Creating Space

Since all the work has been done to strip everything out of the house and the floorboards have been put back down and made "true" it is possible to walk around the house and take more of it in. If you excuse the body in the following photograph you can see through from the rear reception room to the front room and out of the front door (across the road etc .....). This had led to the suggestion that we should consider not replacing the doors between the rooms as it helps to open out the space. This makes sense but it has made me wonder about whether we should open it out further.

The pictures above and below show both sides of the same wall. You can see in the picture below, the wooden lintel although as the wall is solid and non load bearing there is some doubt about what it is doing there. I have come up with the idea of removing much of this wall and opening out the staircase to the rear reception room. I would like to remove the wall completely but this cannot be done without an RSJ and by the time that was installed and clad with fire retardant material it isn't worth the extra cost.

A cheaper and easier option is to take the wall down to just below the ceiling and but in a 4x4 lintel to say half way (or maybe just over) the wall by the stairs. This will open up over half the stairs into the main room and create a much bigger space as well as making a feature out of the stairs. APD Observer and MeatOnTheBone will probably remember doing something similar in a house in Cobham over 20 years ago. Any memories they have of this would be appreciated.

The picture below shows the wall above the door from the reception room side. The lintel would just about be at the top row of bricks and would need to be boxed in or painted black and made to look like a beam to match those in the front room.

If we did decide to do this I think it would make sense to replace the door from the front refeption room to the stairs.

I have the day off work tomorrow (mainly for Christmas shopping but Mrs APD has done most of it) so we will be have a chat with the builder about this in more detail.

Bathroom Shopping List

The new cloakroom suite arrived and gave us the chance to offer the units up to the wall and see it fitted OK and that there was enough space. I am pleased we did this as it showed us that whilst the units we purchased would fit upstairs we need a much smaller sink (and no pedestal) downstairs.

So here is the list of all of the other items I need to purchase to complete the bathroom and the cloakroom except for the small sink and associated taps as I need to make absolutely certain the unit I chose will fit in the space we have available. I have sent this lot of to our plumber for his thoughts before I place the order. I also need to know what waste units etc I need to buy and get the specification of the cloakroom sink in the same order so I don't have to pay another lot of delivery. When I have finished the order I think I will have spent about £650.00 on all the bathroom units. I could have spent a little less but I think it is worth spending money on taps and things that have a high visual impact.

This is a much better shower unit and I hope that those that have been rightly critical in my choice of unit so far will think this one is more appropriate.

Bathroom (s) Shopping List

Taps

Shower Unit

Shower Screen

Bath Panel

Bath

Toilet

Accessory Pack

Fiscal Stimulus

I did not expect the chancellors PBR to have a mention on the blog but the following story made me laugh.

I received a text message from the builder yesterday - "could I order another skip and settle the account." No problem with this. We have had four skips so far (the first we paid on delivery) and I hope that this next one will be the last. We have gone over budget on clearance fees.

I telephoned the skip company to be told that I owed them for three skips and another one would be the fourth.

He then said the first three skips were at 17.5% and the one delivered on Monday will be at 15% (it being 1^st December). I asked how come they weren't all at 15% at I hadn't received an invoice from them for any the skips so far and the tax point should be the day they raise the invoice i.e. Monday 1^st December. His response to this was that we should have been paying for the skips as we took delivery of them. The fact that they hadn't asked for payment nor had they issued an invoice was irrelevant.

I did try and point out that this was not how the new rules were supposed to work but he beat me with his response.

"Do you want the skip or not?"

I have read forum after forum about how the new VAT rules are supposed to apply for services already delivered and not invoiced and confusion reigns (I know this is sad but my real job has some exposure to this). Government seems able to make the announcement that VAT will change in one week without giving any meaningful thought to the difficulties this puts business in. I have a sneaking admiration for the way the skip company operated. They are wrong, they are not short changing HMRC and they know that reducing VAT by 2.5% will not make any difference to whether I buy their goods and services or not. In that respect they are right and I ordered the skip.

So much for a fiscal stimulus.

