The longest day of the year! No time to celebrate...

As I am sure everyone is aware, last Friday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year (Still 24 hours, but light for more of it). It was also my Dads birthday, or at least it usually would be. This year I made the managerial decision of shifting it to one of the adjacent, second longest, days - Saturday.

No, I'm not a bad person, and it was all taken in good spirit; he had booked time to come and help of his own accord. Plus what could be better than helping your favorite son renovate his new flat on the day before your newly reassigned birthday. So the latest recruit arrived on Thursday night ready to work.

Or so I thought, he clearly did not get the memo, because it was an extremely slow start on the on the Friday morning and though the sun may have been up the earliest it had been this year my dad was decidedly not. I chose to leave him to lie in and headed down to bathroom solutions to collect the shower tray that I had ordered earlier in the week.

When I returned he had risen and was doing a good deal of pottering, in what would probably not be described as appropriate builders attire.  The pottering went on for some time... I am not sure what time it finished up but it was late morning before we headed down to Travis Perkins to purchase the latest batch of supplies. Shopping list this week was primarily plasterboard and with a curtailed and less hungover trip than that of the week previous, we tootled back up the hill with 8 sheets of the stuff, along with a replacement floorboard for one that had received some Darvill Damage a few weeks before.

The main tasks for the day were to get the wiring in for the bathroom ceiling halogen lights, shove some new plasterboard up on the same ceiling and make a start on the shower tray supports and bathroom dividing stud work.

Dad set about chipping off the cornice, a job that Charlie and I had abandoned a couple of weeks back, while I attacked the ceiling with a hammer, locating joists and rerouting new wiring for the lights. This work was a killer on the hands and I am not looking forward to doing it on the rest of the flat.

Once holes were made and wires were routed and Dad was finished with his fair share of destruction, we were left with a ceiling like a piece of Swiss cheese and a flat covered in dust and rubble.

So with Dad doing his best to clear up with very limited tools (yes that's a block of 2x3 being used as a brush), I started to prep new ceiling boards. Then, with some solid father son teamwork, and a short pause for a Birthday beer at around 6, the ceiling came together.

With that milestone reached, there was just time to tidy up a bit, shower and head out for some Birthday champagne next to the Clifton Suspension Bridge at sunset, catch some unexpected fireworks and grab a bite to eat.

Saturday (Dads surrogate Birthday) was a little more relaxed. He spent the morning relaxing while I started work putting in the shower tray and started on the internal dividing walls in the bathroom.

At around lunch time my brother Rich arrived and work stopped, or at least it was diverted, as when exploring he accidentally broke the slightly temperamental front window sash in such a way that the window could not be closed. Either way I had to fix that before we could head out. With that done it was the end of work for the day as we went out to celebrate Dads birthday properly.

On Sunday my guests left and I set about putting the plasterboard up on the bathroom side of the new dividing wall. It went up without much incident and really made the place feel a big step closer to completion. I know its still a building site but it really gave a better feel for the divide and the new spaces.

That was all I really had the energy to do for the weekend, but I was very happy with the progress. I was also, despite the teasing, very grateful to my Dad for taking time over his Birthday (on the rare occasion that it is actually sunny) to stay in my dusty flat and help me renovate. Big Thanks!

Apologies to those few who have been quick to point out that I did not post this at the beginning of the week. I have no excuses, its just laziness. At least I got there before the next weekend came along...

First construction starts with a BANG..ing headache

Yes that's right, somehow, against my better judgment, and in the knowledge that this was the weekend that actual building work was to begin, I let myself be coerced into going out on Friday night for a colleagues leaving drinks. I could not tell you much about her, don't even know what she did at uni...

Anyway, inevitably, after a combo of wine, beer, spirits, a completely gluttonous kebab and 4.5 hours sleep, I awoke at the crack of... 9am, with a solid hangover and two friends crashed out in my building site of a flat. Little did I know that this was the beginning of one of those days. One of those days where not much seems to go right; where you're just not "feeling it". I'm sure that in a moment, once written up, I will realize that I am to blame for a good portion of the woes that followed, but until that disappointing realization, I'm blaming fate.

