First-time house renovation

suisidevw

hahah. Cheers TM. My wife was visiting her best friend in S.Hampton this weekend so had a 'Sam-time weekend' and nearly finished the fireplace and cleaned the house etc and sent her across some pics of the above! Only one stocking fitted on, I think I've been a good boy/husband this year!

Will get up some pics later, sealed both edges now with sand/cement and used 'notting' on the surround so prime/paint tonight and we are nearly there! Lowri put a load of decorations up last night and picking up a tree this evening so it's feeling very Christmassy in our house!

andrew-b

jamtart6 wrote: »

I'm no closer to finding any tiles that I like for the bathroom - want white large glossy ones with some sort of texture/vein through it - no luck anywhere! Everywhere is just full of travertine.

We went for 33x25cm tiles from homebase - smooth glossy/white/marbley grey..just standard ceramic tiles ...think they were around £10 per sqm mark
Best pic i can find is this one (before grouting) - click on for larger:


..but yep most of them in the shops are travertine/travertine effect! everything everywhere seems to be a shade of beige at the moment! My thoughts are that travertine looks good /fashionable now but may be a short-term fad..retiling is hassle! Repainting the walls next to the tiles is easy so my compulsory shade of beige is going on the walls instead!

latecomer

Edit: sorry but its a bit of a rant/whine - much longer than intended.

Well we had a pretty poor weekend. Builders were in for a few hours on saturday morning starting on the first fix for the electrics but all but left by around 11:40am. Roofers were there too and stayed longer but not a full day, they will be coming back one day this week to finish off the slates.

Not sure whether I said but we managed to get all the slates the guy had (approx 470) for £300 which was a bargain. Apparently they are all in ver good condition too which is a bonus! Builders picked them up on thursday morning.

Anyway on saturday night I went up to the loft to retrieve our mop bucket which I'd used previously to catch drips and check the dormers weren't leaking. While I was up there I heard dripping and realised it was coming from where they had opened up the roof to tie-in the extension roof. They've removed all the slates and a couple of the sarking boards where the trusses enter the original roof and one at the bottom to allow the trusses to sit on the wall head. Anyway they had put on up one row of boards to create a canopy and apparently sealed this before putting a tarp over the top. Obviously this hadn't worked and what was more annoying was that they had placed a bucket under one corner and a large sheet of plastic (mine!) under the whole area so they knew it wasn't watertight.
Water was dripping through one of the holes in the kitchen ceiling but thankfully it doesn't appear to have affected our bedroom.

I couldn't figure out how to stop the water coming in as once I had got some plastic in place to stop the water getting in where the sarking was removed, it simply came in further down between some of the other boards. I couldn't even make use of the heavy duty plastis sheet as it was covered in pools of water and I didn't want that spill onto the ceiling as I'm sure it would have gone through. In the end the solution I came up with was to use all the plastic sheets I had, weighed down with bits of wood to try cover the whole area that was affected. And these had to be connected on the insde of the roof to catch the water that would otherwise be dripping in and let it run down the roof and off.

In total I spent about 3 hours on it on friday night, about including a fair bit of time oueside at the top of the ladders (I hate heights) in the wind and rain. Finished up just before midnight. Got up in the morning and checked to see if it had worked. I dont think there was much rain overnight which probably helped. I then spent about an hour collecting all the water that had puddled on the sheet of plastic on the ground and checking on the rest of it.

Oh had texted builder on saturday ngiht about 11pm and he finally got back in touch about 2pm yesterday. He'd been out on a session on saturday night and we told him not to bother as I didn't see what else he could do by himself (and I didn't want him falling off the roof either). He did appologise for the problems but we seem to be having a lot of appologies at the moment for stuff that shouldn't happen.

I had a very brief chat to him this morning to tell him where the water was coming in. He promised the roof would be watertight this morning no matter what. I left with water dripping into the kitchen......

And talking of water, I also found water damage to the ceiling in the small bedroom which we had finished. Its obviously come in while the back dormer has been formed. There is some staining in 2 small patches and also the water has tracked along the top of the paper leaving a visible "tunnel" which I'm hoping might dry out but probably wont.

There is some good weather forecast for later in the week so they need to make the most of it as the new kitchen is going to arrive next week after being re-assured by the builder that we would definitely have a roof over the extension and it floored. I hope he's right as there is nowhere to put it at the moment and I'll hold him responsible for any damage to it.

Trouble is at the moment I dont want to upset him until the house is watertight. After that point things will change.....

latecomer

Minor update - we've still got a ceiling and its still white. Not entirely sure what they did up there but they did spend the whole day on it in the rain. They boarded out a fair bit of the roof and felted where it joined the house. they also put a board on the pitched side to prevent water getting in from the side. Mind you it didn't rain last night so no way to tell whether it worked or not.

