Prep for the plasterer and planning update

Greetings!

As I've mentioned in one of my previous posts, I'm saving up progress so I can make an interesting post every now and then rather than update regularly with little news.

So, I shall start by letting you all know that our plans were approved by the council last week!

Now, that doesn't mean we can start working straight away as we need to get detailed plans drawn up for building control and then possibly a soil sample for foundation calculations. It does mean we can start demolition of the old extensions which we will only do when our kitchen is finished.

As for the kitchen - we have been preparing for plastering which is happening this week. We've finished painting, run some wiring and generally tidied up and got rid of some rubble.

As well as having our wagon wheel light, we are having some additional up lights which will be blended into the plaster. They are 12v LEDs and actually look pretty good!

Andy has also blocked up the door that currently leads from the kitchen to the bathroom. This now means we have to use to back door for now to get into the main part of the house.

 

Above is the existing floor plan. The door leading to the "kitchen area" is what has now been blocked up.

New floor plan (when we are done) is below:

We also bought some scaffold boards off eBay which will be our kitchen floor. We need to clean the brick dust off them, sand them and wax them and they will look just as good as floor boards. 

After the plastering and floor is laid is we can fit the kitchen! 

We are surviving caravan life - even with the recent bought of cold weather. The electric blankets have been working over time!

Santa brought motivation for Christmas!

Hello!

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and New Year.

We had some time off over the festive period so have picked up the pace again on the house.

The plaster boarding of the conical section is now complete! Hurrah! 

Before getting the plasterer in, there's a few more areas of rotten render to take down and we need to block up the doorway. 

We took two corner sections from the lock up, where our eBay kitchen currently lives, to see how it was fitting with the Rayburn. It's not a bad fit, needs a bit of adjusting to ensure there's enough of a gap between the combustible cabinets and the cooker.

We have also been putting up wood beams on the conical roof:

These have two jobs. Firstly, to provide some additional support to the roof. Some of the rafters are not in good shape and we are adding extra weight to the roof with the insulation and plaster board. And the second is for decoration. A sort of exposed beam effect. 

We've also sanded the existing rafters in the other section and painted them. I only took a picture after I did 1! I will put more on next time.

Because it is soft wood, we have to use the proper outdoor wood paint. Luckily, these days they have an array of colours so we've gone for a muted grey! The colour theme of the kitchen and dining room will be light and lots of grey variations and creams.

Here is a look at my scrap book page for the Kitchen if you're interested:

The East Garston Parish council will be meeting Wednesday 7th Jan evening to discuss our plans so Andy and I will be attending with our fingers crossed!

West Berks council have said they will be advising us of their decision on 3rd Feb. I've been keeping up to date with the responses from the various other parties they write too (archeology, conservation officer, the bat people etc) and so far the responses have been sufficient. I don't want to jinx it though!

Life in the caravan is having ups and downs. We went away for a weekend and returned to find a mouse hole had been chewed from the section where the gas cylinders live to the inside of the caravan. To add serious insult to injury, the little bugger nicked our advent calendar chocolates!

We took the awning out of the front, which the little darling was using to get up to the top to chew through, and left a humane trap and blocked up the hole with expandable foam. Heard him mooching around one night, but he avoided the trap and he can't climb up any more to get inside so I think he's got bored and left. 

Him and his family obviously had a merry bloody Christmas feasting on our advent calendar chocolates. And they were Mars chocolates too!!

Other than that, we're keeping warm and are having hot showers by recirculating the water into the tank and hen hooking it up to the shower which doubles the heat. It's actually not a bad shower! 

The cooker arrives!

I've decided only to only update when something or a few something's happen. Otherwise, it will be a dull read and a lot of "tired from work...couldn't be bothered today!"

A couple of weeks ago, we had the two trees in the front garden chopped down. It was sad to see them go, but you may remember from a previous post that they were causing us issues. Perhaps when we are done, we will plant something else not so intrusive.

We have finished the insulation but are a bit slow with the plaster boarding as it does take a little while to flex and drill into a curved shape. 

The majority of our time has been spent making a floor frame and concrete base for our cooker which arrived this weekend.

It's bloody heavy and we spent a good few hours trying to get it across the rough terrain and into the house. 

But here she is :-)

This is not our final flooring by the way...