Quick Update

Building work continues and good progress is being made. There will be 7 people working on the house tomorrow including plumbers and electricians. The damp proof render has started to be applied and things are good.

The picture shows the steel straps that we have used in the problem corner to hold the wall together. The gap has been fixed with sand and cement as a "glue" and this wall is all ready to have it's thermaboard attached. As usual you can click on any of the pictures to get a higher quality image.

Here is a close up.

The stud work that forms the new landing has been finished although it is difficult to see it from this picture here are the two doors frames. One leading to the bathroom and the other to the bedroom.

The windows are going in on Monday so all the lintels have been installed in readiness and tomorrow a suitable hole will be cut out the side wall for the new bathroom window.

Decisions need to be made on showers and sinks and I'll post something about that over the weekend when I have more time to research and plan.

Oh yes - and while I think of it. This is my 50th post. I wondered whether I would stick at it.

More Pictures

Here are some pictures showing how how things are progressing.

This first one is my favourite as it shows the stud work for the new bathroom so the house is beginning to take shape. The new brick wall you can see at the back was the door to the cupboard holding the hot water tank in the back bedroom. The brickwork above the wooden lintel was "live" (got the use of this term sorted out now) so the builder decided to replace all of it with new block work and a lintel underneath it to hold it all up. You can click on all of these pictures to enlarge them.

This will be the door into the bathroom.

This is a better photograph of the new wall with it's lintel.

Just as impressive is the amount of work that has happened outside in the garden. There has been three solid days spent out here and it is amazing how much progress has been made. This photograph has been taken from the back wall of the house. Three days ago it was difficult to get to the back wall let alone take a photograph down the garden!

Squeezing past the sink

One of the problems with trying to plan a bathroom or a kitchen is that you have to make decisions that cannot be easily revoked. Once the pipework is in etc the scope for change is limited.

It seems to me that this situation is worse with a bathroom as you are usually tying to squeeze three or four pieces of furniture of different shapes and sizes into a small a space as possible. With a kitchen you are trying to squeeze as much stuff as you can into the space you have. Kitchens have the other advantage of using equipment and furniture of a standard size; 600mm deep and so on.

As a result of all of this I think it is nigh on impossible to pick a bathroom suite and be certain that you have enough space between the wall and the sink to get to the toilet or the bath and the toilet to get to the sink and so on. Templates etc would work well but it is not like the real thing. That is why I ordered a sink and toilet today so we can see how it fits in the bathroom. If it works - great. If not we will use this kit in the downstairs cloakroom and buy something smaller for upstairs. It means paying more than one delivery charge (£40.00 each time) but I think it is worth it. It costs a lot more to send these things back if they don't fit and you don't want them anymore.

Bathroom Suites

I have been told that it is time to start thinking about the bathroom suites we want (and buy them I guess). The type of toilet is particularly important as it makes a difference to the way that the soil pipes are attached.

I have looked at various bathroom suites on-line and have been quite surprised and how much they cost (a lot) and how much they get discounted to (also a lot).

So, here are links to the proposed suites.

Upstairs Bathroom

Downstairs Cloakroom

Thermostatic Shower Mixer tap

This all comes to about £550.00 with the taps costing £255.00. I have sent details of these over to our plumber for his thoughts but I am going to make life size templates of the units and take them round over the weekend to see how it all fits and to find out if you can get past the sink to the toilet and so on. We have decided (on advice) to move the sink and the toilet around upstairs which should make this easier. Apparently the stud walls are up so I will take some pictures at the same time.

The clock is running ..........

The other thing that I agreed with the builder was a target completion date. This is set at Friday 16th January 2009. There are no penalties for being late (except a delay getting to the next job) and no bonuses for being early but we both have signed up to it.

I have set up a project clock on the right hand side of the screen showing the time from the moment we owned the house to the building work being finished. "Completion to Completion"! It works out at three months (give or take) in total.

Project and Budget Update

The main work has begun on the house now with electrical and plumbing work having started today. I had a long conversation with the main builder over the weekend and agreed costs for the remainder of the work and I can now make a reasonable assessment for the first time on how close to our budget we will be.

