A Couple of Days Off!

So over the last week I have been working on the plastering and also painting. I have painted about 3/4 of the living room so it is starting to look much better. The amount of dust in the house was getting excessive so I spent a few days cleaning up so that the place is a bit more liveable. It's nice to get a reasonably tidy house back again so I have decided to have a couple of days off from the work to rest a bit.

The guy is coming in on the 10th September to install the central heating system and the bathroom so that will be a bit of turmoil again so I am preparing for that too! It will be so nice to get the bath in and have a brand new bathroom, very exciting.

Hitting the wall (metaphorically)

So today I have kind of hit the wall with all the filling and sanding. It just seems endless! After the first big fill I need to do a finer one but then that needs a big sand and a final fill before any painting and there are loads of channels to do that on so it is going really slowly. I guess everything I do is progress and once all this is done things will go a bit more quickly (hopefully).

On other news I phoned the council about painting the front of the house white and they said there are no restrictions on doing that so I guess I need to schedule that in when the weather is OK. I have the paint so I can get on with that any time.

Delay on gas installation

So National Grid are supposed to be installing a gas supply to the house as it doesn't have one. The surveyor came round on 11 July and said they could start work within 3-4 weeks. However, having not heard anything I phoned them last week and they said it was on hold as the house wasn't ready. I said that was wrong and the surveyor had already been round.

So, it looks like they misplaced my application somewhere and now I have gone back on the bottom of the pile. They phoned with a date for me on Monday of 28th SEPTEMBER!!! Which is 11 weeks from when the surveyor came. This messes up my central heating installation which is being combined with my bathroom installation. SO the plumber will do as much as he can without the actual gas supply and will have to come back to connect and sign it off. Hopefully it won't get too cold before the end of September as I won't have any heating :-(

In other news I am making progress on filling in all the holes that the electrician made for the new wiring. I got a whole lot of stuff at B&Q at the weekend so that I could save 20% and actually managed to save £90. I need to finish the spare room and hopefully the living room by the time I have my BBQ on 22nd Sept and also I need to fill, sand and paint all of the areas that will have radiators on them so that I don't have to paint behind them.

20% Discount at B&Q this weekend!

So B&Q have introduced something called the B&Q club and it is giving a 20% discount on purchases this weekend if you join (all the details on their website I'm sure :-) - so this means that I really need to decide on whether to pick up my bathroom furniture this weekend. I think you can get a toilet for about £50 and the sink unit with cupboard underneath that I want is about £110 I think so that would save me £32 already. Plus I need plaster and a few other bits and bobs and I also need to decide what to do about the fireplace - do I put in an actual fireplace or just some kind of feature? I'm veering towards the latter as it seems unnecessary to have a fire after I have put in perfectly good central heating... Anyway, I'll have to write a list of stuff to get so that I can save as much as possible as it is not often that B&Q have 20% off.

Plastering up the new sockets

So all of the new sockets and light switches have gone in along with a new consumer board. So now I need to plaster up all the channels and big holes that the electrician had to make to get the new cables in. I guess if I had paid more I could have got someone who did this too but of course this is all about money saving if possible so I am going to try and do this myself. If it doesn't work then I will get a plasterer in!

There are some quite deep channels to fill so to start off with I am filling with a bit more hefty mortar and then I will use a finishing plaster to top it off. I think the difficult thing will be to get it completely flat around the back of the sockets so we'll see how that goes.

Here are a few pics of some of the sockets that need doing and a couple I have started already.

Electrical Work Nearly Finished

So the electrical work is nearly done - a new RCD box has been put in to replace the old one. All of the cables have been recessed into the walls and new sockets have been put in and recessed instead of being on the surface of the wall so it all looks better. Added to that the storage heaters have been disconnected and removed ready for the central heating to be put in. Am still waiting for the gas supply to be put in which I was told would be 3-4 weeks and I think that was over a month ago, must check up on that.

So now I need to plaster all the bits of walls where the cables have been channeled and the sockets have been recessed which is going to be interesting!

Also need to sort out a design for a feature where the fireplace was, I think it will just be a kind of decorative. Also need a new box in the hall to cover the electric meter and units.

Have filled, sanded and painted another section of the living room so that is slowly getting done. May do a feature wall on the chimney breast.

The Mess Starts!

So today the electrician started work. Mike had given me a good quote and seemed like a genuine guy and so I was happy to give him the work. He also cleans up after himself which is great! You can find him here: MSK Electrics. I had forgotten how much mess this would create as he needed to channel out the lines for the new sockets and light switches. Work started in the bedrooms and I think all of the channeling has been done in those. Also the storage heater is out of the main bedroom.

  
 

Whilst the electrician was working I was stripping off the wallpaper in the living room - I made quite good progress as it came off pretty easily, some of it even without the steamer. I am leaving the paper on the ceiling and above the picture rail as it looks fine (just needs a coat of paint). The walls are OK with some tiny hairline cracks that will just need a kind of plaster/pva wash as they as so small.

No Quote, No Business!

So over 2 weeks ago I had an electrician from a local company (CJ Electrical) round to give me a quote for the various work that I needed doing. It's not like it is a particularly small job so I expected them to be reasonably keen to get the work. So nearly 2 weeks after they came round I still hadn't received a quote. I phoned but was too late to speak to anyone in that department so left a message asking where my quote had got to. That was 3 days ago and I still haven't heard anything back.

So today I tried to call another local electrician but there was no answer. If they had an answerphone I could have left a message but nothing. People, get the basics of your business right and you might get more work, it's not rocket science!

Anyway, 3rd choice guy came round. Seemed like a very trustworthy and decent guy so I gave him the job. He starts on Tuesday.