It’s two weeks into the action now and (sorry for the lack of updates) the house looks quite a bit different.
The main problem so far has been the builders have been far too keen – working 7 days a week in their “demolition” of the property and annoying the neighbours with the noise. Since we need these neighbours to sign our important 3rd party wall agreement, this is not the start we were looking for – and now have to come back from holiday and sweeten them up with presents from Sicily.
The progress is quite impressive. Every room is back to either plaster or brick (depending on whether the plaster was good or not) and the floor is slashed with holes where the rewiring is going on in Earnest. We have a new electrical switchboard and a lot of new sockets already in.
Upstairs, the rear chimney breast and some of the roof around the chimney is totally removed (making the back rooms feel bigger) and the most progress is in the old bathroom which has a new wall some 3 feet better off as per our new design.
It’s dirty, dusty like a building site really and outside there are piles of rubble and clutter to be eventually removed.
We went for a sneaky peak yesterday morning (for me between coming back from holiday and flying out to the US) and looked round while the builders weren’t there. It is strange to see our “new” house forming from the ashes of the old.
One quite surreal room where the builders are having their tea breaks contains a wierd female mannequin with ginger hair and red nipples… we’re not entirely sure whether they found her in the attic (which would be possibly more odd) or in a skip somewhere but the mystery of the “strange woman” is still to be solved…