It has proven quite difficult to work out how accurate my estimating has been as I seem to be forever moving items from one budget line to another. For example the original plan was to ask the DPC and timber treatment company to do the specialist rendering. I have subsequently decided not to do that as the people who are doing the rest of the plastering are quite comfortable about the type of render required.

The main builder has agreed a reasonably detailed schedule of works which includes (amongst other items) all of the plastering, brickwork, studwork, painting and decorating, kitchen fitting and tiling. We just have to provide the following.

• Upstairs bathroom suite and shower

• Downstairs cloakroom suite

• Kitchen

• Any floor coverings we want (carpets, tiles and laminate flooring)

Whilst I enjoyed my foray out into the garden recently I haven't got the time to finish this off so a friend of the family is going to do this for me starting from this Wednesday.

I think we will be very close to our revised £40,677 estimate. There is slight disappointment that we won't we thousands under but I guess if that were the case the estimate wouldn't have been very good. I am very pleased that we have now understood all the work that has to be done. There will inevitably be some more surprises but I hope that the amount of planning and preparation we have done to date will minimise this.

The Amazonian Rainforest

I don't know much about the rain forest (it is one word or two?) and I have never been there but I think that because the canopy is so thick it is like having two systems in one. The bottom of the forest is dark and damp because sunlight never gets there whilst the area above the canopy is light and bright and is host to a totally different set of species.

The garden of the house is very like this.

I have never seen a garden quite so overgrown with very large trees and shrubs and this morning I did a job that all boys are born to do. Me, an overgrown garden and a chainsaw!

YeeeHaaa!!!!.

I still have all my limbs so I can tell the tale.

I think I said in an earlier blog entry that we bought the house without ever actually venturing down the garden. Subsequently I hacked, literally, my way to the end picking my way through brambles and round thorn trees, just to see what was there. Today's mission was to try and clear a wider path so that others could make the same journey.

It is very clear that this used to be a much loved garden. The things that had been planted had been planted with thought and care but they had, over several years of neglect, literally taken over the garden. The first challenge was just as you walk out through the back door. An enormous thorn bush blocking your path. This proved the most difficult thing to move out the way simply because it was so vicious. Beyond that were several more similar bushes and some thorn trees all of which have now received the attention of the chain saw. I am only trying to completely clear the trees etc on the left hand side of the garden. The growth on the right provide quite a bit of screening so it needs to be thinned, cut back and pruned but I want some of it to survive. The back garden is overlooked by some flats and it need to ensure that we have sufficient cover to block as much of this out as I can.

There will end up being an element of garden design in this project.

I spoke too soon

Just as I said the house couldn't look any worse I have been proved wrong!

I have taken the day off work today to so some work on the garden (of which more later) and took these pictures of the house without the floorboards. In truth the news is not bad because all of the joists are in good nick but it looks terrible. The dpc is in and all the timber treated so it really won't get any worse than this! Where have I heard that before?

The quality of the pictures is not as good as last time as I took them on my mobile phone; I didn't have the proper camera with me.

UPDATE (17:00): Very embarrassingly I have just spotted that I used to and not too in the title of this post. I can't believe I did that. I am hanging my head in shame.

Radiator sizes – the final version

After much debate and very welcome input from various people I have made a decision in conjunction with our plumber on what radiator sizes we are going to use. As we now know that the under floor will be insulated and thermal plasterboard will be put on the walls I have decided to assume that to all intents and purposes that the rooms do not have solid walls and there are not three outside walls for each room.

Here are the final calculations for those that are interested.

Room	Size (WxDxH)	BTU Required	Rad Size	Rad BTU
Bedroom2	3.65x3.05x2.3m	3494.54	800x600mm	4685
Bedroom 1	3.65x3.48x2.3m	3987.21	800x600mm	4685
Back Room	3.65x3.05x2.5m	4748.01	800x600mm	4685
Front Room	3.65x4.4x2.5m	6849.59	1200x600mm	7027

We are over specified on three radiators and slightly under on one. I think this will be fine and the slightly under specified unit will take some heat from the kitchen.

