August 2010
1 post
Things I am now able to do
A few months ago I posted about the things I would like to be able to do. The status of these things will now be updated, to make sure you’re paying attention.
We’re still living in Badger Towers 2, in the 2nd bedroom. Our stuff is still piled high in the first bedroom while we sort out the rest of the house, but some of it is now in the loft and office.
There were several things I...
May 2010
2 posts
Internet Poverty
Wed 12th May
Virgin came to install the broadband on Monday. Talk about ultra-efficient. It was fixed up, drilled, fitted and working in about an hour. We tested it by unplugging the boiler from its extension lead daisy-chain. Now you can have hot water or Internet in our house, but not at the same time. So our plan to work from home at speeds faster than a 3G trickle seemed to be all go,...
Things I Would Love To Do
We’re living in Badger Towers 2, in the 2nd bedroom, our stuff is all piled high in the first bedroom while we sort out the rest of the house. There are several things I wish I could do in this situation.
Change clothes outside of the bathroom (we have no curtains)
Eat a meal in my own house (no kitchen or fridge)
See my dining room without a cement mixer in it
Let Steev out in the...
April 2010
5 posts
I Bring You...
Friday 16th April
We bought a fireplace from Oxford Salvage http://www.oxfordsalvage.co.uk/. The one we had spotted turned out to have the wrong grate, so we chose one that fitted better. Also, we’re going to replace the slip tiles with something nicer.
Delivery soon.
Regulation
There are many things that seem like a good idea when legislation is passed or rules are made. But at the sharp end of these are a bunch of people who have a job to do. It gets harder for a skilled person to get paid to do something he’s good at without tripping over some rule or regulation.
So far in the process of renovating a house I’ve had to deal with:
Understanding...
Dry Rotter
Saturday 27th March
Clutching rubble sacks and a tarpaulin from Wickes Mrs Badger and I resume our hectic schedule at the customarily hectic 2pm. We shovel the plasterboard into the sacks, each of which is hard enough to carry on its own without being in a 1 tonne bag. Schoolboy error averted.
I look up at the lath and see white fuzz and some black bits. Shit. Dry rot. If there’s one...
Giving Me Gyp
Friday 26th March I have a helper! Herbie, Action Maori Executive, joins me to get some jobs done by cycling from Kidlington and arriving a full 40 minutes early. Just as we’re getting started Martin the electrician calls inviting us to Full English Friday. Herb’s on a roll and I can’t leave him on his own to stuff my face with bacon. This means we end up working from 10-4...
Pipes of Peace
Thursday 25th March After my wood chucking yesterday I find my back hurts and I’m having trouble moving. You don’t get this problem working on the internet. The underfloor heating pipes are going down, clipped into place by the plumbers. I quickly wrap the time capsule in a plastic bag and stick it under the floor before the heating pipes go over. Once the pipes are in...
March 2010
17 posts
Plumbergeddon
Wednesday 24th March
[excuse the hiatus, I might post some highlights from last week]
Wednesday. The day when the plumbers come to fit the under-floor heating. The electrician is moving on to upstairs first fix, which includes ground floor lighting. He’s re-wired all of downstairs and the only two plugs working are by the electricity meter. These are essential to the operation of his...
More...
Monday 15th March (contd)
We finally make it to the house in the afternoon. There’s so little skirting board to save we decide to replace most of it downstairs.
Then we attack the windows with the Nitro-Mors, this time properly masked and gloved. The windows are in a right state, and a mixture of stripper, sanding, scraping and sandpaper seems to make little progress.
Building inspectors...
Power Cut
Monday 15th March
We’re just about to get started on the day when the electricity goes off at old Badger Towers. Then the man rings up to say he’s delivering the toilet and he’s 5 miles away. The builders are on another job, so I leap in the car and drive to… the gate. Which is now stuck shut through lack of electricity. There’s a small queue of cars, which must...
Reclamation Ward
Sunday 14th March
On a quick visit to my mum in Exeter for Mother’s Day we visit Tobys Reclamation in Exminster. Having never been to a reclamation yard before we really enjoy it. So much inspiration, and not a uPVC window in sight. We look for some rolltop bath feet, but the ones they have are all rusty and have griffins’ feet. I refuse to have griffins’ feet on my bath. Not...
Coming Out to Play?
Saturday 13th March
Suddenly everyone wants a piece of us. Friends calling and texting saying hello, isnt it a nice day, are you coming over, do you want to go out? We remind them we’ve just bought a house and we’re renovating it. Luckily they all decide to visit the house.
