We went away for Easter ...

Can you blame us???

April 2008:

Del & I had discussed my wash hand basin design idea for the downstairs shower room / cloakroom and, having searched the Internet and failed to find anything remotely like it readily available, we raided the local tile shop for their natural stone leftovers and created the corner "floating font"!

I was thrilled with the result. It is diagonally opposite the corner loo thus providing a pleasant view when seated.

The Sun Shone in February

Little jobs got done: the utility room was built, which provided a mini-kitchen so that the actual kitchen could be gutted and the downstairs loo was moved in order to accommodate this - accordingly, the upstairs facilities were working.

The oppressive ply wall came down and our living area moved south into the new extension. Larger, lighter and brighter: oh joy! This enabled the ceiling and walls in the original lounge area to be tampered with (pulling down the ceiling before it fell of its own volition, moving the doorway from the lounge into the kitchen, closing off the doorway from the kitchen to the hall).
 

The outside walls were rendered. We "celebrated" 6 months on the job. During March, the downstairs shower room/loo was tiled and fitted (except for the whb which was completed in April, more about that later) and the kitchen was plastered and prepared ready for the units and appliances.

2008: it gets worse before it gets better

January 2008. Having built the outer shell, it was time to knock down the original load-bearing back wall of the house. At this stage we are wondering why we decided to do this ...


First, the lounge was reduced from 12 x 14  to 12 x 10 by the erection of a plywood wall to keep some warmth in and some dirt out, meaning that the family living room was cramped with 3 sofas, a TV and no windows. The photograph shows the ply wall, also artily reflected in the mirror. (Can you see the green-brown carpet? Leafy-swirly survivor from the '70s!) Oh, and those plants didn't survive.

Another photograph shows the other side of the ply wall with the supports that were erected to keep the roof up while a very long double steel beam was inserted between the two pillars to support the weight above the "open plan living" gap. The old lounge and new extension will form an L-shaped living/dining room, open to the new kitchen (which we stupidly ordered in spring 2007 and they've been trying to deliver since before Xmas).

The third photograph shows the trendy cheesecloth curtain, swept aside to reveal the remains of the kitchen! There was a cooker but no sink - the only mains water was from the outside tap!

We ate out quite a lot while the place was in such a mess. God only knows how the TV, the old PC and the CD player didn't grind to a spluttering halt with all the dust.

The bifolding-sliding doors and tilt-n-turn windows were in (there's a new web site, www.sunseekerdoors.co.uk/) and the month ended with the plasterers doing their thing.

Installing the Bath

The bath arrived at the end of 2007.

As you can see from the photograph, there is now a Velux window in the plastered ceiling and the bath is in place.

The taps will be mounted centrally on the far wall and the twiddly operating knob for the waste plug will be centrally on the near side of the bath. There will be a bath panel on the front.

The open wall to the left will house the hidden cistern and the loo itself will be hung on the wall. We have chosen one that doesn't stand on the floor (after much deliberation about how safe it is - we're not exactly skinny!) hoping it would make cleaning a little less unpleasant.

Well, that's as far as we've got in 2007 ... happy new year!

;-)

Brick Wall Down, Stud Wall Up ...

and ... hey presto! we have a utility/laundry room.

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If you can be bothered referring all the way back to the plans on one of our original postings, you will see that we had a separate bathroom and toilet. A wall separated the loo from the kitchen.

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We knocked it down - after moving the W.C. to its new location in the old bathroom, having ripped out the rotted unit that was holding up the whb/sink and was, no doubt, harbouring billions of germs.

.

Meanwhile, Christmas came and went (we went too - spent Christmas elsewhere!), then we built another wall 3ft into the kitchen, thus creating a small (6ft) laundry/utility room. The photo shows the view from the kitchen - you can see the gas boiler on the wall and a temporary mobile pantry-unit! (note the yellow and pink walls - and the electrics! H&S nightmare!)

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I should clarify that when I say 'we' that means Del and Tone - with a little encouragement from the paymasters.

From Attic to En-suite

November. . Del and Tone have moved inside to work on converting the roof space at the front of the house from a mini-attic to a reasonable sized en-suite. The photos show the wooden supports and insulation. There will still be some eaves storage which can be accessed from the bedroom. The irony is that we bought the tiles and sanitaryware for the downstairs shower-room a few months earlier but we hadn't given this room much thought! Time to do so.

We have a a local builders supplies merchants, Brookers, not far from here so we grabbed tons of brochures - Ideal Standard, Aqualisa, various radiator companies - and also looked at their wall tiles and vinyl floor samples.

I love going to Brookers. It's quite old fashioned in some ways and service seems to run at the speed of an action-reply but they have unusual things to rummage through and you can browse for hours without being harrassed for a sale. They sell work clothing and boots at very reasonable prices that could easily be worn as casual wear.

Brookers also has a shop in Hitchin town centre. It was better before they housed the post office but it's still a good shop to wander round. It has a brilliant range of cookery and kitchen stuff that I've never found anywhere else, including the internet, plus gardening, diy and small household appliances. It's staffed by women who are probably retired dinnerladies - friendly and helpful.

Brookers has a website. Well, more a web presence. It's a pleasant design but doesn't give much information other than contact info and an idea of the what they can supply (no detail, but that would have meant a dedicated resource and budget to maintain such a diverse site and I get the impression that they've lasted till now without technology so why change); also, unless you happen to know that the company is T.Brooker & Sons, the site's near impossible to find! For those of you who live in North Herts and want to contact Brookers, it's www.tbrooker.co.uk/

We made our choices for the en-suite. Meanwhile, work continued in another area ...

Moving on ... to the next window

Halloween Special! The nights are getting longer and more importantly, the working day is getting shorter!

:-o

Soon, there will be more concentration on internal tasks.

:-)

The third dormer is well under way without breaking into the bedroom, which is still useable.

:-D