The last resident moves in

The cat moved in on sunday, and we've been trying to contain him within the house for the first week, so he can get to know the place. However that plan didn't last long.

Colditz cat managed to escape on the second night, Thankfully he is so far content to explore the gardens (front and back) and not much further. So we decided to accelerate the program a bit and spend some time with him outside. Last night he got to know one of the locals, and woke us both up with a slanging match just outside the back door.

The rest of the work is going quite slowly during the week, due to being at work. Next week we have the gas/heating installation starting, which will be some noticeable progress, rather than simply more destruction and mess. We have got a fairly good timetable of events which is leading me to believe that the major work will be completed by the end of august. Hopefully.

Wonky wobbly Floors

The original layout of the house has changed somewhat, internal walls have been removed, giving plenty more space downstairs, however the underlying problem of different floor heights is still with us. I estimate about 10mm drop across the width of the old wall.










You can see the line of the old wall here, along with the differing flooring styles. Nice.

Noise - a solution?

Perhaps not a magic-bullet (I wish), but a start.

We're going to build false walls on all the shared walls, these will be lined with accoustic insulation and clad in special sound-block plasterboard. This will take up to 100mm from each of the affected rooms (kitchen, sitting room, & bedrooms 1 & 2) but I think we can spare that in exchange for our sanity - we heard her copulating the other night - ugh.

I reckon it'll cost about £500 to build the walls, materials being CLS timber, fibreglass, OSB chipboard & 12mm soundblock plasterboard.

Fire removal

Spent a merry few hours removing the coal-fire. Blimey, it's heavy.

Not the easiest of tasks as the water connections for the back boiler need to be disconnected before it's removed, which is tricky when they're at the back of the cavity.

It came out eventually though, amist a sea of vermiculite, with both me and my brother swinging on it. A handy wheel-board then made moving it around a bit easier.

I'm not particularly impressed with whoever installed it. To make the fireplace opening big enough to accomodate it, a few bricks were removed from one side - these bricks happen to be supporting the lintel over the fireplace. Thus the lintel is supported on the right hand side by wishful thinking. Given it's not falled down yet, I'm guessing it's not working too hard, however I think I'll stuff a few bricks under it, just to be sure.

The eventual plan for this area is to install an open fireplace. S has a cast iron item that she quite likes, thouhgh it needs repairing before it'll actually work (it's currently repaired with some painted wood - not a good plan for a working fireplace).

Given we've managed to extract the old fire intact, I'll stick it on ebay, saves me humping it to the skip, and might get a few notes for it.

You can also see on the right of the chimney breast where I ran into the capping for the socket below. So much for capping be a vertical drop from services - no idea what they were thinking when they built this place, other than the fact they probably knock off early on a friday.

Noise & neighbours

After a week or so here it's become apparent that the walls are incredibly thin. They're also incredibly poor at noise reduction. It's also become apparent that next door (the terrace side) are also quite noisy. Small children can be forgiven, but when it's the mother screaming at them at all hours, it's something else. I'm sure asking them to be quiet is only going to go so far, after all they're being subjected to listening to our house-wrecking.

On approaching the lady next door to ask when it was the kids bedtime (so we could stop with the noise) the response was vague to say the best:

"They don't really have a bedtime, as it's the holidays I've not really got them into a routine"

Great.

S & I agreed between us that 8pm was an acceptable hour. We'll restrict the noisy operations to before this time during the week.

There's also some distinctly herbal smells coming from that house.

New Toy

Managed to aquire a Bosch SDS drill with roto-stop, via a contact in the retail industry - bargin price (about 1/3 RRP) and it's the daddy. My new favourite tool. Makes light work of the chasing, though these soft cinderblock walls are hardly a challenge - we'll see what it makes of the engineering-brick on the chimney stack.

Think the single, free chisel might need a few friends, I can't imagine it'll last long. Might pick up a pack of cheap SDS accessories from screwfix.

A former resident

Found this petrified corpse above the dining room ceiling.

Ick.

Dining room ceiling is now down and in the skip, along with this former resident.

New look kitchen

Brother came over today, and we gutted the kitchen. Not bad for a days work. Just the rest of the house to do. Ugh.