That's Andy's engine crane we used to move it around. It came in handy! That man has a tool for everything!

We bought a flue off eBay and had it

Powder coated black. Andy's next job (as well as to finish off the plasterboarding) is to get the flue through the roof and connected to the cooker.

After Christmas, we should be able to get a plasterer in and then get the kitchen fitted, as long as it has survived the winter in the lock up!

We are hoping whilst this is going on, West Berkshire council are looking at our plans and thinking how amazing it's going to look and grant us planning permission!!!

Plaster and plans

A lot of the left over isulation from the round bit has been recycled and added into the other part of the roof. Our water tank is going to be sitting up there and will be boxed in so we aren't going to bother plaster boarding it.

We had purchased 8 sheets of 9.5mm plaster board from Wicks last weekend and spent the week testing how to bend a couple of pieces. The first piece didn't go too well, mainly because it was cut to the wrong size. The second piece we left over night with various weights on to bend it after dampening it. That just crumbled to pieces the next day.

The third piece we managed to dampen and get up successfully, although an awful lot of screws were required to keep it in place. Never the less, this way seems to work!

We had a visit from a plasterer too as we waned to start getting an idea of how much it's going to cost to render the place and have started asking people to come and give us some quotes. 

He said we should leave the render on that is ok and just pull off the rubbish stuff (the rubbish stuff sounds hollow when you knock it). He said he would then make sure it all joins up and skim over the whole thing. He also suggested we plaster rather than render.

This is Andy's list of what's left to do in this part of the house:

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to unveil to you good folk the master plan (queue drum roll):

Ta da!

I personally love it! It's giving us the space we need whilst not being too greedy and not retracting the focus off the old house.

If any neighbours are reading this and have any questions or concerns I URGE you to pop by and come and speak to us. We want as little hold ups with the planning process as possible (although I imagine West Bekrs council will do a perfectly good job themselves of holding things up). 

The longer the planning delay, the longer the build will drag out and the longer you have to put up with the sight of our £700 ex gypsy caravan spoiling the scenery ;-)

In all seriousness come and have a chat and let us know your thoughts!

Insulating

Hello!

It's been well over a month since the last update. Various things like birthdays, camping trips, weddings and holidays have been going on which has caused work to come to a stop.

But, it proceeded again last weekend with the beginnings of insulating the conical ceiling.

Basically, you may remember that it looks like this:

Lots of rafters and awkward shapes.

We had bought 3 sheets of 75mm  Celotex on eBay and began the long and laborious task of measuring each individual triangle section, sawing it out and stuffing it in. 

Expandable glue foam helped fill the small gaps, but came at a price. Alas, poor Andy was on the receiving end of a rogue piece of foam, making a break for freedom, high in the rafters. It came to a rest on top his head expanding away happily, and stealthily. It was only when Andy noticed the stuff expanding into his ear was evasive action taken. Evasive action being Andy running to get some scissors and chop it out. 2 bald patches later, and we had completed our task.

We took a trip to Wicks today and got some plaster board that we are hoping (through trial and error) to curve around the roof. Andy is going to make a cardboard template first as it really is a fiddly shape!

It's good that after a lot of destruction, we are finally starting to put something back in again.

On the plans front - our architect sent us a second set of sketches and it was perfect!! As soon as we get a copy of them I will show you the plan! I'm happy because it gives us a second bedroom and a decent size bathroom whilst not taking up hideous amounts of space outside. It is single story, but that's because the main building is only height and a half and I think anything too big would be over powering and take focus off the old part.

When the plans are drawn, we want to submit to planning so hopefully by early next year we will get a decision and can start building. Yay!

Every time I'm feeling annoyed about living in the caravan, I step outside and take in the view

And then I don't feel annoyed any more 

:-)

Tree surgeons and architects

Sorry for the delay with an update! We went away for the bank holiday weekend so no work was done on the house.

You may remember me saying in the last post that we were due a visit from both the architect and the tree surgeons. Well, they both came!

Lets start with Duncan, the architect. We had another chat around what we wanted and told him we wanted to make the place symmetrical and have 2 bedrooms.

Duncan agreed.

We then said we wanted to pitch the roofs on the extensions and have a vaulted ceiling, so perhaps have the extensions made out of oak frame.

Duncan did not agree.

