help
It’s impossible to say what’s been done since my last post.
I’ve been so busy working on the house that I’ve not had a single moment for a post. I’ve not recorded what I’ve been doing at all. So really apart from my dismal memory I have no record of all the hard work me, my sis and bro-in-law and a couple of contractors have been up to.
The reason for all the rush, well I’m at the end of my tether financially. I had decided to get in touch with my wonderful mortgage specialist Mark at Ardent Mortgage Solutions in Stockton-on-Tees (plug). Previously there had been nothing going, no one would finance my madness but now there was a chance. If I could convince a surveyor that they house was worth x amount then there was a mortgage company that would lend me 80% of x
The problem was the house was upside down, the kitchen wasn’t in place and there was still lots to do before a surveyor could be convinced my house was worth the risk. Problem too was that most surveyors are instructed to not mortgage properties without kitchens, bathrooms or front doors. My house was missing the kitchen, the bathroom was still a place of rubble and sharp edges and front door was stuck closed.
I needed to get a move on.
Firstly, my Mum was a great help and gave me a loan of her credit card to allow me to purchase necessary items to finish the job.
This provoked a mad dash of purchasing a multiple scheduling to get things delivered not only in time but delivered when I’d be there to receive them.
I got:
- Skip hire
- Range cooker
- Toilet
- Sink and tap for kitchen
- New towel radiator
- Vertical readiator for landing
- Kitchen carcases
- Hinges and fittings
- Kitchen worktops
- Tiles for splashback
- Timber for basin stand
- Bathroom basin and taps
- Lights for kitchen
- Lights for corridor
- More electrical doo-dahs
- Bathroom light
- Lots of paint
- Letterslot
- Electrician
- Carpenter
- Door handles
- Door knobs and rim locks for all the internal doors
- Dip and stripping
This involved a massive amount of planning, purchasing and scheduling, you’d never guess how much this cost me in time alone.
Still the most important part of this equation wasn’t the bits and bobs, nor the time I managed to book off from work that first week but the fantastic help my Sis and Bro-in-Law conjured up by a spontaneous visit. Sandra and Russell had realised that I was really up against it and I needed help, there was no way I was going to get the job done by myself in the time I had. Without a sudden influx of help there was a chance that everything was going to be lost, so knowing this and being the most generous people one could have the pleasure of knowing they jumped into their car and drove the 320 miles to my house.
Y’know what was truly unbelievable though, the next week, the week I had three days extra hol’s to finish off the work. The week when on the first day of my holiday my car broke down on the A689 and cost me a full day of work. Well on that day, despite having just gone home, despite the long drive, well they felt my dilemma and drove the full 320 miles again.
How bloody brilliant is that.
So what did we achieve between all of us.
Decorating
Most of the decorating was done before Sandra and Russell turned out, it really was a tough job. Not only did I have the bathroom walls and ceiling to do but there was also the matter of working down the stairwell to the hallway.
Decorating takes ages, not only is there layers and layers of paint to apply to cover up the dodgy layers of paint that have been applied over the years, but there’s all the preparation too.
First you have to strip down the walls and the ceilings, not an easy job and not easy to do when atop a wobbly set of step ladders perched on a temporary floor, or perched somewhere halfway up a wall in the stairwell.
Next there’s the filling, wandering around with filler and a decorator’s knife filling every tiny hole you can find. There’s the nasty big areas to fill too, those areas where glue, paste and paper have conspired to give the wall the appearance of a map of Asia. These need runny filler and sweeping flamboyant gestures of the filling tools. Once you’ve done with filling, then it’s a base coat, lots of sanding and then – guess what – more filling usually, more paint and more sanding… and repeat.
This work takes ages, still it’s done now, the paint looks good and I looked forward to more sanding and painting and filling once I’d chased the radiator pipes in.
The kitchen
Well this was just an empty room, the utility room was posing as a kitchen but this wouldn’t sate the appetite of a surveyor.
