First-time house renovation

Leif

Ah okay, now I understand! Probably is magnolia then, builders like it, and it's cheap. Apparently it is disliked by many.

I have white in the kitchen to make it feel open. Not sure if I am brave enough to use it in the sitting room. I thought about an off white.

latecomer

aliasojo wrote: »

Is the feedback reasonably spaced out over days/weeks/months and from buyers with reasonable amounts of feedback themselves? (Just checking it's genuine and not from other accounts set up just to improve feedback scores for the seller - I was caught out once like that.)

ASked him whether he had a retail shop as I was just a little apprehensive spending £2500 on ebay and he said he is miore than happy to take payment by cheque on completion which means there is no risk for us other than him not turning up. And he's coming on sunday to fit them too which is great. We need to try and get a different carpet for our bedroom as it looked fantastic previously and we didn't want the same carpet everywhere and if we can get it and have it delivered to the house by sunday he'll also fit it.

Kitchen manager has looked at the extractor and upstands and agrees they are not right and is going to organise replacements and a different fitter to complete the work.

Getting there slowly

aliasojo

Oh Andrew you couldn't make it up. Paving is a good idea.

latecomer

@andyb - thats rather unfortunate but at least it was in the garden. I know our new main had to be at least 750mm below the surface to prevent it freezing - obviously complete nonesense if yours is only 12" or so deep and didn't freeze last year. Personally I'd put slabs along the entire run of the pipe just to stop me doing it again in the future

I stayed at the house a couple of nights last week to try and get some progress on the showerroom. Got the everything plumbed in and holding water by friday night and then on saturday we were painting before the carpets were laid. then back to the house on sunday for the carpets - guys arrived at 9am sharp and were finished by around 2:30pm - did a great job.

While they were doing that I was up in the showerroom trying to fit the shower panels. Having never worked with them before and being my usual ultra cautious when doing something myself it took me ages to get everything cut to the right shape. As it happens the panels are 250mm wide and the internal dimensions of the shower are ~750mm which basically means very little cutting. One side is going to need cut and the other just needs a little extra sealant. Decided to do the slightly wider side as it doesn't have the shower on it and also meant just cutting off the joining bits at the sides. And due to the wall not being entirely square the shower cubicle comes away from the wall a little at the top. Also realised I was going to need to hold them in place until the glue/sealant cured so used some scrap wood to brace the panels from glass panel of the cubicle.

Finally took the plunge and went for it and it went on very easily - although given the amount of preparation and planning it really had to work

Will do the side with the shower on next time I'm over and hopefully this will be a bit quicker although I'll obviously need to make holes for the pipe and cable whcih I'm sure will slow me down plenty. Still the end is now officially in sight - OH has been trying to get hold of the architect to get him to arrange for building control to come out for the inspection as I want him to justify any deviations from the plans etc. He's not returned our calls yet - what a surprise.

latecomer

Put a couple of pics on the outside of the house on the blog for anyone who is curious

http://the2yearproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/beginning-of-end.html

aliasojo

Looks great LC. Shame you can't just move it up the road a bit, I'd buy it.

latecomer

Leave it with me and I'll see if I can arrange a lorry to move it for you

I always thought the one thing that let the house down was the outside and now even thats fixed. Going to be difficult to walk away from this one.......

latecomer

Well its judgement day - got the BCO out today (right now in fact). OH is at the house with MIL and LLC so hoping for a little sympathy. fingers crossed he doesn't complain about anything new.

I finished the shower at the weekend - panelling and shower installation and commisioning. Had to think how to flush through the pipes on my own and rigged up some pipes and valves to allow me to turn on the mains water and flush the pipes. Finally got the shower on the wall and working about 1:20am

then did a bit of painting and making nice all round. this week had to sort of the rockwool type insulation they had put round the vertical wall sections of the loftconversion as some of it had come loose due to the fact the idiots who did it hadn't fastened it on well. I was going to try hold it up with netting but given the access issues ended up just stapling it in place which should be enough. Apparently BCO turned up in a flash suit last time and wasn't for going anywhere dirty so fingers crossed he's not changed

Whats everyone else up to? Thread was down on page 14

typeractive

Well today was rubbish!

Decided to put up a new ceiling under the stairs, and remove more olf lath and plaster. The smallest section of the ceiling and I got nearly as dirty as when I removed the entire 1st floor ceilings - ridiculous!

Anyway, why was today bad? In doing so I decided to take up a landing floorboard to bash the laths down. When I unscrewed a board water started goign everywhere! Screw in a pipe!! I shut the water off and tried to drain the system, but it was pretty persistent to come out. I put a cloth on it and tried to soak up the 'spring'. The bad thing is, it's leaked into my kitchen which has a brand new ceiling, plaster and paint. It looks like it's just stained the paint for now, but I have the electrician coming this week to put in lots of spot lights and wire the kitchen. Really hope the plaster doesn't warp and need to be took down - not at this stage.

Ugh! this is the second screw in a pipe I have found (the first one was my fault). They do pretty good as bungs until released. I wonder if I have any more little surprises? :(

It was really difficult sorting it all out as I have no lights there, bar two portable ones. So I had to round up all the stuff I would need before it got dark in one place, and then work with the lights on. I was starving as well. What a rubbish day!

How's everyone else?

latecomer

Thats not so good. For future reference the accepted best practice if you do this is to immediately screw it back in again - should stop most of the water until you can get it turned off and drained/isolated. also if its a cold/hot pipe then running the taps will also take the pressure down.


We got a number of issues raised by the BCO - most serious one is the flat roof but the guy declined to get the ladders and go up himself. He said he would wait until next time and go up with the builder and OH said that the builder had finished months ago and wouldn't be coming back at which point he backed off a little. He seems to think the felt may not be good enough but the other roofers we had in to inspect it all seemed to think it was fine and given they would have gained from saying otherwise I dont believe there is a problem with it.

Besides whats he going to do - ask us to cut it open to let me inspect it? Thats not going to happen unless he pays for it to be put right again.

Most of the rest of his complaints were for deviations from the plans - and most of the things should have been captured by the architect on the amended plans so he'll need to justify them all to the BCO. Waiting for a report to be sent out - by post of course.....:mad:

Yesterday we were all over at the house - I was painting round the eaves and the guttering as well as clearing it out. then spent the last hour or so transplanting some of the extra turf for the worst bits in the lawn.

OH has been emptying out the boxes that were returned from the cleaners and doesn't believe any of it has been cleaned but she doesn't want to delay things any longer by getting into a fight with them so she's just cleaning everything herself. Dishwasher has been on non-stop!