I've had a word with them this morning and told them to make the most of the good weather and get the roof finished. I've also said they can take out the 2nd chimney which the boiler vents through as soon as they want even if it leaves us without heating/hot water for a couple of days.

They are planning on getting 4 more trusses up today which would take them up to the chimney and hopefully continuing to board up the roof structure thats aleady been built.

I really do hate getting home when its dark and being unable to see what they've been up to. And by the time I'm out in the morning the builders are there so I dont have much chance to poke another then either!

latecomer

jamtart6 wrote: »

Sorry folks, once again haven't managed to catch up on the thread.

Can anyone help? Still having probs with building inspector. BI#1 said he wasnt happy with one wall, I got structural calcs done, hounded BI#2 (nice one) for a week until finally got hold of him, he said they seemed fine.

My OH wasn't happy with this, he felt if one had recognised a problem, how could another be so blase about it.

He rang them back today. BI#2 said that yes the structural calcs were fine ONLY if we did X,Y and Z as well - this is fine, we want it to stay standing!

So my issue is with the Building inspectors again - had we not rang them up, we would have gone ahead and built as they've OK'd it, then they would have inspected it and not been happy, we would have had to knock it down and start again. Thank god we phoned them up again.

Question is - how do we know what he has said this time will be enough? what about next time? do we have to triple check everything with them to make sure they haven't changed the goal posts? I really don't feel they are doing their job properly and I'm really worried as I don't want to knock the sodding thing down in a few years time!

I also know its not good to get on the wrong side of them, and indeed BI#1 (when I asked him a question that I didn't know the answer to) told me "I don't have to pass this off you know luv, then it'll be worthless when you sell" - yeah thanks for the threat!

So as you can see, I'm really worried about this! The architect is the worst ever and hope I never see him again!!!

Any advice/suggestions?

Sorry for not commenting previously. I cant believe how badly they are treating you. I've not had any experience with the building inspectors but I'd be getting extremely annoyed by now if I was subjected to that sort of nonesense.

Did the conditions that BI#2 put on the approval in any way match with why BI#1 said he wasn't happy with the wall? I'd be tempted to make a complaint but the problem is that you still need approval and you dont want to upset them at this point.

If they approve the structure then I dont see how they can then change their mind.

Who is doing your structural calculations?

ukmaggie45

Hi Folks,

House exchange minus 2...

We are going to need to hire an industrial dehumidifier for a month or so to dry out the house. (we're hoping we can get our domestic one back from the caravan at New Year, and then we'll just swap that from room to room)

Just wondered if any of you had any recommendations for a hire firm? OH has been trawling the web, and will make some phone calls later, but I thought it was worth checking with you lot first.

We think we may have sulfate attack, which is a bit of a pain. But the whole house is damp, high levels of moisture in wood, etc etc.

Maggie

stolt

hi hired a couple for HSS shop (if you have one near you) years ago to dry out several rooms, took a while to get going but i think thy did work in the end. As i took three i remember him doing me a deal for the week.

suisidevw

HSS =Expensive in prior experience, just contact you local plant hire shop and you'll probs get cheaper.

jamtart6

latecomer wrote: »

Sorry for not commenting previously. I cant believe how badly they are treating you. I've not had any experience with the building inspectors but I'd be getting extremely annoyed by now if I was subjected to that sort of nonesense.

Did the conditions that BI#2 put on the approval in any way match with why BI#1 said he wasn't happy with the wall? I'd be tempted to make a complaint but the problem is that you still need approval and you dont want to upset them at this point.

If they approve the structure then I dont see how they can then change their mind.

Who is doing your structural calculations?

UKmaggie - HSS were cheaper on the cement mixer for us than the local companies.


latecomer - thanks for the answer. I'm really fed up of it to be honest! BI#2 just told me over the phone that the calculations seemed fine. I probably should have pushed to get it in writing. I think I am definitely going to complain once the last section has been passed. They basically admitted that they'd been making life difficult for us because they don't rate our architect (neither do we now!) - which is really unprofessional, but it seems they can do what they like because they have to pass the damn thing eventually. The architect did the calcs - if there is any more faffing and expense, he'll be getting a phonecall along with the council to re-imburse us. This is just ridiculous. Perhaps I should write everything down! Sorry about your roof, I just don't know why people can't do their job properly. Hope it gets sorted asap

In happier news we are about 20 bricks high! :T

jimbugalee

Hi all,
Think I've missed as fair bit as just got back from Marrakech A lovely break and we made a pact not to talk about the house ... it worked, mostly!!

Had a bit of stress when we got back as slate hearth not delivered and fireplace being installed today. Finally it turned up yesterday afternoon only to find it was the wrong size!!!! They'd cut it way too big AAARGH. OH went mad!! We decided to cut it ourselves as had no other choice. It looks good and fire being installed as I type. We'll have to get some money back from slate place.