The Renovation Diet

Up until this past week I was beginning to be reminded just how bad building work is for the figure, especially in the winter.

Cold weather justifies an almost daily bacon sandwich and the mild but chronic stress/excitement of witnessing the house you bought for hundreds of thousands of your own pounds being destroyed while spending hundreds of thousands of even more pounds putting it back together demands an additional and plentiful supply of cakes and biscuits, at least in my case.

But then last week happened. And I lost five pounds. Why? Because it was the very worst week, and I can only write about it now because the sun is shining and I've had some sleep. 

First, my elusive roofers were on site on the Monday. Good news. In fact, fantastic news. Then I discovered that the temporary roof protection they had installed had failed once more and we have lost even more original parquet flooring. They have since re-covered the unfinished roof and there has been no further water ingress, which shows they can do the job properly but it's always after the damage has been done.

Then they caused really serious damage. So serious that the programme has been set back by at least a further two weeks, on top of the delays caused by asbestos, snow and the roofers not being on site when they said they would be. So really, really bad news.

At the same time I was trying to negotiate on the growing number of variation costs that are coming in, to not only fail, but also managing to upset my main contractors with my ruffty-tuffty big city ways, which is also really bad news as I really think they are great. N J Whittaker (see Nick, I do mention you, and I do mean it) are not only the most professional firm I have ever worked with, but very supportive in liaising with sub-contractors and just a really nice bunch of people, as most people are in Devon.

Then in the midst of all of this, while on site trying to deal with everyone and everything, with my wire haired fox terrier Larry on site inspecting his garden and wondering when he would get it back, poor little Larry, a stately 13 years old (91 in human years), who is also "partially sighted", fell about 7ft off our terrace, which I witnessed out of the corner of my eye.

I rushed to him in his almost normal looking lying-on-tummy landing position and lifted him to make him stand but he just kept leaning over to the right and falling over. I then saw a little bloody gash on his head. Mildly hysterical and furious with myself for being so irresponsible I gathered him up and rushed him to the vet's, almost crashing with one of my builder's vans on the way.

Once at the vet Larry was checked over for broken bones - none found thank God - but also immediately hospitalised and I was told I would be called in a couple of hours with an update on his condition.

With things kicking off on site it was probably just as well I had to return to try and sort things out. Which I did.

But reader, for the first time ever, I'm afraid I did the very worst thing a girl can do on a building site. I cried. Kev, the roofer, even felt compelled to put his arm around me. Given the rarity of his appearance I should have grabbed that arm and handcuffed him to me until the job is complete.

Now it's Saturday. Larry is completely and utterly back to rather odiferous, cantankerous and hirsute normality (note the bald patch on his right leg where the drip went in, and the cardboard boxes we are living with); Nick and I are friends again, I hope; I've chiselled away at the budget to try and cope with the variations, which to be frank is a daily task really; and I've reprogrammed works so that we can move forward.

However,  that plan is entirely dependent on the roofers. If they do not appear on the 7th March and work for the rest of that week and ultimately complete the job then we are well and truly stuffed. We will have a half finished roof and therefore an unprotected house. We can't move forward on the main contract either because you can not start dry lining and plastering until the building is water-tight. And our moving in date will be but a mirage.

Mr Roofer has said he will be there, though he hasn't responded to any of my e mails this week. The frustrating thing is I do believe he is a real craftsman  - he does beautiful lead work and he really knows his onions. When he's been around he's been great with coming up with clever design solutions and I can see why Alumasc recommended him but I suspect, like many guys in this game, they take too much on on the one hand and on the other, don't realise how important it is to communicate openly with clients and be honest about their situation so everyone knows where they stand. Roofing is particularly perilous because it is so much at the mercy of weather conditions.

I might want to lose weight but please not this way!

time waits for no man except, it seems, my roofers

A six week job approaches its sixth month.

Most recent "activity" consisted of being promised site attendance last week only to have a single person on site Thursday and Friday. 

This week the most imaginative excuse for breaking the "promise" to attend first thing Monday I have heard for sometime, consisting of a fan belt, the Welsh mountains and lack of mobile signal.

A "promise" to attend at 8 sharp Tuesday translated into showing up sometime after 8.30 after an essential Macdonald's breakfast had been consumed, this communicated to me with perfect nonchalance.

As a result works to the interior are being seriously held up now - our main contractor quite rightly not wanting to install new ceilings while the roof is incomplete and after the considerable and considerably expensive damage caused by extraordinarily inadequate protection at the beginning of this project.

What is absolutely breathtaking is when I imagine myself behaving like this with my own clients. And I simply can not imagine it. This complete lack of respect for others and pride in ones professionalism is unfathomable.

