Amateur Property Developer

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

2009-09-25T17:52:00.001+01:00

We completed early this morning so this will be my final post. I have enjoyed it (for the most part) and thanks for all your comments and support. Will I do it again – possibly. Will I blog it – probably not.

This blog will now sit in the ether for the rest of eternity or at least until Google decide to pull the plug or start charging.

I may pop back occasionally to see how many people are reading a non updated blog. I may even blog about it!!!!

Lessons and Reflections

2009-09-23T22:39:00.003+01:00

With a bit of luck this will be my penultimate post. I am told that failure to complete after exchange is almost unheard of (one agent I spoke to said it had never happened in her career) and so by this Friday I will have nothing left to blog about. If it does fall through I shall keep the 10% deposit so it won't be all bad news!

This gives me a good opportunity for reflection.

Lessons learned

Buy for as little as possible and sell for as much as possible. Obvious really but had we not had the foresight to re-negotiate the purchase price early on we would have lost money or broken even at best.

Ensure that the refurbishment is to a high standard. We did do this but even so surveyors, perhaps because of the current climate, are being incredibly fussy and are marking down valuations. This makes borrowing harder. We had to reduce the agreed price by £1500 over a tiny problem picked up by surveyors that would not have mattered in 2007.

If your purchasers want a full structural survey be pleased provided you have nothing to hide. Our first abortive purchaser pulled out because his survey (a cheap one) had so many "may be" and "could be" type statements followed by the advice "we recommend a full survey" that the buyer got spooked. A full survey is a good thing.

Takes loads of pictures all the way through the process and be prepared to show then if required. The photographic evidence of the steel straps proved useful as the purchaser's surveyor wanted to see evidence of what we had done to the wall. This would have been difficult if we had just plastered it over.

Get guarantees, warranties and certificates for everything and keep them. The solicitors will want them and you will struggle to sell without them. In our case this included, gas, electricity, damp, timber, windows and building control.

There are several ups and downs in the process. Don't let you highs be too high or your lows be too low. I suffered from both these extremes.

Make sure you can afford to do it and you are comfortable with the level of borrowing you will have if you house is unsold / unlet for several months. I passed on the first criteria but I became (strictly have become as we haven't completed) uncomfortable about the level of debt.

Try and ensure your property is of interest to as many possible purchasers as possible. Quirky is not necessarily good. We feel into this trap. It is beautiful house however the height of the stairs means that for many who viewed they could not buy however much they loved the refurbishment. Also make sure that the property is right for the area. In hindsight a detached cottage is not necessarily what people wanted as it is a unique property in the area. Unique isn't always good.

Get proper insurance for a refurbishment project. It is more expensive but it is crazy to do it on the cheap.

I am sure there is much, much more I should be writing for posterity but that will do for now.

One Year On

2009-09-14T05:57:00.004+01:00

One of the benefits (or perhaps a curse) of blogging this story is that you actually do get a chance to read what you were thinking during the process. It prevents selective memory. My first post on this blog was one year ago tomorrow so today marks my first year as a blogger. I don't suppose I will be writing a similar post to celebrate two years but you never know.

It was the middle of August 2008 that we first saw the property that was going to take up so much of our time for the next twelve months.

To celebrate a year of blogging here are some pointless statistics.

In twelve months this blog has been visited 2,537 times.

There have been 374 unique visitors.

People from 35 countries have been on the site with the UK followed by USA, Ireland and Brazil sending the most visitors.

The most popular time to visit is 7:00PM at night with only three people making the effort at 3:00AM in the morning.

Internet explorer is the most popular browser @ 64%. 3 people use Opera and 12 Chrome – oh yes and 4 people browsed the site from an iPhone.

That's enough analysis. Google Analytics has a lot to answer for.

Some further thoughts

2009-09-10T04:51:00.002+01:00

What a long and drawn and process this has been. I had no idea that it would take quite so long from completing the refurbishment on the house through to exchange and completion.

The main problem appears to be that after you have accepted a quote, buyers (often through no fault of their own) are taking ages getting everything in order and there seems to be little you can do to speed the process up. In the case of our buyer their mortgage offer (which had been agreed in principle before we accepted) took weeks to come through. In the meantime the buyers had two surveys done, one of which took a long time to carry out and even longer to report on.

In retrospect the whole thing when through smoothly, just very slowly. This leaves plenty of time for worry and fret as you know that if a buyer pulls out you will have to wait another two or three months from getting another offer to getting to exchange again. All in all the house was not actually available for anybody else to buy for much of the last 6 months, it has just been under offer waiting for paperwork and due process.

Initial calculations look like we will end up making just under 13% return on capital in just under 12 months but this reduces to 8% if I take a very prudent account of financing costs. I will need to do some work to find out how much of the finance costs (bearing in mind I borrowed against my main home) I will be able to claim against the cost of the refurbishment for CGT purposes. I can see an accountant getting a slice of the profits!

Never mind, if I have to pay CGT it won't be until January 2011.

