First-time house renovation

suisidevw

Much better andrew!

LC, your BIL's family came down full of coughs and colds with LC there?! That's purely selfish! Link to blog if you will please sir?

latecomer

http://the2yearproject.blogspot.com/

We went our nephew's birthday and and BIL's family were there so not quite so bad. Mind oyu they did sit around close to baby LC coughing away. OH took him away to feed mainly to get away from those with the lurgy.

And today I'm having to work from home as I dont feel great at all. Slept in spare room last night to stay away from baby LC, think its probably something from work but who knows.

ukmaggie45

Latecomer, sorry to hear you're feeling so carp. Hope there's been some improvement overnight, and fingers crossed little LC doesn't go down with the dreaded lurgy.

Called round at the house yesterday evening, it's really coming on fast now. Old tiles off the roof at the front, and new liner stuff and battens on.


Front of house by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

We have joists in place for upstairs floor.


Wood joists in place for upstairs by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Here's the view from the front bedroom window! You can see some of the insulation in place in the bay, and there's new felting on the outside of the bay - you can see that in the first photo.


Upstairs window with scaffold by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Here's the house from the back. The tiles are still in place here.


Back of house by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Opening for bifold door. You can see me prowling around at the top of the garden! (though you might need to clicky to see properly)


View to back garden from what will be bifold door by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Looking up through the joists on the diner area.


Looking up through the joists in diner area by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Here's the view from the utility room window, looking down the road towards the Mersey. I think we'll be able to see to the river when the leaves come off the trees. :j


view from utility room window by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Two steel beams have been installed in the utility room ceiling.


Steel beams in utility room by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Here's the shower room window and the utility outside door. So there'll be two partition walls going up between this viewpoint and the door IYSWIM.


Utility door and shower room window by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Looking out of the side window in the diner area. We'll have a nice view of the patio when it's all done.


Diner side window to right, edge of back entry. by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Looking through the extension from the front. I was quite surprised to find that we see the steps up into the garden through the opening - I thought they were further to the left than that!


Looking through extension from front by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

View of the house from up the garden.


View from half way up the garden by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

View of the extension from the garden. Looks a real mess from here!


Build from back garden by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

Another shot of the steel joists in utility ceiling.


Steel joists in place over utility room to be by ukmaggie45, on Flickr

OH has just set off for the dentist to have a tooth out. :eek: We're hoping to get to the house later on, it's gorgeous and sunny so will be nice to do a bit of gentle gardening maybe. Got a lot of spuds in those patio planter bag thingies in the front garden so might try and get some of those out. And the quince has gone berserk again - must prune it again (third time this year I think!).

Hopeful_5

I posted a question about holes in the mortar between the breeze blocks on my extension and Maggie kindly told me about this thread. I do think there are more gaps in my mortar. Mmmm..... Also, I notice that Maggie has bricks above the lintels whereas I am sure there are just breeze blocks above mine. My house is a bungalow so maybe that makes a difference?

Thanks.

Hope

ukmaggie45

Hopeful_5 wrote: »

I posted a question about holes in the mortar between the breeze blocks on my extension and Maggie kindly told me about this thread. I do think there are more gaps in my mortar. Mmmm..... Also, I notice that Maggie has bricks above the lintels whereas I am sure there are just breeze blocks above mine. My house is a bungalow so maybe that makes a difference?

Welcome to the thread, Hope. :beer:

Can't answer about the lintels, but there are several bungalow renovators here so I'm sure one of them will be able to answer your question. Our extension is going to be 2 storeys, so possibly that has something to do with it.

I imagine Building Control will be inspecting the work as it goes on, so I'm sure they will make sure that the work is done adequately. Our builder tells us he had them visit 3 times in the first week to check the foundation trenches as some is on hard sandstone, and some is on softer sandstone. They checked the trenches were sufficiently deep before concrete was poured, and then again afterwards before the walls started going up.

I hope you realise that we'll all be nagging you to start a Blog with lots of photos of your progress! We're a [STRIKE]curious[/STRIKE] nosy lot here, especially me and TomsMum! Yoo hoo TomsMum! :wave:

Fevvahz

latecomer wrote: »

Update to teh blog - now up to date for the end of first builders. All better from now on

What a lot of faffing that you've had to put up with latecomer. It sounds like the lintel situation was an uphill battle. I'd have been screaming "listen to the damn architect!!" :mad: Sounds like its a little more promising though if you've got different builders now though.

TomsMom

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

I hope you realise that we'll all be nagging you to start a Blog with lots of photos of your progress! We're a [STRIKE]curious[/STRIKE] nosy lot here, especially me and TomsMum! Yoo hoo TomsMum! :wave:

Nosy?????????? Never!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:hello: Watcha Maggie! I can't believe how quickly your extension is growing, I'm loving the pics.

Hi Hope.

Andy Your hall looks fab. It all looks so light and airy, paintwork is great.

