Ruined

This weekend was all about eating cake! Well, and DIY. Mostly DIY actually, but there was some cake. We’d been invited to Chris’s cousin’s 21st; an afternoon tea at a fancy hotel. In order to get a good day’s work in before we clocked off for the party, we decided to sleep over at the house for the first time, giving us a Friday evening of work and an early start on the Saturday. In order to give us more focused work-time we dropped Idris off at Chris’s aunt’s for the night, meaning we didn’t have to stop to walk him.

It wasn’t 5* accommodation for the night, but the house was surprisingly warm at least. It would have been nice to sleepover more often during the renovations, but the dust, and lack of electrics, would have made it tricky early on.

A few nights before we spent an evening getting more of the plasterboard on around the kitchen window, including a very tricky corner.

Chris focused on the plumbing for the kitchen sink. Another fiddly but essential job.

Back at the house on the Friday night, I spent my time building more of the frame for the shower wall.

Chris added a recycled piece of wood to the wall in the old doorway, to build up the glass bricks above.

Finishing the last few bits of essential plasterboard around the kitchen windows, we were able to put the kitchen units in place, and Chris spent some time leveling them and connecting them together.

This meant we could add an old worktop, as a temporary surface for the sink to be mounted on. This is to fulfill one of the requirements to get out mortgage moved over; having a kitchen sink plumbed in.

The whole set up looks surprisingly nice, even despite the fact we won’t be keeping this worktop.

Upstairs I was continuing with the shower. When buying our secondhand glass bricks, we’d only been able to find them in a much larger quantity than we wanted. Though we’ll sell on the spares, we decided it would be nice to build some in to the shower wall, to let in some light. I therefore built another shelf across at the top of the shower, at the right height to allow two rows of bricks to be built above. Chris also decided we should build a little recess into the wall, for us to stick shampoo and soap into.

Having previously rebuilt part of the wall in the utility room I spent an annoyingly long time plastering it.

With the back wall cupboards in place we then added the cupboards for the island, and placed the remainder in the utility in order to make things looks a little neater.

Our final job was to tidy the house and take another car-full of rubbish to the recycling center. With our mortgage meeting set for Wednesday, and, with some luck, the valuation shortly after, hopefully we’ve done enough to pass the mark this time. At least it’ll be tidy if nothing else.

We have light! It’s been a busy week for Chris, trying to finish off the last few sockets and light fittings before our electrician came to connect it all together. He was fairly worried incase it didn’t work, but luckily there were no major faults, and for the first time in nearly a year we have lights again.

After working evenings on the lights, Chris went off for a well-deserved rest, heading to a festival with friends. Luckily for me, my friend Becky decided to come stay, meaning I had some company. Unluckily for her, she got dragged into house renovations.

I spent most of the weekend busy on awkward bit of plasterboarding, a fairly slow job, but satisfying to see some more walls completed.

Becky got put to work building the rest of the wall in the old doorway, which she did meticulously.

The next day, on Chris’s return, we loaded up the bathtub that had been sitting in our garden for months, and manhandled it up the narrow stairs and into position in the bathroom.

It’s definitely one of the things I’m most looking forward to, as we’ll have a bathtub that looks out across the fields, certainly a luxory item.

With the bath in place Chris got on with sorting out pipes. To his annoyance he thinks he needs to put in all the plumbing at once, rather than just installing what we most urgently need now. With a rush on to get things ready for the mortgage inspector this isn’t ideal.

In the kitchen, myself and Becky continued the work of the insulation contractors, around the very fiddly windows. Though the contractors are returning to finish the job, we’ve been told that won’t be for several weeks. In order to move our mortgage, one thing we need to install is a kitchen sink. Therefore we have no choice but to get on with the awkward job ourselves.

At home, I’ve started the packing, working my way through the most chaotic room in the house; the coat cupboard. Next stop will be the equally out of control garage. Hopefully with the more demanding rooms packed up in plenty of time, last minute packing of the other, more ordered places, won’t seem as bad.

With work completed for the weekend we headed up a nearby hill, to enjoy a little of the spring sun.

I feel this is going to be a short blog post. Although we’ve been working particularly hard, our energies have been put into a very small number of repetitive jobs.

For me, it’s been never ending plastering. After initially being disappointed with my plastering efforts, Chris has lowered his expections and allowed me to continue (given that it’s only the undercoat).

Plastering is amazingly exhausting. From lugging round the heavy mixture to constantly bending and refilling the hawk (not the bird, the big metal yray you load with plaster in order to scrap it onto the wall with the float), to reaching up and above with the weight on your arms. Plasters must be very fit.

With a day off this weekend to take some of our siblings and nephews kayaking, we managed to get a good amount done in a long evening together. I worked my way up the stairs, plastering up to what I could reach, and then continued round the corner to the bedroom on the weekend. With a sudden heatwave reaching us, we’re having to be particularly careful to cover the wet plaster with hessian so it doesn’t dry out too quickly.

Chris on the other hand has been focusing on electrics. Having finished off the downstairs toilet and sink, he moved on to attaching sockets, switches and lights. With the electrician booked in for next Friday to connect everything up we have a hard deadline to get all the electrical works finished.

Along with our main jobs we fixed a few of the contractor’s mistakes. Chris removed the plasterboard that had been attached over the top of the plaster, knocked off the old plaster and reattached the board.

With my last hour on the weekend I managed to rebuild some of the wall the contractors dismantled during the plumbing installation.

Outside one of my favourite flowers has returned, a purple columbine with green-tipped petals. I’m glad to see our piles of building waste haven’t smothered it. Though there’s still the risk it gets swallowed by the sinkhole, which still seems to be getting steadily larger…

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.