I have agreed the scope of works with the plumber today and he starts on Monday. If you want to see the pipe work diagrams he has them all on his blog here.

Building Control Report

We asked the building inspector to visit the house yesterday so we could consult with them on some of the things we were planning on doing and making sure we had their support.

It is always a good idea to do this as apparently inspectors prefer to get involved at the beginning of a project and to be asked for their opinion. It saves them having lots of arguments subsequently.

The inspector will have been able to see anything he wanted as the house is completely stripped out now and this includes all but one of the ceilings and all of the downstairs floorboards. This may seem drastic but the dpc is being installed on Thursday and all exposed timber is being treated. As there is hardly an unexposed piece of wood in the building this will be fairly comprehensive process.

Overall the visit went as expected; here are some of the main points.

1. The use of steel straps to hold the upstairs corner walls together is acceptable and there is no need to rebuild the corner itself.
2. We will be expected to put thermal plaster boards onto the wall. In the case of the downstairs this will be over the special waterproof dpc render.
3. We will need to add insulation under the floor downstairs.
4. The proposed site of the bathroom and soil pipe is ok and there is no need to provide additional strengthening to any of the flooring.
5. We need to insulate the loft to the current standard.

We had not expected to add under floor insulation but have no problem doing so. It is anticipated that this will only add about £200.00 to the cost. All of the other insulation points were not in the original plan but that was only because I didn’t think of them or didn’t know about them. We had subsequently anticipated that building control would ask to add them and there is no surprise that they did.

All in all a very successful visit.

New Windows

A big moment today as we placed the first major order for the refurbishment. The contract for the replacement windows and doors has been signed.

We obtained two quotes, one prior to completion, but have subsequently made some changes to the specification and the number of windows we wanted. Two local companies re-quoted for the work and after a short negotiation we have signed with Warmlite.

From a budget point of view their proposal is only just over our original estimate and less than the revised figure. As it includes two additional windows I am very pleased with the outcome.

They originally quoted four to six weeks for delivery and installation but after a bit of pushing they will start on 1^st December. The existing windows (which are in dreadful condition) were installed without the benefit of a lintel and the surrounding brickwork is poor so there is work to be done before they can start.

New windows make such a huge difference to how a house looks I am looking forward to seeing them installed.

On a separate note the salesman for Warmlite has been plying his trade round here for years and has approached us several times although we have never had use for his services until now. It just goes to show that selling can be all about building up a relationship without any immediate prospect of a sale but knowing that you will be first in line when the time comes.

Radiator sizes

It is getting to the stage where I need to start buying some stuff and radiators are one such item. Easy enough I thought but what size radiators do I need? Obviously I will ask our plumber to advise but I do like to understand these things myself if I can.

Radiators are measured in Watts or BTU's (British Thermal Units) and there is a ridiculously complicated system for working out what sizes you need involving the volume of the room, number of outside walls, type of wall (solid, cavity etc), double glazing (yes or no), the aspect of the house (North, South etc), what type of room it is (bedroom, lounge and so on) your inside leg measurement, mother's maiden name and the number of pets you have.

I am convinced that this system has been made sufficiently complex and made to look like a dark art to stop the rest of us from trying to understand it. What makes it worse is that every different method of calculating you use gives a completely different result!

Room volume seems to be the biggest single factor in the calculation with the number of outside walls the room has being another important number. In this respect the house suffers quite badly as every room I need to heat has three outside walls. This seems to add about 40% to the calculation.

Radcalcs gets a lot of recommendation from various websites and is easy to use without being overly simplified. The only problem with this is that in one room it is recommending a radiator with 10,523 BTU's which is a very big radiator in quite a small room.

Ultimately I shall have to go with some common sense but I'll wait and see what the building control officer says during his visit tomorrow about insulation etc before making a decision.

If anybody knows of any other sites with a calculator I would be pleased to hear about it.

Incidentally my calculations state that the bedroom require 6546 and 7469 BTU respectively and the downstairs room will need 7294 and 10523. I know that Tim (see earlier comments) pointed out the downstairs toilet will be cold. Fear not; there will be a an electric towel rail / heater to take the edge off.

