up some second-hand new floor tiles. Far too expensive for us to consider buying them new, someone had over ordered and was selling them on cheap. Unfortunately there isn’t quite enough for our downstairs bathroom (2.2m2 vs 2.8m2). However, something we did in our current house was placing the nice tiles in the visible areas, and plain tiles where machines and cupboards were going to sit, so the plan is to do similar again.

Another stop was to go and view a piano. Someone local had offered it up to a new home for free. When planning out the design for our new house I’d immediately earmarked a spot for a piano. I’ve had an electric piano for most of my adult life, but have always wanted a real one. This one is now on hold, the owner happy for us to collect once we’re ready. Another reason to hurry up and get the house ready to move into.

We’ve been busy shopping this week, and so far have a complete bathroom suite biding its time in the garden. The roll top bath was something I was keen on from the start, but we’ve struggled to find one cheaply second-hand. Eventually, one appeared at a suitable price. The toilet and sink came up even more cost-effective, being completely free. Our final purchase was actually round the corner from my parents, and my dad kindly collected it for us, with a friend’s parents getting rid of a nearly new dishwasher.

Back at the house we were pleased to see the floor had set. A little lumpy, but it should flatten out as we grind it down. Firstly though it needs to dry for another month.

So we set about installing the last two PVC windows. The first went in relatively easily, though it took quite a while to break up the two large stones either side of it, in order to get the lintle in place.

The next window was surprisingly difficult. Taking out the old window didn’t take long, as it was so rotten it fell apart in my hands. Although Chris had previous installed a new lintle on the interior of the wall, as well as in the center of the wall, we needed to replace the outer wooden lintle too. Getting acro props in place Chris started to notice the stones above slipping and had to further support them. Either side of the window, much of the stone the new lintle would sit on had dropped out, the mortar too old and weathered to hold together. It took some time to rebuild everything enough for the window to be put in place, and even then drilling into the rock risked dislodging everything. Finally, in the wind and the rain the window was secured.

Although it will have to be moved again to polish the concrete, we decided to set up the kitchen units, to check we had everything we needed and work out the best arrangement. After much juggling around, we think we’ve landed on the final design, with several units spare to use in the utility room.

Chris continued his work building the stud wall with reclaimed wood, including installing a new socket. He then carried on his electric work in the kitchen.

I continued tidying the downstairs, filling the car with another load of rubbish for the recycling center. Cleared out the house looks significantly larger. Hopefully all this cleaning will be worth it, giving the valuer the right sense of its worth so we can get our mortgage moved across.

Out in the garden the snowdrops have gone over, but in their place we have a few daffodils to enjoy. I particularly like this bizarre cultivar. No good for pollinators with all its fancy layers, but still very fancy-looking. Hopefully we’ll have a house to match it one day, although a little more wildlife-friendly.

It was an early start to get to the house to test the underfloor heating before the cement truck arrived. Unfortunately, the company delivering the cement rang as we were driving across, asking if they could arrive half an hour early. Gone was our prep time.

Arriving soon after us our cement deliverer was in a foul mood. He was clearly unhappy about the steps up to the house, the office not having passed on this information. He also told us our boards were unnecessary, and wasn’t pleased we were still fiddling around testing the heating.

Still, as he began barrowing the cement, some 2.7 m3 of it, we were pleased to have him.

While he barrowed in and dumped the cement, we spread it out and flattened it, using the back of a rake and a long piece of wood.

Around half-way through, our cement deliverer stopped to state how impressed he was with our work. He’d been worried when he arrived, but we were clearly experienced or good at faking it. No bad thing if you can fool an expert.

Cement spread, we had to wait for it to set a little before compacting it. Upstairs Chris continued installing sockets.

I meanwhile continued clearing the other rooms of rubbish and tidying.

Sockets and tidying done we carried on with boarding the ceiling.

And lastly Chris removed a large piece of wood beside the stairs. With this gone we have space for significantly wider stairs without having to start cutting into the floor, something we only realised fairly late in the day.

The cement finally set enough, we used left over pieces of insulation to move across the floor and smooth the surface with a trowel. It will take a month for the floor to dry enough for it to be polished. In the meantime, we look forward to having something solid to walk on.