To start with I’d figured out the units I’d need I’d visited B&Q and ordered all the necessary carcases, hinges etc. to fit out the kitchen. This was simple enough but the units were delayed by the internal shelves being a problem to find, further delays were encountered too by the wrong hinges being delivered. This would have been a huge problem but it turned out that there were some hinges from the original demo kitchen that the kitchen dismantlers had slipped into a box of bits. Ultimately this saved me £50 as on returning the wrong hinges I didn’t need as many to replace the faulty ones.
It was a bit of a problem too to find suitable screws for the units, if you remember I bought two ex-demo kitchens from B&Q and not all the bits and bobs were included. It could have been a problem but a quick dip into the Screwfix website came up trumps and suitable replacements were bought in a jiffy.
There was another problem with B&Q as the girl I was dealing with was the girl who’d earmarked the kitchen units for her own house, well that was before I’d come in and pilfered them. She was really nice and helpful, but hey I didn’t know I was stealing your kitchen J
Fitting the carcases proved a bit of a nightmare as the corner one needed some sculpting to fit into a rather angular corner. I cut and gnawed, I even made a template and after hours of jiggery-pokery it fitted into the corner, it then took more time to remodel the internal shelf and more time too to cut out holes to access the sub-counter power sockets I’d installed. There were also problems with lowering the units to fit under the window ledges, it just took ages, a simple job just expanded to fill every ounce of time I had. Even fitting the frames, doors and drawers took some work, the new universal carcases were just a bit out and I even found myself angle-grinding door runners in the rain and dark to get them to fit.
So once in place this all just sat for a while, the week before the surveyor came I decided that I needed to get someone in to fit kitchen worktops.
This was a job I had meant to tackle on my own but I’d suddenly realised that the kitchen was looking rather un-kitcheny without the worktops and as I’d just invested a rather large amount on two solid oak kitchen worktops I doubted that I could trust my abilities to do it justice with a wobbly jigsaw and a following wind.
Time was really tight on this, I only had days to do it, I went to numerous sites and contacted a dozen carpenters. Out of these three or so got in touch and all of them that were in touch told me that they were too busy to turn out on such short notice.
Luckily I was back at work, luckily our college carpenter (Nigel of Woodworx in Hartlepool) hadn’t issued an order number for a job, luckily he’d got in touch with me to sort it out. I – without thinking of my dilemma – sorted out the order, gave him a courtesy ring to tell him it was done and just as I was putting the phone down I blurted “you don’t do kitchens do you?”
He did, he could manage a visit that week and all was well with the world. I even added on a bit more dosh to satisfy myself that I wasn’t getting a discount for being part of an organisation that was putting a bit of work his way, money I could ill afford but well spent nonetheless.
Anyway Nigel gave me a warning that the kitchen worktops must be oiled with three coats of Rustins before he started. This might sound simple but I’d not oiled wood before and I was also on my own in a room full of tat with two rather large lumps of wood to manoeuvre, turn and oil on my lonesome. I managed though, two nights of lumping wood around, gingerly supporting and turning onto large squares of cardboard with polystyrene supports. It looked rather lovely once done, shame that the polystyrene decided it wanted to adhere itself to the surface (I’d actually tested for this without any sticking). Still at least it did it on the bottom of the surface, I’d planned this just in case and it didn’t take too much to unstick it.
So that week Nigel was as good as his word and turned up on the dot and he fitted my worktops, it took two nights but it was a tricky job. Turns out my corner cabinet fitting wasn’t too great and the cabinet while fitting into the awkward gap was a bit twisted and it took the pair of us ages to get everything level. I say “us” reservedly though, as I spent hours not getting it level and Nigel spent ages but did get it level.
Nigel had to chop away at a window ledge too, the kitchen worktop lined up nicely with the low windows in the room and unfortunately he had to cut the leading edge of the ledge to fit the worktop in. I’ll have to sort this out at a later date.
Nigel is a real character and I suppose we could have got the work done quicker but the pair of us spent hours swapping anecdotes. Nigel is a 19 stone biker, mostly muscles and white beard, a real true misplaced Viking, he should have been born a century ago, you could really see him swinging an axe as he jumped off a long ship. He spends a lot of his time in the Shetlands at Viking festivals and while he’s a (motor)biker he has done charity rides on push bikes, having once notched up the Lands’ End to John o’Groats cycle ride for charity.
