I thought you might like to see some improvement shots from the renovation so far. As I type we are waiting for the bedroom windows to be replaced – what a week to schedule that as I gaze at snow outside. That will mean one bedroom is completely done and by early January two others (ours and the office) will be waiting only for their new flooring.
Downstairs the floors in the hall and sitting room have been replaced and the new radiators installed. Because in the week before the windows were taken out we lost the heating in most of the house as we had to replace the flooring before the new radiators could go in. And there was unique snow in London as temperatures fell to -3. But it’s a positively balmy 0 now so we made it through. I have dropped some images throughout this post. Details and links are in the captions.
After Christmas the joiner will be tackling the bookshelves in the sitting room. The windows will be replaced and we can think about the decor in there. Once that is done he will move into the loft when my son goes back to university. That’s another job that is bigger than we thought as it has been, not to put to finer point on it, botched, with a unstable stud wall in front of a window and a light switch at the bottom of the stairs on the landing below.
The family bathroom will be done in mid-January followed by the kitchen and pantry. We are making fast progress although it’s true that things aren’t necessarily being done in the correct order. In an ideal world the windows would have come first, followed by the radiator pipework, the flooring, the installation of the radiators and finally the decoration. These days if you see a builder walking casually down the street with a moment of free time on their hands you grab ’em and ask them to get started on whatever they are able to do.
This means our bedroom has all the joinery and the new radiators but the window wall has been left intact and will have to be finished after the windows go in. My son’s room is completely done apart from the French windows and we will have to make good around the edges.
As I say, it’s not ideal but these are all big jobs that needed doing and to live out of boxes for four months while we waited for the full set of windows would have been hard. Not to mention having radiators that didn’t work and a cracked thermostat to argue with as well. So yes it’s been done in the wrong order and will cost us an extra day or two of labour round the edges but, after two months, of living out of boxes the joy of being able to start the unpacking and have timed heating is, as the advert goes, priceless.
That said, when the heating engineer used his thermal imaging camera to check the new radiators were heating up uniformly and steadily we were able to see just how much heat is being lost through the windows. So for the next few weeks we may well be paying to heat the street but at least we know the cost of replacing the windows was entirely justified.
