plumbing – Number 85

The most enjoyable part of the works was the removal of the old mouldy utilty room.

Who knew there was a brick wall under that mouldy wall in the back? I have no idea what all of the differnet colours mean. And seeing the concrete roof/ceiling allowed us to better understand why the water kept seeping in. Surprise-surprise, half-arsed jobs and patches that never resolved the root cause were to blame. At least there were no huge surprises underneath it all!

Build it up, tear it down

One big change is the removal of the big frech sliding doors on the side of the utility room, and the creation of a door at the back. I’m sure it was fun having to drill a hole every few centimeters around where the new door needed to be. It created a very open plan look.

This new layout meant there was a lot more light, so the old toilet looked a lot less dingy, although all of these holes were soon boarded over, and temporary doors were put in.

But there wasn’t much time to enjoy that, because before we knew it, the walls were being torn down and the old toilet was no more, leaving some interesting pipework.

Stomzy

We also had a few storms to deal with. I think it was Storm Arwen that ripped off parts of the flat roof. Although this was the old roof and so had to come off anyway.

But slowly the walls went up, and some more of the weird and wonderful oddities were uncovered.

But things began to come together, with interal walls and insulation going up.

And very helpfully, a wonderful new (and importantly water-tight) roof was added, complete with yet more cat paw prints. Whilst it isn’t a sexy part of your house, or even a part that you think about very often, it is an amazing feeling to not have to worry about leaks and more mould every time it rains.

The Roof, the Roof, the Roof is on Fire

Wet, Wet, Wet

Plumbing was fun, with lots of new pipes being installed. And some rather horrible discoveries under the kitchen cupboards, of stuff that the pervious owner (or at least one of them) left behind.

But the progress didn’t stop. More walls, more insulation, even new doors, and a quick inspection from the cat, and we were on our way. Some of the old brick work was exposed now, and whilst it looked pretty cool, it caused problems, breaking the builders tools, and making the plastering difficult.

We even got as far as getting plaster on the walls (inside and out). Although this was a unexpected challenge, becasue depite now having a utility room that was water tight, getting rid of the moisture in the plaster proved tricky. After a few weeks, even with an industrial dehumidifier, there were still a few patches that wouldn’t go, but we had to press on.

Then we had to take a bit of a pause.

Whilst we had found the tiles that we liked, we managed to pick the specific ones that weren’t availble for 6 weeks. And then got delayed for even longer. So for a long time, we couldn’t do anything.

See part 3 for the final stage.

[Check out part 1, if you haven’t read it already.]

The plumber came first on 19th February 2018 and installed three radiators (Hallway, living room and dining room). He also advised us that our boiler is at least 18 years old (because apparently from 2000 all boilers sold had to be condenser boilers – and ours is not that ) and that we are doing well for it to still be working. (Admittedly it’s a bit temperamental – but his comment has allowed us to prioritise the new boiler to be one of the next jobs).

[Aside – As we want our new boiler to be located in the attic, rather than wasting our valuable kitchen space, this is due to be an expensive job. I would rather, however, have this job prioritised and spend the money on doing it at our convenience then having it unexpectedly break and either have a new boiler quickly installed without having it moved, or having one installed and us going without hot water in the meantime.]

He was quick and got all the old radiators off and the new ones on (and copper piping done) in a day, which was handy.

We weren’t sure what order things were going to be done in, but we knew that as well as the radiator/plumbing, we had the plasterer coming and a carpenter to do the window sill, and someone to swap the door around, so we tried to get everything ready. And by chance on the same day as the plumber (and at almost the exact same time) a Virgin Media engineer turned up to move the cable entry point. It was a silly little job, but it meant that we didn’t have leads trailing all over the place, and it made sense to get it done before the plasterer turned up.

One thing were very glad to see the back of was the old window sill. This had rotted and had some weird growth beneath it. We think that at some point there must have been a leak and the wood slowly rotted away. And the attmept to fix this was some to leave it an cover the mould with some decorators caulk.