What a bloke and what a good job he did of my worktops, fitted by a Viking.
Anyway, the sink was sunk into place, the taps were fitted but nothing as yet is fitted to the mains. I have put the green kitchen units in at the moment, but I will be swapping it to the blue ones as they will fully fill out the kitchen and there’ll be no need to mix colours if I do opt for blue.
On top of this too I fitted a trio of light fittings into the room, all was well until I stood back and admired my work. Unfortunately, one fitting was much lighter than the others and resembled a clear shade rather than the amber one I’d bought (it was also missing a widget too). A quick email and without any quibble at all a new one was winging my way.
While this was all going on I’d also had a delivery, my new range cooker had arrived. Despite having an electrician or two to hand the day it had turned up – planning y’know – there was a bit of a problem. Turns out the cooker needed a junction box to fit it to the circuit the electricians had been enabling. I was sent off with all haste to Screwfix to find the suitable part, the instruction was to get a 60amp junction box, if they didn’t know what I meant just to tell them it looked like a hamster coffin. Anyway I got to Screwfix and after ten minutes of catalogue browsing I returned with a selection of parts. When I got back I was informed that none of the parts were right and I’d have to source the part later.
The big question about the cooker though was that was it going to fit into the gap in the chimney. We’d offered it up to the space and it was going to be tight, the smart betting was that it wasn’t going to fit, me I was a little more optimistic. Anyway a visit to a Darlington electrical shop later, a post-modernist hamster coffin 60-amp junction box fitted (the hamster coffin ones were old-school I was informed) we carefully slid the cooker into its perfectly but rather neat chimney-breast final location. Things were actually going to plan.
Well most things were going to plan, there had been a bit of an accident while fitting the bathroom WC, there had been a bit of an erm leak. This leak had leaked into the kitchen and made a bit of ceiling sag. Rather than just cover it up I had pulled it down, PVA’d it, filled it, sanded it and painted it. While I was on it I tidied up a bit more of the ceiling work too, it looks pretty neat now and even a trained eye would have trouble finding where the patch had been patched.
Anyway the new hinges have arrived, Ray the builder is booked in to do the drains under the sink, the new light fitting has arrived and there’s a handful of jobs to do before I can claim that the kitchen is finished.
The bathroom
I think we left the bathroom with the floors still unfished and the drains going in.
Well we’ve done a lot more since then, basically the floor and the insulation have all gone in, this took a while, there was a point where I’d ran out of plywood but a new batch had arrived and the final bits of the subfloor were put into place.
I’d also needed to fabricate a cupboard to conceal all the pipework for the radiators, I’d taken the old cabinet, cut the fascia down to size and using a pair of door from this bit I’d made a tidy little cabinet. It did involve some bracing behind it but it saved me lots of cash, it looks the period part and it fitted perfectly into place.
I can’t remember whether I mentioned this earlier or not but there was a lot of work involved in removing and re-installing the shower base support, it just needed a bit of modification, I could have ignored it but the work it took to do would speed things along later and make for a much better job. Did I mention putting in the new pull-switch too, for some bizarre reason the previous sparks had put a wall switch into a bathroom, I’d had it moved for obvious safety reasons.
Once this was all done there was lots of painting and filling to do, the filling next to the window was quite a task as a lot of the wall had come away on removing a frame that had supported a stud wall. This was done with my usual filling expertise, however the employment of metal edge beading on the window reveal had made for a super duper neat edge, something I’d not used in the past.
Once the floor was done I could crack on with the radiators, these needed hanging and their pipes chased into the walls. A lot of work, it took me over a day to get them all done. Still once done they then took further time to get them commissioned and the chases filled, sanded and painted.
The room was looking great now, I needed to get the engineered floor in and sealed. Not an easy job but the flooring was a click one and went down pretty easily, there were some nasty cuts to do but it mostly went to plan, I think I had one fuzzy moment in the whole install when one afternoon it took me three cuts to get one board down, I think I’d lost the will to work that day.
Floor down and we could press on with sealing it.
