You know what really grinds my gears...?

Hi everyone!

I haven't updated the blog for a long time because there hasn't really been much to talk about in terms of interesting updates. But Andy said I should update and tell you all the frustrations that have been going on. Get ready for a rant fest!

Mid October, we submitted our 2nd application to discharge 3 conditions related to our planning; Materials being used, landscaping and planting scheme, and tree protection.

According to this official website: http://planningguidance.communities.gov.uk/blog/guidance/use-of-planning-conditions/discharging-and-modifying-conditions-once-planning-permission-is-granted/

The planning dept have 21 days to get back to us as discharging conditions should not hold up a project. Ha! Yeah...good one government...try telling that to West Berks!!

We submitted on October 12th. We still have not heard back.

That leads me on to my next rant.

One of my biggest bug bears in life is chasing people. Chasing people for updates when you are also paying for their services exasperates my frustration level to no end. 

This is what we have had to deal with pretty much throughout. 

I think anyone who knows me will say I'm a relatively laid back, stress free person (although a worrier!), but I have definitely had my moments over the last few months!

We have been given semi completed building regs drawings by our architect (completed drawings would have been ideal given nearly a year has passed since the original planning was submitted) along with a rather large bill we weren't expecting, but Andy has reviewed the drawings and has noticed a lot of issues so we can add that to our list of delays.

We thought we had a structual engineer already engaged and ready to give us calculations, given one came to site in the summer (organised by our architect) to view the inspection holes. Alas, after further chasing, we now have to wait until the end of this month before someone can tell us how deep our foundations can go. 

Something I obviously naively thought was a simple job and would allow us to crack on.

Something I am going to take control of is engaging a private building reg contractor. 

Our architect said he would do this, but for obvious reasons (see above relating to structual engineer) I have decided to do this.

I've emailed someone this weekend so hopefully I hear back next week!

Meanwhile, we continue to wait for everyone else. Everyone else being all those people living in nice, warm, completed homes, probably insulating their beds with our money.

Whilst we continue to wait it out in a 700 pound ex gypsy caravan, spending a second winter freezing our proverbial's off.

I'm being made redundant next year, which you may think is enough to push me over the edge, but I'm actually looking forward to the money! 11 years working for a big company will equal more than enough to finish our house. Hopefully next year will be a good year for us (especially me!) 

The big 30, a nice payout, 5 years in remission, new job and hopefully, a finished house!

To end on a lighter note, our kitchen is pretty much complete apart from a few finishing touches.

We are still trying to get the hang of the Rayburn before we move in as the fire keeps going out at night time which will mean we could potentially wake up one morning iced up! 

Here are some pictures:

Effing trees!!!

I've been moaning so much at work about our recent situation, using a lot of expletives to describe trees, that I was told that should be the title of my next blog update. And so it is!

I've not blogged for a little while because we unfortunately had our discharge of conditions application rejected by the council. This came as a complete shock to us and our architecht who had spoken to them before our submission to clarify exactly what was needed.

West Berkshire Council have apparently had a lot of people leave from their planning department which has led to different individuals looking at our case. 

A new tree officer's comments late in the day led to our application being denied. 

Essentially, they want us to protect trees not on our land. We thought we had done enough to satisfy this by saying we would be putting up tree protective fencing, but alas, it wasn't enough.

Which has put me in the foulest of moods for weeks.

Technically, until our conditions are satisfied, we shouldn't be doing anything else we risk enforcement action.

This means site clearance and ground works. Which is what we have been waiting to do! We are ready to go!

Fortunately, my mum has been a huge help and has arranged an arborist from her work to come and take a look at our site. He says it's all standard and he will write a report for us that will satisfy the conditions.

Our architecht came and visited earlier this week to and we finalised materials, as that was another condition we had to satisfy. Apparently WBC didn't want physical

Samples...so none were sent. After all, one can quite easily Google what cedar cladding looks like. But no. Turns out they now do want physical samples. So that's what they will get! 

Whatever they want, we will get!! Anything so we can legally start work!

On the work front. We have actually started...

Andy took one of the extensions down!

3 tip runs it took which wasn't too bad. Much cheaper than a skip!

We've been told that you don't need the councils permission or planning permisison to take down old extensions. So I hope we are ok!

