So it has been quite some time!
And finally I grab a bit of time to try and remember what we have been doing for the last 3(!!!) months. I have been busy and not found the time to write, but I also didn’t want to advertise to the local rogues the fact that the house was empty for 7 weeks!
Well anyway, in a land far far away…
We had a week away with the church at the end of July which was nice enough break before the madness began.
It was Hannah’s birthday on Sunday 26th July and her ‘rents came down for a good old nosh up at a restaurant we had never tried before- can’t remember the name now but it’s Nepalese. I had an icecream in a cup shaped as a cow. It’s a winner.
Demolition Week
Some pictures of before we started just for reminders (doesn't actually look that bad does it?!)
Living Room
main Bedroom
Stairs
The following 5 days brought no death but absolute destruction to our house as we stripped all the plaster from the walls in the main bedroom, stairs and landing and living room. It was horrible horrible horrible work. Didn’t enjoy it much at all, but so grateful for pops Ward spending a week with me – I don’t know how I would have done it on my own. Super labourer. From memory we spent 4 days taking the house apart. The stone surround in the living room took a surprisingly long time to take apart – I think that was one day in total, and we had a significant delay when I managed to go straight through a live lead gas pipe buried in the living room wall. An error had occurred.
"bummer" said Ben, as the house filled with gas.
So that brought a stop to proceedings while we turned off the gas and rang around for a plumber who still worked with lead. Found some in Lancashire who were a little like Cannon and Ball, or maybe more Ball and Ball – a pair of jokers but did a good job. They came out, ‘surveyed’ and decided they would take a feed off the copper pipe that feeds the boiler with gas. There was some monkey work involved with drilling holes through walls and taking ceilings down so we sent them packing and Pops Ward and I set about doing the prep work. They came back a couple of days later and connected it all up. In the mean time we had no gas – so no hot water and no hobs. So out came the camping stoves for tea, and a trip to the Kerns house around the corner for a quick shower. Mmm Clean.
£300 quid later and we were all fixed up again. Frustrating to pay that money as I could have done the work myself but hey hoo. These things have to be done. The rest of the week was spent tidying up, taking rubble to the tip and getting ready for the next stage. Hannah arrived back with Liz and 200 cup cakes they had baked for a wedding on the Friday and the Wards parted with us. That left me and Hannah in a cave of a house!
bedroom
bedroom featuring hidden door way into neighbours house and fireplace. Cool
Door way upclose
Lintel for hidden doorway upclose
Dead big fireplace in the living room.
Up the stairs - another hidden door way.
The always 'fun' clearing up process - there was plenty of that going on.
Sparky
The next stage was to replace all the wiring in the house. This took about 7 days (well, 2 Saturdays and few evenings). I spent a lot of time up in the roof doing the upstairs ring main and lighting circuits which was a bit grim and very hot. Not much to say about electrics really. It’s all done and wasn’t too bad. Something that still needs to be done is install a new consumer unit. Currently all the circuits that are live in the house are running off sockets wired in series into the old fuse board. It’s all a little funky at the moment – but it’s safe and works – just doesn’t meet any kind of standards! Hopefully we will get the consumer unit in soon!
The stripping out of the house included the main bedroom, landing and stairs and living room. That involved us packing all our gear off and moving in to the spare room (‘land of spare oom’ as the White Witch would say). So currently the ktichen was intact although half of the ceiling had been removed to do wiring and gas plumbing.
It was mid August when we finished the electrics and thought that actually as the house is such a dump that we should really go the whole hog and do the kitchen as well, rather than making everything else nice and then making the house filthy again by stripping out the kitchen. This posed us with a problem of ‘wehre are we going to live’ as taking the kitchen out would render our house as being ‘ridiculous to live in’ as I seem to remember Ma Evans correctly pointing out. Thanks for that.
New Home
We considered using the trailer tent and camping out side the house – might have been fun for a week but a far more attractive alternative was to live with our chums Si and Cas Gleich in Longwood. It was a big ask, but they agreed and man were we chuffed. It was great having somewhere clean, dry, warm, comfy and most importantly with sky sports to live while we systematically destroyed the house. So big shout out to the Gleich posse. Much appreciated and we really enjoyed it. Hope it wasn’t too much strain on you?!
Destruction part 2
Now, back with the story. Yes, so mid august (ish) the 3rd day of the 3rd ashes test and me and hannah went at our kitchen with a hammer drill each and stripped it all out and took it all to the tip in one day, and promptly moved out. A good days work for sure.
Plastering
I took the following week off work to get a good start on the kitchen. So the Saturday and Sunday were spent doing electrics in the kitchen, running cables to sockets, putting boxes on the wall, putting conduit over cable etc and getting the place ready for the first coat of lime plaster. I also shifted the plumbing about and frilled a hole through the wall to install a tap outside – which Is now very useful for mixing plaster! Thanks to Phil next door for the long term loan of his tap prior to this. Plastering day came and Cas gliech joined Hannah in chucking plaster about the kitchen. Many hands make light work and lots of mess, but very good to get the job done in one day.
Again, from memory that week with the help of Si Gleich I finished off the pantry stud wall and got it plaster-boarded. – That was good. And at the end of the week I spent a very loooong day putting the second coat of haired lime plaster on the walls of the kitchen. Following the second coat was… the third coat. This was the top coat of NHL 2 lime with leighton buzzard fine sand. I wasn’t (still not) happy with the quality of finish I achieved on the external render (job for 2010 there maybe?!) so I dedicated one evening per wall in the kitchen to be able to properly re work the plaster and smooth off for a better finish. This was very tiring and time consuming job, but I’m reasonably happy with the outcome. It is definitely a step up from the external render in terms of finish.
