Hello!
We’re baaaack. We keep thinking there’s nothing to update the newsletter with, but then we look back since the last update and there’s always more than we thought. We are also getting better at stringing out updates so it’s going to be a longer one this time. Obviously this is likely to be the last regular update 😉
Unpacking
📦 Unpack-o-meter 📦
We've unpacked 60 boxes out of 67!
Woohoo! Actual progress this time. 6 more boxes unpacked! We are starting to plan out our storage so there’s places for our least used rubbish to live. On this note, we have bought a set of shelves for our cupboard under the (many) stairs, so our tools are a lot more organised. This is great because we keep getting more tools.
Roofers
The roofers have been and gone! The whole process took only 5 days, which was just as well because the loud banging was directly above our office and we didn’t take any time off. The roofers also enjoy loud banging tunes which came straight down the chimney.
We didn’t know beforehand how much work the roofers would need to do, as they would need to be on the roof before they could properly inspect it. It turned out the roof was in a much better state than we feared. The felt underlay was perished and needed to be completely replaced with new breathable stuff, but the tiles were mostly sound (except the asbestos ones at the front which were replaced with composite slate). Our buildings survey said the rafters were likely damp, but it turned out they weren’t. The new roof underlay should help with ventilation also, so next winter any warm air that reaches the roof can escape before condensing in the loft.
We also needed our lead flashing replacing. The roofers kept the rolls of lead in our house overnight and I thought that they were putting on a show with all the huffing and puffing it took to get them inside. Nope! We were amazed by how much heavier they were than we expected! Just a small roll weighed more than a person! 91kg!
I had an exciting trip up the scaffolding, which was extremely nerve-wracking. The scaffolding itself was very solid, but the roofers seemed to have found the bounciest ladders possible to scale it. While I was up there holding on tight and Sean was showing me what they’d done, some of the other roofers were perfectly happy to sit on the handrail of the scaffolding with nothing behind them 😬 Luckily we have our access hatch if we ever need to go up again.
The roofers themselves were a bunch of loud cheery lads, but they were really good at turning up on time and letting us know the progress on all fronts.
Electrics
Our old fuse box has been replaced, with a new fuse box. I was a bit concerned when the electricians came with a box labelled FuseBox, but it turns out that it’s just a brand name. The electricians managed to get all the work they needed to do done in a single (busy) day. They managed to;
- Replace the old fusebox with an actual consumer unit
- Replace the wimpy cable with big chonky ARMOURED CABLE 💪
- Add an additional set of breakers upstream of the consumer unit
- Add in all the wiring needed for a radiator, sockets, and lights in the utility room
- Add even more cable for sockets and lights in the vaults
The additional breakers upstream took me by surprise - I thought that they’d said that they wouldn’t do that. I must have misunderstood ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The vault cabling is vaguely aspirational at the moment as we still don’t really know what we’re going to do with that space - but while we’ve got the chance to get some electrons flowing in that direction it seemed stupid not to go for it.
The electricians will be coming back next week to actually connect all the wiring and finish their tests. This includes labelling all the RCBOs.
They’ve been really good so far as well. They tend to be a bit busy so you have to book in advance, but once they’re on the job they’re good at the work they do, and they’re happy to talk though any of it with you.
Damp proofers
Argh, the damp proofers! Definitely my least favourite set of people to deal with. As a company it seems that they don’t really know what they’re doing from day to day. Each time we weren’t sure which people would show up, or when - which made for some rather stressful mornings trying to balance roofers, damp-proofers, and work meetings all at once. The guy we ended up with doing all the actual damp-proofing and plastering was pretty useless at letting us know what was up.
The plumbers will be back this week to reinstate the plumbing that was removed so we can finally have both a dishwasher and washing machine again. The humidity in that room is still very high, but with some heating it’s manageable (hopefully 🤞).