And it is a shame because, it seems at least, the quality of craftsmanship is good. If only the quality of customer service could match up.

 

 

 

Where the "Cygnet Period" meets the Bronze Age

 There comes a time in every project - usually around the middle - that you could call the "Cygnet Period", where the house you spent thousands on and then spent thousands more ripping apart looks utterly forlorn, broken and caked in mud and, moreover, where very little appears to be happening.

 

But in fact a whole lot is going on unseen, probably more than at any other time in the project - where you are leading the team through the travails of unforeseen challenges, where you are scrutinising every unforeseen cost - adding here, taking there. Where you are desperately trying to make sure everyone and everything is turning up on time. And trying to make sure people tell you when they need things by, rather than letting you guess.

But what appears above the surface is not the mythic, pristine and graceful swan, furiously paddling beneath, but a rather shabby looking cygnet, albeit a cygnet that will, though you can barely believe it, turn into that fabulous swan.

Hence my recent lack of posts noted by a surprising number of you.

And what have I been doing?

Well I discovered that the wonderful people at Barber Wilson are pulling out all the stops to supply me with my own range of new brassware to install into our "master bathroom", I have confirmed all my other sanitary and brassware orders with the friendly folks, Steve and Claire, at Honiton Tile and Bathroom and those incredibly efficient boys at The Showroom (my order an entirely chrome/brushed steel/nickel-free zone), I located the rather amazing Feature Radiators who are making me a "landscape" towel rail in a sprayed coloured finish at the excellent price of £300, I've booked in my SEC boys for yet more asbestos removal, we've had our drains relined and the septic tank emptied by the impressive Drainology, I found an amazing company called Rocco Stone in Cheshire who are supplying me with great big 900 x 600 slabs of flamed granite for my kitchen floor and outdoor paving at a jolly good price (which is just as well as I had not planned an entirely new kitchen floor). I've also found a beautiful terracotta tile to go into the dining room from, and I love the name, Floors of Stone. I've had to sit down when I got my quote from Mr Resistor. I've been trying to grasp the finer points of carpentry as we attempt to fit a perfectly straight fascia board to the perimeter of a very wobbly roof. And I've been working/procrastinating/deliberating on my joinery drawings, of which there are quite a few, the kitchen proving to be a special challenge for some reason. 

 
What is exciting is my bronze windows have started to go in and they look amazing (though my rubbish picture plus the mud doesn't really do them justice). All they need is the bronze window handles which I had to buy specially from Allgood. Unfortunately no such solution for the handles to the sliding doors and we have had to go with hideous roundy ones, one of two options from the manufacturer. I actually preferred the alternative but husband doesn't want to be flipping the flipping handle all the time though he says the one he preferred make the doors look like something out of a call centre - fear he has a point but I have searched high and low. Maybe we can customise??

And my luscious outdoor lights from Engineering With Light are due to arrive tomorrow.

So, I guess I had better get on with those drawings......

Floored.....

So to site with my hamster face and slightly out of it thanks to pain killers (have just had a wisdom tooth out). It turns out that going to site slightly high on painkillers was a good thing as:

a) the lovely terrazzo floor that I was hoping to retain as my new kitchen floor is not salvageable which means I need to buy an additional 25 sq m of flooring 

 b) more asbestos has been found at the top of the two windows in the dining room we are removing to create one big picture window

c) it has only just been brought to my attention that we need some structural work, and so also more bloody asbestos removal, in the old greenhouse to allow for replacement of the roof light in what will be my studio 

d) my lovely collection of brassware that I am designing for Barber Wilson may not be ready in time for installation into my home after all which means I have to research alternatives and the plumber is on site next week to commence first fix not knowing what the spec. is

e) the roofer was only on site Monday of this week, so we have lost four more days and approach month 5 of our 6 week roofing programme

f) the bronze door furniture I want is about £1,500 over my budget of £1,500. I blame the Chinese.

Oh God!

On the bright side the kitchen floor replacement presents a number of benefits, not least the opportunity to finish the kitchen and the adjacent terrace in the same material. 

Er....and that's about it.

Time for a well-earned Friday night cocktail...with some more pain killers.

Naomi and Roof

The snow has melted and now it's just wet.

Works to the roof continue. We are now in month four of a 6 week programme. Any more delays and everything will be delayed which will be jolly annoying, not to mention expensive.

SEC, the asbestos people, whom I simply cannot recommend highly enough - expert, reassuring, helpful and affordable (www.secasbestos.com) - were back on site this week and just as well as tearing down the final section of existing wall we found some more of the grey stuff.

Let's hope this is the last bit.

