New Roof

Second Floor Bedrooms

Second Floor Landing

The inevitable low(s)

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later! We hadn't had a bill from the builder for 8 weeks and what a shocker it turned out to be... almost all of our budget and we are not nearly finished! That was just over a week ago, we've just about got over the shock and are trying to come up with a solution to fund the rest of the project. Anyone want to buy a child?

The main roof is now complete and the roofers are finishing off the smaller roof at the rear. The velux windows are great, especially the one above the landing. We personally didn't achieve a great deal at the weekend, we were both exhausted and demoralised from worrying about additional funding. As soon as we have detailed costs we can arrange additional borrowing - just hope the interest rates don't increase too much!

Progress

The roof is coming off today and plastering has started downstairs. I'll take some photos at the next possible opportunity, we should se esome vast improvements over the next few weeks.

Mulching Schmulching

It's been a couple of hectic weeks. The was away for 2 weeks, leaving his very capable and lovely son to manage the job. Rob was finishing off rebuilding the front of
the house, only to find he'd managed to put the window back off centre!! Rob has now put it back to its correct postion and has promised me he will start plastering next week.
The plumbers have completed first fix. We were having a few problems with mains pressure but Severn Trent water are going to replace the lead mains pipe in the street to a wider one. The builders will also have to dig up the drive to lay a new feed from the street to the house (hopefully this Saturday).

All the render has now been removed from the side wall. Its been acid cleaned and is back to its original red brick state and looks great. I'm thinking I'll have a go at repointing whilst the scaffolding is still in place!

The Spouse and I have been busy: I've been stripping and sanding the exterior stone work in preparation for decoration. Balancing on the scaffolding has been quite hairy at times, but managed not to fall off. The Spouse has been going over all the interior walls removing any final scraps of wallpaper in preparation for plastering.

Thanks to Fox who has been helping out in the garden, he's cleared most of the flower beds and getting rid of loads of crap that was left behind. It's starting to resemble a real garden!

Last weekend was a joy; Ben (The Spouse's Brother-in_law) arrived with his chain saw to chop down the 8 leylandii that were an eyesore and too close to the house for my liking. I'd like to say it went smoothly, well it did in terms of no one lost any limbs. But it was a bit hair-raising at times. The Spouse ended up holding a rope that was tied to a large tree which desperately wanted to fall into the neighbour's garden. Ben and Fox narrowly diverted a potential disaster by coming to his rescue. We were gutted to find two very stunned baby birds and their nest in the debris, but we helped them to safety and haven't seen them since. After a full day of cutting down trees the chainsaw blade became blunt and we had to stop. Ben is returning on saturday to finish the job. We are also hiring a mulching machine to dispose of the waste responsibly. (If anyone wants weed free mulch for your flower beds you can come and collect this saturday between 11am - 4pm).