First-time house renovation

jamtart6

hi all,
sounds like you all did well over the weekend. my Grandad who I was very close to died last week, so tried to keep ourselves busy over the weekend and managed to agree on how to do the front garden. Instead of spending £70 on slabs, we put some railway sleepers (free) in and filled it with gravel which cost us a grand total of £23 - very MSE and looks a lot nicer than slabs would have so we are really happy with how it looks. Obviously not the most important job, but the front of the house looks nice even if the insides are upside down. Plumber coming on wednesday so feel like its starting to come together now

matt_boro

latecomer wrote: »

matt - congrats on the house and the list of jobs looks good. Regarding these pest control companies - I believe they are like the damp specialists. They will always find something that needs done and will of course have the prefect solution to your problem. Is the wood worm bad or just a little? Where is affected?

Hi!

The only area I can see is in the hallway just under the stairs.. it is really though, theyve gone right through the floorboards!

I've had the floorboards up at the other end of the hall though and theres no sign though. I might just spray the hall and under stairs and replace the damaged floorboards.

Matt

Shimmyhill

latecomer wrote: »

Is the wood worm bad or just a little? Where is affected? I sprayed about half of our loft after being quoted abuot £1000. I moved all the insulation away from the affected areas and then spent a day spraying a treatment using pump and spray. Not a pleasant job but definitely it to us. I'm planning on doing the rest of it this year as a precaution.

I am going to do my loft this way, when we lifted the tiles for the insulation we sprayed the wood - what did you use and where did you buy it ?? Expensive stuff but i had a bottle a roofer gave us that i need to replace and also buy to do the loft.

Also did you wear any specific mask to do it ?

lisal0u

Hello Everyone! Hope you all had a good Easter break!

Helping-Hubby & Latecomer - Thanks for your advice on the skirting! I'm hoping the walls are all straight as they have been boarded! I haven't checked yet!

Helping-Hubby - I hope you feel a bit better! I know what you mean about OH's! Mine is just the same! They don't think about jobs that need doing they just wait to be told! Its tough when you work all week and have all the house work to do and a house to renovate! I don't think I have trained Stuart very well ha ha! He's at home today and so far all he's done is sleep!

Latecomer - Glad you managed to get your hole cut, typical that you managed to find a tie in the way! We've got one more to do but I think we've got the hang of it now! My house has a lot of holes in it!

Matt-boro - Glad you got the house you wanted! Im looking forward to seeing your blog! It sounds pretty much like what we have done apart from the woodworm.

Josepina - How was the Ideal Home Show? We went to Grand Designs last year and it was excellent! Just booked tickets for the Harrogate flower show to get inspiration for my garden! I really want to go to Chealsea too but its a lot of money!

Andrew-b - Your blog is looking good! Your bathroom is coming together nicely! The vanity unit looks fab! I wish I was a bit more handy and creative!

Jamtart - Really sorry to hear about your Grandad! My Uncle died 2 weeks ago and its so sad! I've bought a cherry tree to plant in my garden to remember him by!
Good job on the garden! I've been focusing on mine too. Its a bit more fun than inside the house hahahah. Managed to get the front garden looking quite pretty! I'll have to take some piccys!
I'm also enrolling for a garden design course next week! Quite excited but it will be weird going back to college!

We managed to get the house ready for the plasterers to come back and finish! I think they will be done by the end of the week! I've then got no excuses cos everything else is then down to us! I must say I cant wait to get all the trades people out so its just down to us! I will update my blog after they have finished as I haven't done an update in ages!

I hope TomsMom comes back soon!

Off to get some dinner, ta ta!

latecomer

andrew-b wrote: »

Bucket for a few days is ok .

I'm hoping to have the new toilet this week and at least temporarily installed at the weekend. Of course that depends on whether the replacement gets delivered or not. We can cope with the bucket method for now and we bought a Porta potty (OH is from a family of caravanners!) in case of emergencies

@Jamtart - sorry to hear of your loss. Never an easy time

@Matt_boro - make sure you check all the joists too.