 

The drains have, unsurprisingly, presented issues too. The sixties has a lot to answer for. In very many ways. While Fanny and Johnny thought it the height of sophistication to splash the food colouring all over, the building industry thought it was equally cool to use loads of groovy new materials like asbestos insulation board and pitch fibre drains......which quickly collapse - so all our drains need to be sleeved with fibreglass. There's a bit of sucking in of teeth in certain quarters as to whether this will really work but Drainology are giving us a 15 year guarantee so buttocks clenched, quite literally.

The order for the windows and glass doors is confirmed. And after lots of fannying around I found some bronze window handles at Allgoods that will match the bronze frames as, weirdly, these only come with ironmongery in black, white or silver. Yuk! Why, after all these years, is there so much rubbish design/design thinking around still?

Door furniture is next and again it must be bronze please. No white metal thank you. Though am discovering this costs a small fortune. Why must I always be so ahead of the curve? A cross I have to bear.

The electrics plan has reached Revision D because I've had to strip out costs, dropping fittings in some areas and redesigning in others.

And then there's "The Paradox of Choice" or "category overload". Looking for downlighters I get the same feeling I get in Waitrose sometimes: it's all just too much choice. Hyperventilating with panic, I often end up running out with all the usual stuff (pasta, sausages, salad) and then, while flipping through Waitrose Weekend afterwards, feel ludicrously depressed for not being sufficiently interesting and adventurous to discover Heston's Ponzu Salad Dressing, or Nettle Cordial or all those other amazing things that if you're an interesting, adventurous person no doubt you're guzzling down this very minute.

Time to sit quietly in a dark room...in Mr Resistor's dark room so I can make a choice based on  the evidence in front of me instead of a list of mathematical equations (www.mr-resistor.co.uk).

 

White Christmas

Unsurprisingly work has come to a standstill at the house, it being very "Mums shop at Iceland" there right now. Yep. Down in Devon snow is refusing to budge, and with the sun out today too, it is all rather incredibly beautiful.

So after I took some snaps......

...of my studio.....

....of one of the bathrooms......

...of the exterior of the "master" bathroom (such a funny phrase - what about the "mistress" bathroom? Or just, er..., bathroom?).....

......and the dressing room, I went skiing. 

Wishing all a wonderful, world-of-white Christmas and a world-of-colour in 2011.

Big Bang

Though it's a shame to see the magical, ice-encrusted landscape give way to one more typically greasy hopefully the (reportedly transient) warmer temperatures will prevent the replacement boiler in the shower belonging to SEC, our asbestos chaps, exploding - as it did last week. No shower. No removal of highly toxic asbestos. No getting on with the rest of the works.

A Small Victory

In spite of being told by a number of people our water damaged parquet floor is unsalvageable I have found two specialist "floor revivers" who say it can be repaired. Never give up. And actually now the guys have ripped the stuff up in one of the bedrooms it is clear it's a simple floating tongue and groove floor which, as I say in my book, is the one to lay as a DIY-er. And as we can salvage just enough to effect a repair this is what we are going to do. 

Of course all of them say that given the time and cost of repair you may as well have put in a new floor but actually this is not true for four reasons: 1) a new floor will look too new 2) the product is no longer in manufacture so cannot be replaced like for like 3) repair will cost less than replacement and 4) to replace perfectly good flooring is simply not acceptable environmentally.

As I repeatedly advise don't listen to the experts per se but get lots of expert advice and make your own judgement. 

The flooring in the adjacent dining room is another challenge as the concrete floor beneath is more of a delicately contoured landscape, begging for a model train set. I had wanted to use some terrazzo floor tiles here but I think they are simply too thick: digging out to create the right level will chew into our already well nibbled contingency as a result of asbestos and leaks - so I am considering a 6mm thick tile instead. It's so difficult to find a floor tile for a living space like a dining room that isn't either boringly tasteful or just bad taste though - but I have a plan. More to follow.

The Japanese wallpaper in the hallway, the one we planned to preserve, now has a nice bloom of mould thanks to the leak through the roof so we'll have to completely re-wallpaper here, that's assuming there's no asbestos beneath.

Talking of which we have daily discoveries of even more of this bloody stuff.

But back on the up side this is because the builders are making progress, which builders always do at the beginning of a job - and in fact at the end - it's just the middle bit that always feels slow - even though it's not really.

And in spite of the set backs, which is the case on every build to be honest, I do love a building site.

