We have decking! Peter and Tomasz have been busy over the last three days putting up our decking – the finishing (and hopefully last major item) touch for the garden and the house. It is looking superb now.

Alarmed at the height of our decking and the lack of privacy this gives us and our neighbours next door, M (next door) and I decided to put up a new higher fence panel to protect us. Ironically spending a day getting to know each other better on building a barrier between us – but I’m sure it won’t get in our way.

We aimed to mirror the recently added fence on the other side and so our deck now is symmetrical. We bought the timber posts and featherboard separately and made a custom panel to fit the space. The old fence is exhausted and so ultimately we’ll be replacing the whole thing – one panel at a time. All in all a good day’s work.

S was on BBQ duties as well as oiling the new garden furniture – so by the end of the day we had a “changing room” style transformation of the back of our house.

Posts and holes dug on the hottest day of the year:

 

Decking goes down:

Missing some:

The garden of doom:

How to treat your Polish builders – good food, good thrones:

Working hard:

Get your missus on BBQ duty – feeding neighbours and builders:

Fencing panel newly finished:

And from M’s side:

Trellis to go up:

And from our side, already with ivy:

Nice butt:

And the beautiful dining set – neatly oiled by S:

And the twinkly lights:

And the transformation is complete from THIS:

To this:

I came across some interesting material on various topics including packaging (did you know paper bags are several times worse from a carbon-footprint perspective than oil-based plastic bags in food packaging?) and local vs road-hauled food.
One of the key issues is that:

the debate on environmental issues is moving fast but is too often guided by the need to gain marketing advantage rather than deliver genuine benefit. As a result too much effort, in both business and government, is put into doing what customers and voters expect and not enough into rigorously researched long term solutions.

Fascinating re: tomatoes… if you just ate these in season you’d only have them in August and September.

I’ve been doing some reading around about eco-living and generally doing one’s bit for the environment.

Gareth Kane defines this as:

Eco-living is the art of living your dreams while minimising your impact on the environment. To include: waste, energy, recycling, green building, transport, food, product reviews, book reviews and anything else to help readers live within ecological limits.

We’ve just pretty-much built a new house (as you can see) and there are some good eco benefits that come from simply observing the current building standards, such as:

• Double-glazing everywhere including energy efficient K-glass
• Thick layers of insulation – especially in the roof
• Boiler is a high-efficiency “System” boiler which should mean less gas used
• Dual flush, compact toilets which should mean less water usage for flushing toilets
• Recycling – a lot of our weekly rubbish gets recycled by the council here who have a pretty good scheme for paper, card, bottles, cans, metal, plastic bottles and organic waste.

However, there are also things we’ve done which probably aren’t ideal – such as using halogen lighting (which ends up using a lot of power relative to energy efficient bulbs…) and decadent large shower heads.

We have made some improvements in the garden already which will help the effort:

• Rainwater harvesting – as soon as the new deck is down, we’ll be harvesting all the rainwater off the roof for watering and gardening
• Composting – we’re already composting using a large Sankey compost bin. All the waste from the kitchen, garden and paper shredder makes it into here and should give us “soil enhancing” compost in the future
• Growing our own vegetables – as previously mentioned, we’re on with growing our own peas, beans, carrots, corriander, tomatoes, courgettes,  pumpkins, chillis and basil – to varying degrees of success. This is never going to make us sustainable but it’ll help and it also is fun to do.
• Chickens – we plan to keep 3 rescued battery hens in a coop in our garden which will produce eggs as well as being fun.
• Cycling – both S and I are cycling to work almost exclusively. In my case this is cutting down on wasted bus trips and in S’s case, more importantly, cutting down on expensive short 5 mile car rides.

Here’s a few things which are on my list to review as we try to make our house as green as possible:

• Standby power – since we use a lot of electrical items (TV, PVR, routers, wireless storage devices, shaver sockets etc etc), I’m concerned about the power they all use when “not in use”. I was particularly concerned by the shaver socket in our new bathroom which seems to be an unwelcome heat and noise source during nights which are warm enough… I have not been able to find any information so far on “eco-shaver sockets” but there must be some out there.
• Solar heating – although possibly disruptive to fit at this late stage in our building programme, I am interested by using some solar heating panels to help us heat our water etc
• Buying “local food” is important. Especially buying products which are in-season – we might sign up for one of those organic vegetable boxes etc.

I’ve been reading info at the Alternative Technology blog for interesting advice.

More to come.

Continued hard work at Grosvenor Mansions sees us getting ever closer (and yet still so far) from home interior perfection. Each weekend seems more tough than the last and the list grows ever onwards.