It seems that the phrase “It’s a building site at the moment” doesn’t quite explain to...
Strippers!
Friday 12th March
Quickly! Off to B&Q, buy some paint!
Faced with three aisles consisting of nothing but paint I call my dad for advice. “What’s an undercoat? What’s a primer? Do I want satin? Do I want gloss? Why would they make paint that needs more than one coat when they make paint that only needs one coat?” Dad gives me some advice on painting window frames and...
Cisterns are doing it for themselves
Thursday 11th March
Another late start, this time because I have to show the man from the lettings agency around so he can measure up the current Badger Towers. His company supplied him with a chunky biro and some graph paper, but on closer inspection it turns out to be digi-paper, which works using a clever dot matrix background and a scanner on the end of the pen which works out where on the...
The Fat Controller
Wed 10th March
Up early for dentist, then a series of faffs around town, culminating in collecting an Oxford City Council Building Control form and two almond croissants from Cafe Loco, which is going to become a bad habit.
Unbelievably I get a parking permit from Oxford County Council despite not having changed address yet. Win! “You down with OCC? Yeah you know me!” They also...
Indirect Debit
Tues 9th March
Bloody direct debits. I spend all day trying to move about six of them to our offset joint account so we can make the most of the offset by paying our salaries straight into it, but take the wrong approach and try to do it over the phone. Battling with 0845, 0870 numbers and queues is not my idea of fun. On the plus side I find my V5 vehicle registration document and now I can get...
Rent In Twain
Monday 8th March contd.
They’ve torn out the kitchen. There’s a massive gash through the floor where the waste pipe’s going to go from the sink to the new inspection chamber.
I have to admit I quite like the mess. It feels like it can’t get any worse than this, so we must be at the nadir. I think I’ll probably be proved wrong.
For reference, the kitchen used to...
Ugly Bathroom Designs Ltd
Mon 8th March
I get up with a slight hangover and fix Mrs Badger’s laptop. Then I fix the broken internet connection. All before breakfast. I have a feeling this is the most I’ll achieve today.
Sadly this doesn’t manage to resolve the question about the bathroom. We could still go for the expensive option, but spending £250 on a piece of wood no larger than a side table makes...
Admin
Sun 7th March
Today I insist we tackle the massive pile of paperwork which has developed over the past week, containing lists of things to do/check/ask/remember, sketches, cross-sections, dimensions and dire warnings, mortgage things and letters telling us stuff we already knew in triplicate (thanks Swinton!).
Mrs Badger’s work laptop takes this opportunity to break, so I have another...
Absolute Shower!
Sat 6th March
After a lightning visit to the house Mrs Badger and I embark on a shopping trip for shower fittings. And possibly new bathroom fittings too. And tiles. By the time we’re out of Wickes we have less idea about what we wanted than when we started the day.
Weirdly in the Oxford branch of UK Bathroom Warehouse shop Dale Winton is on Radio 2 playing retro charts and I’m...
Bathrooms, Meetings & Ox Cheeks
Friday 5th Mar
I spend the morning doing some severe procrastination, meaning I start to transfer some VHS tapes to my PC, a project which has been on my todo list for the last four years. Who said procrastination doesn’t have its uses?
While drinking coffee I read about remodelling bathrooms in one of our Real Homes porn mags and realise we’ll have nowhere to store toilet rolls...
Soil
Thursday 4th March John & Marko have demolished the bathroom and part of the kitchen. The extension floor is now in pieces where they tried to find the soil pipe. It vanishes underground to somewhere next door. The plan is to install an inspection chamber, but inspiration strikes John and he decides to move it and the soil pipe inside the current kitchen to pick up the downstairs loo, the...
Dude, Where's My Floor?
Wed 3rd March
We turn up at lunchtime and the floor’s gone already. Incredibly it all fits in the back bedroom. Two of the joists are rotten at one end, but apart from that the floor’s in pretty good condition. Unfortunately the joists are only 4 inches deep, so the underfloor heating becomes a little bit more complicated. You can’t notch 4-inch joists to pass the underfloor...
Kick Off
Tues 2nd March
Planning application is completed at 11am. We go to the house to meet John and the plumbers at 1pm. This is it, some action instead of playing CAD Lego with Google Sketchup. We check out the size of the joists and decide where to start with the underfloor heating. It’s not going to be simple, but it’s doable.
We submit the planning application to Oxford City Council...