I spent an enjoyable couple of hours at the house yesterday tinkering and fitting parts of the new burglar alarm. It’s the first hands on work I’ve actually done (ashamedly) but it’s nice to finally get my hands on it. We’ve never yet spent a night in the property and only then will it feel like home.
The bathroom is really close to be finished now, the new pair of lights in the alcove went in and look great:

And the flat roof of the loft is partially completed – most of the structural joists are in:


Showing the rear piece of the roof which will also be completed replaced with new (since it’s in bad condition):



Some nice detail on the joints between the roof joists:


Roof felt goes down on the gable:


The tiles on the side of the neighbour’s loft are removed so we can joint ours to theirs and create a water tight seal:

Scaffold – I went up and tied up a loose part that was flapping around, make sure it doesn’t make too much noise:


I fitted the new alarm keypad

and control panel:

Progress has been swift again this week – with the first half of the roof (the slanty front bit with the velux windows in it) is up in skeleton form and all the floor joists and structural steels are in place.
The chaps dropped the steels below the loft floor which means we get a good 6’6″ ceiling height in the loft.
They’ve done a great job… photos below:

Our house has no roof. The first thing you notice is you can hear the plane noise much louder in the house (than you could before) and walking through the front door there is no change in the sound. This is because there is no roof. In literally two days, a crew of men has demolished the roof of our house – in the same way as a bomb blast or a hurricane would have. The tiles, the roof timbers, the flashing and the loft contents – all of it is gone. (well to be truthful it’s in a huge heap in the front garden but it soon will be gone). The horror of our terrible roof is no more.
When you stand on the landing and look up, all you can see is the corrugated iron roof, far above. Too far above – it feels unreal. The top of the house is like now as high as a concert hall. When you climb a ladder up onto what was the floor of the loft (unboarded at this point) you are left standing in a place where you could have a game of football or play squash. The head height is enormous and the feeling of space immense. It gives a grand feeling to the project we’re undertaking. The house suddenly feels much more than a 3-bed Victorian terrace. It’s heart is on display, it’s guts wrenched open. Ready to be improved.
Of course in the end we get far less space – they’ll soon be building a much tighter roof inside this iron palace – but it’s nice just for a few days to feel the space.
Inside it’s surprisingly dry. The neighbours don’t like it because the tarpaulin makes a crackling noise all night (and I can see their point – we’re trying to get it tightened to reduce that). But the scaffold is doing it’s job and protecting the innards from the heavy rain until the new roof is constructed.
Elsewhere, the utility room is nearly complete – and I was able to test the water pressure for the first time – it’s (thankfully) very good. And the bathroom alterations are also nearly done.
The back room and the garden are so full of materials, we could operate a builders yard – and yet probably within the next two or three weeks or so most of it will be in use lining the new roof or plasterboarding the new walls.
Photos to follow as soon as I have more. The project is certainly back on “full steam ahead”.

Scaffold (a real photo of ours this time)… this is what’s known as a “tin-hat”

I climbed this ladder (bit wobbly) to get these photos:

The view of the garden from the top:

And the various aspects of the roof (it’s in pretty bad condition):













The broken clip which lost the scaffold pole which flapped in the wind and damaged our neighbour’s…

Skylight… which is now scratched…

Oh… and finally we decided it was time for our “friend” to go… last view before we bagged her up. The nightmare is over:

It’s been a reasonably eventful start to the new year where the house is concerned.
Due to a suspicious lack of activity at the house this week, we decided to withold this weeks fairly meaty payment to the new gang starting the loft. It certainly had the desired effect – causing ructions which reached the MD of the building company and resulting in somewhat threatening messages on the answerphone. Anyway it was all resolved quite nicely and won’t happen again – and it was all down to miscommunication since the guys had actually done a lot of “work” (or at least ordered a lot of the stuff)- so we paid and they promise to be on site, in force (7 of them) on Monday.
The scaffold was also delayed by a couple of days and the monkey boys who put the stuff up finally turned up on Monday this week. They did a kind of two-days on, two-days off kind of thing which was also confusing but the net result is that our house is now entirely sheathed in scaffold – front, back, top and sides.
There was scepticism from the project manager (Paul) over whether the builder (Barry) had “over-done” it on the scaffold – apparently protecting the roof from rain is only a secondary concern when you’re trying to squeeze profits on the job. But I’m glad Barry went the extra mile. Especially since London flooded today from all the rain.
Of course it could never be that simple and the enormous scaffold shield did a good job of rendering next door’s satellite dish pretty much useless. So now we have to get a company to come and move it to keep the neighbours sweet. All in a days work for a property developer.
In other news, the other gang is close to finishing the refurb job. The two main bay windows were replaced today and look good and we’re down to skirting boards, architraves and the final bathroom reorg in the grand pecking order of the snag list.
Photos will follow when chance happens to make it light when I’m able to be at the house.In the meantime imagine some mechano connected by corrugated iron and that’s pretty much it.

I’ve been thinking about our loft conversion and heat.
Lofts can get hot and steamy especially in the summer. I’ve been thinking about provision for air-conditioning to avoid those hot sticky nights up there. But then I read this and thought again:
From the “Home Ecologist” at the Independent:

When I popped into the local B&Q recently, it was great to see that it had an exhibition on energy saving, with good deals on bulbs and insulation, and an exhibition on solar panels. But the irony of simultaneously having a special offer on home air-conditioning units piled high at the entrance seemed to have escaped it. Studies have shown that buildings with air-conditioning can have 100 per cent higher energy bills, doubling the damage that they contribute to our climate crisis. A quick look at the energy consumption of some air-con units being marketed for home use shows that they range from 1,200 to 3,500 watts per hour – for just one room. That would be like having up to three electric fires running in each room with a unit. In comparison, a desk fan uses only 60 watts.
The crucial question is not “Which air-conditioning unit should we buy?” but “How can we avoid getting one in the first place?” There are lots of simple tips that will keep your home cooler, without using gadgets that will make the planet even hotter. The simplest is to allow as much natural air flow through your home as possible. Hot air rises, so ensure that windows or skylights at the top of the house are open, allowing it to escape. If you then open the doors and windows on the ground floor, you will generate a nice breeze. If you live in a one-storey flat or apartment, similarly try to create a through-flow of air from the front to the rear by opening windows or balcony doors, which allows the air to flow nicely. Pull the curtains on windows that are exposed to direct sunshine. The thicker they are, the better. You would be amazed what a difference this can make, especially if pulled before the sun hits the room.
Turning off all unnecessary electrical equipment and lights will also help. Halogen lights add enormously to the uncomfortable summer heat in modern homes, so get rid of them. A dozen halogen bulbs will create up to 600 watts of heat, which is the equivalent of another electric fire blazing in your ceiling. Installing air-conditioning to counteract the heat generated by these stupid lights is straightforward lunacy in the current climate crisis.
As the summers get hotter, copy our Mediterranean cousins and install retractable shades or shutters over windows that get the sun if your house is overheating. Good loft insulation will help keep the sun’s heat out, as it absolutely roasts our black British roof tiles. I switched off my solar hot-water panel the other day by mistake and was shocked to see the temperature on the roof had reached 130C.
Finally, for a deep-green touch, fast-growing deciduous trees, if planted on the south-facing aspect of a block of flats or house, will in time keep temperatures down in summer, while allowing solar gain in winter when the leaves are gone. You will also have the smug knowledge that instead of burning carbon dioxide using air-conditioning, these natural shades will absorb carbon dioxide as you watch them grow. So next time perhaps the DIY stores will pair up trees, not air-conditioning units, with special offers on energy-saving bulbs and insulation.