The Robin Has Landed!

December 2010

We finally get it all together and move in. 101 jobs still to do but it's warm and dry and mostly working as it should. Below are a few pictures of the many changes since the last post in October. 

Before they fell the leaves turned wonderful colours ....  

and the cladding was finished - all but a bit around the balcony which needs revisiting.....and some leadworkwhere the sloped edge of the roof meets the cladding..... and some guttering.

 

The outside lights went up at the end of November along with the first snow.

A man came from BT to connect a phone line - but he found no telegraph pole close enough. "Shouldn't take long to get a new pole" he said and left.

The next week a new telegraph pole appeared opposite the house, the following week another one appeared up the road. You can just see the impressively big drill bit they use to bore the hole for it above the man's head.  Four weeks and two new poles later he was back and we were finally connected.

It seems there's a different "planning permission" system for telegraph poles. They planted the pole and attached a form saying if you have any objections to the pole write to BT and they'll consider your objection. Seems no-one did, fortunately for us.

Inside the house the pesky cork tiles finally lay flat, we had the kitchen and bathrrom tiled and I moved on to the laminate flooring that covers the ground floor.

 

 After a tricky start it got easier. The floors are far from flat and this made it difficult to interlock the planks. We left the skirtings off so I didn't need to worry about near edges agains the walls which speeded things up.

Then I plucked up courage to tackle the rather expensive oak floor for the sitting room.

I ran speaker wire where it can be concealed later. And shaped the planks to follow the uneven edge of the stone hearth.

After worrying about the variation in timber and spending ages sorting if for grain and  colour we think it looks great!  Dave couldn't wait to start filling the bookcase.  The sitting room started coming together. My desk was positioned to start sewing curtains and a month on there's still lots to sew.  



Elsewhere in the house I finally finished the wardrobe.... it looked really nice empty.

....I tiled the kitchen splashbacks and then gouged the grout back out and re-did it when I realised they looked much nicer with grey grout....

  ..and made a larder - here are the shelves, I'm not saying curves are better but they were more fun and I'm not great at straight lines. Des the carpenter had finally finished and all his wonderful tools left with him. And here's the larder insitu - not quite finished... it measures 1100 by 600mm and fits in a corner of the kitchen. There's a PIR light on the ceiling which switches on when you stick your head in for a look.

 

 

 

 

I put up the kitchen shelves... and we sorted out the cupboard handles after I took this photo... there's a mirror over the sink - it's intentionally directly opposite a window and gives a view up the garden.



   

..still plenty to do inside and out...

  I enjoy the way the light gives many shades of white across the kitchen ceiling, and the way the light changes with the weather and time of day.

The utility room, which shares the same high ceiling as the kitchen has seen some improvement with lots of the pipes and cylinders now hidden behind a curvy bamboo screen. Still plenty to do here too.

The washing dries well on an old fashioned Sheila Maid pulley up under the roof.

I've laid sisal carpet in our bedroom - landing and stairs still half done...



 

 ....Milly the cat is starting to feel at home relaxing on the window sill.

Dave finished (almost) his painting marathon and spent many, many hours cleaning and sorting everything and recycling lots of leftovers.  His work is vital but mostly unseen - apart from the paintwork of course.

Here he is bringing in some firewood, another great job. The garden is much improved by the dusting of snow.

We had a burst pipe - outside fortunately - the insulation had just fallen off - it was simple to repair and I've insulated it properly this time, I hope. With our thick walls there's no heat really emanating from the house to help keep it above freezing and bizarrely the only place to close it off is at the wrong end of the copper pipe - so it's always at risk.

Our man from Building control and Building Warranty man came round and both have signed the building off.  We had to replace a door to the store room with a fire door (fortunately it already had a fire-rated door frame - which implies a bit of confusion on my part) and we upgraded the intumescent strip in the fire door to the garage. Apart from that it seemed we'd done all the right things. It was a relief to get these passed, not least as our mortgage depends on it.

On the 13th December our removal men came and we finally moved in. Stuff everywhere! Too much of it says Dave.

 

Finally home and dry and warm and much still to do.