He said oak frame would be expensive and you would be covering most of it up. He also said that pitch roofs wasn't a good idea. Firstly, it's making more work in that we would need to start messing with the conical roof. Secondly, because the pitch would be so shallow, we wouldn't be able to have tiles so would have to have slate. But this isn't an issue as I quite like slate.

Duncan suggested we go with flat roofs.

Andy and I weren't expecting this as flat roofs are what are there now and quite frankly, they look like sheds. That's all I could imagine them looking like.

But Duncan sent us some examples:

Having seen these, we think it is actually a good idea. We like the over hang and the roof would be zinc, not felt, and the cladding could go vertical not horizontal like a shed.

Also, if we are cladding and/or render the outside, then we could build out of blocks.

It seems like a quicker, easier and cheaper options.

Duncan has already given us a first sketch but I don't want to share that with you as I want you to see all of them at the same time along with the final sketch ;-)

Now for the tree surgeons. It started off a bit wobbly as when they initially came to do the quote, the caravan and shed weren't there. This meant it would take them a bit longer to get around them and get branches down.

But, they did it!! And what a difference:

The lads left us the wood so we can chop it up smaller and let it dry out to use  in our wood burner Aga thing in a couple of years. We just need to find somewhere to store it. It's a lot of wood...

The tree to the left in the 2nd photo is

Playing havoc with our drains. The other tree's roots are coming up through the asphalt on the drive. It would be a shame to chop any of the trees down completely  as the chestnut trees line a lot of the lane, but these 2 are starting to become a pain...

There aren't any TPOs on them. But we are going to wait and see. 

Bean watch update: they've turned black and will start being harvested any day now! It will be odd having open space again!!

Caravan update: sky light was leaking. Now fixed! 

Leaks and levelling

Last weekend, the Briham residence (as we shall now be referred) had to contend with a leak. 

Andy was preparing the gaps in the floor for filling and then he noticed a pool of water where the mains comes into the house. 

This was naturally a bit of a bugger. Andy's good chum and plumber Ricardo Browne came to the rescue and replaced the leaking pipe. He mentioned whilst he was here that he had installed many Rayburns and Aga's, which was useful information as you'll find out further down.

Whilst he was sorting out leak, Andy took out a couple of the doors that are in the corridor going from the main bit to the bedroom.

A little thing like taking an unattractive door off can make such a huge difference I think.

We also had another chap come and assess the house for installation of a Rayburn. As mentioned before, our central heating and hot water is going to be powered by wood. It might well be a pain for Andy in the dead of winter at 6 in the morning to go and start a fire as I want a bath, but its the cheapest option in the long run. 

Electric will cost us a fortune and we can't get gas mains and have no where to put a propane tank and propane isn't cheap.

Anyway, the chap said he can fit the Rayburn and tanks and connect it all up as soon as we want it so that we can have hot water and a cooker available. Then he will just leave some pipes ready for when we finish the place and put radiators in.

He quoted us nearly 8 grand. That's a hell of a chunk of our budget. That's 2 quotes we've had now of around the same price so I think we are going to have to source a reconditioned Rayburn and tanks ourselves and Ricardo do the plumbing in. 

We also bashed some more render off the wall. We're not removing all of it as we are going to have it rendered exactly the same and some of it is sound. It's just a matter of removing the crumbling hollow stuff. 

It's a fun job to do on those days when we can't really be bothered to do something but feel we ought to do something.

This weekend, we put self levelling latex down on the floor. Whilst the quarry tiles are lovely, the floor was cracked and terribly uneven across the room. Pulling them up is easier said than done so we early on said we would have to level, insulate and then we're going to have floor boards as the finish.

We ran out 3/4s of the way through and Andy had to go and get some more, hence the obvious join. But again, it's not going to be the finished look.

We still haven't got the digger back from its service but that's understandable given its harvest time and the combine harvesters take priority over out little Kubota.

The Architect is now back off holiday and is coming round tomorrow for another chat and then we'll hopefully get some sketches soon! Yippee!

I am also very excited about the tree surgeons coming on Wednesday!

Caravan life is still ok, although our sky light is leaking, but its nothing that a saucepan on the floor can't sort out!

Andy bought some insulation so the plan for the weekend coming is to crack on with that for the roof.