House: Return of the Updates
Apr. 13th, 2009 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_differenceSo I really haven't sat down and made time to write one of the these in a while, so hopefully I haven't forgotten any key details still at least I have the photos to help prod memory. And if all else fails calling ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
purplegirl23 seems to have worked well :)n (She's at home for a few days).
So here continues the house renovation saga, and yes it is still fun.
This week (7) was a relatively brief renovating weekend, with only a little time spent at the house because we went thelunarkittenlj's surprise party; which shows how long this particular update has been coming. Most of the day was spent looking at lights, and buying the graphite handled hammer of 'I'm not going to lose to nails in walls' (I think it's at least +2). Which was good, because it was exceedingly effective at getting rid of the last bits of the cupboard and the four inch long nails hammered into the stone walls of the house that had previously beaten and bent my first hammer. The surprise party in the evening was lovely of course.
The Sunday well equipped with a crowbar and a couple of other tools I got out the last few nails that had been above where I could safely reach and apply force, so I think I spent time de-nailing the bits of wood in an effort to make them safer to carry around, something I would continue the week after Minami which I write about below.
Week 8 was mostly the week we arrived to find the electrician had started, so all the carpets had been pulled up as had various sections of floor boards, as well as a few places where parts of them had been cut away. A little advice to anyone who may end up renovating a house in future. If you have to put new floor boards in, use screws not nails, because you can at least remove the screws and the floorboards with out damaging them. If you use nails there's no way to avoid damaging them when taking them up.
Having at this point hit a limit to what we can do inside (we only have a couple of temporary power points next to the meter) - and all the inside work we have left to do (pre-decorating) is in the form of steaming of glue, and paint from the ceilings and a couple of bits of the walls, something we need power for. So I spent the time getting rid of the nails from all the wood and faux tiles that had previously been a cupboard and on the walls respectively. Mostly because I'm all for making things safe to carry around, and large pointy rust nails at random angles certainly don't make things safe.
While I was doing this,purplegirl23 was removing the ceiling tiles from the rear toilet connected outhouse bit. I have a feeling we were both done about the same time, though my memory is fuzzy so I could well be wrong about this. And so we moved to the front porch where we proceeded to take turns to remove all the polystyrene ceiling tiles from there too.
So week 9 was mostly about making the most of all the good weather, especially considering how much dust there is inside the house. In the week previous the electrician had come in and begun the process of chopping out the sections of walls for the new wiring, new power points, lights, etc. This creates a lot of stone dust, which gets everywhere. I literally opened the front door to dust falling on my head. The other weird thing is how high all the power points will be especially seeing them as cut out areas from the walls; new regulations mean they have to be about 18 inches of floor level, where as I'm used to them being less than 6.
So with the dust everywherepurplegirl23 and I spent most of our time working outside. First thing first though we had to take the curtains down, as we had just not actually got around to doing it. Not sure why in hindsight, with all the dust we really should have done it sooner. Chances are that means purplegirl23 suggested it sometime earlier, and that I really should have agreed at the time :) Anyway curtains were taken down and then hung out on our washing line to be beaten out of dust then aired.
Curtains dealt with we began the process of digging out the flower bed, which will be expanding our driveway into. Most of the work was spent digging up the plants in order to clear the space so we can dig the trench for the new location of the side wall. We made an effort to replant a few of the bulbs, though I had failed in an early morning organisation attempt so we only had the 1 digging tool. Woops. On the plus side it meantpurplegirl23 could avoid all the worms having reached her ickiness limit after a reasonable amount of time. Anyway the up shot of this is we only tried to save maybe a quarter of the bulbs and didn't even bother with the rooted plants. The rose bush being particularly difficult and thorny to deal with. Still by the end of the day we're cleared maybe 10ish foot of flower bed, stopping when it came to a small tree we weren't equipped to clear, and have so far dug about 1.5 feet of trench, which only means another 15 odd to go. Which I'll do when I next get a weekend with good weather, digging trenches in the rain is never a good idea. Probably should got more done with the good weather this weekend, but it was nice to have a well deserved restful one instead.
This was also the weekend wherepurplegirl23's parents came down and saw the place for the first time. I think they were surprised at how big it was, having only really seen the mostly student places where purplegirl23 is staying. They also had lots of been there, done that sort of comments, because they're renovating the houses they've lived in too. It was nice to show them around the place, and they even offered to come down and help with the renovations in future, though not anything garden based as it's a long way to head back if you're muddy and maybe wet.
Monday meant a meeting with the plumber and all the necessary discussions that needed to happen, hopefully he'll be starting this coming week. Now to see when the gas transport people get back to me about getting the point checked as that will have an affect on the work the plumber will do. I'm hoping it will be soon.
Photos as usual in the normal place.
Anyway this weekend has been a weekend of rest, I really haven't done anything for the house except to travel to Porth with a friend of the family and his van to collect the large table and chairs frompurplegirl23's parents.