Sandra my sis’ volunteered for this task and after I’d done the first coat she sanded the floor and applied the next coat and a wonderful job she did.
Once the floor was in we pressed on with fitting the WC and bathtub. I must say that the WC was a nightmare, I just couldn’t get the waste and the water feed to work. The problem was that the feed and waste were to be fully concealed by the toilet and it was incredibly tight work to get it all into place. I must have flooded the floor at least two time and this led to ceiling problems in the kitchen below. It must have cost me almost the full day to get it done, in fact without the help of Russ and Sandra at the end of my panting on the floor in the bathroom for hours I doubt it would have been done. All three of us in the end had to pin the flipping thing down and drips buckets of sweat trying to slide the waste into place while securing the HEP02 link to the water feed. Even when that was done the WC still wasn’t finished as the seat wasn’t sitting properly and the top to the cistern needed some jiggling to get seated properly.
I wish I could say that the bathtub went as smoothly, the freestanding taps had dropped into place no bother at all but the tub proved a three-person job again. At one point I’d had to venture to Screwfix for a lesson in waste push-fittings, I’d completely forgotten how they worked. Luckily in Screwfix a very helpful assistant had spotted a plumber in the shop and he’d showed me in a jiffy the error of my ways. Once back home and once we’d thrown away idea one and adopted a cunning plan involving two fittings and now having correctly fitted the waste compression joint it all fell into place.
Once the WC and bath were in we then pressed on with the skirting, I remember that this had to be done in double quick time one afternoon before I headed off to look after Izzi. I was running up and downstairs to my mitre-saw which had now been relegated to a garden location. So in the rain, in a matter of an hour or so I managed to pin the skirting to a full bathroom, there were missing bits and new bits to be cut but I did it in record time.
Sandra then pressed on with sanding the skirting and painting it with two coats of paint. Other jobs had been done too, the paintwork had been touched up, the windows had been cleaned, the rubble and tools had been removed and stored, the change in the bathroom was quite miraculous it was now looking wonderful. As Sean my mate at work put it on seeing the pics – “I never knew it was going to be beautiful”. Thanks Sean.
Once this was done a basin stand had to be put into place to satisfy the surveyor, a tip from Nigel the carpenter put me onto the track of untreated railway sleepers in JT Atkinsons. They had one in stock, which was admittedly one more than I had found elsewhere, they pointed me to their main yard in Stockton.
A visit to the Hathaway Timber JT Atkinson site was gold dust. They had a three metre stack of untreated oak sleepers, a bit of arranging and some fantastic customer services and I had the prospect of a Friday delivery of timber to my gaff some thirty miles distant. Of course knowing my luck of late the timber didn’t arrive on the Friday, I phoned on the Saturday and was told it was locked in a van in a yard and the best they could do was Monday. I explained that I didn’t have that luxury as I needed it for a survey and they actually arranged for a Sunday delivery, how good is that.
One slight problem though, my measurements had basically been for three long cuts and two short cuts of sleeper, although my receipt reflected this I was presented with thee short and two long. Still never mind it still worked and the customer relation standards were amazing.
I managed to stack the timber into the fashion of a stand, I then balanced the new basin on top of it and the surveyor seemed very happy with the results.
I now only have to fit the sink and waste – again Ray the builder is booked in to sort this out – I need to then tile the splashback, fit the sink and cabinets, fit and sand the washstand, tile the shower, fit the shower and base, waterproof the base, fit the new light fitting and some blinds and it will be done.
Maybe a mirror and a set of drawers too.
Outdoors
It may sound as though I’ve done a lot, what I’ve done is the itty bitty scratching the surface of the bigger jobs. Y’see while I spent hours mucking around with things like putting kitchen carcases together and then sawing bits off them off to tease them into tight spots, well while I was doing this my sis and bro-in-law did the real work.
The time we were working there was a bit of a rainy spell so while I was nicely indoors and faffing around with the odds and sods they were getting down and dirty and wet in the garden.
One thing that wouldn’t hang well with the survey was the outside of the building, the window frames on the bays were a mess, the porch and lobby at the back was terrible and the garden was rather overgrown.