Andy has also started digging an inspection pit. Definitely not foundations. It's just an inspection trench. To inspect. Things like...roots. Soil type. Etc.

He's dug a metre so far with our handy tractor digger we purchased from ebay about a year and a half ago. 

The soil is heavy with clay. We need the architecht structural engineer to tell us how deep they need to go. Apparently building control will give us the depth but it will be completely over the top! We've heard of them telling people to dig down 3 metres in some instances! Given we have a flat roof single story, hopefully it won't be too much more!

We also fired up our Rayburn a few weeks back. Mr Browne has finished our plumbing and a mighty good job he has done!

We have a safety system where by if the cooker gets too hot and the hot water tank is as hot as it should be, the heating will automatically turn on and pump hot water around to try and relieve the pressure. It works a treat! Very proud of those two as it was a right pickle!

As part of the taking down on the extension, we moved the shed and caravan. Our new home is back under a tree which is horrendous when it rains.

The tree we are under is also a mature council owned horse chestnut tree which has unfortunately died (genuinely nothing to do with us).

We now have a nice view across the field from the caravan which is nice!

It really does look like a building site!

The front of the house is now visible so we've given it a bit of a clean.

Gonna give it a re-paint to!

Kitchen is pretty much there. We have water. We have electric! 

Need to attempt the tiling and just finish off the cladding in the ceiling. They are cosmetic jobs that can wait...and they will wait!

We both have 2 weeks off work so will plod on. It was our intention that we would have full planning by this time so the 2 weeks would be spent digging foundations and getting them filled with concrete and ordering the Beco Wallform bricks we are building out of.

If Grand Designs and Restoration Man and those programs have taught us, it's that delays in planning are part and parcel of any project!

Still on the Kitchen!

It's been a while! Luckily for you, I've got lots of photos this round!

I'll start by telling you that we've had a few weekends off to enjoy the sunshine and to actually have a social life...so we are still not finished in the Kitchen front!

Richard Browne has continued to plumb away and he is pretty much done now!

We have a tank full of water and fully plumbed into the mains!

These pipes will be boxed in 

Our pump is in and everything is connected up to the hot water tank.

Our hot water will be from the Rayburn which we can't get going until at least one radiator is in

We decided we didn't want big chunky radiators taking up space so decided

Pretty early on we wanted to try skirting radiators. 

Andy found a company who advised their aluminium skirting could be bent, so we had 5 meters delivered.

We can see now why the company recommend they are the ones who come and bend it! Our round room is all over he place...so we needed bends here and there and everywhere!

But persistence paid off and it was eventually bent into the shape of the room. 

Prior to this, Andy had put up some cladding, which I then painted. He found some flexible decorative dado rail which was also painted to match. And the result looks bloody good!

The trim round the top of the skirting needs finishing off. When the radiator is on it should shrink a bit so we are waiting for that before we add some caulking and paint it. I can't decide if it should be the same colour as the wall or the same colour as the cladding. 

Radiator in, plumbing done and the flue is in place! We bought some smoke bombs to test there was no leaking and it was successful first time! The smoke went straight up and out the chimney! 

We are very nearly ready to fire up Ray! We just need Mr Browne to come back and finish up a little bit more and cap some pipes. 

Given we have our water plumbed in, we also have taps we can turn on and off!

The pressure is actually not that bad! We will be having a pump for the shower as we both like a good blast when showering!

We've stained and waxed the worktops nice and dark to match the floor and I've been busy sanding and painting our kitchen cupboards. It's still not fully complete, and I'm not 100% happy with the colour I've painted them, but it's certainly come along!

We also decided to clean and paint the window and will replace the highest pain of glass where the extractor fan was. It's actually come up pretty well, so we will save some money by not replacing the window frame.

We also purchased some wooden cabinets to go on the other side of the fridge and hot water cabinet as some additional storage and decoration

Obviously we still have a bit to do with the painting but it is definitely getting there.

Finally, we've had a huge issue with our fridge and freezer.

I returned home from work one evening to find the house full of smoke and a sheepish looking Andy holding a fire extinguisher. Apparently he decided to plug in the fridge and freezer that came with our kitchen and they both exploded and caught on fire!

So we went online to Currys to buy a new one. I won't bore you with the whole story, but we basically were sent a damaged item with the replacement item also being damaged. That wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't take about 30 phone calls to Currys customer service to be told contradicting information around exchanges, delivery and refunds.