The plasterer came over just a few days later, again fortunately when we were both off and were attending a cookery course over at River Cottage, so we were able to get everything ready but also didn’t have to sit in the house whilst the work was going on.

Note the Wifi Router protected but in place

Impatient

The plastering was actually one of our biggest problems. Whilst 95% of it was fine, we had a few problems with the rest of it. The problem areas were all of the difficult parts, like around the sockets, pipes, and floor. There were sections that had just been missed around the copper piping, that we had to fill in ourselves, and gaps around the skirting, which although would eventually be covered by the skirting boards, were so uneven that we’d spend many hours trying to make it fit for purpose.

Please mind the gap

All white

Then it snowed.

After that, we got back to painting and decorating.

Starting to come together

Kate’s idea of decorating

But my skills aren’t much better

Although our calculations on the paint were pretty damn accurate

Oh yeah, then it snowed again.

I must admit that writing this makes it seem like as soon as the plaster went on, we got everything painted. But in reality this took fucking ages. For weeks, it was was a case of waking up, going to work, coming home, painting, sleeping, and repeat. It was quite soul destroying.

But eventually, we got there. And in the process we did learn a few thing about decorating, that we put together in a quick guide.

Then we had the carpenter come to put the new window sill in. Some time last year we purchased a load of oak sills ready to go into the windows as and when they were ready. Again, we were keen to see this, having had such horrible sills there before. After about 15 minutes of the carpenter being there, he did notice that the wood we had wasn’t actually going to fit in the window properly. Basically, I had fucked up the measurements and not thought things through properly. But in contrast to the plasterer, the carpenter was fantastic, and was actually able to fix my mistake by using a couple of the other sills that we hadn’t used yet and did a fantastic job.

Although once he had installed the sill, we quickly realsied that the plasterer hadn’t quite been able to plater right up to the edge, so there were some more gaps that we had to fill in.

Now the room was starting to feel like it was nearly there. One last thing (or so we thought), and that was the flooring. Originally we were going to carpet the front room, and have some hard flooring in the dining room, but we wanted to keep the costs down and get things done as soon as we could. We popped over to our local carpet shop (literally around the corner) several times, as we kept trying to get some samples, and eventually got some to try.

We were sensible compared to last time and when for a reasonably priced option that would be quite hard waring.

One problem though; the manufacturers didn’t have any in stock so we had to wait a few extra weeks. As it turns out that would be a good thing.

The last job to do, was the skirting. I was not looking forward to it, but I watched some YouTube videos to see how people did it, and we bought a proper mitre saw (having realised it was cheaper to buy one than rent one for a few days). However, things didn’t go as easily as planned. Despite following the instructions and having faith in trigonometry, the wood didn’t slide together as easily as I had hoped. And thanks to the plasterer, every wall had to have chunks of plaster taken off and sanded down so that the walls were even and straight (or as straight as we could make them).

Even after all of this, the skirting was pretty uneven and a bit of a mess. We hoped that after a bit of sanding and filling, it might be a bit better, but even this was a struggle. I don’t think I even took any photos of the skirting, as I was too stressed trying to get it done. And it took a hell of a lot longer than we’d expected too, so the delayed carpet turned out to be handy. In the last weekend before the carpet fitting, we even got Kate’s parents to come over and help finish of last few jobs, like caulk, sockets, and filling, to try and get everything finished.

After several attempts with the filler, a lot of sanding and several coats of paint, things started to look a bit more normal. All we had to do was remove the frog tape we placed around the skirting to protect the paint on the walls. How bad could that be?

As it turns out, this was not a simple job. And it meant that we had to go back over almost every inch of the wall that had been covered in the tape. And whilst this didn’t take long, we only had 2 days before the carpet was due to be fitted, so had to use all the spare time we had to get it done.
We’re not sure why this happened, or what we should have done to prevent it because we even bough specific ‘low-tack’ tape but it made absolutely no difference.

Thankfully we managed to get those bits covered just in time before the carpet fitters arrived.