We also played with the chaser, wow. It's heavy & cumbersome, the switch is a bit iffy, and it won't cut right up to the ceiling but it doesn't make a speck of dust. The width is set at 40mm which should be fine for most stuff.

We hired an SDS for a couple of days to chisel out the inside of the chases, much quicker than a hammer and bolster, however the only SDS the hire-shop had was a maxi, which is a bit like overkill.

S was at work, so she'll be in for a bit of a suprise when she gets home. She was thinking we'd start on the weekend.

Previous owners came by this evening to remove the rubbush they'd left behind, one more item off the list.

The big move weekend, part 2

Yay! Our first night in the new house. Another 2 van loads, plus accompanying cars, mostly garage stuff this time. Fixed the leaking pipe, though the floorboards aren't down yet, but we're here. Just about.

Anyway. Bed time. Lots more to do tomorrow.

The big move weekend

Gathered the family (my brother and his wife) for the big push, a weekend of lugging boxes.

About half way through now. Borrowed a van from work, and managed 2 loads in that yesterday, accompanied by a pair of cars, both also stuffed with, er, stuff.

House is mostly cleared apart from car stuff. Garage has had 2 carloads of stuff removed and still looks no different. Returning today to finish that off, after we've put right a small mishap i had yesterday with a floorboard nail and a heating pipe. Spent the night at Brothers house due to the hasty removal of the floor in our bedroom.

Weather is co-operating nicely. Not too hot and a nice breeze for when things get heavy.

Skippy

Booked a mini-skip to take the kitchen and the kitchen & dining room ceiling. It'll be delivered on a 13ton truck which required a 9ft clear width. Best I measure the width of the drive then.

Trash - the conclusion?

Got a call from the previous owners, they're coming by to clear all the trash - result! He sounded a bit miffed at the tone of the letter he got, and thought he was doing us a favour by leaving the wood so we could use it as fuel. Guess the estate-agents didn't communicate our intentions to renovate the place.

Still clearing out

Still working on getting the garage cleared - you can see the floor now, and I've removed all the cables hanging from the roof. Got 5 big boxes of stuff out on and S didn't notice the difference.

Lots more to do.

Back at the old place

I'm taking a quick breather from efforts on the drive - it's another scorcher here today.

S has taken another car-load of stuff over the bridge, and will be firing up the wallpaper steamer and setting to. I'm holding the fort here. Well, actually I'm putting Dave's car back together - I pulled the engine out a few weeks ago to tackle some tricky welding by the clutch pedal. It's all welded and happier now, but I've just got to re-assemble the rest of it, give it a good wash and then an MOT. At that point I can give it back to Dave with a clean conscience.

We had another visit from the estate agents today to take some photos of the tidier bits of the house so they can advertise it's rental - my own efforts have been largely fruitless so far.

The landline is hopefully is working by now, though we keep forgetting to take a telephone over to test it. Must sort that, as I need to get the broadband working..

Trash, the revenge..

Got the solicitors to draft a letter, I like solicitors when they're on our side:

Further to completion of this matter on the 25th June, our clients have contacted us regarding the appalling condition the property was left in. Our clients have had to contact the Council to arrange for three wheelie bins full of rubbish to be removed. A letter had been delivered to the property dated 25th April to tell the owner that the wrong rubbish had been placed in the wrong bin so that it could not be emptied until the rubbish had been sorted.

There is a large pile of wood to the right hand side of the garage, bits and pieces of old furniture and wood still within the garage and what looks like asbestos sheeting from what was perhaps an old garage roof at the back of the garage. Three photographs evidencing this are attached. There is also a photograph showing two old doors propped up between the coal bunker and the garage. There is a chest of drawers in the third bedroom whilst the garden has been used as a dumping ground for buckets of cement or sand mix, old bits of worktops and
various other rubbish.

As well as dealing with the Council, our clients have to hire a mini skip to remove the rubbish and will have to pay a specialist firm to remove the asbestos.

Your clients are clearly in breach of their contract by failing to provide vacant possession of this property on completion.
Our clients rights against them are reserved. Our clients estimate that the cost of dealing with your clients breach will be £528.75. Please arrange for your clients to reimburse ours direct for this additional expense. If they are unwilling to do so, our clients rights against them are reserved.

Yours faithfully

Scary sounding stuff. Let's see what happens..

