Day 83 - View from the Front

Here's looking out our new front doorway which is now in the front of the house, innovative huh?!


The small retaining wall at the front has come down



We presume so the giant crane could get access to the front




As all the toilets have gone from the house there's now a lovely portaloo out the front!

Day 83 - Steels are in, walls come down.

After a hectic week we finally got up to the property on Saturday, with the boys, to check out the changes since last weekend.

As the steels came on Tuesday we were hoping for major changes, which we got!

The chimney wall has come down so we can now see the full size/shape of the store room








And the old back wall of the lounge has gone too now the big steel is in place to support the upstairs


Here's the big steel



Upstairs our old bedroom now has temporary steels




and holes in the floor



A view from the back



And the Thorpes pose through the new study window

Day 81 - Blue Steel

Just had a call from Shaun, the big steel has been delivered and is being shuffled into place.

This means work will ramp up and Shaun hopes to be breaking through and removing the existing supporting walls tomorrow!

I couldn't be there today to watch as I'm presenting on a training course in Hursley but Shaun took pictures for me to post on here!

Day 75 - Site Closed

The site is closed today - they've run out of things to do!

Monday will be busy as they have to clear the site, including the skip, to make room for the crane which is coming on Tuesday to maneuver the biggest steel into place.

Once the steels are in the guys can start on the 2nd floor and then the roof and we should see things moving more quickly - hooray!

Day 74 - Pootility Room?

One of the things we considered last weekend was the downstairs loo. On the plans it leads off the hall and the door is directly opposite the front door, not ideal. Also we were worried that the hall would be rather long and twisty, an unfortunate consequence of moving the front door to the front of the house!



We've decided to get rid of the coat cupboard - it protrudes too far into the hall, a coat rack will have to suffice.

Then Ern came up with the bright idea of moving the loo door into the utility. We discussed the pros and cons and decided to go for it, if it was possible.

I spoke to Shaun and he agreed it should be possible if we moved the hand basin under the window but also came up with a new possibility - cutting off the corner of the loo with a diagonal wall and putting the door in there, the access would still be off the hall but the door wouldn't directly face the front door.

After more debate we decided we loved the diagonal wall idea but still wanted the access off the utility, but could we have the loo hanging off the diagonal wall?

The diagonal wall would also give us more space in the hall and hopefully a better flow. And an interesting diagonal wall! The downstairs loo is pretty spacious so it wouldn't make much difference to the space in there.

This week I met with the brickie and he laid the blocks out to give us an idea how it will look





We're pleased, it definitely makes a difference to the flow of the hallway, it seems to flow rather than the previous abrupt left turn. Plus the guys think it should be fine to hang the pan off the diagonal wall which will add interest to the downstairs loo.

And the blog post title? Several years back my folks modified their kitchen/downstairs loo area so that what had been a cupboard off the kitchen became an extension to the downstairs loo and space to stack the washing machine and tumble dryer. At one of their infamous November fireworks parties some wag, no doubt under the influence of the notorious mulled wine, dubbed it the pootility room, a lovely juxtaposition of toilet and utility room.

Day 70 - I did it!

After Shaun's somewhat depressing suggestion that we replace the wall between my study and the boys room I spent last weekend tackling the somewhat daunting task of moving everything in my study away from the offending wall. This meant trying to fit it all onto the shelves on the other side.

And I did it!



Now of course you could argue I've just got too much stuff in there, and this doesn't include all the stuff that moved with me to my temporary home at Davids, but I'm very proud that it all fitted!

It was a bit like building a dry stone wall, you had to find the right sized slot for the box you were holding!



This is the tidiest my desk has ever been!



And then on Monday the desk came down and the chests of drawers got moved over and it all got covered in black plastic which will hopefully protect it when they knock the wall down.

Day 68 - Soaking more away

Another Soakaway

This is the original soakaway specified in the plans





As opposed to the additional soakaway the Structural Engineer specced earlier in the build

Day 67 - Dodgy walls

Another problem surfaces...

Don't worry it's nowhere near as serious as the damn hole problem (oops, I said I wouldn't mention that again)

The spare bedroom wasn't undergoing major changes in the build but we did decide to move the doorway. The room is longish and fairly narrow, a pretty impractical shape for a bedroom, compounded by the door opening into where it makes most sense to put a double bed. This meant the bed had to pushed up against the wall so the door could still open and obviously meant you could access both sides of the bed - a pain for guests and bed making!

So as the other side of the wall is now in a corridor we're moving the doorway further down the wall to make the space more usable.



As shown in the pic - the yellow line is the old doorway, the green line is the approximate position of the new doorway.

Anyhow.... they starting my making two long vertical cuts with the circular saw - and then the wall dropped


away from the corner


and down - this is the line they'd drawn - you can see in this blurry pic how much it dropped

This is a similar problem to the bathroom wall dropping although that was compounded by a leak.

We have solid walls upstairs and basically they weren't built right and aren't supported on the joists correctly.

So now Shaun is advising we replace the two remaining internal solid walls that aren't affected by the build. This also includes the wall between the boys bedroom and my study - eeek!

Day 64 - Final post on the hole , promise!

We got the bill...

Thanks to Fowles' structural engineer and his simplified solution the potential scary bill of over £5000 was reduced to £1700. And more importantly it's resolved.

Hooray.

No more posts about the hole...

Day 57 - Skip Life - a still life in redundant plumbing equipment

Day 57 - The walls go up ..

but lots of other things come down or out...


The side walls get higher


My trusty boiler, which I think was original to the house (c1980) has come out.

Every time the plumber serviced it he'd tell me "It won't last much longer", but thankfully it lasted as long as it need to and I think 29 years is pretty good for a boiler.

We'll be getting a nice new big boiler and a pressurised water system and maybe a solar water system - more on those later.


The open plan ensuite toilet has gone


As has the brick/concrete 'feature' fireplace - farewell...

Upstairs..

The bath has gone


And the basin & the radiator

The toilet remains, but has attractive black markings we think from the sludge in the radiator.

Oh, and Jordan has a Brazilian it seems...

Day 57 - Patio door negotiation

One of the issues we've been battling with is to get the size of the patio doors increased.

I'd had several conversations with Shaun about it but things didn't happen till we clarified that we needed to speak to John (architect) to get agreement on the size.

This is all to do with the the relatively new building regs which control how much of a room can be glazed for insulation/eco reasons. The simplest rule states that the amount of glazed area must be less than or equal to 25% of the surface area of the ceiling/floor. Importantly for us, if the room is being extended, you are allowed to include any existing openings in the 'old' room that will be covered up in your calculations.

We did the calculations and worked out we could go up to 3 metres wide on the doors according to the rule - thankfully John agreed.

The downside was the builders had already built the doorway, with the narrower width. We didn't like to make them redo it, after all they had just followed the plans, but the view from the old patio doors was one of the best features about the house and we really wanted to preserve this feature and maximise the light and views into the lounge.

The first opening was 1.8 metres, it's now closer to 3m - acres of glass!



And in case you're wondering, at the moment we're going for old fashioned patio doors as they let in the maximum light and provide the most unrestricted views. We thought about those fancy expensive folding doors you see on all the home shows but that part of the garden only gets sun in the very early part of the day and there aren't that many days in the UK when you'd want to open them right up. Also I think they work better off a kitchen/diner rather than a lounge. I suppose it's just a lifestyle option too far for us!