Kitchen

Before moving in there were essentials we felt we needed....a functional kitchen was one of those things. This is apparently what it will roughly look like and you can judge for yourselves later....

So we set to work, this'll not take long.... Oh and we beg and borrowed as many of my parents gas and electric heaters as it was sooooo cold. The 1970's electric heaters did take the chill off the air...just.

cupboards and the housing for the fridge and ovens

The chaos as Tony starts to put it altogether and make sense of it all.

Tony's neat spaghetti pipework under the sink.

mmmm...not what?

Dunar! One sink fitted - never done that before!!

Tony's technical Drawing classes from school cone into they're own when working out how big to cut the hole for the round island sink!

A wee bit of Christmas cheer to help :)

The worktops arrive and are fitted - however there are two chips in them (probably because they didn't arrive until 4pm and it was dark and freezing and they had to work under the site lights and carry huge slabs of quartz in and out of the garage to cut them outside)
Not great conditions, but not really acceptable either., as we try to decide how pre-madonna are we being?!!..more later....

Crikey this oven's heavy, can I have a coffee?

Main bathroom start..

The next essential before moving in was a working bathroom......so the family team set to work....

I got mixing again.

I got tiling again - a much nicer sized and squarer room this time!

OMG we don't have to have a glam portal anymore!! Do you think we're happy? No door, but hey, who needs privacy when you've got a privee?!

Staircase - no more ladders?

Finally we sayu goodbye to our trusty ladders! It's been so long it feels odd to not climb a ladder. But hey, somehow I think a staircase might make life a bit easier, so over 2 (very long) days over the weekend Tony helped Paul & his mate 'meccano' our staircase together......

"I'm sure this should lead somewhere, is there another bit?!"

"Yep, I'm sure I saw another bit in the lounge..."

One beautiful oak staircase (well half oak). Ballastrade to come....'one day'!!

Getting Plastered!

If only we had time for that!

The plastering is nearly finished with just the hall and a few details to go. Even the Garage has been done.

Lee (the plasterer) seemed a bit offended when I suggested that he should get some clown trousers to go with the stilts!

The curves in the Music Room have turned into a bit of a work of art.

On The Tiles

We've started tiling the Kitchen and the Utility Room floors. The tiles are 600mm square which is a bit big for our tile saw but we've managed to cut them anyway with a bit of balancing and two-person holding.

It's a fair bit of work over a couple of weekends and some evenings under work lights. Also, a few flying visits from Joolz between the school runs. She's now an expert at measuring out the exact quantity of tile cement that can be used between the 9.30 drop off and the 12.00 collection!

Just in case you're thinking we missed a couple in the middle. That's where the kitchen island is going and we're trying to save as many tiles as possible in case of breakages.

The Utility Room was finished today and grouted - so proud!

Glass Ceiling

We had planned to glaze the curved section at the rear of the house ourselves sometime after we moved in. It isn't part of the planning application and therefore isn't necessary for Building Control sign-off. We discovered that water was leaking down the back of the rafters which made it impossible to finish the rendering and would probably have rotted the rafters if we'd left it through the winter. More un-budgeted spend!!!

However, we're really pleased with the way it has turned out. We're just debating whether or not we can get away without a gutter to maintain the appearance.

Resilient Bars

After much research it transpires that there are clever things called "resilient bars'" that you can fit to the underside of the joists before fitting the plasterboard ceiling. The idea is that the ceiling is 'de-coupled' from the joists above which means that the vibrational sound transfer is minimised as the ceiling is separated from the structure above.

The bars are also really useful for keeping the sound-deadening Rockwool in place which we fitted at the same time.

It may be sound-deadening but it doesn't half make you cough!

 Many thanks Mark for all your help.

 The bars attach on one side only which create a kind of 'sprung ceiling' effect.

Plasterboard

We've had a fairly busy week with quite a few things happening at the same time. The plasterboard arrived - all 312 sheets of it - and it didn't take lifting too many of them to regret over-specifying 15mm board instead of the more usual 12.5mm. At 30kgs a sheet it certainly made for a good workout.

Lee made quick work of turning the piles of boards into something resembling a room which enabled us to build the chimney breast ahead of next week's stove installation.

The girls' bedrooms seemed to take no time at all...

It was only after he'd been there for three days that he noticed the vaulted ceilings on the other side of the house! No mean feat at 30kgs a sheet.

Albiet with a little help from his son and Kev!

Upstairs Underfloor Heating

We've been debating long and hard the merits of upstairs underfloor heating as the insulation spec and the thermal mass of the downstairs heating coupled with the recirculation of heat from the Heat Recovery system may well mean that we never actually need to use it.

However, IF it transpired that we didn't fit it and we DID need it the cost would have been enormous as a retrofit. In fact almost impossible to do. Therefore, we took the safe option.

It's a wet system, the same as downstairs, but instead of being buries in concrete the pipes are clipped to aluminium diffuser plates on the underside of the upstairs floor.

Bi-Fold Doors - At Last!

Apologies to those of you who have pestered me for updates! We've been extremely busy adding more and more insulation, taping and sealing and mastic-ing windows. The photos just look like all the other insulation photos unfortunately.

However, our patio doors, which were ordered in March with a 7-8 week lead time, arrived this week! It feels like quite a change as we're now fully watertight and secure. Despite them coming from a different (and significantly slower) manufacturer we're pleased with how well they match the rest of the windows and doors.

Eventually we'll have a patio which will go round the corner of both of them and level with the inside. They fold right back to give the "Kevin McCloud inside-outside effect".