Feeling Frustrated
It's all a bit much at the moment, things aren't happening fast enough for me and things keep on happening to add to my frustration, let me tell you of a few.
I filled the skip (see pic) phoned them to come and collect it before the damp specialists came, they said Monday, it is now Wednesday the damp people are here but alas the skip guys are still giving me excuses as to why the skip is still in my front garden. We have moles. The nice freshly mowed lawn that I have just got back to a reasonable length, I have mowed and mowed and raked and the grass is just turning green from a nice straw colour and a load of mole hills have suddenly appeared. Only in my garden not either neighbor's but mine! I have paid the £227.00 that is required for the National grid to connect the gas but they inform me that they have 21 days to let me know when they will be coming to lay the pipe! (that is it- I have to dig the trench they are just connecting the pipe! £227.00!!!) and even then it could be up to 7 weeks wait!
As you can probably tell a massive WOOOsaaaar is needed here I think I need to take a step back and get a reality check.
We have a really nice house.
We have a really nice garden.
We at last live in the country.
We have nice neighbor's.
maybe that's why I'm so frustrated - I just want to be living there already! :)
The Front Garden
Just thought i would post these pics- there are still a number of root balls to dig up!!- any offers???! hahahah
We have tried to transplant most of the shrubs to the back garden. I am glad of the rain today actually!
The skip dwarfs our house!
Demolition over, we can now start building!!!!
So here are the pics of our lounge after the destruction has finished. You can see from the fireplace that there was 4-5 inches of concrete on top of the screed that you can see exposed!- hardcore (literally!!)
There used to be a wall across the middle of the room and as you can see in the photo the floor the other side of the "wall" was origional!, we are down to mud!! (and have even found the odd victorian drain!)
Next steps are; 1. to get the damp treated on Wed (28th June) 2. get the walls re-plastered 3. Get the fireplace repaired including laying a red brick hearth 4. Re-point the exposed wall and seal. 5. Install the heating 6. Lay the wooden floor.
So we have our work cut out for us and it feels like a long way off but I'm sure once we get our teeth stuck in it will happen in no time at all!
Destruction!!
So here you can see the chimney exposed, one of the walls completely exposed and my dad with his legs exposed!!- and wielding a massive 10kg road breaker! (that I tried wield but couldn't!)
It was really hard work standing there watching him smash our beautifull tile floor up- no really it was, honest!
You can see from the other photo where I have started to strip the plaster off of the walls- this is so that they can breathe and so that the damp people
can inject the damp proof into the wall- its very clever they drill the bottom of the wall every 20cm and then inject this stuff that then seeps across and forms a new damp course!- very clever!
The plaster is a real pain to get off- I didn't wear gloves and every time the bolster slipped I grazed my knuckles on the wall!- I bled alot. Its all for a good cause though! ;)
Our Main Living Space
Here is our new lounge- well actually its almost the entire downstairs of the house!!- behind is an open plan kitchen (where the photo is being taken from) then through a door is a tiny lobby then a bathroom!
Although it looks very clean, if you look carefully on the photo bottom left you can see how wet the wall is! This is caused by rising damp- apparently the house used to have a nice wooden floor, which allowed the room to breathe but alas some idiot filled it with concrete so the damp rises hits the floor then seeps across and then up the walls! et voila rising damp!
Since taking this photo we have been busy- the wall on the right now has no plaster at all, it looks great, red bricks! The floor has been smashed up and is now in pieces (we needed to hire a road breaker to do it- the neighbor's loved us!), the plaster on all of the other walls has had to be chipped away 90cm high (which was really hard!) and we have stripped the fireplace back to the original Victorian red brick fire!- also looks amazing!
So we have been busy, I will post photo's of all the work soon.
I have found it a bit weird doing this house as in the photo it was clean and tidy but we have made such a mess!!- it feels as though we have to take 10 steps back before we can move forward!! It's all good though.
The Jungle
So then first thing first, we thought we should tame the garden as soon as possible- here is a photo of laura in one of three sections of our new "jungle"
- we strimmed and strimmed and mowed and mowed and fought with stinging nettles and cow parsley but alas we have tamed the beast!
The Beginning...
My wife Laura and I have recently purchased an 1892 Victorian mid terraced property which is in need of some serious TLC. This blog is where we are going to document our progress/ in-experience in property development.
Enjoy ;)
