Bedlam in Waterford

After getting quite used to just two guys coming and going from the extension as they pleased and quiely cracking on.  The start to his week has been a good deal more frenetic at one stage there were 6 vans parked outside the house.

Without any heating or hot water, I'm also sampling life "Victorian Style" on a fairly mild but grey and damp November day I'm struggling to stay warm - especially as there are 6 people constantly coming and going via the front door. Brrrrr!

Roof tiling has commenced with two roofers on the roof

We have a plumber relocating hot water tanks and plumbing the new services in (hence no heating or hot water). We have an electrician cabling. We have 2 builders and their supervisor knocking down walls and connecting the old house to the new house.  One thing that is really amazing is that the floor in the existing bathroom meets the new floor perfectly - that's quite a feat!

Bathroom before - we never did paint the side of the cupboard

Cupboard and water tank removed

Floors all covered with protective plastic

First contact with the new space

Getting bigger

Breakthrough!

End of day 1 knocking though

View back into the house from the new bedroom, ensuite to the left

170 year old laths

You can see the horse hair in the plaster

Everything is moving along at quite a pace.

Week 20 - Stone Masons and evacuation preparations

Week 20....

Well progress continues to be slow - East Herts County Council's Conservation Officer has finally approved the original roof tile, so we will hopefully have a new roof in the next week and the carpenters are busily working on the external woodwork of the house. The insulation and plasterboard is up and the room is really starting to shape up.

The programme has now changed based on the continuing delay with the folding doors on the ground floor.   The builder will now knock though upstairs only, will move all of the plumbing and make good upstairs with a view to completing upstairs by Christmas.

The downstairs knock though will happen in January and ambitiously will not involve us moving out, takeaways and microwave food -  yes but we're not moving out.

They will start knocking though on Monday 19th.

The really exciting thing happening at the moment is the stonework going in.  To date the stone work has been a drawing on a plan, and a (very large) bill that we had to pay very early for the supplier, based in Dorset, to manufacture the stone to the architect's specification. It is the detail that really defines how we wanted the extension to look, so I was a bit nervous...

It arrived like a gigantic 3D jigsaw and the Stone Mason and his assistants have lugged these gigantic pieces of stone lots of pulleys and chains and crashing and banging  as they moved the stone piece-by-piece into place