I’d been to B&Q for paint matches, been turned away from Wickes and eventually found solace in the Decorator Centre in Darlington. Again while Sandra and Russ were doing some proper work I was spending time buying paint in Darlington, the trick was to find somewhere where they knew their paint and could get the matches and colours I wanted.
First we needed a match for the windows I’d already had installed, the fitters had recommended a colour code but on having it mixed it bore little resemblance to the one I wanted. I then took along a sample of the window trim, in B&Q it was close but not close enough. The decorator centre though, again the code didn’t come close but their match and their choice of the Opaque paint was right on the money. Remember though I can’t do a job without some bad luck and on mixing my paint one morning the lid came off in the paint shaker and hey presto a five minute job became a twenty minute one as they mopped out the machine.
So I got some paint – big deal – I got more paint for the back porch in a nice green, more paint for the stonework and a B&Q visit got me some lovely blue paint for the front door. Yeah big deal… I didn’t have to prep and finish the woodwork.
Sandra and Russ were brilliant, come rain or shine they were out there, Sandra working on the bay windows and front door and Russ doing the back porch inside and out. I’d done the insides of the bay windows and appreciate what hard work it is to do, each coat of each bay takes hours. Add to this too that Sandra and Russ had to achingly sand down all the woodwork of two fidgety bays and a very fidgety porch. Russ not only had to work on the painting he had his work cut out in just tidying the porch as it was mega-untidy.
Sandra seemed to be permanently perched on top of my rickety ladders, she became such a fixture I found it difficult to get used to not seeing her atop a ladder whenever I looked out of my front room window. The first coat of paint she was using too wasn’t great, it was so runny I even took it back to the decorator centre to enquire if it had been mixed right. I was informed it was and the second coat of paint proved them right with a stupendous wonderful finish covering the awful red windows with a lovely coat of cream.
Russell discovered a lovely bonus while working in the porch, the internal room was in super shape so that saved him a huge job. However, things on the externals weren’t so hot, woodwork was a little rotten in a couple of patches front and back. A bit of wood filling by Sandra and things were tidied up, it looked a million dollars.
The front door presented a rather heavy problem, I was tasked with getting it off ready for sanding and priming. I started the job and quickly realised the screws were in a shocking state, I’d managed to replace a handful when I realised that he door was on hinges that allowed one to simply lift the door off its hinges. A crowbar, me, Sandra and Russ and it was off its support and on a bench.
Once on the bench I took a planer and stripped a bit off the bottom as the door was always jamming we rehung it and found my work had done the job first try. We took it off the hinges again and Sandra sanded it down, primed it and painted it in the lovely wonderful blue I’d bought from B&Q. This was all done over a period of days but the results were fantastic.
Later I added a Carlisle Brass letterbox, Carlisle brass numbers and replaced the Yale lock with a more modern number.
Of course fated as I am the Carlisle Brass number 5 and number 2 I had ordered appeared as a number 5 and a number 1 despite – again – the invoice backing up what I had correctly ordered. Again a quick email and it was exchanged.
The door, the front bays and the back porch now look a million dollars. Russ even spent ages on the gardens, knocking back my unruly hedges and ironing out some of the lawns.
Skip, rubbish and sorting
One of the best bits of organising I did on this project was to organise a skip, I had rubbish and rubble piled up everywhere it needed a skip to sort it all out.
However as things don’t necessarily go to plan on the day of the delivery of the skip the scaffolders who had been booked for months to work on next door’s gable end turned up. I’d already expressed that I was happy for them to work there. It would be nice if they’d return the favour too of not having to apply for a party wall agreement and put my me some batteries in my burglar alarm siren box and replace a teeny bit of soffit that had fallen down.
Anyway they turned out and started unloading onto my drive – where the skip was going to go – I wandered across and explained I was having a skip delivered and could they not block my drive, “no problem” was the reply.
Ten minutes later a scaffolding lorry was on the drive unloading scaffolding, humph still never mind they’d move it once the skip arrived. An hour later and it was still there, an hour later and it was gone, phew, an hour later and another one arrived, humph, an hour later and this was gone too.