In the end, we physically took the 2nd damaged fridge freezer to a store and got a refund. So, we will continue to search for an integrated fridge freezer!

I'm hoping by the next update I would have at least started, if not finished the tiling in the kitchen! 

The Kitchen takes shape!

Greetings friends. Family. Neighbours. People I don't know from overseas (you know who you are - I've seen you in the blog stats! Unless I have family in Russia I don't know about??)

Kitchen is coming along nicely!

We abandoned the idea of Andy making worktops from scratch when he found some nice chunky wooden worktops online.

http://www.kitchen-surplus.co.uk/timber_worktops.html

This place does some fantastic deals on solid worktops. They delivered fast and the quality is outstanding. I highly recommend them if you are wanting wooden worktops. We got the farmhouse oak and paid the price on the website, plus 40 for delivery. Bargain!

Obviously they come as a 3m untreated board, so you need to treat and saw it yourself. Luckily, I have an Andy who can  do all that!

I have to say, that boy done good. Considering he has never cut a worktop before, he did a fantastic job! Mind you...he hasn't done any of what he's doing before and he's doing great.

He even cut nicely round our new sink! Only 1 side is done as we need Rich to finish the plumbing before we can put the units in on the other side. More of that later.

On to the sink; we've been looking for a Belfast sink that will fit a 500mm unit but weren't having much luck. We then found that a reclamation place near Stow was selling some new Armitage Shanks ones for about 200 pounds so we set off to take a look.

When we got there, we saw one outside which measured up and was perfect. When we enquired, the chap said we couldn't have that one as it was damaged. He then proceeded to show us the tiniest hairline crack on the side of the sink that you can't even notice, and would be covered up by the units either side.

Anyway, he knocked it down to half price because of the "damage" which did us fine! The taps we wanted were 350 quid so we headed to ebay once again.

We found a seller who had a poorly listed large Belfast sink for sale with taps for 70 pounds so we snapped that up! We might have even found someone who wants to take the large sink off us too!

I bloody love ebay. 

Most of the stuff in the kitchen is from ebay!

It looks great! I'm very pleased.

Believe it or not, the unit to the right of the sink has an integrated dishwasher inside and the unit to the left has an integrated washer dryer. We didn't buy them from ebay. We got them from currys! But, I managed to find a 10% off voucher by doing a Google search for currys vouchers and saved about 50 quid.

Andy has also wired a new fuse box which we've sat in the hole that was the service hatch.

We need Southern Electric to come and move the old meter as its on a wall that isn't going to be there soon, so we will get it connected and checked and have a nice new fuse box hidden away!

We're going to be putting a push open door for access which will be concealed by clever tiling.

The other thing we've done is put our wagon wheel light up!

This was the first thing we bought from the house (ebay again!). As soon as I saw the inside I knew it was crying out for an amazing hanging light - and I wanted a wagon wheel!

We aren't happy with the chains. Usually, you'd have one chain come down and open up into 4 chains connected to the "light" but we obviously have a window at the top that a chain can't be attached too.

We had to go 4 into 1 back into 4 and we just aren't liking how it looks.

We're going to see what it will look like with 4 chains coming straight down, I think it will look better though. You can't really see from the picture, but trust me - it doesn't look right as it is.

We haven't added any lighting yet, we wanted to get it out of the way and see what it looks like. We're going to have candles around the top with LED flickering lights for effect only. Then we will have an LED bulb in the bottom to give downlight.

When it's finished, like everything else, it will look amazing!

Richard Browne has been back in to do some more plumbing. Bless him, he has a tricky job as the area he has to work in is so tight.

We have to have a hot water cylinder of at least 190l capacity for the Rayburn and we needed it to fit in a kitchen cupboard so it's as close to the Rayburn as possible. The system is all gravity fed but I won't go into details...mainly because I don't fully understand it myself!

Anyway, we managed to find an online company that make custom sized cylinders and with a calculator on their website that lets you put in sizes and tells you how much capacity that would be. This was extremely useful and we managed to find a size that fits in the cupboards and gives us the capacity we need!

They were extremely well priced too - I'm sure we paid about 200 for the cylinder, fully insulated and delivered.

There she is!

