First-time house renovation

suisidevw

Good stuff, hopefully you can enjoy the peace!

Our bathroom was skimmed last night and bath in place, I stupidly bought the wrong waste trying to be MSE so had to buy that for delivery on Tues, so it's all in position and I'll have to help Andy fit it next week. in the meantime, we'll have to wait for the bath (was hoping for one tonight) and Andys getting on with the other bits!

keith969

Got the woodburner installed, took a day for the builder to open up the old fireplace and render the walls, then another day to line the chimney and fit the stove and hearth. Still a little tidying to do but already keeping the place a lot warmer!

suisidevw

Looks brilliant Keith, how much do you reckon that's cost all in? Love it! Granite hearth?

What are you doing for log supply so far, the kindling looks like the crap bought in homebase that's like paper?!

keith969

suisidevw wrote: »

Looks brilliant Keith, how much do you reckon that's cost all in? Love it! Granite hearth?

What are you doing for log supply so far, the kindling looks like the crap bought in homebase that's like paper?!

Well the stove and chimney liner etc came to about £1100, then another £1050 for installation. The angolan blue granite was about £300. In fact the builder is going to cut and fit a new piece of granite for the inner hearth area as he messed up the cutting - you can just about make out that right at the back there is a little extra bit - I said I wasn't happy with it that way and wanted it done properly!

Kindling is just bits of old floorboard, for logs am getting a lorry load of seasoned beech delivered tomorrow...

jamtart6

latecomer - oh that post sounded much more manly I meant no offence honest so sorry to hear about your builder. They sound like fools Very stressful when you have to be on someones back constantly. I felt like that with our eejit of an architect. Every problem we have had seems to come back to the fact he was awful. You live and learn (the hard way!). Sounds like they are starting to get somewhere though. Well done for the shower! I love a bargain!

Suiside - yay! I love new plaster when it has all dried out, soo smooth and lovely!

Keith - that looks really really nice. Forgive me for being thick, but with the wood burners, do they pump smoke out of the chimney/flue? We live in a "no smoke" zone so I'm not sure we could have one....but I like them!

Ooh lots going on in our house of horrors! Tiling should be finished this week in the bathroom Then I need to learn to grout (eek!). I am not a patient person so this could be testing!

Roofers are hoping to finish this week, but we keep getting random showers of hail which is making the whole site really treacherous. Hope it melts and we have no more snow until the windows are fitted!!

Electrician came to reccy some stuff. We are having the door on the bedroom going the opposite way to how it was originally, which meant the light switch ended up behind the door. Despite having plastered and painted the whole room I've decided it will annoy me too much to have the light switch there, so we're moving it. Good bye gorgeously smooth wall But...its best to do it now whilst we're still in a mess.

Can anyone help? We need a towel heater. I've worked out the BTU for the room size which is about 1500 btu, the radiator comes in just under that. I don't understand btu though, so is that ok or does it need to be more than the BTU?

In wedding news, bought stuff for favours and booked the cars still loads to do though!

jimbugalee

Hi all,
Hope you all had good weekends. We went to Germany/Belgium and France, 1500 mile round trip!! Zzzzzzz

Spent some time at boyfriend's uncle's house in France which they are rennovating. Makes us realise that the jobs in our house are small compared!

JT - get one of those grouting tools and grouting will be so much easier. Screwfix/B&Q etc should have them. Also really good for getting a smooth finish if you are siliconing round things, bath etc.

Keith - that fireplace looks just like ours. I think it's the best thing we ever bought for the house!!

JT again - what's a no smoke zone?!

littlerose12345

jamtart6 wrote: »

Suiside - yay! I love new plaster when it has all dried out, soo smooth and lovely!




In wedding news, bought stuff for favours and booked the cars still loads to do though!

Haha I love the feel of new plaster too!! When ours was done I was like an obsessed woman feeling the walls!! Nothing beats it though.

We also booked our wedding cars at the weekend too!! Spooky!! What favours are you going for? I think we're having our traditional Italian bonboniere

jamtart6

Thanks for the grouting tip Jim! "no-smoke zone" (not sure thats the right name!) is basically somewhere you can't have open fires in the garden or smoke coming from the chimney. Which I think means we can't have a wood burner but not looked into it properly yet!

littlerose - mini bottles of wine wrapped in organza

keith969

jamtart6 wrote: »

Keith - that looks really really nice. Forgive me for being thick, but with the wood burners, do they pump smoke out of the chimney/flue? We live in a "no smoke" zone so I'm not sure we could have one....but I like them!

JT, yes they do smoke a little, however there are some types of woodburner that are allowed to be used in smokeless areas. See:

http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/smoke-control-areas-clean-air-act.html

TomsMom

jimbugalee wrote: »

JT again - what's a no smoke zone?!

I remember "smokeless zones" coming in, hate to say it but probably 40 odd years ago due in the main to fog/smog problems in cities at the time. I remember smokeless fuels coming in for open fires, I also remember the horrendous fog - hard to describe but it made bus journeys virtually impossible to get home from work so people migrated to the trains, then there was the walk home from the station and not seeing where you were going.

You can have stoves as long as it's an authorised appliance.
Info here.

Hope that helps.