Scaffolding up and now happy the skip turned up, great, well not great as they’d installed bracing struts that went directly onto my drive and the scaffolders were nowhere to be seen.
Soooo all we could do was put the skip half way out of the front gate and into the road, this wouldn’t have been such a problem but the ton of rubble I had to put into the skip was at the other end of my 16m long drive and my wheelbarrow had a puncture.
Three hours later I had the rubble into the skip. Tres knackered.
Anyway the skip was brilliant, Russell spent hours getting everything from rusty radiators to cardboard boxes into it, after three days it was brimming with rubbish, rubbish that would have taken weeks to shift in a car.
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The skip also took on the might of my carpets.
Sandra had been brilliant in the carpet disposal duties, she’d tackled the rather horrific carpets of the utility room, I think there had been three or four layers with some lino underneath for good measure. Once this was off she’d had to chip away at all the detritus that had fixed itself to the concrete, an awful dusty, dirty job done well.
Sandra had also lifted the stair carpet, this time it was only a single carpet but there were the twenty or so gripper rods to contend with too, not only dangerous but fixed to the stairs with oodles of pins they took some time to remove. Again lots of bits to tidy up once removed too.
Once the carpets were out the house looked much better for it, a bit more industrial but a bit less dirty and fuggy.
There was one item in the house that wasn’t going to go in the skip, a large leather sofa. The sofa had been kindly donated by a neighbour last year, it had been generously accepted and had proved to be a lovely squashy chair but it had grown a bit too huge for the house. It was just too large and whenever I needed to move it I ended up nearly having a hernia, with some reluctance I decided it must go. First it was consigned to the garden and quickly became the break spot, we’d park ourselves on it in the sun while enjoying a cuppa and biccies. Soon though the sun became shrouded by clouds and the rain pelted down. The sofa now became unusable and Durham council were arranged to take it away. So one night Russ and I struggled the rain sodden chair into the street and the next day a bin wagon turned up and two blokes manhandled it into the back where the compactor crushed it surprisingly easily.
Russ and Sandra also busied themselves with tidying out rooms, sorting things out and moving things around. I had multiple rooms piled high with mixed tools, materials and oddments, it would days to sort them out, but sort them out they did.
I already mentioned that the back porch was given a thorough tidy out and the utility room was de-carpeted. But the utility was also tidied and cleaned from top to bottom, the attic was temporarily boarded and large volumes of gear were moved there. My study too was populated with a desk and chairs and made to look beautiful and all my gear upstairs was sorted out into cardboard boxes (Sandra and Russ had kindly pre-ordered and delivered) and buckets I’d bought for fixings and the like. I cannot overstate the work this involved, later on when I decided to move the contents of the large bedroom into attic I got a taste of the work involved, this one move taking me a day to complete. Not only was it moving gear but everything was lousy with dust and everything needed a dust and/or polish before it could be moved, so not only heavy work but dirty work too.
The job I think they most enjoyed was working on Izzi’s new room, they’d spent time and money on buying furniture an books and toys for the room and even had a banner made up. It was lovely to see Izzi’s room start to take shape, if we’d had time we could have got some curtains up that they’d made to measure, unfortunately we just didn’t have the time.
The living room too needed a sort and despite them having invested serious hours in getting it up to scratch on their previous visit it still required lots of spit and polish and lots of washing and cushion beating too.
Doors
Another job that needed to be tackled were the internal doors, the doors had the potential to be beautiful but had had their panels covered in hardboard, the woodwork had been covered with fake paint woodgrain effect, the door handles had been moved from their original low waisted position to a higher position and what were perhaps rim locks had been replaced with standard door mechanisms couple with rubbish plastic handles.
So what to do, well first thing was a search around the internet for a paint stripper, a bit on enquiring and most the strippers were around £35 a door and booked up until October. A bit more research and I found a stripper “Dip ‘n Strip” of Darlington, he was free and depending upon the type of finish it could be as cheap as £20 a door. With this tempting offer I then stripped out the car, loaded up my spare door and dropped it into him one day, the next day the door was done, the cost was £20 and on picking it up I was amazed by just how good it looked. Being critical though the door did sport some historic burn marks where someone had been at it with a burner, but despite that it looked a million dollars.