Moving stuff over

Back at work now, after a few days off earlier this week to give guided tours of the new place to various electricians and plumbers. Also had the Landlady come over to 'inspect' and talk property matters with estate agents and maintenance contractors - she's putting the place back on the letting market, albeit at a higher rent.

We're still doing at least one run a day over the bridge to collect post and drop off a car-load of boxes, the pile in the sitting room is growing.

Last nights trip involved an involuntry break in the unloading for an unexpected downpour, so we put the kettle on (that was in the first run over) and found ourselves picking at spot of loose wallpaper. Well, you know how these thing end up, within 10minutes we'd partially stripped the entire dining room.

Behind a false panel alongside the chimneybreast I found the incoming water stopcock, along with the piping for the coalfire, and a chronological history of the decor of the place, I suspect all the way back to the late 60's. We've got reds, blues, patterned, plain, woodchip and foam textures. I think after all this removal the diningroom will be significantly bigger - I hope it doesn't skew the calculations the gas fitter did for the room volumes..

Another thing we've noticed is there is a different artex pattern in each room of the house. It seems almost a shame to pull it all down, but it's cracked and theres evidence of leaking over the kitchen.

The weekend will see paperstripping in earnest, carpets coming up downstairs, and more serious destruction as the ceilings come down in the back of the house. I'm going to get a rotary disc chaser for cutting out the wire-ways in the walls, these are neat and fast, but produce a ton of dust, so I'll try and get hold of a henry-hoover from work (rather than trash the dyson).

The kitchen units have been ordered and paid for (did I mention that?) and last night we also ordered the fridge-freezer and washing machine. I'm dubious about this as I've a feeling we'll have to install the washing machine in the bathroom whilst the kitchen is getting the 'treatment' The fridge-freezer will go in the conservatory, which is, like the bathroom, largely escaping unscathed.

The plan

Dividing the work up into 4 major areas, cost wise gives us the following:

• New Kitchen
• Complete electrical re-wire.
• Install gas supply, new gas combi boiler & replace/upgrade radiators where needed.
• Replace single prefab garage with double prefab (try to sell single garage).

Sounds simple, doesn't it?

The kitchen is pretty straightforward, into a favourite national DIY Chain with some drawings/sketches of layout and get it ordered, demolish old kitchen, dump it in a skip. We'll have a gas supply (see below) so a gas hob and an electric over is the best combination. Saying that I like the sound of these new inductive hobs, expensive though...

The electrics will be pretty involved, and will include chasing new wire-ways into the wall, lots more sockets (1 per room just doesn't cut it these days). New consumer unit with plenty of extra space for expansion. Whilst chasing I'll put extra routes in for network cable, tv co-ax, and other AV stuff.

The heating system will largely be on the advice of a heating engineer, I tried a few calcs with regard to heat losses and radiator efficiency and ended up with numbers ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. I'll want to over-size the boiler to allow for future expansion, extreme weather conditions and someone running the hot tap whilst I'm in the shower.

I'm tempted to go for a modern storage cylinder with additional heating coils for alternative heat sources- the house roof has an east-west aspect so we could get solar water heaters, or the front garden see's a lot of noon-day sun, so ground source heat-pumps are also an option, though I doubt we'll have the budget for that to start with. It would be good to have the option in a few years, especially if there's subsidies to be had.

The gas supply will be mostly down to the transport company (wales & west) though I can probably save a few quid by digging the trench myself. Perhaps hire an excavator and dig out the pampas grass that's taking over the front garden at the same time.

I always fancied a go on a mini-digger.

The garage will probably follow later in the year once we've got the house sorted and moved in, initially it'll be a storage place for non-essentials whilst we're working on the house. The car(s) will have to be accomodated elsewhere for the duration of the work. The existing garage is a prefab, but has seen a new roof recently, if I can get a few quid for it then that'll help.

The size & shape of the property makes me think I can get a modest double width (16ft) onto the land if I loose the shed and coal-bunker alongside the house. If I sneak the front upto the line of the porch then I can go a bit deeper, which would be nice, though it's iffy ground with regard to planning. I'll need to dig out the old foundations and lay a pretty massive slab (20ft x 20ft), I imagine that'll be quite messy, but more fun on a digger I suspect.