Because 🎉🎉🎉 tools are our favourite 🎉🎉🎉 I can’t resist sharing one of the damp-proofer’s tools. In order to be able to add a damp-proofing slurry layer to a previous layer you need to have a rough surface for it to key into. Normally they would just use a paintbrush and stipple the surface and call it good. Apparently that wouldn’t be enough for here so they brought the big guns. Specifically this flick-slurry-all-over-the-place gun.
After seeing what a state they’d left the entire room in after using that tool they did explain that it’s easier to remove the excessively flicked slurry once it’s dried, but I still wasn’t pleased by having all our nice new electrics slurry-flicked.
They’ve apparently finished now, but they still haven’t taken their rubbish away and the floor is very sticky.
Really, we’ll just be very relieved once it’s all properly sorted.
Ethernet
It’s done! The cable has been terminated on the other end in our sitting room, and everything is nice and tidy (haha). The router will live here permanently (which needs to live near the phone line), and anything else we want to be centrally placed in the house. This is not going to be its final form, we’re on the lookout for a console table.
All the servers that were living in the music room have now been moved to the office, though still on the floor in a mess. We might get a similar console table for them to live on, or just stick them in the cupboard. It has moved far enough down the priority list that we’re leaving it be for now.
Kitchen
There’s an update on this! The company we’re using (Shaker & May) has just opened their new Bath branch, which is very conveniently down the road. We popped in to see the detailed plans from our designer, and to get very excited about having a properly nice kitchen!!
Our dry-fit installation date is set to be the beginning of November, which means we might have the whole kitchen finished by Christmas (famous last words). We are currently in talks with some builders who can get the new kitchen room prepped in advance of the install and remove the old kitchen.
🎉🎉🎉 Tools are our favourite 🎉🎉🎉
New tools! We’ve got a new floaty lawnmower which is making quick work of our non-standard slopey garden.
We’ve also got a new trolley which should make reinstalling the washing machine a bit easier. (and is generally very useful to have!). It’s a million times better than our previous method of sliding it around on a rolling road of squashed cardboard boxes.
Our ‘outside toilet’ is something we have been planning on renovating by ourselves, so we have been researching how to plumb (having neither done any before), and buying 🎉tools🎉 to help cut copper pipes and PEX. Now the proper works have settled down, we’ve got a bit more energy to muck up part of the house again. To be honest, this seems like a perfect My First Plumbing job as all the pipes that we want to move are accessible from the garden store below.
A scary story 👻
Are you sitting down?
Ready?
We got our first energy bill! 😲
Would you believe it? This place costs more to run than Harrow. If only we’d known that before moving in… Really though, I’m impressed that this place only costs twice as much as Harrow. We’re using an awful lot of gas but we’re still finding the right levels of heating. Wish it was like solar panels where we could offset it with what we produce on a daily basis.
Friends and family
To escape all the scary stories, tradespeople, and endless todo lists we visited the Ozzy parents. We sat outside and enjoyed the glorious sunshine (first sunburn of the year). We also got to have a meal that we didn’t need to worry about ourselves and got a few loads of washing done - It was just like being a student again 😁 We did end up spotting a todo list that had been strategically left out (I suspect) and ended up doing jobs anyway 😂 it’s a habit now!
We also went on a really lovely walk with some of our more local friends. It turns out that a house with stairs doesn’t immediately turn you into a champion walker. Maybe more stairs are required? Some of them came back for a picnic after and shared their planty knowledge with us. We failed to take it all in but came away with “If you’re not sure it’s probably a rose” as a start. I think we’ll need to make some kind of garden map with labels.
In conclusion
Having lots of things going on at once is very tiring and stressful. Once this burst is over we’re going to be working on things that the two of us alone can manage for a while. When we get to Sept-Nov things are going to go crazy again with the bathroom and kitchen happening simultaneously so we need to be prepared for that.
In order to relax ourselves we bought some cat prints to hang around the house
Hope everyone’s doing ok and enjoying the beautiful weather!