Central Heating
Current boiler is a Glow Worm Fuelsave 60B Mk II – which SEDBUK has listed as a 65% efficient boiler costing approximately £550 a year to run. A typical 90% efficient boiler would cost £400 to run – however might need to increase size of the radiators, increase system flow rate and would not work very well with ‘mains flow’ hot water system.
I think we finally could say we had finished the kitchen around August 2008, what seems like an eternity. So thought I’d post a comment here with links to some photos of Henry exploring his new environment. There is a small collection of photos in our album under Birch Cottage > Kitchen After.
Henry had a soft spot for the sink, and could spend hours playing with the plug, trouble was his attention would eventually turn to the tap… with spectacular and very wet consequences.
Here you can see Henry is examining the quality of the Travertine floor (more likely he is concentrating on something more mundane, as this has now become known as Henry’s poo pose).
Finally, Henry is trying to read the gas meter, conveniently located in this small cupboard full of alcohol.
Planning Officer: Kim Bowditch, (01202 495030)
Building Regs: Sai Mak, (01202 495032) / Les Clements, Senior Building Control Surveyor – (01202 495031)
Builder: Chris Stewart, Stewart Building & Contrators, Whiteparish, Wilts. SP5 2RB (01794 884388 / 07721 382503)
UF Heating: 01799 524730 – Ambient Heating
Building regs completion certificate? -> Planning Reference
Get letter stating that planning consent is not required.
Some problems with the current Kitchen extension that need sorting:
Carpet fitters have put the carpet in, and superficially looks okay, however some issues are:
The carpet fitter is returning next week to fix some of these problems, otherwise they won’t get paid…
The toilet cistern was intermittently leaking into the bowl, so took the thing apart, reversed the rubber washer at the bottom and refitted the flush valve. This has stopped the leak, but alas now the short flush doesn’t work, the valve immediately closes after the button is released.
Instructions found here and copied locally here, are somewhat cryptic, the last “CLIC” is alluding me.
Update: Left it for a couple of flushes, now seems okay.
The baby’s not due, but the carpet fitters are! We have spent the last few days madly trying to get everything complete before the carpet fitters arrive to carpet the whole of the upstairs.
Liv has repainted the spare room, with B&Q’s down to earth “Pale Yellow”, just what we wanted all along, I finished off by putting all the electric sockets back in, changing the window casement fittings and replaced the pesky ceiling rose.
Then it was just a case of taking _everything_ that was upstairs and finding a home for it downstairs, Liv did all the small stuff, I moved all the bigger items and ripped out all the old carpet and underlay. Also nearly forgot to wire in the extra light circuit for the kitchen downstairs, just wonder how long we will have those bare wires hanging out of the ceiling…
Our first colour “Gentle Yellow”, comes out looking very peachy, not exactly what we were after, back to B&Q to get another handful of random sample pots… Top tip, rather than spending 4 hours carefully cutting in your chosen colour, just roller it onto one wall to double check its right first!
Liv has been powering ahead getting the painting finished, so far she’s mis-coated the walls and ceiling, done the first coat of gloss on the architrave, skirting, and coving. As well as cut in the emulsion on the ceiling. Just got to decide on a colour for the walls…
I have been fitting the skirting boards during the evenings over the last week, and put the last few pieces in place on Sunday, so it is all now screwed in. Liv has been wood filling and caulking the various joins, caused by a combination of curvy walls, warped wood and cheap mitre saw (nothing to do with my excellent workmanship).
Just need to do a last scan of the walls and woodwork, for any more cracks that need filling, then after a quick sand we are finally onto the painting.
Last weekend dominated by plastering, sanding the walls and base coat followed by top coat of plaster. Fortunately not too much to do, some where the architrave and skirting was removed, a big hole where the old radiator used to be and also the channels I cut for the new electric sockets.
Liv did more wood work sanding and knotting and priming of the architrave, and mis-coated the ceiling with PVA/emulsion mix. Sunday was on hold as the plaster was far from dry.
This weekend spent a good hour sweeping the chimney, really back breaking work, and then sanding the walls down and using fine surface filler to fill as many cracks and dinks as we could find.
Bought the extra skirting board we needed from Jewsons (not quiet the same pattern as the existing stuff unfortunately), and fitted the two hardest pieces behind the radiator.
Spent another weekend doing the groundwork for the decorating, Liv sanded down the woodwork for the window, and the coving, as well as knotting and undercoating some of the wood for the skirting and architrave. We attached the architrave around the loft hatch, filled and caulked all the gaps ready for painting.
Sunk and fixed the socket backs for all the electrics, fixed the conduit and routed the cables, left one socket usable and the other two blanked off. Cut and fixed all the battons ready to mount the skirting board to, also calculated that we need to get another lengths of skirting to finish the job (we had two more but they were so warped as to be unusable). Soaked all the exposed plaster with PVA to help to stabilise it as much as possible before I start patching up the various holes.
Spent a really tiring weekend stripping back the spare room ready for re-decorating. We pulled off all the knackered woodwork; the skirting and the architrave around the door, stripped all the wallpaper off, removed the old plug sockets and rewired the ringmain. Also knocked and prepped a new hole for another socket by the door, which needed to be reinforced due to the poor state of the lathe and plaster wall. Liv also sanded down most of the woodwork for the window and the architrave to go around the loft hatch, ready for painting.
Managed to break the head off the wallpaper stripper that Dave from work kindly leant me, so spent a good couple of hours trying to glue it together again, eventually improvised a replacement out of an old red tool tray.
Last bit of DIY before the baby is born is to turn the spare room into a nursery, although the nursery bit will mainly consist of furniture, some posters and a whole load of mobiles & baby stuff (we’re not painting it pink… We’ve already got one pink room).
Spent a couple of hours, dismantling the bed & chest of drawers and relocating all the bits into the conservatory, and the wardrobe moved to outside the bathroom. Now only have the chest of drawers carcass and tools left in the room.
First purchase is for a brass victorian casement stay from Screwfix, already have all the plug sockets and light switch bits, plus the casement stay.