Disaster strikes!

 

It feels like a home, Ok, a shell of a home, but a home, it’s clean (mainly) has walls that look good, Ian is painting the skirting and architrave and fittings we chose are  in. Exciting times! Another delivery brings a big step forward. 

More boxes, this time containing wardrobes! I can hardly believe it. The only room fully ready is bed 2 (no longer the blue room). To ensure a sense of space, we aren’t having wardrobes in our room, they are going in bed 2, and so that’s why they are the first installation. The carcasses are in progress and the day is going well. We’ve done a few more jobs and before we know it, its 4pm and we haven’t yet eaten anything. We decide to just crack on and have an early tea rather than stop now, as we are in full flow with the wardrobes. I have some life admin do to, so we decide we’ll get this bit done, I will head to Agy, sort tea out and do the admin and Ian will fit the doors and shelves, drawers etc. It has been incredibly wet and windy today with rain waves heading down the road outside. Agy was rocking, but all looked good. 

The final carcass is built and in place by about 6pm I head to Agy and it is freezing in there! Now the house is cold, about 16 degrees in the day, but Agy is really cold. Something is wrong, the heating should be on.  I check, we have no electric… a week or so ago we did discover someone had unplugged Agy as they walked home from school and so I presumed someone had done that again, we laughed last time as it wasn’t a problem, but no, She is plugged in. it’s something bigger. I get Ian and we begin investigating. By now, it is about 10 degrees dark and windy on a Sunday night, not the best time to have no electric or heat. There isn’t damp in the van's external socket, which was the most likely problem with the weather today, so it must be something else. Ian ends up contorted in all sorts of strange positions trying to fathom what could be wrong with Agy’s electrics, has something shorted, damp got in, something burnt out? Nothing.  The house electrics just keep tripping whenever we turn it on. Agy is not the problem. So we head to the other end of the cable that is plugged into the garage. The garage sockets trip the electric again, so maybe it is the garage.

I head to a neighbour to see if they have a very long extension lead we can plug into the house through the letterbox to Agy to tide us over. Luckily this neighbour was an electrician, so offers to help if we need it. Back I go with the extension lead, but no, that doesn’t work either! Clearly something is wrong with the house electrics. The lights work, but not the sockets, the moment anything with an earth is plugged in, it trips. This means we have no heating in the van or power in the house, our solar will keep the fridge and lights on in Agy, but it can’t run the electric heating. We have gas heating too, but that uses a lot of gas, and we don’t really want to use it all up as we need that for cooking. Refilling in lockdown isn’t so easy as normal. Ian sends me back to ask for the neighbour’s help.

With no worries about heading out on a very cold Sunday evening in mid November he joins us with testers and a torch and sets about investigating. He tests all the sockets Ian has changed or installed. All perfect, he checks lots of things, but no obvious answer, then suddenly it all works. Nothings has changed, it’s fine, working. We are all perplexed, but Ian and I are very thankful. It may have taken a couple of hours, and we are frozen to the bone and starving, as it is now 8pm, and we still haven’t eaten. Ian and our neighbour agree, it could be damp travelling up a cable, or in one if the garden outside sockets, or it maybe the RCD needs changing as it has tripped a few times and maybe it is just a bit too old and over sensitive, our neighbour is happy to do this with Ian as he knows exactly what he is doing, so Ian gets ordering a new one and we hope it stays on. 

We finally eat our chicken casserole at about 9pm, the wardrobes are built and Agy is warm. Phew!  

Strange days

It’s getting much colder now and the weather has been shocking, wind and rain for days and it’s time to remove the final few radiators and sort out the walls behind them. Great! We are waiting to hear exactly when the plumber will come to fit our new ones, but we need to be ready whenever that is, so we put in some very long days. 

