Clad all over...

After the 'Phew What A Scorcher' of last week we had three more blisteringly hot days - BOB registered the temperature on the new patio at 44 degrees. That's HOT. And then on Friday we had a Force 8 gale and I had four layers on...

On Monday we had nearly a full complement of builders - two plasterers, a stonemason, a labourer, BOB, two carpenters, an electrician and two Aga engineers. This was mostly because The Other Job (remember: there's always Another Job) had come to a grinding halt. It's a listed building and extensive woodworm has been discovered so all the internal woodwork has to be removed. BOB is waiting for formal written confirmation from the Listing Officer (or whatever it is) before he starts to be totally sure they've got approval. Thank goodness for woodworm and bureaucracy, eh?

So, we really did have the Aga put in on one of the hottest days of the year. Genius. It was duly turned on, then turned off again. Not actually because of the heat, but more because (a) there's no electricity yet and (b) we need to cover it to protect it from paint and plaster.

We started with this:

Went through this:

And got this:

Before covering it up to this:

It is utterly GORGEOUS. We already love it. We will love it even more when it's turned on...

Meanwhile, the plasterers cracked on through the rest of downstairs. We are now completely plastered, except for a final coat on the fireplace. The downstairs looks HUGE. We're not quite sure what we're going to do with all the space. Roller blading??

The carpenters cracked on with external cladding - from this:

To this:

Yes, it would look better without the external oil boiler in the way. That will be plumbed in on Monday.

The Music Room is nearly clad too - all except for the really fiddly top bits.

Guy and I have played our part this week, acid cleaning and rinsing all of the external oak. It has taken AGES. On Thursday alone we worked out we did nearly 10 hours of acid cleaning. This after BOB had said 'why not keep it natural' and we'd pointed out the footprint on a rafter...

We had a chat with the decorator who came back on Thursday and speedily mist coated everything before saying that the oak should have been done before the decorating started. Helpful. He said he liked the natural look and, yet again, we pointed out the footprint on the rafter...

That's Guy up a ladder rinsing the oak. By the way, what's with masking tape?? You put it on, you do what you have to and you peel it off, right? Oh no, no, no... You put it on, you PLASTER all over it, you then have to slice it with a Stanley knife, and THEN you peel it off. Good grief - what a palaver. Bit rough on the hands too - after the acid rinsing (yes I did wear gloves) and the masking tape peeling, my hands are now a weird shade of grey. And I thought they were just nicely tanned...

We also got slabbed. That's a proper building term...

Our little patio table and chairs are going to look slightly lost, right? Oh, OK then, we may just HAVE to buy one of those huge gas barbecue things. Except we don't really barbecue... And we have an Aga... Anyone got any other ideas?

We have declared war on the bloody rabbits. Our lovely new bed on top of the wall has become, basically, the salad bar at a Harvester for rabbits. So... not only have we put fishing line round it on little metal hooks (excellent tip from Sian's gardening friend - thank you!) but also put a sign up to deter them.

Yes, of course it will work. Because we are sooooo sure it will work, there's another one on the veg patch gate:

The signs were a housewarming present from Richard and Sue in the village - I have NO idea how he managed to get these, but they are just BRILLIANT! And they will work, I have no doubt...

On Wednesday, just because there wasn't enough going on, we picked up Ruby and Wooster, our two new cats - they're mum and son. Wooster is so-called because when we first met him he was a proper wimp so I wanted to call him Wuss The Puss. It got slightly upgraded to Wooster. He is now a proper brave little chap whose major passion seems to be climbing trees. And chasing wine corks. I don't know how we found one for him to play with - I mean, it's not like we have a drink of an evening, is it?

After three days, Wooster and Izzy will eat out of the same bowl and cwtch up together but Ruby (mum) still wants to be on her own. She is, however, recovering not very quickly from being spayed so she's allowed to be a bit huffy, bless her...

Purchases Of The Week:

The cat house - it's a bit small, but it's temporary. We'll be selling it after we move in - if you fancy a chicken coop cum cat run cum rabbit hutch at the end of July, let us know.
Two cats - from a charity, to go in the cat house. Obvs.
3 bags of cement, an in-patio manhole cover, and a Y drainpipe junction. Guy is now on first name times at the local Robert Price.
Plants - thyme, hardy geraniums and chamomile. They're all rabbit proof. Oh yes they are.
36 bottles of water for the builders. It was the least we could do - I mean, we didn't want them fainting or anything, did we?

