More updates!

So many updates, so little time!

• Our immersion heater has died, and our boiler is still not working. So we don't have any hot water :( Our kettle is boiling over time!
• We now have a (mostly) functional cooker. The oven has always worked, although it doesn't seem to cook at the right temperature and the fan at the back is very noisy. The two maybe related. The rings are gas powered, and until recently weren't connected. We were on our last canister of gas when the gas man came back to put the cooker on. We now have three rings out of five, and the other two should just need a bit of a clean with a wire brush. At least we can now use gas to heat the water.
• We've booked the gas company to come and swap out the old pre-paid gas meter for a normal meter. The electric meter is already a normal meter. Why would anyone want a pre-paid meter except in a rented house?
• Next we want to move the electricity meter so it's in a much more convenient place.
• The TV unit is almost finished and even though I say so myself, I'm very proud. It's a dream given form! All I've got to do is put the doors on and all the messy computers, broadband kit and TV will be hidden from view. Pictures to follow!
• We've fitted dimmer switches in the living room and bedroom
• The bedroom, living room and kitchen now have black metal chandeliers - which came out of the shop when Melody shut.

I feel like we're really making head way, but we've got a long way to go. I feel like I can relax after a hard day at the hospital without having to worry so much about the state of the place!

Sheds

So we had some friends over yesterday to try and put up the shed (which is only 12ft by 8 - my bad). We're putting it up on pylons to prevent damp from collecting underneath. What I didn't realise is that the back of the vegetable patch where we're putting the shed, is about a foot higher at the back than it is at the front. So we've got substantially more paving slabs at the front than at the back. And at near £2 a pop, that's rather expensive. And we're now going to have to build steps to get into the shed :( We took so long getting the base level that it got dark before we could put the sides and the roof on. At least now the parts of the shed aren't going to kill the grass - we've stacked the parts on base out of the way. That's going to have to wait for another day.

Broadband

YAY! We've got broadband at the house AT LAST!

Too much stuff!

A bit of a frustrating day yesterday for Melody. She wanted to put more time into the kitchen to try and finish up some more of the decorative facias and so on, but couldn't find any of the door handles. She's spent half of this morning clearing out the cupboard under the stairs looking for them. At least it meant when I got home last night there was a lot more space in the living room as she'd gone through many boxes looking for them, and putting things away as she went. It didn't feel quite like we had the sofas on one side and a wall of boxes on the other with a narrow walk way between to get through to the kitchen.

We put up the other chandelier in the kitchen last night. It's the same as the one in the living room - black metal, which goes very well with the black floor and black worktops. Hmm - do we have a thing for black or what? The only problem with the chandeliers are they give off a phenominal amount of light. We're going to have to use up lighters in the corners of the room if we want to use energy saving lightbulbs, or be wreckless with the environment and install dimmer switches. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if you can get two-way dimmer switches.

Updates galore revisited

Melody had a productive day yesterday and achieved the impossible! The cupboards on the walls in kitchen are now all square. Today she will probably be hanging the remaining doors. Then all we have to do is add the cornices and fascias and we'll almost be done. The end of the kitchen project is in sight! Jobs left to do:

• Re-jig the pipework behind the washing machine, as it's currently pointing in the wrong direction, causing the washing machine to stick out into the kitchen.


• Tile in front of and around the washing machine


• Add the fascias and cornices, and sealant to the bottom of the kitchen units


• Tile round the back of the kitchen units


• Put up the cooker hood

But at least at the moment we can put away all the plates and cups without getting brick dust and plaster all over them :) We need to get the gas man back in to re-connect the cooker and test it is working, as the camping stove we're using is running out of gas, and we're finding it more than a little frustrating cooking on just the one ring.