@shimmyhill - I used Cuprinol woodworm treatment I think (I can check later) which was abuot £25/5l tin. I also bought the sprayer to go with it which was about £20. I used abuot 2.5 tins to do between a third and half of our loft. that was the whole roof, boards and beams, and joists on the floor (we dont have any flooring down).

I used a mask from B&Q which I'd bought for use with the nitromorse but it worked great with the woodworm treatment too. They looked like this (cant find them on B&Q website) : http://www.screwfix.com/prods/21462/Workwear-PPE/Protective-Clothing/Respiratory-Protection/MDF-Mask

but had replaceable filters. Was about £28 and although I was very sceptical I found it brilliant. Highly recommended.

andrew-b

Jamtart, sorry to hear about your Grandad

Latecomer, i considered getting a porta potty just in case but i'm hoping to be able to rip the old loo out and fit the new one in a day - i'm a bit nervous about that job as OH won't be happy if we don't have a toilet at the end of the day.

I spent this afternoon installing the basin waste (have updated the blog as usual).

Also phoned a double glazing company with a showroom a few streets way to get a quote for a door...he came round less than 5 minutes later to give me a proper quote - though probably wont go with it as the price was a bit high (£777 including an easter discount) for a door that OH doesn't particularly like the look of. The one's she would like the look of were much more expensive. That's the third quote now and they've all been in a similar price range so maybe i'm being a bit too optimistic on pricings.

Andy

jamtart6

andrew-b wrote: »

Jamtart, sorry to hear about your Grandad

Latecomer, i considered getting a porta potty just in case but i'm hoping to be able to rip the old loo out and fit the new one in a day - i'm a bit nervous about that job as OH won't be happy if we don't have a toilet at the end of the day.

I spent this afternoon installing the basin waste (have updated the blog as usual).

Also phoned a double glazing company with a showroom a few streets way to get a quote for a door...he came round less than 5 minutes later to give me a proper quote - though probably wont go with it as the price was a bit high (£777 including an easter discount) for a door that OH doesn't particularly like the look of. The one's she would like the look of were much more expensive. That's the third quote now and they've all been in a similar price range so maybe i'm being a bit too optimistic on pricings.

Andy

Thanks for all the nice comments

Do you know any window fitters who do foreigners? That's why ours was much cheaper (door and windows). I think £500-£900 is ridiculous also, I thought they would have been about £250 so I was seriously disappointed when it was over double that.

ETA: 2 of our neighbours said how lovely our front garden looked today to my OH

Josepina

Josepina - How was the Ideal Home Show? We went to Grand Designs last year and it was excellent! Just booked tickets for the Harrogate flower show to get inspiration for my garden! I really want to go to Chealsea too but its a lot of money!

Was a fun day out but not as good / useful as when I went 2 years ago. I was hoping to see lots a bathroom and kitchen companies but there were only a handful really , bathstore didn't even turn up! I'd love to go to chelsea too, maybe it will be my treat when all this house stuff is sorted out (in about 5 years lol)
Feeling a bit down tonight as builder phoned to say not only had he underpriced new boiler (which I was expecting) but he has now realised he's under priced elecs by £1000, he forgot new fuse box! So feeling bit broke and despondant, my contingency which would have funded (at least partially) the kichen is rapidly dwindling away and soon I'll be on value baked beans from Lidl! Do you think I should warn them that I now can no longer supply them with biscuits?

latecomer

Josepina wrote: »

Feeling a bit down tonight as builder phoned to say not only had he underpriced new boiler (which I was expecting) but he has now realised he's under priced elecs by £1000, he forgot new fuse box!

Tell him to get a grip or you'll get someone else in. If he cant quote for the work then he shouldn't be doing it. A fuse box costs very little and fitting it shouldn't take a qualified sparky that long to do either. I'd seriously consider asking for a full breakdown of the increased costs and then getting an independent quote for the work. Sounds to me like the guys trying to milk you for all he can.

Then again I might just be tired and irritable at then moment.....

Josepina

I was tempted to phone and ask him about it, was to shocked to say much when he told me ealier but for now I've decided to sleep on it rather than risk saying something I might regret - I'm also tired and grumpy