Un-Purchases Of The Week:

Beehives. Having ordered two beehives in early MARCH, the bloody company cancelled our order once without us knowing, never refunded that money, said a second order (mid May) would take 10 days, didn't deliver and wouldn't respond to emails or phone calls. Guy lost patience (and that's saying something), spoke to an actual human at PayPal (remarkably difficult) and had a full refund for both orders within 4 hours. Which means we have the money back but no beehives. The company are Leeway Woodworking from Surrey, they sell through Amazon and Ebay. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Plumbs Upholstery. After the ridiculous saga of them losing half our sofa, they had the nerve to demand the full balance of payment. I sent a rather weary letter explaining everything (again) and along the lines of 'do you seriously expect us to pay the whole bill?' They offered a £250 discount which we accepted. Still a crap service, still wouldn't use them again but, as a major supermarket says, every little helps. I won't now be posting my 'already worded in my head' vitriolic review on TrustPilot, but mainly because I really can't be bothered, not because I think they've put things right. Avoid? Oh yes...

Phew what a scorcher!

This weekend has been HOT. We have been cleaning the external oak with boiling acid, an excellent job to do in hot weather. Followed by oiling the same oak. We are now mostly sticky... However, let's go back a bit...

Last weekend was mostly spent worrying about timescales. When we'd spoken to BOB on the Friday he thought we could be in 'by 17th July'. Quite where he got that date from, we don't know, but we were supposed to have been in by the end of May... Somehow in the last 8 weeks the schedule has slipped by 6 weeks. We rattled his cage a bit and suddenly were promised more plasterers and a speeding up of the process.

On Monday we had to decide whether to give a month's notice on Tuesday... We really didn't know what to do - pay for yet another month, or go for it? We were helped in our decision by the floor chap who turned up to test for damp on the concrete base. It's at 4%. Which, apparently, is OK. We're aiming for 0% and he reckons we'll be there in a few weeks. We talk timescales and agree Monday 10th July for installation of the floor, which will take about 5 days. Which means we will, as BOB said, be moving in on 17th July.

On Monday we had the roofer working on the chimney skirt thing - it's finished!

We also had the painter wanting to paint the outside. We said we'd rather have the inside done and he suggested he went somewhere else for the week. NOOOOOO - please don't leave, just paint whatever you like... He stayed. The plasterers (who are now on another job) came back to put more render on the kitchen wall (which is meant to be plastered, dried AND painted by next Monday) and we opened lots of windows...

On Tuesday we gave notice to the rental agents - we move in on July 17th, and out of the rental on July 20th. WOO HOO!

There was nobody - and we do mean NOBODY - on site. Seriously. Apart from us - we moved bicycles into the barn and opened lots of windows... We did, however, have a chat with the joiner who is making the bathroom cabinet and the kitchen. We had been waiting for a price for 3 weeks... I had rattled his cage on Monday too, so at 7am we had the quote, by 7.30am we'd agreed a timescale - cabinet by the end of next week, kitchen before the floor goes down. WOO HOO.

On Wednesday we were swarming with bodies again - plumber, two joiners, two brickies and BOB. Sills were put on the music room ends, the steps carried on out the back (again, not the band) and Guy and I put yet more oil on the oak to stop it turning black. We got internal doors downstairs...

and the utility room worktop and sink - PROGRESS!

[Note: There is a gap that needs filling in the worktop, and the sink isn't actually fixed yet. We're just pretending that it's nearly there.]

The rear steps got finished too - hooray!

And on Friday we were just back to plasterers... sigh.

At the weekend we washed oak with boiling acid, oiled the same oak a bit later, shifted more stuff into the barn and watered everything. We also decided to pretend we could actually live there, and moved the builders' plastic table and chairs down to the patio. Or what will be the patio when the slabs get put down.

Saturday's lunch was a bit rustic:

Although enlivened considerably by the arrival of some friends from the village who brought ice lollies with them - how fab is that?!

On Sunday we got a bit posh and had plates:

The weather is set to be scorching for the week ahead. So, what's a sensible job to do tomorrow, probably the hottest day of the year?

We're having the Aga put in.

Genius.

Dear Diary...

I may have given a slightly false impression of the cleanliness of the site last week. This picture makes it all look rather lovely:

But down below it's rather more like this...

Because each week is now more bonkers than the last, this week I've been writing the blog each evening. Which makes it rather an epic blog - sorry! Next week I'll go back to just remembering... (Or 'forgetting' as it's sometimes known).

Monday

It rained. And rained. And rained. So what's the best thing to do? Yep - work outside on the landscaping. No kidding. Most of the builders (apart from three carpenters, the decorator and the plasterer) were outside, so Guy and I were too. We were looking at walls, steps, stones, drains - you name it, we looked at it. And we got WET. Soooooo wet. Apart from the time we spent driving to Black Mountain Quarries to pick up the slate for the hearth. And we sheltered indoors and made a cardboard template for the cutting. We got door handles and locks for the front and back doors, and the curved wall was plastered too. Painting galloped on upstairs and it looks gorgeous - the rooms look bigger again (hooray).

