I got me a new toy!

I think I mentioned in an earlier blog about going at the pantry wall with a hammer and chisel and managing to strip about a square foot in 45 minutes? Well, if i didn't, there it is.

Anyway, I decided this was no good and was presented with the possibility of buying a new toy. So I did. I did a bit of reading and found I needed a rotary hammer drill with a hammering action. A little more searching told me that anything by established brands such as Dewalt or Makita were a touch on the expensive side. And then I spotted an Erbauer (Screwfix's own) SDS rotary hammer drill. sweet. At 70 pounds its about a third of the cost of a big brand, so i figured if i needed to buy 2 i would still be quids in. It also came out with excellent user reviews. Have a read here...(http://www.screwfix.com/prods/91190/Power-Tools/SDS-Drills/Erbauer-ERB30Y-6kg-SDS-Plus-Drill#reviews)

So i picked it up today having ordered it in and gave it a whirl. It was good. It's a lot on the heavy side at 6Kg but regular breaks should counteract that. But the performance was good. I finished my square meter off in about 15 minutes or so. Pretty pleased. I reckon witha bigger chisel bit I would be more productive too.

Down side is that within those 15 minutes i broke the handle. I think it was probably my fault... but they were happy to replace it. I pick up the new one tomorrow intime for some render bashing with Pops Ward over the bank holiday. good stuff. here's a pic of my stripped 1 m sq.

A little bit of nothing much

So, times ticking on already it seems...

I took friday off work on flexi time as the boss in on at me to cut it down a little. I have less than 2 weeks flexi now... should make him a little happier.



So Friday i took out the floor in the pantry part of the kitchen, removed the radiator and built a studd wall around the fridge and plasterboarded it.

To take the radiator off the wall I needed to drain the central heating. I wasn't planning to need to do this, but it wasn't possible to get the floor out without removing it. ANyway, so I drained the system cut the pipes and got on with the day. Only when it came to shower time and the water wasn't getting hot I realised that I needed to repressureise the boiler. Doh.



I didn't have the bits i needed (8mm stop ends) to fill the system, so that was a job for saturday.


Saturday brought a very inefficient day of shopping. I visited wickes, plumbcenter, screwfix and B&Q.. twice chasing bits down and recitifying my own mistakes. frustrating, but I got my stop ends on and filled the sytem in time to do the dishes from lunch. In the afternoon i finished the pantry stud wall while listening to the footy on Radio 5. I took it steady as I had a stonking headache.

I finished up early and had an evening eating pasta with hannah.

So a slightly slow weekend in terms of productivity with extended shopping trips and headaches but it's a job done.

The next step was to experiment in taking the plaster off the pantry wall to a) see how difficult it is to take off, and b) to practice putting lime on.

I thought it would be clever to mark a 1 meter square on the wall and time myself to see how long it would take to remove. I could then use this as a rough guide to how long the rest of the house will take. So far its about 45 minutes for a foot square... slow going.

Online Internal Planning App

Here is our listed building application for the internal works...

http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/business/planning/Details.asp?id=2009%2F90771

Moving in to second gear - Shed Work, Lime and Pantry

Hello all.

Well it's been a good little week in terms of house planning/thinking/doing.

Hannah grabbed a shed from freecycle on Good Friday which was ace. So we went to a nice lady's house (who had a brilliant black labrador) at about 7pm on that evening, took apart this shed and strapped it to the top of the Vectra. We had to take the corners slowly but it stayed on! We used some ratchet straps we at bought at work but were too small for the application, so I have taken long term loan. Already proved to be useful!

Anyway, this Saturday I built the shed so that my bike could be moved out of the kitchen. Part of the build included digging a hole under the shed and filling it with concrete and setting a ground anchor in it. This has given a good solid 'thing' to lock my bike to. Great.

I had to rebuild the roof and re-felt it, and then stained the new bike shed and the other shed, so they both look like new. Although the shed was free, I still managed to spend £100 on concrete, ground anchor, wood preserve, felt, screws, padlocks, hinges and chipboard. It is a real challenge to go to B&Q and spend less than an hour there and £100!

