Stripping back the mouldy wall

The living room and kitchen are one big open plan room since about March 2013 when builders came to knock through the old stone wall.  The room was known as the play room to the Chandlers and was previously a really dark little room .  Now that it’s all opened up however the light from the kitchen comes streaming through and has completely transformed that side of the house.  The plan is for this to be the day room and there will be a separate little snug / study / TV room for cosy evenings in.  The main issue with this room however is damp. It’s an ongoing battle here at Gwalia but this room has suffered the most from not being heated, not getting much sunshine and the walls not being able to breath and dry out.  Harry did quite a bit of work on the exterior facing wall in 1990 but little did he know it was actually to do more harm than good.  He insulated it, fitted a thin membrane and erected a new stud wall so as to block off the stone wall.  Unfortunately that wall is so wet that the water was seeping into the room under the floor.   Removing this stud wall and stripping back the window sill / framing revealed the extent of the water damage, the walls were literally dripping with water.  

The wooden lintel above the window was also extremely damp, so much so there was soil and roots forming on the underside.  This wall will be left to dry out for a few months and then will be lime rendered to allow a more natural breathing process.   A new wood-burning stove should also help this. The age and construction of the 18th century house means that the floor sits directly on top of the bare earth with only some insulation and chipboard underfoot.  We had to rip up half the floor and replace  the waterproof membrane so that we could run it further up the wall and hopefully prevent the same problems re-occurring.

Panel fitted by Harry, Livy, Corinna and Amy February 1990. Good luck to you all!

Corinna May Chandler born 17/10/79, aged 10 years old

The only nice part of this was the discovery of some messages from the past.  When Harry covered over an old window sill the Chandlers each wrote a little message for future inhabitants to find.  Long forgotten about, it was rather fitting that it should be the those same Chandlers to rediscover it a quarter of a century later!

It’s not just all the building work we’re doing ourselves.  The redesign has also involved a great deal of plumbing and re-wiring to fit in with the new layout but also to bring this part of the house up to current building standards.  Harry is fortunately a bit of a dab hand at plumbing and turns his hand to most things so has been really helpful with advice and guidance.  On the Electrics side of things we’ve had the help of a local electrician who has discussed the planned work with Amy and then come back to check everything over before going live.  It’s been really useful for Amy to have had the benefit of his knowledge, skills and of course he’s been invaluable at reassuring everything is safe before he’s “plugged us in”.  Whilst the input has been fantastic, Amy has done all of the actual work herself, not to mention figuring out the numerous plumbing and electric parts we’ve needed to get up and running.  The entire original half of the house has been completely rewired, a new consumer unit installed and on the plumbing side she’s dismantled the old bathroom / pantry arrangements and fitted the plumbing for a new kitchen and bathroom.  I keep being in awe at how these things just get done.  Lots of hard work and research of course goes into it but it’s great to remember that hiring someone to rewire your house and plumb in a new kitchen and bathroom would cost a small fortune.  Amy rocks!

Kitchen assembly

Alas we did not meet our deadline for finishing the kitchen by Christmas, although it had actually arrived and the Ikea flat packs were all piled up like Christmas presents waiting to be un-wrapped.  After a couple of weeks off over Christmas we were back to it in the New Year and raring to go.  We opted for under counter drawers and 4 large wall cabinets over head.  Having fitted better branded kitchens in the past, Ikea is now tried and tested as the best design for fitting yourself.  We had a bit of a production line going and it all got assembled very quickly.  All drawer and cupboard fronts are white  and with all that natural light coming in we opted for white paint on walls and ceiling to really enhance the brightness of the space. 

The worktops were sourced separately from an online company and we opted for beech.  They are a bit of a faff to oil properly in advance of fitting but that is the key to keeping wooden worktops in good condition.  They arrived on the back of a massive lorry in 4 metre lengths and are extremely heavy.  Because of the narrow country lanes here we’ve had quite a lot of fun and games with delivery drivers and lorries.  The closest this lorry could get was 20m from the front door and so we had to carry each one through the yard and round to the back door.  There were 4 of them and did I mention they were really heavy?!   We don’t actually have 16m of worktop but had ordered 7m extra to use as window sills.  They look fantastic and it worked out a lot cheaper than buying the same quantity / quality of wood.

