Fatherhood² | Henry's Blog

Archive for the ‘Building’ Category

Today was Tony’s last day at the house, and he managed to finish everything he planned to. All we have to do now is decorate a bit – paint the bathroom, treat the new doors etc. Henry also managed to hang a new door in the bedroom, which was a bit of a bonus!

The building is coming along fast and furious, though the Reading Festival has eaten our builder for this friday so it probably won’t get finished this week. The bath is almost completely finished now, the sink is on the wall and plumbed in, the floor has been leveled and laminated, and the radiator’s on the wall.

The remaining jobs list is getting smaller, and now only features getting the shower enclosure up, building a door for the room and adding a small sink to the toilet room.

The bathroom is coming along swimmingly, with a Friday finish looking quite probably now (finger’s crossed!)… The tiling is all but finished now, the shower tray is in and looking good, and the door is being bricked up as we speak…

As you can see from the photos below, the new bathroom is coming along nicely. The progress has started to be really visible, with the biggest difference (and most annoying for the builder!) being the blocking up of the old back door, which has now been done – from the inside at least. The bath is now set in place and plumbed in, the shower tray is also in place and all the plumbing is ready to go.

We also had (yet another) visit from a British Gas engineer – this time who who seemed to know what he was talking about – so we now have working hot water as well. What a bonus!

Finally, after having most of the suite sat in the garage for the past 6 months, the building work started on the new bathroom today, with an absolute shed load of work getting done by our fantastic new builder Tony Allwood. The first day’s progress including ripping the entire suite out of the old bathroom, blocking up the passageway (to save the house getting covered in dust), taking the separating wall down and putting up some new plasterboard. Job’s a good’un!

Well after a month of having the builders in we were very glad that Tom came back today to finish the last few little bits. He rendered the wall so its all smooth and when its dry it’ll get painted. And he tidied up the concrete on the steps as well especially over the pipe. He also put concrete down in front of the door so that water doesn’t seep underneath it. I think thats it. And even their equipment is gone from the garden as well. So apart from the money aspect, we’re all sorted and can now enjoy the sun!

After a delay of a week or so (more like two actually!) the builders finally delivered the new back door and installed it. It hasn’t got a cat flap in yet, but they’ve done half of it. Hopefully they are coming back next week to do that, plus the rendering on the outside. After that they’ll be finished for the year! Next stop, bathroom…! :)

It actually looks much better than we were imagining, and thankfully it’s got a lot of (tough) glass in and ISN’T obscured by that funny frosting (which the builders thought we had wanted). Job’s a good’un!

Thursday was the day that they finally got round to starting the doorway. Tom came round on his own, and as well as fixing a few paving slabs to cover up the concrete footing of the wall (not sure what that means!) he managed to take the old window out, knock the wall out from underneath and build up some new blocks, ready for the carpenter to come in and fit the doorframe, which will hopefully happen on Saturday.

As you can see from the photos, it was quite a messy job, so we had to put dust sheets over everything in the kitchen. Even then though, the whole place seems to be covered in a fine layer of orange brick dust! Oh well, at least it’s on the way now.

Today seemed to be the last day of work on the steps, before the grand opening (scuse the pun!) tomorrow – when they knock a large whole in our kitchen wall. Below are shots of the finished (apart from painting over the render) walls and steps – I’m sure you’ll agree it’s looking pretty good. Now we’ve got to figure out where you get railings from, to stop small children wandering off the sharp drop!

We’re running out of things to say about all this now – the pictures pretty much say it all! Today Tom (I am reliably informed by Sara!) added the side panelling to the top portion of the steps, and finished the retaining wall at the bottom. He also did a rough "scratch" layer of rendering to the new wall and the side of the house.

It’s all coming together now, so we can’t wait to see what it looks like when it’s finished. By the looks of it, we’ve only got the final rendering and the new door to go now – fingers crossed it might be done in time for the weekend!