Wednesday, 16 April 2008

Update

No photo's this time, but here is what's been happening.

All the floors in both front rooms have been leveled and replaced. Things are moving back towards making the place like a house rather than a building site.

Last night was the saw the first room being plastered. This is real progress, only 2 more rooms and a hallway to plaster. The electrican is also still plugging away (rather slowly).

And now for my first list:

The What's Left To Do List:
-Plaster 2 rooms
-Plumb Kitchen
-Put flooring down in kitchen/backroom
-Lift hallway floor
-Level joist in hallway
-Lay new hallway floor
-Install wood stove
-Install Kitchen
-Relay upstairs carpets
******MOVE IN******

Or something like that.

Oh and I cut the grass for the first time last week too.

Wednesday, 2 April 2008

From Despair to There

From Despair.....

To There...



The biggest job so far has been in the kitchen/back room. Thanks to my wife's genius and vision we decided to knock the kitchen wall down into the back room and create a large L-shaped area that will be the command center.

A simple job in theory, however the kitchen needed to be removed as it was pretty dire. Also the floor was uneven. That would need corrected.

To get the ball rolling Mr Andy, family friend and all-round building legend came over one Saturday morning, put up some big steel poll's (that have a name and are used to hold up ceilings) and knocked the hell out of the wall.

Job done, two rooms become one. Dusty but simple.

Back to that floor. The floor in the back room also had a weird tarmac base. We decided to lift that as we already had to lift the kitchen floor because of the problems with it's levels. Once lifted we found soil, soil and rubble. No bloody wonder we had problems with damp. The solution, DIG, DIG, DIG until we hit clay, then fill it in with stones and damp proof lining.

The Dig For Freedom Campaign

Old man B and my good self broke our backs and dug out the two rooms, it hurt and burnt but it's done.

Since then we have put in the first layer of concrete on floor, put in a new kitchen window and rebuilt the fire place, we will be putting a wood stove in this room. The kitchen has also been purchased, it's waiting for the floors to go in.

It will rock, it will take a good bit of work yet.