LC Hope you feel better soon and little LC doesn't succumb.

latecomer

@maggie - thats fantastic progress. Do you how many guys they have on the job? Also a general question - is it normal for bricks to be used in between the top and bottom of the beams? I think at my BIL's they've just put plasterboard round it.

@hopeful5 - we had lots of gaps in our mortar but then our builders were !!!! and the weather was terrible at the time too which didn't help. Good news is that they can just be packed afterwards so no great problem.

@fevvah - yeah they were completely incompetent in most respects and how the architect didn't notice this on previous jobs doesn't say much for his abilities.

Feeling marginally better but not much. Just about to head to bed and hopefully get a good nights sleep. really dont want to infect baby LC with the cold hence staying well clear but the down side is the Mrs LC has to do most of the pacifying, feeding and changing. That said I took him for a nice walk earlier to give her a break and a chance to snooze.

New builders are causing more grief with trying to come up with new things that we supposedly haven't paid for. Going to ignore him until monday and if he calls just say we're away for the weekend and have no access to email. Thankfully we've got 99% of things in writing so we'll just wait until the window is in which should be done on thursday before rocking the boat too much.

GSDog

This thread is really inspiring, it's full of such brilliant information and advice.

I'll be starting my own first-time renovation very soon (mortgage completion is the 1st of October, from then on it's going to be chaos!) so I will hopefully post some pictures of my own soon.
I'm lucky in that my dad owns a building company so we have a lot of tools and reliable workmen on hard if needed. We'd like to do most of the work ourselves though.

It's a 2 bed detached bungalow built in the late 30's which hasn't been touched for over 30 years. It's going to need completely new windows, doors, central heating, electrics and plumbing, etc. Thankfully the roof is OK and we don't plan to do any major structural work. Infact, the only interior alternations we have planned so far is to take out the chimney breasts in the two bedrooms which are using up a lot of space.
There is a lot of loft space so we definitely plan to put a third bedroom with an en suite bathroom at a later date - it seems that most of the neighbours have done that already.

I never expected to be doing this so soon. I've always had an interest in property since I was a little kid when my dad used to take me out and show me his jobs.
Unfortunately my grandfather passed away in June who I was very close to and I found out shortly after that instead of leaving the bungalow to my dad and uncle, he'd decided to leave it to myself and my brother. I can only think it's because he knew how difficult it is for young people to get onto the property ladder and he knew that I've always wanted to do property development.
I wish that I could thank him and show him what my plans are.

andrew-b

TomsMom wrote: »

Andy Your hall looks fab. It all looks so light and airy, paintwork is great.

Will post more pics when i've painted it all..though we haven't made any decisions on colour yet but it looks like it will be some shade of beige/brown.

Got diverted yesterday into other things...

There's been a bit of an ongoing problem with the toilet seat as we're on our third one under warranty now! The previous two with "top-fix" fittings both cracked at the right hand hinge but Twyford have replaced twice with no problem. Most recently was a couple of months ago and i insisted they supply me "bottom-fix" fittings instead as it appeared to be related to the top-fix fittings making contact with the seat where they shouldn't when the seat was lifted. The customer support lady tried to tell me i couldn't have "bottom-fix" fittings because it was a back-to-wall pan so i explained i'd built a cabinet that i could disassemble to gain access and she agreed to send me (the seat is identical just the fittings different). So when they sent me it i disassembled cabinet and fitted the bottom-fix fittings with no problems but used the supplied plastic bolt-tightener - bad idea!

So yesterday i found the bottom-fix fittings had worked loose and had to completely disassemble the cabinet again which is easy enough but quite time consuming. This time i've tightened the bolts with a proper spanner so hopefully it should stay put now. Not sure i'd have a back-to-wall toilet again though.

As the cabinet had been making noises at the joints as we sat down i sprayed lots of silicone spray all around the joints and edges. Then climbed up into the loft to fetch a load of loft insulation and packed it all into the toilet cabinet and the boxed in pipework under the towel rail behind the removeable skirting. Had meant to insulate it ages ago to avoid any condensation probs but just never got round to it. Now you flush the loo and you can't hear the cistern refilling at all..just the cold tank in the loft above refilling.

Spent Saturday afternoon out in the garden until dusk. Cut the grass and then spent ages laying spare paving slabs along the fence-side of the shed. Some of the slabs my Mum had laid along the back of the shed as a path to the compost heap (and to protect the conduit for the satellite cable a foot below being dug into). I had other slightly smaller slabs that i could use as stepping stones there so decided to swap them for those.

Still need to sort out replacing the slope by the back door with paver bricks but i need bags of sharp sand that i can't lift and of course OH can't risk doing now either so i think that will have to wait until next year as indoors is priority now. Also need to do quite a few more tip runs to clear the rubble pile and dispose of the hall carpet (currently rolled up in the shed) but again neither of us can do now!