Kitchen taking shape

As a bit of extra functionality, very thin stainless steel sheets were ordered and fitted onto 2 sections of worktop.  One section on the sink / dishwasher area so as to prevent water damage and the other was fitted onto a lowered section of kitchen unit which will be used for rolling out dough and pastry.  It’s been really great to customise our kitchen in this way and has been the real benefit or doing it all ourselves.  Come the end of January our kitchen was pretty much finished, bar a bit of tiling and window paint.

It’s taken all summer to strip down, rebuild and make the extension watertight but come the end of October we were insulated and ready for some slightly less heavy work.  The plaster boarding happened fairly quickly but it was not without its challenges.  We were boarding onto the stonewall of the original house which was neither flat nor straight.  There is still a section which we’ll have to sort out at a later date or just cover over with kitchen cupboards!

Plaster boarding

Nonetheless we were ready to plaster and when I say we, once again Amy is trades woman extraordinaire.  She had done a fair bit of jointing and patching work in the past but not skimming and so having watched what must be hours of You Tube videos she was ready to go.  Amy started on the wall which would mostly be covered by kitchen units and tiles, just to get her eye in but there was no need – she was off.  I think she would say that it’s pretty difficult and hard going on the arms but the end result was fantastic.  It’s a very impressive skill.  For the ceiling we employed a professional, simply because there are 3
velux windows to board around and we wanted to make sure the ceiling was really perfect.  Nice smooth walls and ceilings, it’s starting to feel like a real house again and just a building site.

Amy plastering kitchen

New stud wall

Our new kitchen / diner will sit on top of what used to be the pantry, bathroom and a separate little loo for campers so we now need to incorporate a new and much smaller bathroom within the re-modelled space.   This has proved a bit of a challenge because we want to maximise the kitchen space but still fit in a bath to make a decent family bathroom.  The dimensions were drawn out on the floor and although it will be rather bijou it’s just doable.  You don’t actually need that much space for a loo and so despite there being no natural light in there we’ll be finding some other ways to give it a bit of a wow factor. 

Funky shapes hiding electrics

The stud wall was erected and has been packed with some (hopefully!) decent sound insulation.  The added complication with putting up the wall is that this is where the fuse box / consumer unit needs to live.  It will be embedded into this wall and be accessed through one of the kitchen cupboards.  It’s also meant that Amy needed to get a bit creative with that section of wall in the bathroom .  A rather funky shaped wall has appeared above the sink so as to hide all the cables and pipes. The sink itself was upcycled from the outside loo, it’s a beautiful (and extremely heavy) old Belfast sink which has provided the inspiration for the décor.

Now, the other challenge in the bathroom is fitting in the bath.  Quite a lot of research went into bath sizes and designs and we had actually ordered a square bath but that fell through so we were down to just a couple of choices.  Either go with an expensive square bath which would fit in nicely but not allow you to lie down in it or…go with what I call the “James Bond” option.  This involves a bath which is too long to fit into our bathroom.  Basically (I still don’t know how she persuaded me), Amy cut a section out of the bathroom wall in which the end of the bath now sits.  It doesn’t look any different from the kitchen side because when you have a bath it means your feet will be sitting in one of the kitchen cupboards.  Brilliant or crazy…you decide.

James Bond bath

Light and bright

Natural light is the main feature of the new rooms we’re creating and so we really want to maximise the light spaces.  We ordered some custom French doors which will open out onto the stream next to the greenhouse garden.  These align with the 2 roof lights so as to flood the previously dark living room space with light.

Amy’s windows

As for the windows these are all being made from scratch.  Having routed out several metres of wood herself, Amy has meticulously fitted each piece in place .  Our local glazing company made our super-eco glass units to order and again Amy is fitting these herself with such perfectionism you can forget it’s all a DIY project.