The skirting boards arrive, they are so long we only have one place to put them (the living room), and we need to get them fitted as soon as possible. Now, cutting skirting board is easy with a big saw that does fancy angles as well as straight cuts (working out the correct angle less so) but it produces enormous amounts of dust, I mean it belts out, covering everything. Having removed all the doors, and being a relatively small place, this means there is no escape. Everything is covered in very fine wood dust, which is OK, but it gets everywhere. Add to this, the fact we use the electric sander to sand some of the final wall mess behind the now removed radiators, and sometimes we have a pea soup of a fog in the house. Thank goodness for masks and windy days where is blows out of the window quickly.

Ian gets to work measuring cutting and fitting the skirting and it looks great. You will gather as things progress we both like simple, clean lines, so this is perfect for us, it takes several days, but most of it is in and the dust begins to settle. Everywhere. My hair is now completely stuck together when I take my hair band out, it stays up (ew) and it is far too cold and wet with no heating to wash it, so I pretend it isn’t happening and carry on.

While Ian is doing the skirting, I need to find jobs that mean I can move, stop or get out of the way reasonably quickly, so I have some strange days, I stuff insulation in the cavity of the wall we built. It would have been so much easier to do that as we built it, but we didn’t, so a tiny stick and time gets it full. 

I clean the surround to the light tube that takes hours and decided to paint the bathroom ceiling with undercoat. 

When we got here, the only room that wasn’t yellow and didn’t smell was the bathroom, so we left it. It is the only room in tact and we will replace it later when we have done most of the rest. But, it turns out, having a beautifully non-smelly house and white paint everywhere else, the bathroom does smell and it is yellow! 

The bathroom is a bit odd. There is clearly a very expensive jacuzzi bath, but no amount of cleaning is going to persuade us that the recirculating water through the jets would be clean having seen what the house was like, so that will go, as will the tiles and shower. I have never seen a shower head like it. We think it is something to do with a gas burner, and the plumber said the same, whatever happens that will go. The light tube is cool and helps with a dark(ish) room, so that’s staying, but as I paint it becomes clear how yellow it was. I suppose it’s not a surprise, but it is hard to believe we thought it was white.  

And then, the day comes when the skirting needs painting. Now, we haven’t worried about dust with emulsion, but with satin/gloss, it’s going to be a problem!  The place is full of dust, and all we have is the vacuum that is designed as a dust extractor for power tools, not floors and a brush. So, I set to work, trying to become dust free. Now clearly this is a big step forward we are moving from building site to home, but it takes a lot of swishing with a small nozzle to sort this lot! 

Little things

Sometimes it’s the little things that make you happy. We now seem to see the delivery drivers daily, and the postman is our most frequent visitor. Everyday at least one item arrives, some are just practical – sealant, decorators caulking, bits of wire etc., but some make us very happy. We’ve had a few of these in the last week or so. The ceiling rose in the bedrooms are horrible white (or not!!) plastic, so these get changed to chrome, with a silver fabric flex. A lorry arrives with a pallet full of carpet tiles (we can fit these ourselves and they will look great), the radiators arrive, and our new coat rack is here. 

And then there is this big box. We have been waiting for it for a while. We are both fairly fussy about light fittings, we rarely see ones we like, so as we intend to stay in this home, we were prepared to look hard. They came from Germany, and they are here, this box is the box of smiles for us. 

They may not be to everyone’s taste, but we love them, Ian fits them as soon as they arrive, and we can’t stop smiling! Sometimes it’s the little things that make you happy.

Obviously, between the deliveries there is work to do, electric sockets to remove and wires to secure safely under the floor so the wall can be removed for the patio doors to be fitted. Doors need undercoating, and more window frames need cleaning. 

The thing is with cleaning window frames, is that the solvent is pungent and flammable, so the multitude of paper towels can’t just go in the bin, they can self ignite (so I am told), so they pepper the garden, waiting to become safe enough to bin. The neighbours are very understanding when I explain – they did wonder what we were doing apparently!   