The great thing about that particular trip to B&Q was that I could drive myself, thus taking as much time as I need without winding up my chauffeur (wife). It is good that I have passed my driving test... it frees Hannah up to not have to follow me around DIY shops aimlessly wandering wondering what the bit i need is called and I can nip out and get the gear I need even when Hannah isn't available. I think it is a good thing for our marriage. But as Hannah taught me to drive, our relationship has already been tested to a good degree!

Anyway, so I finished off the shed in glorious sunshine on Sunday afternoon listening to the sound of the 70s on Radio 2. Good Tunes.


On Monday I got the 3rd quote for the external rendering as a man without a van came and had a look and discussed options. He can do it for 3K. An improvement on 4K from a previous quote so we thought we might go for that. Then Hannah looked at the savings and having just shelled out for car insurance and windows, it's looking a little sorry for itself. If we spent 3K on rendering we would only have our rainy day buffer left, putting the rest of the summer build on hold.

So... i read a gazillion datasheets, books and websites and costed materials to do the job. That came to about £300. So if i did it that would be a saving of £2700. Now, I've done a course so have a little idea on lime plastering and rendering and i'm quite up for having a bash. Worse case - we spend 300 quid and a couple of weeks. It falls off in a year and then we have saved up some money again and we pay someone. Playing possible losses against possible savings it's a no brainer. The beauty of it is, with the old rustic traditional look, the plastering shouldn't be perfect anyway, so that's good!

So on monday night we drove over to Womersleys and picked up a bag of NHL 3.5 lime and a couple of bags of sand to have some practice. It's good fun, and I'm already learning techniques. A little more practice and improved mixing technique is required, but I'm quite positive about doing this job. Cool. Here are my practice attempts from Monday night.



Now we have a new shed, we have somewhere to store lime and sand too. Double Cool.

So now the bike is out of the way in the kitchen this got me thinking... What if we did the pantry now...

The positives are that instead of packing up the kitchen in summer everything bar appliances can be moved in to the pantry, thus keeping the kitchen fairly usable. Also, the work required to build the pantry is relatively small scale and not too dirty. And also again, it will give some good opportunities to practice lime plastering on an area which isn't going to be seen very much!

All good. Negative is that we haven't yet had permission for the pantry, but Conservation said it was a formality when they visited so I'm happy to press on with that work.

So I'm going to make a start on that this weekend.

and I think that brings us up to date.

Cheerio.

Still Planning

Hello All.

Well windows are in and looking good, and quotes are in for the external render. I have a chap visiting on Monday to survey the render job to see if we need to do the back of the property or not. Obviously, if not, then it'll be half the price! Whoop. Still, it's going to be a couple of thousand which is a blow to the balance.

Meanwhile, Kirklees sent me the wrong form for the planning, so i have refiled for permission for the internal works. I'm not holding my breath for a speedy turn around... it seems to take an age just for the initial checking of the application - i.e. "is everything there and the form filled out? ok... we'll send a 'we have now recieved your application letter' and scratch our bums for a bit". I'm guessing there must be more to it, but it seems a tedious process.

The first bank holiday weekend in May I will be stripping the external plaster, and Pops Ward was eager to help out so I'm anticipating a fairly quick job. Fingers crossed we don't have any nasty suprises under the render!

And all the while I'm busying my mind with thoughts and plans for the summer build. I've knocked up a very qucik Gannt chart based on not an aweful lot more than guesses. Amy will move out just before bible week (i'm led to believe) so we will put our stuff in storage before then, and then after bible week move in to her room ready to spend a week or so stripping the house and getting all the horrible jobs out of the way. According to the plan this, electrics, plumbing and stud walls should be done by mid august. I'd like to think we'll have a bit mor done than that too... but I'll er on the side of caution.

here's some stuff I'm working on. Rock and Roll. Click them to see them bigger.


Gannt Chart Plan




Kitchen Layout Plan