Day 118 - Panoramic

You'll need to click this one to see the detail but I took the opportunity of having no walls to do a panorma of upstairs

 

This is view across from the spare room, Liam's room, Master suite and the main bathroom

Day 117 New Roof complete

Here's the lovely new roof over the new back bedroom and along the side extension. The new tiles have all gone on the back and the old tiles have been reused at the front so the new part of the house blends in from the front

New facias and soffits on the side



And Shaun showing me the plastic trays they've installed under the new roof tiles to prevent the lining filling with water and sagging.



 

In the second pic you can see how the old roof lining has sagged. Ern says his is much worse on his roof.

Day 110 - Bedroom roof

The roof for bedroom extension goes up

 


Elsewhere the carpenter, Pelham, and his assistant Graham are fixing the roof beams - it seems many have sagged or are just wonky and as we're now replacing all of the ceilings everything needs to be level.

Day 105 - Upstairs Update

Things really moving now...


This is the old bathroom window, part of the old external wall, viewed through the new bathroom window.


The wood is the outline of the bathroom wall



This area will be the master bedroom ensuite


Roof trusses

Day 101 - Henry's Son

This week we met with Peter from Henry & Sons, our window suppliers, to measure up.


That's Peter on the right

We also met our chippie, the unusually monikered Pelham. I'm interested in unusual/old names from my family history studies and this isn't one I'd come across before. According to a quick search on t'internet Pelham is an old English name which may mean tannery town which is slightly less glamorous.
I also found that Pelham is the first name of P.G. Wodehouse and that according to the wonderful, if grammatically incorrect site, YourNotMe there are only 62 people called Pelham in the UK.

No pics of Pelham but here's a slightly blurry pic of his great work on the 5th Bedroom roof




And here's the 5th bedroom


View from the 5th bedroom doorway looking forwards.


High level window window in our bedroom which we're hoping to turn into an opening window, albeit with occluded glass, otherwise we have a ventilation problem in the master bedroom as the french windows aren't tall enough to include a top opening window without looking odd.


And here's the french window opening

I also made myself somewhat unpopular with Graham, our master brickie as we decided the main bathroom window (that he'd already built) wasn't big enough - eek! For some reason our architect John had drawn the window pretty small on the plans and it was only seeing it in real life that we realised it would be better if it was bigger. It should only cost us a replacement lintel to change though.

Day 97 - Sticky plaster?

We popped round to the property for a meeting with the electrician (think of a number of sockets and double it!)

The plaster has gone from the hallway and landing (as well as the carpet)






No, I don't know what the loo roll is there for either... probably best not to think about it too much!

as well as the wall between the boys room and bathroom (the plaster was so badly popped on this wall it was held on by the wallpaper!)




and between the boys room and my study (the wall that moved when Shaun pushed the door)


More of the old external wall from our bedroom has come down


And this big crack in the stairwell will have to be 'stitched' with some metal spines.

Day 91 - Downstairs complete

Looks like downstairs is pretty much done



here's the storeroom - future home to ex-garage stuff such as bikes, mowers & the eternal pile of stuff waiting to go to my folks to be sold for Cancer Research


The utility room, future home to washing machine and spare fridge freezer - we continually run out of room in ours so hoping two will solve the problem!

You can also just see the doorway to the downstairs loo


Interior of the loo - not very exciting so far but you can see the diagonal wall and the window


And the lounge - which won't all fit in the picture which I suppose means it won't be too small!

Day 90 - Home Improvement Show

Today we headed up to the Home Improvement Show to pick up lots of useful tips

Overall it was useful, exhausting and slightly weird being at and event and not being an demo dolly!

We saw George Clarke (from C4's Home Show), Michael Holmes (C5's I own Britains Best Home - never seen it!) Julia Kendall from DIY SOS and Matt James the Urban Gardener.

There were lots of interesting exhibits and some useful free seminars and classes.

We picked up some useful info for our solar water decision, looked at internal and external doors, the amazing studybed and picked up a free paint roller cleaner!

It was also lovely to see and chat with David Hyde who was an exhibitor with the high end window company he works for.

Only one picture...


this is the inside of a Megaflo, the pressurised water system we're having fitted.

Day 89 - Asbestos

While removing the upstairs walls the builders have found some patches of asbestos.



They're happy to remove it if we can take it to the dump - seems it's easier/cheaper for us to get dispose of toxic waste than them!

Day 89 - A head for heights?

Today we had a meeting at the property with Shaun and Ian (the plumber).

As Ian was on the phone when we arrived we got to go up on the scaffolding to see the 1st floor progress

But first we had to put our hard hats on




They've knocked through the old external wall in our bedroom


View from what will be our bedroom looking towards the front of the house


Looking into our bedroom and through to the spare room as the wall has come down


Inside view of our bedroom


Hanging free


Our former bedroom window, now bricked up to become the wall for Liam's room


This is Lee and a glimpse of our main bricklayer who's name I've forgotten - doh




Looking down the gap to the big steel supporting the house


Front builders storage area - aka front garden


Shaun going back down the ladder