The "Horrible House"

Our youngest daughter (3 next February) is not impressed with our new house and calls it the "Horrible House".

Most of the house is empty now and this collection of pictures is hopefully as bad as it will get. With a bit of luck it won't be the "Horrible House" much longer. (click the picture to enlarge it).

Another expense

I have just posted the forms off to building control along with a cheque for £235.00.

I knew they would want to be involved in inspecting the new bathroom but it appears that they are also concerned with the plastering and they will insist (where practical) that we increase the "thermal properties" of the house. There is not that much extra that can be done when the house has been built with 9 inch walls without making the rooms smaller! They may insist that we use thermal plasterboard, where practical, and whilst that will increase costs slightly it is right that they force people to consider the environment.

They will also insist on the level of insulation in the loft and so on. We would have done this properly anyway but I think it is a good thing that somebody monitors this.

Wall Re-visited

The wall that appears to have come adrift from the house that was exposed when we removed all of the plaster has been the subject of further discussion.

It is now very clear that the flank and back walls were never attached to each other when the property was originally built. So much for Victorian build quality! In some respects, as it has been like this for a 100 years, we could just fill it and suggested before but I feel uncomfortable about this.

I took the oportunity to telephone Chawton Hill, the surveying firm who we used in the first place, to talk it though with them. It makes life so much easier when you can just send a high quality picture over email so no site visit is necessary! I think the receptionist thought it was quite funny that I wanted to send the surveyor a picture of a wall. I don't suppose their acceptable use policy for the internet mentions picture of bricks.

There are two solutions. The first is to take away several columns of bricks and re-build the corner of the house. This would take time and be very expensive as a full scaffold rig would be required. The second method is to purchase some galvanised steel straps to hold the wall together from the inside and fill the hole with a sand and cement mix as a sort of glue. The straps would then be plastered over and everything will be fine.

Our builder is comfortable taking either approach and I see little point in taking the first option. It doesn't add anything to the house (unless we were planning on leaving exposed brick at the back of the house) and gives us added unnecessary expense.

Steel straps it is then.

On-Line Plumber

The plumber we are using to do much of the work in the house is a friend who is embarking on a plumbing course and needs some practice.

He has also decided to blog his experiences and that includes the work on this house. He has some more picture of our house including some that I haven't seen as he has been there more recently than me.

If you want to see some pictures or catch up with David's progress it can be found here. At least I have categorical evidence that the boiler has been decommissioned.

Something I won't be doing again

Today was supposed to be house clearance day and the company I booked to do it duly turned up at about 09:30 as agreed.

The way these companies work is that they turn up, give you a quote, which you then accept or reject. Luckily there is no obligation to accept the quote and you don't pay a call out fee to get them there in the first place.

Why is this lucky?

If you remember from a previous post I had anticipated that to clear the house would cost £143.00 plus a bit for some extra weight. In my mind I thought it might cost nearer £250.00 and possibly as much as £300.00. The quote when it came this morning was a surprise £1,300.00!!!

I declined their offer and a skip with permit is being delivered to site tomorrow morning while I enjoy a tasty meal of humble pie with a side order of words.

This has set us back a day as the front room in the house was full of rubbish waiting to be removed and of course it is still there. As I said in the title of this post - something I won't be doing again.

Building Report

Wow. The house looks very different already.

The building work started this morning or should I say the demolition work started this morning. There are two guys at it and when I popped round at lunchtime to give them a second set of keys much progress had already been made.

As you might expect there is mixed news. Upstairs the rear bedroom no longer has any ceiling or any plaster on any of the walls. Apparently the plaster wasn't "live" (a new phrase I have learned) which means it was no longer attached to the underlying wall. There is a large and rather worrying hole in one corner through which you can see outside! At some point somebody had just decided the best way to fix this problem was to plaster over it! It is difficult to know why the hole is there but obviously it is going to get filled. If it was movement in the walls then it is historic and no cause for alarm for us. There is a lot of repair work to do on all of these walls and I wasn't that impressed with the vertical crack down one wall but I am assured that this is nothing to worry about.