Shelves in the study, now properly attached to the wall. (they started bowing so we had to improvise with the car jack and a pole to lift them back into place and secure them to the wall…)

Sofa in the study:

We have curtains – labour of love that was to get them hung etc – thank god we didn’t need to make the curtains ourselves…

Vases a la P – in the guest suite…

And matching cushions etc

Front door gets sorted:

And from outside, we get numbered again:

Pride of place in the street and returned to former glory:

Top:

Clean paint all round:

What’s your number?

Floor is replaced (apparently a bugger of a job):

Chosen decking material:

Cauliflowers:

Coming on nicely

Corguettes:

Oh and composting begins in anger:

We spent a rare free weekend working hard in the house – this time without builders present (they’re clearly anxious to finish now and discussions into the final payment are well underway).

We did a bunch of jobs – commissioning the alarm, putting up bathroom cabinets, tidying up the shed, cleaning up the kitchen and were still scrubbing the kitchen floor at 9pm on Saturday night (what a life!).

Hope you agree it’s now looking fine!

Clean windows:

Guest bedroom:

Functioning bathroom with cabinet:

Still got boxes:

Floor needs fixing…:

Kitchen coming on:

Now without plastic covering:

Seating at the island:

Our cauliflower plants broke the surface! v. exciting:

Basil (cheated):

Courgettes:

And a final look from the back of the house:

Exciting news today is that the Corian worktops arrived. They were templated a couple of weeks ago and got fitted today. We’re pleased with how it looks.

Oh and we have the underfloor heating:

The timer clock for the boiler:

And the room thermostat for the boiler:

Bathroom now being used thoroughly:

Sink with unit and handles, finally:

Towel rail:

Study gets books:

Bathroom cabinet S found:

Door with undercoat, it is now blue:

Pot, salvaged from the old garden and given a new lick of paint:

Few photos from moving day for posperity…

It’s been a week of small jobs. The guys are still on site everyday – finishing the painting and finishing all the small jobs. I reckon one more week and we’ll be very close to finished.
The small jobs take forever – toilet roll holders, shelves, towel rails, light fittings. And they’re being very good and doing what is effectively scope creep for nothing or at least very little. Of course we still have to settle up the final bill.
I like that the place smells softly of new carpets and fresh paint. At least the top floor feels clean – the other two are a bit gritty and dusty still. The whole place will need a few weeks of thorough cleaning to get rid of all that dust.
The last remaining big job is the decking (an extra we’ve added) which will finish the garden off nicely.
Photos of the various achievements, coming shortly.

It’s fathers day and I want to pay tribute to my dad.

Here he is, after spending 7 days last week down in London helping us move house. From supervising the builders, fetching us materials, mending things, and making things just right, nothing is too much trouble and he works like a trooper. He made a very stressful thing, more relaxing and brought a calm influence to proceedings by removing the pressure from us.
All this for love. And I love him.
Thanks Dad – you’re amazing and I wouldn’t be here without you (in the less than obvious sense).
T
x

Sorry about the gap there. Had no broadband for a few days until we moved in and got set up. So bumper update tonight.

And so to the culmination of a plan we made 15 months ago to make an offer on a crazy wreck of a house in Sheen, sell my flat, move in together in S’s, do a complete renovation on the place and finally move in to our beautiful house.

The builders are still with us – every day pushing us that bit closer to living here on our own – but we are, to all intents and purposes installed in the finished article.

Who would have thought a 20 minute viewing of a dirty, infested, unloved property would be enough to inspire us both to take on this massive project which has changed us and our lives forever? Now we have a base, a foundation, a community of great neighbours and a place we can genuinely call our own – to our design – in this world.

And so I turn to unpacking the many boxes – most of which I’ve been without for 9 months. I have had a sort of allergic reaction to my own possessions. Some are nice to get back – and remember fondly. Others seem so out of place – from another time and no longer appropriate, I throw them out with disgust. Perspective changed. Yet more bring a tinge of sadness from a life forgotten, dim and distant already despite my (relative) youth – glimpses of the odd past dream. New ones replace them. And a new future beckons.

And to more pressing concerns, like the various new snags we’ve uncovered as we’ve actually lived in the place – rather than just walked around it, looking.

Anyway, some photos:

The patio doors finally arrive, 4 weeks late:

Bringing them in:

Boys get to work:

Pretty happy?

Finishing touches:

And the moment S pulls a proper “you’ve missed a bit” moment – when she points out that the stickers on the K-glass which say “Sticker must be on the interior” are actually on the outside…

Cue much head scratching:

Until it is finally understood that the K-glass is on both sides and the stickers were wrong… how can you tell? Will we have a permanently cold or hot kitchen?

And the garden, clear at last: