Dust and a broken camera

I've had every intention of writing a post each day this week but it just hasn't happened.  There just doesn't seem to be quite enough hours in the day at present; it's a bit chaotic.

So, a quick round-up.

The plumber began his work on Tuesday, demolishing the remains of the bathroom and pulling up the floor - this seems to be a recurring theme with our workmen!  Lots of noisy tools and lots of dust again - also a recurring theme ;)  I will try not to keep on about the dust too much, suffice to say there has been a great deal of it!

We've had the bathroom fittings delivered, along with the tiles, and we've finalised the design for the kitchen.  There are tools in every room except the little bedroom which I put out of bounds to everyone.  We have been to the tip with more rubble, old chipboard flooring, tiles and wallpaper.  We move boxes from one room to another trying to create space to work in. 

Today the heating engineers returned to fit the radiators.  They look beautiful (the radiators, that it ;) ) and we are very pleased indeed that we decided to get them replaced along with the boiler installation.  

We have tackled some of the coving.  We soon realised we needed the proper mitre block and coving saw to do the job properly.  And it took us ages to get to grips with the correct angles for the corners; we ended up with lots of rejected pieces.  However, we persevered and completed the little bedroom, and it looks really good.  N has carried on coving when he has been able to, space permitting, and has made good progress in the hallway.  I think he's cracked the angle issue now.

I've been determined to continue painting the little bedroom, the one I banned everyone else from.  The ceiling and coving have been done, and the woodwork has all been given a first topcoat of satin finish but still needs a second coat.

In between all the other work that is going on in the house, sometimes it is only possible to do odd jobs around the place; sanding the skirting boards, stripping a bit more wallpaper in the kitchen, and taking some of the old kitchen cupboards to pieces.  It's a bit frustrating, not having a free run at one job but we keep reminding ourselves that all these jobs need doing, and each one is a step closer to finishing.

 There's a lack of photos in this post due to the fact that sadly my little digital camera developed a technical fault Tuesday which has proved terminal *sigh*.  I have resorted to my mobile and N's rather flashier camera, and until I work out how to download those photos, it will just have to be 'words-only' for a while.

We did have another visit from Harry the Hedgehog this afternoon, having a mooch on the back lawn.  He's very sweet and allows us to take his photo before disappearing under the fence.

Best laid plans

Oh dear, I shouldn't have got so excited about a bit of painting yesterday.  There was me, thinking we had finally turned the corner.  I hadn't planned on the radiators.

Over the weekend, N and I mused about old-fashioned radiators, sizes of radiators, efficiency of radiators and the cost of replacing them.  We asked our wonderful central heating engineers about it this morning, thinking we might look to do the work next year perhaps.  They kindly pointed out that it would make far more sense to change the radiators now, while the house is in the throes of refurbishment, rather than wait till all the carpets are down.  Clearly it made sense.  Clearly it makes sense to have new efficient radiators working with a new efficient boiler.  So why had we not thought of this sooner?  We were really annoyed with ourselves for such a lapse.

So, to cut a long story short, the lads have changed their work specification mid-job.  The flooring has been up in nearly every room, old pipework removed, new pipework replaced, brackets removed.  Chaos and dust reign once more.  

It turned into a long day for everyone.  The heating engineers worked so hard, hardly stopping other than to confirm what we wanted.  They will return in a few weeks time to install new radiators and complete the system.  They are stars!

In the middle of the veg plot we found this lone antirhinum

 With so much upheaval throughout the house, N and I were unable to do much indoors so we pottered in the garden, weeding the veg plot again.  

Today reminded us that the best laid plans can go awry.  Our fault.  Tomorrow is another day and we will start again with another list. 

Painting!

Finally, after days spent taking things to pieces, ripping stuff out, creating mess and chaos, we have at last got to a point where we could actually start on something constructive.  

I have painted a window sill.

Granted, it was only undercoat but still, it's a step in the right direction.  It's pleased us no end.

Radiators in need of a good clean

On the back of one rad, N found this stamp - we already knew the house was built in 1979 so the radiators have seen 35 years' service.  

We've also taken advantage of the radiators being off the walls (the heating engineers need to drain and flush them through) to paint the walls behind them - it's always the trickiest bit to decorate if the radiators are in place.  Just a couple of coats of white emulsion but it's one more little job to tick off the list.  N has done sterling work cleaning all the radiators; front, back and between the panels.  They look much better for a bit of soapy water.

Gradually covering the pink!

We've got the bathroom tiles sorted - much easier than we thought; we both picked the same tile immediately we saw it, something of a result.  The coving proved a bit of a bonus, too.  The pack was 3.6 metres in length, way too long to fit in the car but we noticed that some of the pieces were damaged so we approached a salesman and suggested we take the damaged goods off his hands for half the marked price (don't get if you don't ask!).  A deal was done, we took the pack into the carpark and N proceeded to cut the lengths at the damaged point and lo and behold, they fitted into the car perfectly!  

We are both terribly weary, we don't mind admitting.  But little by little, ever so gradually, we feel we are turning the corner.  We hope to get stuck into some serious painting this week, the boiler/central heating will have been finished and work on the bathroom begun.  It's beginning to take shape.

And guess who turned up this morning?

Ambling along the path in the back garden was none other than Harry the hedgehog (short for Hieronymus, N tells me - he's a fan of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels).  It could of course be Hilda or Hetty but I think we'll stick with Harry until proved otherwise.

We're rather thrilled to have our own hedgehog.

Slower, and aching

Huge excitement yesterday when I spotted a green woodpecker on the lawn, feasting on the ants

N and I are running out of steam.  We ache and we're tired.  We've slowed down because we can't keep up the pace.  I've said it before, we're not quite as young as we thought we were!

Old pipework

Gripper rod is viscous stuff, it needs to be levered up and handled with great care!

However, the heating engineers have done sterling work today and the new boiler and all the associated pipework (there's lots of shiny pipes under the floorboards now) looks lovely.  We've been trying to work around them, doing odd jobs (more wallpaper stripped; cracks plastered; skirting board sanded; walls washed), but every room looks like a building site - not really surprising, I suppose.  The first day we had the house, we found an old dustpan and brush that had been left behind, and they have been used on a daily basis to sweep up the mess we keep creating.  They probably feature in many photographs.

One of the holes that has appeared  over the past couple of days - this was where the old gas fire has been removed

And here's the remnants of the wallpaper behind the fire, a green 'willow pattern'

We had a bit of a shock yesterday when the plumber announced he was able to start work on the bathroom early next week.  That's great (we had thought we might have to wait for several weeks) but at present we don't actually have a bathroom to install =:o   After a mild panic attack (another one) we were out first thing this morning to try to rectify this predicament.  We wondered about sourcing everything on the internet, but after a very helpful hour in town we are hopeful that it can all be ordered locally and delivered on time.

Tomorrow we have a shopping list of required hardware, and a 'to do' list of things we would like to achieve.  It's a short list.  We are being realistic.

And we ache.

Progress

Very exciting today - the central heating engineers arrived to fit the new boiler.  It was really encouraging, after two weeks of demolition, to see something new going in.  Never mind that there are holes in the walls and holes in the floor, this is progress :)

Old boiler with cover removed

Shiny new boiler!

N and I did our best to work around the lads, doing lots of odd jobs as we saw them.  Carpet gripper prised up from floorboards, cleaning wallpaper off from behind radiators (they have all been taken off while work is underway), investigating the compost bin, and a spot of birdwatching.  I'm trying to keep a photographic record of the 'transformation' so I have to be alert to what's happening in different rooms.  In years to come it will be interesting to remind ourselves of how the place looked before we began work, and the stages along the way.

An intruder in the garage

Polystyrene coving had to come off.  Once very popular, it's now recognised as a fire hazard.

A yellow wall to add to the pink, orange and green walls elsewhere!

Yesterday we stripped all the remaining wallpaper off the walls; only the kitchen left, but we're leaving that room alone until the old floor-standing boiler has been removed.  It's a messy, fiddly job, stripping wallpaper by hand and we were very glad to have an extra couple of pairs of willing hands to give us a lift.  At the end of the day we had several bags full of old wallpaper, stacked in the garage.

Typical chaos at the end of the day

This morning, bright and early, we went to load up the car for yet another run to the tip.  I started carrying the bags to the car when N shouted that I was dropping paper all over the place.  Looking down, I saw the bags had big holes in them.  Funny, didn't notice those last night.  I picked up another bag and found the same thing.  More holes.  An uneasy feeling began to float through my mind.  Along the lines of: something is making holes in these bags.  Then I spied a pile of, well, poo, in the corner of the garage.  Uneasy feeling becomes full-on panic.  We have 'guests'.  We began a tentative search, and found the culprit.  

And then realised that neither of us had a camera with us.  

Our intruder was a hedgehog, trying very hard to burrow into yet another bag full of old curtains.  I was immensely relieved as I had visions of rats running riot.  We very carefully (hedgehogs are a bit prickly, after all) extracated it from the curtains, picked it up in a towel and carried it out to the back garden, leaving it in some shrubs to find it's way home.  

An exciting start to the day =:o

The rest of the day didn't pan out quite as we had intended it but sometimes you just have to go with the flow, regardless of planning or not.  We managed to get a bit more work done, N pottering in the 'bathroom', while I was up and down the stepladders, washing the sticky gunk off walls - yuk!

Temporary taps removed, replaced with isolating valves

The shower tray has gone, leaving just a hole in the concrete base

We've had the design back for the kitchen.  There's not much scope for anything too radical, and as the kitchen needs to be functional rather than fancy, we're happy with the plan.  What has caused us a problem is the dining area, we just couldn't see how to make it work for us.  Not wanting to give up on this problem area, we've been discussing all sorts of possibilities, measuring up, drawing up scale diagrams on graph paper etc.  Today, finally, we came up with a way of incorporating the area into the kitchen and making the whole room feel more integrated. 

We cobbled together a breakfast bar using various bits of the old kitchen units, then 'sat' on imaginary stools to see if our idea would fit the space.  We think it does.  Now we just have to hope we can get it built.

Tomorrow the heating engineers are coming to fit a new boiler.  Floors up; pipes cut, removed, and relaid; radiators off the walls - yep, we're so looking forward to it!! 

Weary workers

Another early start to get to the tip before the rush.  That's our sixth tip run, this time with all the grass cuttings to be composted - we haven't got our own compost area in the garden up and running yet; it's on the list, but so are lots of other things, too.

Truth be told, we were a bit weary today.  This was our eleventh consecutive day DIYing and fatigue had caught up with us and tempers were a little short to begin with.  We took things relatively easy today, nothing too arduous.  There's always plenty to do.  Washing down walls, a bit of plastering, and stripping more wallpaper off to reveal . . . 

. . . a peach wall!  It goes with the pink walls in the adjacent room.

Conservatory furniture aka recycled kitchen cupboards:

And a reminder to whoever is last out the front door:

We'll be back tomorrow to strip yet more wallpaper and wash down even more walls.  At some point we might actually paint!