The fire pit flooded...

Tuesday

The utility room started to go in,

Rendering started on the wall that will be behind the Aga (that very festive silver stuff is the ducting for the extractor fan which we still don't want but which is required to get the cottage past the building inspector. We're thinking of keeping it for Christmas.)

The chimney was worked on from the outside (it's going to have tiled 'hips') and steps appeared outside.

The painter started on the en-suite - it's FABULOUS! We've been brave with the colour, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

Stone steps went on outside the front and back door, and outside the music room doors.

We also made four madeira cakes - one of the builders has a daughter who has her first birthday this weekend... he found out we made cakes and put in his request. It feels weird to be doing a cake whilst building a house. As long as we don't get the plaster and icing mixed up it will be fine... We're pretty tired - Guy fell asleep in front of the England cricket match and I went to bed in daylight.

Wednesday

We gain radiators in the bedrooms, more painting carries on upstairs, edges of doorways get plastered (this is Important - they're all being rounded to keep the cottage feeling as old as it really is), we get most of a utility room, the hips thing on the chimney and steps at the back. Except nobody has told the chap building the steps what they're meant to look like, so when we join him on Step 2, there is a bit of a discussion and then he unpicks Step 2, rebuilds Step 1 and doesn't even swear. The second version looks MUCH better, and we're all happy. Well, apart from the poor chap building the steps, although he remains remarkably good-humoured. Oh, and we get the power moved from the outside loo back towards the house. Or, at least, we get the power cable moved from inside the outside loo to inside the house. We have no electrician on site, so there is no power connected for the afternoon. It is weirdly quiet on site - lots of people, just no power tools.

We carry on with the cake but we're (a) out of practice and (b) knackered. It looks terrible... Hopefully we can cover it in flowers. Or something.

Thursday

It's an early start as IKEA have said they'll deliver the worktops between 7am and 11am... Before leaving the rental I notice that one of the tiers of the cake has developed Elephant Man Syndrome - a huge great lump full of air on one side of the cake. I stick a pin in it several times and then it goes wrinkly. Oh dear. I give up and drive to the cottage. Guy has a text saying IKEA will deliver between 9 and 10, but on the plus side, our electrician had also said 7am works for him, so I had to be there anyway. By 9am we have power into the house into another temporary socket board.

There's a shower cubicle, loo and teensy weensy basin in the teensy weensy en-suite - it looks alright! We still wish the shower cubicle had had a sloping panel, but that wasn't available with the height restriction. Bespoke doesn't mean bespoke when it's shower cubicles. We forgot to take a photo...

Steps carry on outside. No, not the pop group (that would have been hilarious!), but the steps at the back of the house, and also everything else gets flattened ready for patio slabs. Guttering goes up, and so do battens to take the oak cladding. Sadly the lad doing the oak cladding seems to be allergic to rain, so goes home at lunchtime. The rest of us get soaked. Again. Having been on site at 7, I leave at about 10 to go and fix the cake. I re-ice both tiers and it looks better. It will do.

An Aga engineer visits to check that we're ready for installation A WEEK ON MONDAY WOO HOO and apart from an issue with the flue (it's going to be hard to make it look pretty) it all seems to be ok. We ask the very patient plasterer to knock out yet another hole in the wall and pull the flue over to the left. He does so with good grace and further patience, bless him.

Worktops arrive for the utility room and Guy and I empty crap into the skip - we can't be much use on site, but tidying up is rapidly becoming our forte.

In the evening we make the cake presentable...

We also watch telly, with me picking lumps of icing out of my hair. It makes a change from cement...

Friday

Well, that was an odd day. We had the plasterer and the painter on site. There were meant to be a lot of other things happening, so here's a list of how it all went:

1. Carpenter on site to do oak cladding on external walls - didn't show up.
2. Builder arriving to collect his cake. Well, yes, but not till 8pm... 
3. Roofer on site to finish chimney roof bit - didn't show up.
4. Bloke from joinery company to put damp meter on concrete floor - didn't show up.
5. Fencing people to put new gate posts in at back of house - we thought they weren't going to show up then they phoned at 5, were with us by 5.30 and job done by 6pm...
6. Blacksmith to measure up for curtain poles and stair handrail. He turned up!
7. Beehives should have arrived by now. In fact three weeks ago. No beehives yet and they won't answer their phone.
8. Electricity to the barn re-connected to the house. Electrician didn't show up. Our normal electrician is on holiday this week - hopefully next week when he's back it will get sorted.
9. Nice new empty skip to be delivered. Didn't get delivered.