Light at the end of the tunnel

 

We are getting there, we really are. We are exhausted, very sore and getting going in the morning is a slow process as every muscle hurts. We have lost weight, clearly a good thing, but when your shorts nearly fall down (we have limited clothing in the van and it isn't too cold yet!)when walking to the launderette carrying 2 big bags, not so good!

Bed two is painted, and now insulated above the window with special insulating foamy wallpaper, bed one (that nearly broke me with it’s massive damaged wall) is looking good, the living room has paint on it and the hall is almost done with the base layer.

Now, as I have said Ian like things right, and so do I, he is just far more patient and determined than me. Ian is detail, I am big picture – we make a great team. So once we put some paint on (ha, this said pain, not paint when typing, possibly a Freudian slip as I can’t move my head today from neck pain!) we examine the wall in different lights, at different angles, for flaws, bits that need repairing or re filling, sanding and painting. We were doing this last night about 7pm, I was up a ladder putting more undercoat on the living room ceiling where I had missed bits and the tar colour was showing through the top coat; and Ian was spotting the bits that needed doing there, and on the walls, Ian asks “do you think other people go around drawing pencil marks on their new paintwork so they can try and make it better?” I think most people probably just go with whatever it is like having got this far, but I don’t really know. So, do you? If decorating, do you do the pencilled circle of doom? More filling, sanding then painting? We know these walls will never be perfect, but they will be the best they can be with what we have to work with.

To break up the repetitive movements, we mix in other jobs. The wall that we built in the kitchen needed rendering on the outside, so we (I say we, but mean Ian) did that. He’s never done it before, and I think it looks pretty good! It’s going to be painted, but for a first time, it looks great.

The other job that needed doing was fitting the new door furniture. We decided we could keep the doors if we sand, fill the holes and paint them, but they needed new furniture, so Ian has been doing that. Of course, the holes for the catches are a different size and shape, but he did it reasonably quickly on the 2 bedroom doors and new surrounds (jams?) we made, so they fit snugly. And then it was onto the bathroom door.

Now we have a story about bathroom door locks, and it make me smile every time I think about it. We have a friend, an amazing woman who inspires me to be a better person. She is funny, thoughtful, intelligent, has the grace of a dancer, is married to an amazing man, and can be a little bit how can I say it? A bit ditzy. When ‘friends coming for dinner’ was a thing we were allowed to do, many moons ago, that’s what we did. Our friends came for dinner, we ate good food, drank good wine (possibly too much good wine), the music was loud and we were singing along at full volume. A fabulous evening. At one point our fabulous friend, who was more than a little tipsy went to the loo, unfortunately Ian and I, along with her fun filled husband didn’t notice she hadn’t come back, we were too busy singing and dancing. After a fair while she appeared, clearly flustered with the sheared bathroom lock in her hand! Turns out this ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ woman has the strength of an ox, when stuck in the loo, while we merrily ignore her calls for help. Shamefully we laughed, but couldn’t understand how she could possibly be locked in. Turns out, if you push not pulled the door, it opened no problem. I’m just warning you now, it took Ian 2 days on and off, to fit the bathroom door lock as it needed chiselling out, the lock didn’t fit right and it wasn’t easy. So, when you come to visit, and we very much hope you will fabulous friend, the door opens inwards. We love you so much, but I don’t think Ian could face fitting a new lock.

When 2 become 1

 

Now, if you know Ian, you will know he likes things done right, he isn’t one for it’ll be OK, so when we find a squeaky or uneven, or dodgy floor board, up it comes. It’s sorted out and back it goes. It sounds so simple doesn’t it? Oh no, not here. The delight in creating holes in the walls has had a direct correlation to the number of nails and screws in each board. Oh so many! Many clearly original, old, temperamental, degraded so you can’t see them, but somehow with a vice like grip.