Last week I was proactive and spent a portion of my evenings CADing up the layout of the flat and the required stud work. Despite doing this in a completely over the top, unconventional way (using industrial design software for interior design... I know, I know I can hear the tutting) it did give me the exact quantity of wood I would to need to purchase on Saturday morning down to the millimeter. A level of precision that, due to an unexpected turn of generosity that I will come to, was not necessary.

So after rolling out of bed, and bidding farewell to Craig, one of the aforementioned crashers. Will and I headed down to Travis Perkins try our hand at amateur dramatics... We had to fit in, and make it sound like we had a clue what we were talking about. Long story short, we pretty much nailed it (excuse the pun). We were such convincing "builders" and got on so well with the guy in the yard he pretty much told us his life story and threw in some extra wood for good measure (I'm keen not to emphasis the "some", as it was not "some", it was way too much really.) This HERO will have to remain nameless so he does not loose his job...

And speaking of heroic, picture of the week goes to a William Darvill. With three 4.2m 2x3 pieces of timber. The car was going to struggle getting them up the hill to the house without doing some landscaping of its own, but not this guy, oh yeah he just walked them up the hill to the house, no mention of a hangover. Sure he nearly decapitated several pedestrians on route and moaned about a bruised shoulder the next day, but at this moment, just prior to departure, he was walking on air!

So all is going well you might think, and I have no grounds for my earlier grumble. Well upon arrival at the top of the hill the blustery showers of the day were realized and during the unloading of the wood the heavens opened. James, my very neighborly neighbor, saw the trouble we were having and ran out to help with the unload (third hero of the day). After that manic rush and feeling a little damp we headed to Chin Chin, the most local cafe for a spot of brekky; as if to spite us, the rain instantly stopped.

At this point four things happened. The first was that we waited for almost an hour for some breakfast that never came. Somehow the order never made it to the kitchen. The second was that we went outside to find it pouring down with rain once again. The third was that I found that I had left the passenger window of my car wide open and the car was, well, wet. And the fourth (along much the same lines as the third) the flat window, which was ajar to allow the 4.2m piece of timber to protrude out, had not served to keep out the rain. In fact the timber had acted like a funnel and I popped in to find a growing pool of water in my living room.

Grumbling, hungry, head pounding and with Will waiting in the (dry) back of the car, as if to be chauffeured to screw fix (our next destination), I frantically mopped up as much water as I could and dragged the offending pieces of timber all the way into the flat, before heading back down to the car. This was probably the lowest point in the day.

Screw fix was uneventful. They did not have the brazing iron that I wanted so I ended up settling for a slightly cheaper option. Upon returning home I found we had bought the wrong gas. At this point both Will and I were loosing the will and decided that it would be best if we just built something. we set about on the spacing wall which will eventually hide pipework for the new bathroom. First job was to feed wiring for sockets up through the base piece of wood.

We had finally started building works and it was going well. At least it was at first but then the cracks started to show in Will's measuring abilities. It started with a couple of cross pieces being out by a few millimeters. The sort of thing that stud work of this kind can absorb with a little hammer negotiation. He crossed the line on the last upright, no hammer was making this one fit...

At this point we cut a replacement upright and called it a day. Heading to Beerd for a Pizza, a round of Battleships and a slice of Ginger Cake. Needless to say the order for the Ginger Cake was forgotten/lost/purposefully mislaid (Oh yeah it was a conspiracy by this point).

Sunday came next, as it does. And Will had decided to take a day off. I felt refreshed and wanted to try to get the double door and the wall that supported it in. It all went quite well.

[Will popped by on his way from town to check on progress]

Really it was very uneventful in comparison to the day before and with it all done, I was even able to head into town and watch the new Superman film with Bermuda (a friend from uni).

A longer post I know and a late one to boot, but what can you do. Thanks to Will, James and the anonymous Travis Perkins man for all being super motivated and generous with your weekend time.

All that is left to be said is - Music... I can't believe you thought I forgot Emma.

A productive weekend!

So I did not have the energy to write the weekend post yesterday evening. It was a combo of nights out and the the building work. However I am writing it now...

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were productive days but unfortunately the pictures don't quite portray that. I think the reason for that is because most of the jobs are in the corners or under the surface. The list comprised of a few things, the first was to remove the wall paper, cornice and skirting board from the bathroom end of the room. The skirting came off easy but the cornice was a dusty difficult job, that was far less satisfying that it should have been. I did not have any safety specs and after the third eyeful of dust that Charlie received and in turn the third earful of grumbling about inadequate safety gear that I received, I made him up a mask using a composite video cable and the plastic body of a remote control car.

