The final assault begins

Ok well those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will know that today was Day 1 of Bathroom round 2. Very exciting! This is the LAST major building work planned to get the house how we want it.  It also means that we are one big step closer to finishing the house for the end of the year.

Now some of you will remember that we had our bathroom redone a while ago when the kitchen was being done (http://aoldhouse.blogspot.com/2009/06/real-destruction-begins.html). But this episode of bathroom renovation taught us many things including:

• Black is not a good color for tiles, especially in a hard water area
• There is a special kind of wood you are supposed to use on bathroom floors (marine ply for those of you interested)

and most importantly:

• YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

So having not paid very much it wasn't entirely surprising when the shower started to leak and stain the kitchen ceiling and the floor tiles started to crack in half due to the water soaking into the ply ad swelling. Joy joy joy!

So older, wiser and with some money in our pocket (but not for long) we've got back in the lovely builders that we used for the last major works. They were really great so we thought why not! 

Today is Day 1 = Destruction Day. I left to a bathroom fully intact and without a care in the world and have come home to this:

All of our furniture is crammed in the front room!

This is why I love that my husband is an engineer. He can draw things like this and they look like they are supposed to!

This is the final look we have taken as our inspiration. So lots more light and just brightening up the whole space.

Let us know what you think and I'll try to update this every day there is decent progress.

The builders must have a screw loose

Ok now I know an estimate is called an estimate for a reason, but you would normally expect it to be fairly close to the actual amount and if it's not then you think they would at least say something. Well ok that's what you would think and in fact this is not the case with us.

So despite talking to our builder from the beginning about the false door fireplace cabinet for the dining room so we can have storage for the surf board, skis etc. Despite always talking to him about this and getting an estimate we never finalized the details.

So despite repeated statements of it won't work by the builder we asked him to figure out a way and then decided to go for Plan B when it seemed like Plan A was going to take too much time/money (and also involve opening back up the new ceiling) . So we get the new quote and it is 5 times more expensive. So you can imagine our shock and surprise.

So that means we still don't know what we're doing and our builder needs to get a bit of a grip. Stay tuned for part 1 million of the builders are still here. YAWN!

Photos as promised

Here are the photos I promised. Lot's of photos below:

Look No Stairs!

How to get up and down v.1

Fixing some old problems

The new partition wall

Looking at the house from the Kitchen

Bathroom doorway ripped out and being flipped

How to get to the bathroom from the bedroom v.2

Just because it was so yummy the dinner hubby made me last night

Day 24: They're still here

This is a dual purpose post. Firstly, I'd like to apologize for not doing more updates in the last 20 or so days. It's been tough with having no power to the sockets upstairs and everything else in life going on.  Also, there hasn't been that much to get excited about. Most days it was actually quite hard to see what had been going on.

So I'd like to think of this post as a new start for the build. We hit a slight bump in the road with the new partition wall being put up and being taken down and then put up again. Yeah you heard me folks...it if is supposed to be structural you better make damn sure that you know what's a joist and what's plywood on an engineer's drawings...all I'm sayin'. So yeah we think the builder has now gotten the message that we're paying attention.

Lots has happened in the last couple of days. Most of the electric and data cabling has been done. They have rectified quite a lot of the mistakes of the last builder. Let's just say long story short quite a few bricks were involved in the sorting out of the problem. It is now Saturday and they have ripped out the stairs (pictures of ladder contraption we are using to get around in next post) and the bathroom doorway has been destroyed because it needs to be moved for the new stairs. Let's just say that it's so alfresco I'm crossing me legs till the builders go. Plus we've got a proper partition wall, some plasterboard and insulation in. Now the stairs aren't going to be back in till Wednesday so I'm going to be pretty far along in my future career training as a high wire act by the time they go in.

Lot's going on and they are still working away. So here I sit in my cold backyard on top of a pile of bricks typing this because they are destroying more of the inside and plastering. Quite frankly that dust is enough to choke a mongoose and I'd rather shiver. Pictures to come.

Day 2: The Destruction Continues

Well it's the second day of the builders and I can't exactly say that I've gone off them, but we've had a few ups and downs. On the up...there is more destruction! More stuff has come out and it's really starting to feel like we're making progress. Plus ex-next door neighbour Luke popped round with his dog Heidi who officially approved of the new fence (i.e. she hiked a leg and christened it as hers...now there's a girl that knows what she likes). How can a visit from a dog not be an up? Here's how it's looking:

The down: We found out that the rushing water sound under the floor was a cracked mains water pipe spewing water into the space under the house. While I was tempted to dig a swimming pool I didn't fancy paddling with mice/rats so the builder has fixed it. The other down...after taking out a radiator the builders for got to cap the open pipe so when the central heating kicked on in the evening we had black, smelly water spewing across the dining room floor. YUM!! So we have no hot water at the moment and things are getting quite dusty, but onwards and upward!!

Day 1 of the Builders

Well that day has finally arrived and it can't have come soon enough if you ask me! The builders are in and they've been very busy ripping out walls, ceilings and floors. We're already getting a really good feeling for how it's going to look when it's done and we're really happy with it. The rooms feel fantastic. Here's Day 1's summary of progress...

Before:

After:

Oh and can I say that I love that they are very tidy. Plastic dustsheets stopping the kitchen from turning into a mess, neatly stacking the rubbish and taking lots of it away each day. These are my kind of builders!  Day two update in the AM!