We’re spotting a trend here. Life gets in the way, we don’t do enough house things for an update, we put off the update in order to not look bad, then rush a lot of house things and pretend we did them earlier.
The builders are much faster than us.
Life getting in the way
What with spending so much time on house stuff for the past year or so we felt very much in need of a holiday, so we booked a week in Italy across our anniversary and Ozzy’s birthday. We went to Naples, with a day trip to Rome. We particularly wanted to see all the Roman history - Pompeii, the Colosseum, the Pantheon etc. In order to get the most out of this educational trip we did some research in advance, Nikki remembering her Latin classes at school and Ozzy watching ‘Up Pompeii’ and ‘Carry on Cleo’.
Obviously the food was a strong reason to go as well. Almost every meal was absolutely delicious and we did lots of educational research of delicious pizza (Naples pizza > Rome pizza). By far the worst meal was a pasta dish that we had in Naples. It was too thick, chewy and didn’t have a good flavour - and it was the result of the pasta making class we did :(
We very much enjoyed all the architecture of Italy. There are so many buildings that seemed to be built to impress - certainly in Naples there were many enormous churches that seemed to be tucked away on back roads.
Speaking of back roads, Naples seems to only have two types of road - either a 3 lane major road, or a back alley - and all the cars travel as fast as they can down both.
Pompeii and Vesuvius were definitely worth a visit. They were both crowded with tourists, but still very enjoyable. Pompeii is truly a fantastic place. It especially made us think about the permanance of things.
Rome was also good. Speaking of impressive buildings, Ozzy was particularly awed by the Victor Emmanuel II Monument. It’s just ridiculously big.
The Colosseum is just one of those things that you have to do - and it’s worth it. Ozzy’s favourite fact about the Colosseum is that at one point it was known as the 🥮 Frangipane Fortress 🥮
To try and draw this section somewhat closer to the Nozzy House we’ll give you another interesting architectural fact. The columns of the Colosseum have different styles on each level (Tuscan / Doric, then Ionic, then Corinthian). This style is replicated in The Circus in Bath, which was modelled after the Colosseum.
Unfortunately on our return, Nikki caught Covid for the second time and Ozzy managed to avoid catching it for the second time. She’s all better now with no lasting symptoms, but this rather slowed down our house-things-rate. The builders continued unabated.
Dining Room
The dining room is now nearly complete. Since the last update, the plaster was painted, floor sealed and lights, ceiling speakers and radiators installed. There are a couple of finishing touches left to do, but essentially this room is done*.
All that remains is to add furniture and decorate!
We have gradually been acquiring new bits and bobs for the dining room over the last couple of weeks:
We have already had a couple of sets of local friends over to try it out. It’s not perfect yet but we think it looks marvellous so far.
We’ve already committed to hosting a dinner for ten - we’ll have to see how that one goes. It’ll be snug but we’re hoping everyone will at least have some elbow room. At the moment, while the room is full of hard surfaces, it can easily get very echoey. We’re sure that adding a few soft things will help absorb that noise, e.g. guests.
Hallway
Time for another learning point in our favourite subject - 🥳 tools! 🥳
The floorboards in the hallway were in an okay state, and Simon and Will have done a great job of getting them mechanically secure and filling all the gaps.
For sanding, they opted to use a handheld orbital sander instead of a proper floorboard drum sander. This worked okayy, but it doesn’t sand down the boards completely evenly - the harder knots tend to resist. Despite all attempts at dust management, extra steps had to be taken.
A single pass would have been fine, but despite him using the same stain as in the kitchen, the floorboards have been sanded, stained and oiled many many times in an attempt to try and match the finish of the adjacent kitchen floor. We think this has made the knots more pronounced.
Lesson
Use the right tool for the jobIn the end it looks okayyy. We can definitely see the difference between the finish in the hallway versus the kitchen floor, but it’s close enough not to grate and will probably change over time.
The wall lights have been installed, which we think look great (better than okayyyy).
Rob also came back (though still traumatised) to replace our consumer unit front.
There’s only a few finishing touches left for this room. A stair runner, boxing in the electrics, getting a solution for coat and shoe storage.
Guest Bathroom
The bathroom is taking shape! Much of the work has been the same as when we had our master bathroom done. Studwork has been built, pipes installed, plasterboard put on top, mermaid-coloured waterproofing painted on, underfloor heating laid, tiles being laid.
We did have one little scare. We only thought to test the underfloor heating once all the floor tiles were down and settled. After 12 hours of leaving it on it was clear that no heating was happening… Fortunately the issue was that the underfloor wires had been connected to the towel rail connections on the controller - a quick rewire and everything is nice and warm :)
Nikki’s deep love of herringbone tiles has been causing no small amount of grumbling from our builders. The amount of herringbone combined with the niches in the walls makes for a LOT of tile cuts. Oops. Our previous bathroom has herringbone too, just a lot less, and cunningly planned to have as few cuts as possible. However, the result is looking stunning, so we personally think it’s worth it.
Luckily we’re getting to the end of all of our major projects, so if we annoy them too much at least we don’t have to find new builders. (seriously, they’ve been fantastic)
We’re waiting on a few supply issues for the next steps. The countertop needs templating and sending off to the manufacturers, but our designer lost the notes of what we agreed it would be made out of 🤦♂️. We also are waiting to see our towel radiator and the shower glass (which was accidentally made in the wrong colour and had to be remade).
However, we can spend the waiting time admiring the tiles now they’re grouted.
Utility Room
At the end of the last update, we had roughly scribed the worktop to the back wall.
Since then, we have made some progress! It takes a lot of willpower to get started, as getting the worktop down the stairs into the basement is very taxing. Especially if you’re trying to avoid bumping it into freshly painted walls.
One of the downsides to leaving this task for so long was that the wood has changed shape. This was a problem when we tried to lift it out of place and it was stuck! We manoeuvred it eventually with much perseverance and swearing.
In one very productive evening, we cut out all the front sections and now we can see our sink again.
As a side note, we had to use our own tools this time as Simon had already taken most of his away. As such, we’re upgrading the rating of the hoover - dust collection is incredibly important. If it’s not controlled it makes tasks miserable (especially for Ozzy who has a sensitive face)
The tap is just there for show at the moment. We’ve still got to round off some more corners, seal everything and finish off the plumbing.
AOB
It’s that time of year again. Our central heating turned on for the first time this year, and not all of the radiators came on with it. Despite using our best TRV wiggling tactics from last year, four of our radiators seem to have given up. We’ll be fixing those before it gets much colder.
There are several things in London that we simply never got around to doing despite being there for so many years. We managed to remove one item from our Bath list by going on the Bath Skyline Walk with our local friends. It was lovely :)
We had our first mince pies the other day. Is it too early?
Nozzy signing off
ciao