The chunky wooden frames really set off the large windows which span the full width of the gable end at one side, a really funky-shaped window at the opposite gable follows the pitch of the roof line and the third spans a couple of metres along what will be the kitchen worktop area. It’s been and incredible amount of work but the total cost for glazing, including the doors, has come in under £1000 because Amy has done it all herself. 

A sink with a view

As part of the demolition we had to strip back the interior to the bare concrete walls and so earlier work required a complete framing of all internal walls.  Building control specified the insulation levels required for the floor, walls and roof and so whilst Amy’s been getting to grips with the finer points of joinery work, I’ve been cracking on with insulating…and dear God there’s a lot to be getting on with.  25mm will sit on top of the existing concrete floor, 100mm in the walls and a whopping 150mm in the ceiling.  It’s an old house but we are determined to be cosy.

Lots of insulation

Amy Roofing

It’s a bit like getting your sea legs when you climb on to the roof every morning.  Ok so it’s not quite 3 metres high but that can be a bit alarming  when you’re used to having your feet firmly on the ground.  With most of the rafters on, me back to full capacity and Amy managing her sciatica we could move on to completing the roof structure.  It all followed fairly quickly once we got going again.  The strapping and waterproof membrane went on in a couple of days and meant that for the first time in a couple of months we weren’t getting rained on.

Dee wielding hammer!

Velux windows were always part of plan as these would to help draw more light into the darker part of the house however, the pitch of the roof is only 15 degrees which meant we were restricted in what roofing material we could use.  Having investigated a few options we settled on lightweight steel tiles which were easy to install and look like slate so it’s in keeping with the rest of the house.  Luckily a good dry spell allowed us to get the whole roof covered and 3 small velux windows fitted in just a few days.

Amy getting the Velux in

It certainly improved the old hammering technique although there were several bashed thumb and sweary word incidents along the way.  No pain no gain though, it was worth it to be water tight.

It has been some time since the last blog entry, I don’t really know where the time has gone exactly but several things have happened.  Firstly, we’ve had quite a lot of holidays, that is to say several trips away for long weekends camping and visiting friends and family around the UK.  It’s been a pretty long and hot summer and we’ve been making the most of having the freedom to take off whenever we want – hurrah!  Secondly, some of the holidaying was due in part to some fairly nasty injuries incurred during the demolition phase.  Amy has sciatica triggered by 2 days of heavy lifting whilst dismantling a chimney stack.  She was doing this by herself because I had torn a muscle in my side which made any form of lifting a big no-no.  Both injured and unable to get on with things we decided there was nothing else for it but to relax and work on the tans.

Things did not completely grind to a halt however as we had some invaluable help from our brother in law Chris who, despite whiling away the hours in the world of Procurement, is extremely handy at mega DIY projects.  A couple of weekends graft from him really pushed things on and got us to a stage where we could start assembling the roof.  

Chris grafting away

Amy is basically Project Managing the whole thing and there’s a lot of research going into materials, design and process and although things feel very slow at times it’s all an amazing learning experience.   There have been times when we wondered if it would have been quicker and easier just to tear the whole lot down and start again however, from a building control perspective that would have meant going right back to the original foundations which would have been very costly.  And so now we begin the rebuild.  New walls, roof, windows and doors all required and that’s before we even start to think about the new kitchen, bathroom and all the nice homely stuff.

[singlepic id=74 w=320 h=240 float=left] Never before have I experienced the shear joy of hitting something as hard as you can…and then doing it again and again….and again.  The conversion of the old pantry, which was originally a 1950’s lean-to kitchen extension, into a modern bright and open living room / kitchen will be quite a challenge.  Work began back in January 2013 when, fuelled from a 2 week stay at Gwalia over Christmas, we were inspired to start knocking stuff down. The ceiling of the Pantry needed to come down so that we could see what we were taking on.  Whilst this is normally a fairly simple task, it was made quite a lot more difficult by a decision taken some 30 years ago to use some rather unusual insulation. Continue reading →