The blacksmith is wonderful - we have a gap in the wall at the bottom of the stairs and think ordinary bannisters will look odd, so we're planning stair to ceiling iron bars, removable so that we can still get furniture round the tight bend in the stairs. Trust us, they'll look great. The blacksmith suggests making it a hinged panel - sounds brilliant, and we say 'yes please'.

Purchases of the week:

Genuinely can't remember, except we did go to the garden centre on Friday and buy plants for the top of the new wall. We plant it up and it looks fabulous.

Until Saturday morning when the bloody rabbits have chewed three of them to stumps...

The plasterer works the weekend (again) and the Aga wall progresses. Which is just as well as in 7 days time it needs to be plastered AND painted.

The timescale is slipping - we were supposed to have moved in by now. We have no electrics, no water, not one finished room and debris everywhere.

We were going to give notice on the rental on Tuesday... Or will we?

The build accelerates!

The week started normally enough, with drainage carrying on outside, walls going up on the outside of the music room and doors and decorating inside.

And then Wednesday happened. O.M.G - suddenly it was like we'd shifted into another gear and everybody was on site at once.

The decorator, bless him, has been masking oak rafters FOREVER. He remains incredibly good humoured and amenable and just gets on with painting. He does a coat upstairs, lugs his ladders downstairs, does a coat in the sitting room, lugs the ladders back upstairs, and repeats. He works around whoever is in his way and listens to Radio 2. We're rather fond of him...

The carpenters are working upstairs too - we now have skirting boards in all the rooms, and on Thursday we gained a chest of drawers, built into the wall using a B&Q basic unit and bespoke oak drawer fronts, in the en-suite. We may well paint them cream, we're just leaving them as oak for now. We have fabulous drawer handles (given to us by a friend well over 10 years ago and saved for just such a set of drawers) although they would look better on cream fronts...

The electrician came back on Thursday and suddenly we were finding actual lights to go onto the wires. We have wired sockets, wired switches, and LIGHTS!!

No, of course they don't work - the electricity is still wired into the outside loo.  However, wait until next Wednesday and the power comes back into the house! Which means that we have a meter box on the outside wall and probably no power at all on Wednesday afternoon. This shouldn't be a problem as most of the electric tools used now run on batteries, so as long as everybody charges their bits of kit, we can keep going.

The plasterer is on now downstairs and has prepped all the walls, he worked both Saturday and Sunday to get the bathroom plastered as the plumber starts putting bathrooms in on Wednesday.  tomorrow he's continuing with the utility room as the units should be fitted before Wednesday when the carpenters go on holiday. Guy and I have spent the weekend making base units and drawers to help things along. It'll save a few hours and mean that the room can be (almost) finished.

Stonework on the outside wall has just about finished - we have walls and sills before the oak cladding goes on the music room. It looks GORGEOUS!

The drains were finished ...

...  before extra hardcore was put down outside - we're nearly at the right ground level. It's made a huge difference to how the house looks, and there is no longer a two foot step through the front door.

YES!!  We have a front door...  Still no door handles though. That's tomorrow's job!

It has a grey undercoat at the moment. It will, of course, be painted (all together now) Ronseal Willow.

In the hope that the oak can now be kept clean, Guy and I acid washed, scrubbed, rinsed and sanded the porch and sitting room oak before oiling it. It is now, at long last, protected. Phew.

We've planted up the veg beds, we have pots, plants, seedlings and bulbs to go in the flower beds and we're getting towards the landscaping.

BOB was also on site on Saturday morning building the end of the wonky wall at the front of the house. It is far too beautiful to match the rest of the wonky wall, but short of getting Guy and me to build it, that's the most wonky he can make it.

We had a long discussion about where walls, paths and steps should be. BOB gave me the blue aerosol can for ground marking. He really shouldn't have... not only did I draw paths and flowerbeds, but also put little blue flowers in the flower bed sections...

Purchases of the week: 

Frankly, I've no idea, the pace this week has been so fast. However, I needed to prove who I was to some organisation or other and proffered my bank statement. The last TEN entries were, respectively, Screwfix, Travis Perkins, Robert Price, City Electrical Factors, Western Power, Owen Fuels, M&G Plant and Tool Hire, Specsavers (I treated myself to new contact lenses) and Handyman House. I am a sad person. 

Tiling has started in the teensy weensy en-suite. We needed to get tile cement, grout and those little plastic cross shaped things - tile spacers. Mopsi is getting used to sharing the back of the car...

Although she doesn't look particularly cheerful about it...  The blue roll is 'self adhesive hard floor protector'. It's RUBBISH. The only thing is adheres to is, well, itself, so I guess 'self-adhesive' does kind of cover it. It is currently not protecting our hard work of upstairs floor sanding. We will probably have to do repairs, but they shouldn't be as bad as the first sanding. Should they?