He's done a very neat job with the plumbing and is very nearly done! One more visit should do it, which I'm glad about because he keeps polishing off my favourite caramel biscuits!!!

All the pipes will be hidden behind units once done.

Finally, I've been taking a long time to decide on what colour to paint the cabinet doors but I've now decided!

I'm going to paint them a similar colour to the walls (light grey) with some nice pewter knobs.

That's my test door. I think when it's all done, it's gonna look great! It's amazing how a lick of paint and new handles can transform kitchen unit doors.

The worktops will be stained dark like the floor, and there will be tiles along the wall in a crackle glaze, random pattern like below:

I can see it all taking shape which is very exciting! It won't be long before we can start on the extensions.

Andy thinks it will take about a year from when he starts digging the foundations to us being in a position where we can move in. That won't mean we are completely finished, but enough to be out of the van, finally!

We are hoping to get out conditions satisfied by West Berks council soon too! Our architect sent them new drawings showing the landscaping and where the protective fencing will go. I bloody hope they like it!!!

Kitchen and floor

Hello readers.

A good bank holiday weekend was had! We had Richard Browne (our plumber friend) come round and lay all the piping for the kitchen ready for appliances and heating etc. 

Andy also lay all the wiring for lighting, plug sockets etc which runs on top of the pipes (not pictured).

Saturday was spent cutting insulation for the floor. We had previously started this a good few months ago but the insulation started curving and shrinking which was weird so we started again.

Sunday we got to put our lovely scaffold board flooring down! 

Andy did a fantastic job of sanding it all and cutting it to fit the curve.

Once it was down we were able to get a couple of coats of varnish on, giving it a fine sanding in between each coat to stop the shine and keep it looking rustic.

I'm so pleased with how it has turned out, it looks great! 

We have stopped at the end there because we need to wait until the new back doors are in. The next planks we put down will be butted up right up against the door. And as we don't fully know what style of door we want, we don't want to put it down and have a gap.

Monday was spent in our lock up sorting out our kitchen! We pulled it all out and decided what we wanted to take back to the house to see what fitted and what looked good. It also gave us a chance to organise everything and do a bit of a inventory ready for when we put the bits we don't use back in ebay. You will be pleased to hear it survived the winter and is damage free.

All week, we've been putting things into position and working out what we like and don't like and what fits.

We think we have finally cracked it this weekend and have roughly put it all into place:

Nothing is fixed down yet including the doors and I will be painting the cabinets. We also need a worktop which Andy has decided to make himself from new scaffold boards so they are nice and chunky and match the floor.

We aren't having any wall cabinets as it looks too cramped but we are going to have shelving and hooks next to the Rayburn to hang sauce pans and things.

The big cabinet to the right is the fridge freezer and the cabinet to the left is where our hot water tank will sit. Because our heating is being run by the Rayburn, the tank needs to be as near as possible to the cooker. The bathroom will be too small to house an airing cupboard and our hall is also too small for one so its ok in the kitchen. 

Our corner units we bought as part of the kitchen set were too big so we will need to open up the cabinets in the corner so you can get access into the corner so it isn't wasted space. It will be a sort of custom made corner unit.

Andy also wants us to have a "pop up" microwave on one side and a "pop up" appliance of some kind on the other side to make use of the wasted corner space, keep the tops clear of appliances, and because he wants a mechanical toy to play with! 

It's not a bad size kitchen for the size of the house and we will be able to have a dishwasher, washing machine and Belfast sink in there too. We haven't gone down the route of having another cooker or hob for summer use when the Rayburn is off. We will probably buy a plug in single halogen hob, perhaps a Geroge Foreman type grill and with the microwave that should be adequate for summer cooking. The hot water tank will also have an immersion which will mean our summer bills will be pricier than our winter bills!

I will show updated pictures when the kitchen is fully painted and fitted.

No update on the planning front. I haven't spoken to our architect for a few weeks so will have to call him for an update on building control plans also. I think we are just going to do what the council want. If they want us to plant new trees - fine but they will be very small saplings and may disappear as soon as the project is finished!

We will be ready to pull down the extensions soon and then the digger we bought can come out of retirement for the mass digging of foundations and trenches that is to come! 

Edit:

This is the kitchen a year ago!

By this rate, our house will be finished in 5 years!