So over the next few days it was load the car up with three doors, drop them off and pick up any doors that had been done. Most were unmarked but there was one more with a few more scorch marks but apart from that they looked great.
I make it sound though as this was a simple job, there was however the onerous tasks of removing some of the hardboard covering (my Dad had removed most of them) unhanging them and then rehanging them on return, this being mainly handled by San’ and Russ. I’d been the driving monkey getting them to the stripper’s and back, not simple as they did take over the car and ones line of sight, it did involve a bit of unloading and loading but in comparison to the all the work they tackled in my absence and shifting them from and back to the door frames, well my job was a drive in the park.
Anyway I would thoroughly recommend Paulie of Dip N Strip of Darlington anyday, his lock-up is an Aladdin’s cave of stripped wood, he’s punctual, cheap and does a great job.
Electrical work
It was becoming pretty apparent that my first fix electrics would need and electrician to come in and do the second fix.
Firstly, I tried the electrician who’d done the initial work on the house, I dropped him a text but he didn’t reply. I cannot help but get the feeling he’s taken the hump over me for something, I may have said something stupid in the past to him that’s gotten him all gnarly and upset but I’ve tried to apologise for goodness knows what I’ve said but he’s not for pacifying.
Shame as he was a good bloke and did a good job.
Anyway once I’d discounted him I got in touch with Jack, a wonderful chap who’d done work on my previous abode.
Jack was going through a terrible time personally but did me proud, not only did he turn out on time on days when any lesser mortal wouldn’t even have got out of bed but he did a marvellous job.
I’d completely underestimated the work in hand and assumed it would only take a matter of a day or so, Jack however told me the true story, the hours it would need and the extra hands he’d need to get it done.
Once we’d established this though Jack was straight onto the job of arranging at team in triple quick time and even tackled a couple of days on his own.
Jack a great guy and the day we were all working on the house simultaneously he spent every opportunity he could to wind me up about me lopsided wall sockets or the size of my range cooker. I fell for it every time, at one point while looking at my range (I live in an electric only zone) he shouted:
“You never told me it was a gas cooker”
“Whattttttttttttt” I shouted back hurrying into the room, only to realise he’d got me once again.
Jack and his team managed to polish off half the remaining electrics before they called it a day but importantly they’d made bits safe, the kitchen ring main was installed and the cooker point too.
There was still work to do but the surveyor should be happy.
Actually there was one bit out of all the amazing work that I was particularly amazed by, Jack had to take up a floorboard in the kitchen diner as I’d got the ring main all wrong. I know those floors intimately and know that there’s two layers of insulation and three layers of wood in that zone. Once they taken the board out and replaced it you wouldn’t even know it had beed moved, even up close. They’d even managed to locate my hidden head screws that had been filled over with wood filler and get the board up completely unscratched.
Amazing.
Carpets,
I may have mentioned this last but this was a job that needed to be done early, what was the point in dressing my study or Izzi’s bedroom if at a later date we’d need to strip them out to get the carpet in.
So thinking ahead I’d requested some carpet samples from http://www.flooringsuperstore.com/ and once I’d made my decision I booked a delivery to coincide with the arrival of a carpet fitter.
A colleague at work put me onto some seriously cheap Cloud 9 Nimbus underlay and that arrived on time and ready for the fitter too.
The hardest part though was getting a fitter to fit said carpets and underlay on short notice, the fitter who eventually turned out not only did so in plenty of time for the work on the rooms but he also turned out on the evening so as I could meet him after a day’s graft.
David Brown the carpet fitter turned out to be brilliant, not only fitting to my schedule but turning up on time and doing a fuss free brilliant job. He even gave me an estimate for the stairs and hallway once they needed to be done.
Again brilliant
The house now is looking wonderful, the surveyor agreed on the estimate the mortgage company needed and now I’m just awaiting the payment. Once this is all sorted then I can get on with finishing the house completely.
Must say out of everyone though that my Sandra and Russell were brilliant and without their help I doubt I would have had everything resolved so successfully.
They’re pretty amazing they are y’know!