Ceiling
At this point the ceiling was still non existent in the kitchen, so a Saturday morning was spent plaster boarding that while listening to Jonathan Ross on radio 2. Entertaining, but I by far prefer to work on an evening and listen to Radcliffe and Macone (sp?) from 8-10pm mon-thurs. Quality radio featuring Noddy Holder in a Thursday. How can that not be great? Anyway, I digress.
So the ceiling was up and walls were plastered. To lime plaster on to plasterboard uou have to use stuff called prependuit which allows the lime plaster to bind. Unfortunately this is mega expensive at £35 a bag. It took 3 bags to do the pantry wall and ceiling. Wowzers. Calculating that this method was going to cost about £600 across the rest of the house I thought I might have a bash at Gypsum plastering on a wall by the freezer to see how it goes. It went well. Not pro standard, but nice enough for ceilings in the rest of the house when I get that far. Moving on, so I did a coat of prependuit on the ceiling and pantry walls, followed a few days later by a coat of lime putty. Lime putty is great to work with. Nice to achieve a smooth finish and is very workable.
Ma and Pa come to visit/work
By this point we are in the 3rd week of September and ma and pa Evans have come for a week staying at a local B&B on an evening and working on painting the windows during the day. Brilliant! We shared a few meals and laughs and it was very enjoyable to have them here. They did an excellent job also, making the outside of the house look a lot smarter. Thank you very much. Awesome
Once the ceiling was plastered we had to wait a few days for it to dry before lime washing it white with stuff we had left from the outside. Job done.
Painting
The walls, it was decided were going to be an off white called “Portland” and the wall behind the cooker was going to be green. So we painted them Portland and green. There was a bit of a faff getting the green mixed right, but we’re happy with it now. The walls took about 5 coats to get a decent covering. Hard core.
Floor
So walls are done, next the floor. We found a very nice slate tile we liked for the floor, which surprisingly was the cheapest option also, which was good. So we bought 26 boxes of tiles. I also spent a good while specifying an underfloor heating system. It was tricky as we didn’t want to raise the floor too much, but we found a company in grand Designs magazine who did a slim line under floor mat.
I haggled £200 (!!!!) off the quote and got the lot for £300. Jackpot. As usual, it was a bit awkward to install, as the insulation and the mat raised the level of the floor about 11mm, but the heating wasn’t going under cupboards etc, so Hannah and I spent a couple of evenings sealing chipboard and screwing it to the floor to make up the floor level around the heating mats. It has seem to have worked though. So we stuck the insulation down and prepared the heating matt.
To test it I wired it into the main and it heated it up ok. I was still very nervous about laying the floor though, but bit the bullet and laid all the full tiles on the last Saturday in September.
I spent a further 3 evenings cutting edge pieces and grouting – which was a pain!! The grouting also made a terrible mess all over the floor – so we then spent a further 2 days and an evening scrubbing, washing, rubbing, scraping to get the stuff off. We eventually got there.
While all this was happening in the house Hannah had been pricing up kitchens from here, there, and everywhere! Trying to get a style we liked and a price we liked. We wanted the country cottage look and settled on an Ikea kitchen. It wasn’t a bad price.
So after the floor was finished I installed all the spot lights and wired in the sockets and tested them. I would now like to mention that they all worked first time! Get in there.
Putting in units
So walls, ceiling, floor, lights, sockets all done, must be time for units. Si Gleich, Hannah and I spent an evening building units (I say Hannah, but she disappeared to A&E an hour or so in to the evening swearing she had swallowed a nail. 3 x-rays later and she decided she hadn’t). That was a Friday I think… maybe.
Saturday came round again and Hannah and I spent the day making shelves for the pantry and cutting oak worktops. That was a nervy job as they are very expensive! But we got it done and suddenly we had cupboards and worktops. Fantastic. Must be ready to move back in then.
Old Kitchen Pics
Pantry that I started back in may
Old Kitchen
Old Kitchen
New Kitchen Pics
mmm green.
New pantry. Still needs a door though! All in good time
Lovely dimable spots. mmm cosy.
Ye Olde.
Moving back in
7 weeks after moving out, and 1 week before we anticipated we moved back in to the cottage spending the Sunday afternoon emptying kitchen stuff from the spare room so we could get to the bed! Hannah had to go up north to do some teaching on India so left me to have the first night back on my own.
Unfortunately I was ill. Lots of coughing, weakness and generally under the weather. So I phoned in sick on the Monday. Come the afternoon I was feeling better though so plumbed in the kitchen tap and washing machine and fixed the gas up to the cooker. A truly truly functioning kitchen! Yay. I cooked curry to celebrate.
Amongst all that we still managed to get to see Maximo Park - the greatest band on the planet with Pea and Mel Cassidy, and 2 other people I didn't know. Ruddy Good Fun.
It was 2.5 weeks ago we moved in I think and since then we have slowly been getting the kitchen organised. It isn’t finished yet, there is still a fairly long snag list but we will plod away with that over winter.
For now, our attention has turned to the main bedroom. But more of that soon… real soon… honest.
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