We huff and puff in our house of straw, but eventually they come up, we find the place the mains electric comes into the house, we find old wires, all the plumbing, the place where the joists meet mid house and we pin them all down. Woe betide (I can only hear this phrase in Billy Connolly’s voice… have you heard that one? I can’t help but laugh at most of his stories)_anyone who steps on a floorboard and it squeaks when you visit! We also make a new floorboard as for some reason, exactly where we hope to have new patio doors, someone fitted a tiny thin bit of floorboard where the radiator was, meaning walking on it would be very dodgy – so 2 become 1. Go on sing it with me, a fan or not, you know it, I know you do!

And now lockdown 2 has finally been announced. Best get ordering supplies to keep us going! Day to day it won’t change much for us, we are here except for essential trips out for the launderette and pharmacy and our shopping is delivered, so as long as we can still get supplies, we should be OK. Oh and we keep on painting to cover the blue, purple, peach, yellow......

We’ve also had a visit from the plumber who will connect all our new radiators up and move the one in the living room (more work for us to do to prepare for him as we are pepping it all). We will need to have finished decorating behind the radiators before he comes, which will mean removing them all in the chilly weather, so we need to have finished the sanding and filling, fitted skirting boards and painted them before he comes in about 2 weeks! Luckily, he can still work in lockdown, especially as we can easily vacate the house while he works. The surveyor from the patio door company also agrees to still come on day 1 of lockdown to measure up for our new doors.

We’ve had to change lots of plans since actually getting here as the house has thrown up a few surprises, and to be honest, we are just going with whatever is practical and what we like. We want it to be the best it can be, absolutely fit our style, but if we can’t have our first choice, so be it, no point in moaning, so the flooring and skirting will be different to the one we hoped for, the patio door will be different, the kitchen will be different, as will the bathroom, but we have now planned out most of them, ordered many of the supplies and await deliveries – some come quickly, other won’t! There’s pros and con’s to that. We don’t have much storage space, so things coming before we are ready to fit them is a challenge, things being very delayed means we can’t move in. However, what will be will be!

When will it end?

It turns out I was optimistic, there is no end in sight to the sanding and filling… we keep spotting dents, bumps, plug sockets that need filler. I know it has often been said that you can’t have enough plug sockets, but you can. We have huge numbers. One tiny room (the blue room/ bed 2) has, 8 double sockets! When each one needs filling around, sanding and replacing you can have too many! However the bathroom has no power at all, so that will need putting in when we eventually get to that point – very odd.

So we continue to sand and fill. I’m despondent to be honest, it’s hard work, my hands are actually red raw from sandpaper and I have no finger prints left, my phone doesn’t know who I am and I am praying I don’t need a fingerprint log in on any apps.

 I have a jolly good cry, Ian works his magic and talks me round to it being OK and we continue. Ian is in the same state, he just doesn’t cry about it. Maybe it is a toasty in the warm conservatory, listening to the birds on a very cold sunny day that perks us up. This is going to be a beautiful place to live, eventually.

To do something different, I decide to sand the lintel that is in the blue room to remove several layers of paint. It’s teak we think and is visible in the room. It is beautiful wood and we would have loved to keep it on show, but sadly someone has kept up the theme of drilling holes in everything (why would you drill holes in a lintel?) so it needs filling and sanding. This is one for the electric sander, rather than doing it by hand like the walls, so has a different impact on me. This one gives me conjunctivitis! Marvellous!  Ok, so I should have had my goggles on (they went on fairly quickly, but not soon enough). 

Meanwhile, Ian starts to tackle the Artex on the kitchen ceiling, but before he starts, it needs loads of work to remove old paint that is coming off, work to stabilise it as it’s a bit dodgy, and generally preparing, so takes a day of prep before the dabbing begins.

Each job seems small on the daily to do list, but it takes forever and we are both now very tired. But, having done this sort of thing (decorating, not major renovation) before, Ian says, we need to get some paint on the walls so we can see the problem areas better. Hurrah! A different job, so paint we do. First bed 1, then bed 2. I concede, they can no longer be the blue and purple room, although after the first coat, you can still see plenty of colour.  I said in a previous blog ‘it’s going to be all white’, and it is!