I also have a feeling there were no house related things I wanted to write about, but I can't remember what they were currently so I'll leave the theoretical things for an inevitable future update.
purplegirl23 seems to have worked well :)n (She's at home for a few days).So here continues the house renovation saga, and yes it is still fun.
This week (7) was a relatively brief renovating weekend, with only a little time spent at the house because we went the
lunarkittenlj's surprise party; which shows how long this particular update has been coming. Most of the day was spent looking at lights, and buying the graphite handled hammer of 'I'm not going to lose to nails in walls' (I think it's at least +2). Which was good, because it was exceedingly effective at getting rid of the last bits of the cupboard and the four inch long nails hammered into the stone walls of the house that had previously beaten and bent my first hammer. The surprise party in the evening was lovely of course.The Sunday well equipped with a crowbar and a couple of other tools I got out the last few nails that had been above where I could safely reach and apply force, so I think I spent time de-nailing the bits of wood in an effort to make them safer to carry around, something I would continue the week after Minami which I write about below.
Week 8 was mostly the week we arrived to find the electrician had started, so all the carpets had been pulled up as had various sections of floor boards, as well as a few places where parts of them had been cut away. A little advice to anyone who may end up renovating a house in future. If you have to put new floor boards in, use screws not nails, because you can at least remove the screws and the floorboards with out damaging them. If you use nails there's no way to avoid damaging them when taking them up.
Having at this point hit a limit to what we can do inside (we only have a couple of temporary power points next to the meter) - and all the inside work we have left to do (pre-decorating) is in the form of steaming of glue, and paint from the ceilings and a couple of bits of the walls, something we need power for. So I spent the time getting rid of the nails from all the wood and faux tiles that had previously been a cupboard and on the walls respectively. Mostly because I'm all for making things safe to carry around, and large pointy rust nails at random angles certainly don't make things safe.
While I was doing this,
purplegirl23 was removing the ceiling tiles from the rear toilet connected outhouse bit. I have a feeling we were both done about the same time, though my memory is fuzzy so I could well be wrong about this. And so we moved to the front porch where we proceeded to take turns to remove all the polystyrene ceiling tiles from there too.So week 9 was mostly about making the most of all the good weather, especially considering how much dust there is inside the house. In the week previous the electrician had come in and begun the process of chopping out the sections of walls for the new wiring, new power points, lights, etc. This creates a lot of stone dust, which gets everywhere. I literally opened the front door to dust falling on my head. The other weird thing is how high all the power points will be especially seeing them as cut out areas from the walls; new regulations mean they have to be about 18 inches of floor level, where as I'm used to them being less than 6.
So with the dust everywhere
purplegirl23 and I spent most of our time working outside. First thing first though we had to take the curtains down, as we had just not actually got around to doing it. Not sure why in hindsight, with all the dust we really should have done it sooner. Chances are that means purplegirl23 suggested it sometime earlier, and that I really should have agreed at the time :) Anyway curtains were taken down and then hung out on our washing line to be beaten out of dust then aired.Curtains dealt with we began the process of digging out the flower bed, which will be expanding our driveway into. Most of the work was spent digging up the plants in order to clear the space so we can dig the trench for the new location of the side wall. We made an effort to replant a few of the bulbs, though I had failed in an early morning organisation attempt so we only had the 1 digging tool. Woops. On the plus side it meant
purplegirl23 could avoid all the worms having reached her ickiness limit after a reasonable amount of time. Anyway the up shot of this is we only tried to save maybe a quarter of the bulbs and didn't even bother with the rooted plants. The rose bush being particularly difficult and thorny to deal with. Still by the end of the day we're cleared maybe 10ish foot of flower bed, stopping when it came to a small tree we weren't equipped to clear, and have so far dug about 1.5 feet of trench, which only means another 15 odd to go. Which I'll do when I next get a weekend with good weather, digging trenches in the rain is never a good idea. Probably should got more done with the good weather this weekend, but it was nice to have a well deserved restful one instead.This was also the weekend where
purplegirl23's parents came down and saw the place for the first time. I think they were surprised at how big it was, having only really seen the mostly student places where purplegirl23 is staying. They also had lots of been there, done that sort of comments, because they're renovating the houses they've lived in too. It was nice to show them around the place, and they even offered to come down and help with the renovations in future, though not anything garden based as it's a long way to head back if you're muddy and maybe wet.Monday meant a meeting with the plumber and all the necessary discussions that needed to happen, hopefully he'll be starting this coming week. Now to see when the gas transport people get back to me about getting the point checked as that will have an affect on the work the plumber will do. I'm hoping it will be soon.
Photos as usual in the normal place.
Anyway this weekend has been a weekend of rest, I really haven't done anything for the house except to travel to Porth with a friend of the family and his van to collect the large table and chairs from
purplegirl23's parents.I also have a feeling there were no house related things I wanted to write about, but I can't remember what they were currently so I'll leave the theoretical things for an inevitable future update.