I've got the lads coming over on Saturday to help put up the enormous garden shed my parents gave me. 12ft by 14ft should give me quite a lot of space to store all the stuff associated with hobbies, and still give me some space to do woodworking etc. It is going to take quite a chunk out of the vegetable patch though, so I can see us extending the vegetable patch to reclaim some of that lost space. At some point I want to put a greenhouse in, which is going to lose yet more space either to the garden, or the veggie patch. It would be helpful to have the two close together so they can share the guttering for the waterbutt.

Updates galore

I've not posted in nearly two weeks now as we've not got 'net access at the new house - how have we survived? So many updates, I keep on having to go back to see what I've already written about.


When you buy a repossession house, first thing you should do is change your telephone number! It's taken two weeks to get the number changed, and during that change over time most Internet Service Providers won't touch you with a barge pole. We've had to change the number as we're still getting phone calls from aggressive debt collection agencies for the previous owners, and we're just not interested! We don't have contact details for them, and frankly we don't want them either.


I've had two weeks off work to do all the DIY, but it's wrecked my hands. I can barely feel anything at the moment with either index finger, and the skin is so dry the industrial strength skill moisturiser I use at work just soaks in - which is unusual as I normally need to wipe a fine layer off my hands. Lesson learnt: Wear thicker gloves, not just the latex ones!


What else has been going on? Well:

• The ground level kitchen units are down. The doors and facials are on most of the kitchen units, although a little more work is needed on the cupboard that houses the dishwasher
• The work tops are on the kitchen units - which was nerve wracking (more below)
• The floor in the kitchen is mostly tiled. There's a couple of extra bits to do and then it needs grouting. It's mostly square, although there are a couple which are on the pi$$ a bit.
• We've discovered the walls aren't in anyway shape or form square. This is particularly difficult when you're trying to hang cupboards on them. Currently all none of the cupboards are level in both directs - there are big steps. We might have to take them off the wall again, bolt them together and then but them back. Hmmmm - not sure that's going to work either :(

Lessons learned:

When you buy waste pipes, and attempt to fit them using 'solvent welding', make sure you use pipes that are designed for it - it won't work otherwise! Solvent welding is a quick, cheap and easy way of getting waste pipes to fit. You apply a very smelly solvent to the surfaces that you need to join and then push them together. After a few minutes the solvent will have evaporated leaving a water tight seal (in theory). But only if you buy pipe which is compatible with solvent welding. Without realising the differences, I had bought the type of pipe you can't solvent weld, and then wondered why it wasn't working. Fortunately you can buy push fit joints as well, which are quite difficult to use - much harder than solvent welding. So if you can stand the smell of the solvent - buy the solvent, pipes and joints. You can also buy compression joints, which are very easy to use but cost 3 or 4 times as much.

Worktops

So when the £450 bill for your worktop arrives (or more - it's a very expensive piece of your kitchen), you think great - a major part of your kitchen arrives. Then it slowly dawns on you that you've got to cut great big chunks out of it. One corner of the kitchen has a support pillar running through it, and of course there's the kitchen sink to cut too. I did the corner cut first, and spent over 2 hours doing some templates to try and do the cut right. In the end, it came out ok, but it's lucky we're tiling and putting some sealant round that corner as the wall's crooked. (No surprise here).

Then there's the sink. The template that came with the sink didn't match the sink we'd bought. So it was kinda lucky my Father insisted we measure up the sink to make sure! And make sure you have enough play on the flexy hoses coming out of the water system to go into your nice new taps. I suspect we'd have had problems even if I had put enough copper pipe in, as I wouldn't have been able to reach up past the sink. I ended up adding an extra bit of flexy pipe onto the plumbing so we had enough maneuverability. All in all, not a terrible job, though a professional would have had it done twice as quick and probably wouldn't have such a large gap down the back of the worktop. Still, we can correct most of that when we tile the splashback - when we finally get round to it!

The bedroom is mostly sorted out - realistically we just need to put up the curtain pole and we're all done in there. YAY!

I've spent a few days putting floorboards in the loft. At approximately £5/square metre, they are not cheap. But it's all down now - just in time for Melody to shut her shop and move all the remaining stock up there.

More updates soon!