THE MASTER BEDROOM

VIEW TO MY STUDIO FROM THE ADJACENT SHOWER ROOM

DE-HUMIDIFIER IN THE GUEST BEDROOM

OUR GRACIOUS DINING ROOM WITH VIEW INTO THE KITCHEN

Keep Calm and Carry On

When I decided to write this diary of the refurbishment of my new home it was so that what I learnt could be shared, on the basis that every build, no matter how trained and experienced you are, is effectively a prototype.

So, dear reader, some "Top TIps" for you.

If you are contemplating buying a property built around 1960 - 1980 do have an asbestos survey done in addition to your building survey. This is perhaps well recorded advice. In our case, though, we simply had a building survey done, partly because the survey identified asbestos, for which I had a straightforward strategy in terms of management.

Little did I know, in spite of inheriting the original build archive, that as we stripped out we would find a whole lot more asbestos, most alarmingly lining all four walls of one bedroom, lining a partition wall in the living room and lining another partition wall between our intended master bedroom and dressing room - plus some other bits and pieces.

Which is kind of ironic considering the man who built the building was an asbestosis specialist - and has clearly been merrily chopping up left over AIB (asbestos insulating board) to insulate the odd extractor fan and roof light too.

As with all building challenges the thing to do first is keep calm and second garner information on the same problem from a number of different sources, because I can guarantee you that they will all say something quite different. It's rather like seeing consultants in the medical world: all of them are experts but they will often have different opinions and, unfortunately, it's down to me and you to use our own judgement.

In the case of asbestos it's fair to say that there is a lot of alarmism in the industry: asbestos is a scary word and unscrupulous specialist companies exploit our fears. Having said that asbestos is not nice. Nor is it uncomplicated.

There are different types of asbestos of varying degrees of toxicity described in simple terms by a colour coding - white, brown and blue, with brown (the type we have of course) being the most toxic and white being the least. But then there are also different compositions within these categories which determines toxicity too.

The first thing to do after you have had your asbestos survey done is to have suspected asbestos tested. The test itself costs just £15 ex VAT-ish but you may want a specialist to take the sample, in which case you will be looking at £150 + VAT-ish.

One way to check for walls lined with AIB is to simply remove light switch plates and look at the exposed edges of the cut out in the wall behind: if you see a greyish 4mm-ish thick board this is probably AIB. If you don't want to do this yourself just make sure your surveyor does instead.

The test will indicate whether you need a licensed contractor to deal with the problem or whether your contractor can, so long as they have had the right training.

If you need a licensed contractor make sure you get at least three opinions and quotations: we have had prices quoted from £20K plus to £2-£3K. And in one particular area one firm quoted £2.5K for removal and another £440 for management, as per HSE (Health and Safety Executive) regulations - so be warned.

In the end we have appointed SEC (www.secasbestos.com) because the MD, Richard Greening, seemed helpful and pragmatic as well as being professional - and was extremely transparent about costs. Hopefully he can start on the minor items this week and once the 14 day period of notification to the HSE has expired he can get on with the larger items.

What this does mean though is flexibility in design. So long as asbestos is undisturbed it is not a threat so strategies I am deploying are things like:

- replacing skylights where I had planned to remove them, as the interior is lined with AIB

- rethinking the electrical and plumbing plans in affected areas so we don't have to penetrate the wall

- reconsidering how we treat the walls in the bedroom fully lined with AIB

This matter has been complicated by the massive damage we have experienced as a result of very poor protection to the roof while works have been in progress. For example, in the affected bedroom the building surveyor is recommending re-plastering. Which means removing asbestos. Do we really need to? I'll hopefully find out today. 

Furthermore where there is water damage to ceilings and walls elsewhere these need to be stripped out, but the cost is more than doubled where there is also asbestos.

So if you are having any roofing works done and the roofer tells you that he has protected everything have a good look yourself and use your common sense. And if you want more protection ask him to do it and tell him how. As an extra insurance cover everything you value inside to protect from any water.

Our parquet flooring in the living room is we are told, "unsalvageable", but I am going to experiment with salvaging parquet from other areas to make a repair - and where we plan to have a 3m x 3.5m rug simply install ply beneath.

As the poster says, keep calm and carry on.

Please Don't Let It Rain

Hmmmm. Well this is an interesting trade off. As the roof gets repaired the inside disintegrates, thanks to rain pouring through the temporary "protection" applied prior to new waterproofing being installed.

The main contractor has fewer ceilings to pull down now but we were hoping to keep the floors! And the saving on demolitions is but a speck of plaster dust in comparison to the cost of remedy to the parquet.

Les the roofer promises extra protection measures but I need to be sure the bits of new insulation and existing timbers that got a soaking won't cause problems now, or in the future.

Thank goodness we're not living there.

And that the main works start next Monday 8th. Local firm Whittakers won the tender and I can't wait for them to make a start.