Four months in and we’re getting excited about how awesome our house is going to be. We’re itching to get back in, but it’s still at least 6-8 weeks away, optimistically.
There was a three week delay right at the start, when the plaster was removed from our room and the bay window declared unsafe. Engineers were called in, changes had to be made to the permits and the room had to get internal supports put in before it was considered safe for workers to start the underpinning. Neither the concrete lintel above our bay window, nor the steel lintel supporting the old chimney, had been anchored properly into the walls. Just a lick of mortar and a that’ll do attitude. Probably more to do with shortage of materials at the time – our house was built in 1919.
Our room now has five very solid concrete underpinnings, an entire new support frame for the floor, new floor and the start of some serious built-in robes. There will be a quirky corner at the end of my robes as it became clear that squaring up the wall next to the old fireplace-turned-cupboard would involve removing the entire chimney – uh, no. Not worth the cost. Our builder has suggested shelving and it really does work out well as it will give me a little meditation nook and I had been wondering where I would put my crystals once I no longer had a chest of drawers. I still find it difficult to imagine what he has in mind, but so far everything that he has suggested or come up with has turned out much better than I’ve expected.
It has become clear through the process that the window is in a really bad state and we now have to replace the entire thing. I am not immensely surprised – once we moved everything out it looked pretty obvious that our window was in desperate need of some TLC. I had discussed the possibility with our builder during the consultation period, however we had been looking at the window in Zac’s room which the builder said could probably still go on for another 10 years. We knew our room was the worst in the house, but even so didn’t really expect it to be getting such an amazing make-over. Having just seen the windows made by our builder’s window man, I’m really quite glad that ours need replacing. Finally we’ll have windows that we can open. And they’ll be double glazed, and air-tight and noise reducing. Sweet!
So, photos so far….
House Renovation - Our room so far