Here are some pictures of what it looks like now (click on any of them to enlarge, they are of reasonable quality and really show the detail). The paper like stuff stacked up on the floor is some very old fashioned loft insulation.









Once these walls have been repaired we can put plasterboard directly onto them and then skim that. This is more expensive in materials but much cheaper in labour and much much quicker in time.

Curiously the other upstairs bedroom is fine and we will be able to keep the ceiling and all of the existing plaster which is great news.

Downstairs we have discovered an old window (or door we need to hack off more plaster to discover which it is) which somebody has just taken out and filled with bricks leaving the soldier courses and wooden lintel in place. The quality of the repair is shocking even to my untrained eye and we will need to put a couple of stongboys in there to prop up the house to remove the bricks and lintel and then replace them. It is not a huge job but there will be an interesting hole in the wall while it is being done. Here is a picture of the wall showing the brickwork. Stunningly poor quality. Even with a DPC this house would have been damp.



The gas supply will be capped tomorrow morning and the water system drained so we will be able to rip out everything else. The house clearance people arrive between 9:00 and 11:00 on Wednesday so all of the clearance will need to be finished by then. It will be tight but the guys seems supremely confident that they will be ready. I'll try and get some more photos Wednesday evening.

Rubbish Clearance

A last, and with a fair wind, work proper should start on the house this Monday. I have been anxious to get on with it but in fairness we only completed 10 or so days ago and you cannot expect people to be hanging around waiting to start work, even in a recession.

So the first job is to clear the house of all of it's fittings. Kitchen, bathroom, cupboards, radiators, hot water tank, floor coverings (what there are), plaster on all of the downstairs walls, some ceilings, old grippers rods, electric sockets and light fittings, internal doors, one internal wall, some internal doors and so on. You name it and it will go. At the end of this the house really will be an empty shell of rooms and a staircase with all the poor quality plaster removed. The only thing staying that will eventually go is the windows.

The builder thinks it will take two or three days to clear the house, I think this may be a little ambitious but there again with nobody living there and nothing that you need to look after it may be possible. There will be a lot of rubbish to be cleared away so the next question to decide is how should this is best done.

The builder has already said "you better order a skip" which is the obvious answer but I have been looking at other services from companies that claim to take your rubbish (including rubble etc) away from you for a fee and this option is looking quite attractive.

A 6 yard skip which seems to be a pretty standard size is £194 including VAT to hire from one website I tried. I am sure it will be possible to shave a few pounds off this but it will do for the purposes of comparison. On top of that I would need to apply for a permit to put the skip on the road which round here is £50.00 (if I remember rightly from the last time we needed one). So, all in all, a skip will cost £244.00 which could end up being higher if 6 yards is not enough.

There are various companies offering a totally different service of basically coming to your house, assessing how much stuff you have, and then quoting you to take it away. One of them claims that 7.5 yards would cost £165.00 (incl VAT) but they will charge £70.00 per hour for labour after two hours. They also charge more for heavy loads like rubble etc but our load will be mixed so we should avoid this. There is another company who seem to charge £143.00 for 8 yards which is cheaper again but the website is less clear about extras.

The other advantage is that if you need more space than 7.5 yards it is not a problem, you just pay more. In addition, there is no danger of everybody else in the area dumping their old furniture into your skip! I can see why this service would not suit if you have nowhere to store you junk before collection but there is no reason why we cannot stack thinks up in the front room and let then take it from there.

This seems a no brainer to me. Cheaper, quicker and more flexible. I cannot think of any reason why I wouldn't want to use this type of service.

If anybody has experience of this I would love to hear about it.

October Statistics

It’s the first of November which gives me an excuse to look at my blog statistics for October.

There have been 259 visits to the blog this month from 40 visitors. There was one from New Zealand (Auckland) and one from USA (Florida) but I must confess to knowing who they both were. Still quite exciting though!

There are so many statistics you can get from Google Analytics I could put on my anorak and quote them for page after page..... but I won’t.