This was how progress was looking on Thursday afternoon, and yes there was two of Charlie at that point, go figure.

The next thing was to sort those pesky radiator pipes that were sticking through the floor. This involved draining the heating system, a job made fairly easy as all that was needed was to open one of the valves on the aforementioned pipes. The plan was to put on a new portion of pipe and cap them under the floor near where they should be so that at a later date I could lift the boards once again and then pipe them to the radiator. This plan ended up changing on Sunday but I will come to that. To drain the pipes completely I drilled through part of the pipe that I was chopping of causing a comical burst pipe fountain, fortunately intentional at this point. Next the new strait sections of pipe went in.

The last job that needed doing this weekend was to hang some new cross joists to support the new dividing wall. This was not done with the wall we took out, which was in breech of building regs, so its a good thing that I am changing it really. It was a difficult job as it required floorboards to be lifted, some of which ran the full length of the room. Never the less with some help from a sizable team now, Dan and Will/Piers joined to help on Saturday, they were done without too much trouble and just in time for a few beers.

On Sunday we were back to a team of two, and a hungover team of two at that. After a review of what was to be done next I decided that the plan to raise the floorboards again later was not so wise and it would be better to just get the radiator that I wanted now, measure where the pipes should go, bring them through the floor in the right place and cap them off there, ready to attach later. So we head off to screw fix and bought a lovely chrome radiator and valves.

While we were there we popped in to Topps Tiles and got a couple of quotes for the bathroom area, but more on that in a later post. When back we drained the system, for the second time in that weekend, this time using a slightly more cowboy builder adaptor (no hose pipe and no radiator valve sticking through the middle of the floor). I then set about doing the pipe work.

That was the end of a solid weekend. The room does not look much different as I said, but a start has been made on the cornice, the skirting is gone, the wall paper is going, the supporting joists are in, and the heating pipe work is done. One other thing that was bought and delivered was the pocket door system, as seen at the side of one of the above photo's, but I will dive into that on another post. As always, big big thanks to Charlie, Will/Piers and Dan for their help (Dan helping even while hungover). Also thanks to Dan's mate, a plumber who's telephone consult was most helpful (probably prevented some costly Darvill mayhem...)

So much room for activities!

After last weekend was so productive I decided to take Thursday and Friday off in order get the rest of the walls down. The work is noisy and I felt that if I did the noisiest of it in the week I could minimise the disturbance to my neighbours. Also charlie finished some mock exams on Wednesday so kindly offered to come down and help again.

The plan for Thursday was to remove the radiator from the dividing wall followed by the dividing wall itself. Leaving the room as per the plan below.

Removing the radiator posed its own choices, we could could remove it at the adapters and shut it off with the inlet valves but this leaves the pipes sticking through the floor while we try to knock a wall down around it; a bit risky. The second option was to lift the floorboards, drain the heating system, cut the pipes and cap them or route them to a new radiator position and then cap them. The problem with this latter option is that the plan is still in flux and I'm just not certain of where the radiator is going to go. In the end we decided to just remove the radiator and leave the pipes for the time beings, and just be carful when removing wall.

So first job was to drain the radiator and remove it.

Next was the wall, but at this point we were still debating the best layout for the bathroom, a discussion that had begun because the opening that currently remained to the right of the wall was quite nice for going in and out of the bathroom area. We decided it would be useful to see what the double door opening I the middle would actually be like, so rather than just demolishing the wall, we started by cutting the double doorway opening in it first.

With that done, a very useful exercise, I was pretty sure that the original plan was on the money once again and we proceeded to remove the rest of the wall. While doing this I learnt that it had not actually been built on a joist, it was just supported on the floorboards in between joists, this was pretty shoddy and does not comply with building regs, something that does not bother me so much as it is now gone, but given that the new wall was going to be put in one joist back, does mean that I will also not land on a joist and will need to put in a series of cross joist supports for the new wall. Something that I had hoped I could avoid doing. Oh well...

With the wall gone, we carried on with the cleanup job and begun scraping off the bumpy wall paper that is pasted across the whole room.

It was a great days work and now, temporarily, the room is huge, there is so much room for activities. Big thanks to Charlie once again!