A brief update

2009-09-08T22:20:00.003+01:00

I know I promised an update but I have drunk too much wine to type anything of any use.

As I cycled home tonight I was thinking about how long this whole process has taken. I looked back in the blog archives and re-read my first post. http://amateurpropertydeveloper.blogspot.com/2008/09/starting-out.html

So – we will complete on this project exactly one week and one year after we started out. Was it worth it?

I will do the sums and calculations in a couple of days but we did make a decent profit after everything has been taken into account but was it worth the stress and worry?

We Have Exchanged

2009-09-08T16:00:00.002+01:00

More details to follow ......

Under Offer Again

2009-07-15T06:37:00.002+01:00

Let's hope for a smoother passage this time than last.

Fingers crossed.

On the Market ..... Again

2009-06-04T06:24:00.002+01:00

Sadly our potential purchaser has decided to withdraw from the transaction. This is disappointing as I thought they would go through with it especially as they have spent money on surveys and searches. Never mind – these things happen.

The house is back on the market again and there have been several further viewings so I hope I shall have some better news soon.

More Paperwork

2009-05-18T06:40:00.002+01:00

I have now tracked down all of the guarantees, certificates and permissions and so on and bundled the whole lot up with a covering letter and delivered it round to the solicitors' office yesterday afternoon. I have given him all the originals as the thought of scanning all that lot in through a home printer / copier / scanner was more than I could cope with – I would have needed to stop for a shave half way through! I am glad that it is all done now – another job ticked off the list.

I think the purchaser will be getting a survey later this week. I would be surprised if anything came out of that so we are making good progress.

Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork

2009-05-13T06:12:00.003+01:00

A huge amount of guff arrived from our solicitors yesterday morning so I spent last night trying to find all the guarantees and other documents required to complete the sale. I was struck, whilst watching the news on the BBC at the same time how much extra money I could save if I had a second home allowance similar to our elected representatives, that way I could execute a quick "flip" to avoid CGT having had some help with the refurbishments costs. Oh well – I shall have to remain a humble tax payer.

I have written to the solicitor who claims in one of his two letters to arrive to have obtained Office Copy Entries. I thought the whole point of a HIP was to avoid the need to get these reports – instead it appears we are paying for two of them! I shall wait and see what he says.

Just got to find the guarantee and inspection certificate for the central heating system and wait for the final certificate from the Local Authority's building control which I have only just realised we haven't got yet.

The House is ......

2009-05-09T18:16:00.004+01:00

UNDER OFFER!

Offers that come to nothing

2009-05-07T05:39:00.002+01:00

Nearly a month since my last update and whilst there has been a lot of activity there has been no offers that have amounted to anything.

We received a reasonable and serious rental offer but after giving the matter some thought decided to reject it. The plan was always to sell this house and that isn't going to happen while somebody else is living in it. It was interesting that the opening rental offer was increased after a couple of weeks both in terms of duration and value as we kept rejecting it but I remain convinced we made the right decision at this time.

A couple of weeks ago I asked another agent to get involved and this seems to have made a difference. We have received another offer for close(ish) to the target price but the agent doubts they are serious. There seems to be a number of people at the moment who put offers on houses they have no intention (or no ability) to actually complete on. We continue to get a number of viewings and I remain confident that there will be positive news fairly soon.

Offer Update

2009-04-11T14:25:00.002+01:00

We have just received a second offer for the house which is much more acceptable. Not as high as we would have wanted but one that will turn a profit.

The Estate Agent is just negotiating the final figure and then it looks like we may a have buyer.

I'll post an update as soon as I have one.

Update

2009-03-31T03:38:00.003+01:00

Time has flown by and it doesn't seem that it has been three weeks since I last updated this blog. That sounds like a confession "bless me father for I have sinned, it has been three weeks since my last update....."

That means the house has been on the market for about five weeks and whilst there have been plenty of viewings there haven't really been any meaningful offers. I say "meaningful" in this context as we did get one offer which the agent had the sense to reject before I even had the opportunity to comment on it. Interestingly this was the right call as I said that if they were prepared to "move a bit" we might be able to reach a deal but they then didn't get back to us at all – not even to reject our approach. I am confident that these people would not have progressed with a purchase even if we had accepted their original, low offer.

The house remains on the market but we have now decided to investigate the rental market as well. This was always a backstop position (outright sale was and remains the preferred solution) but it is far from a disaster and many people have commented privately that they believe this to be a better approach anyway. It appears that people make decisions on rental quite quickly and there are already a couple of people who have expressed an interest.

Should we end up renting I will then re-mortgage this house to free up as much cash as possible from it. Strictly speaking the house is currently owned outright but that is because we funded it from the current family home. There is nothing wrong with doing that but I have been told that it is harder to offset interest on loans against tax if you don't have a specific loan for a rental property.

More news as soon as I hear anything.

Viewings Update

2009-03-07T06:52:00.002Z

The blog has been a bit quiet of late but that is really because there is not much to report.

Today (Saturday) really marks the end of the 2^nd week that the house had been on the market and available for viewing. We have had 5 or 6 people round so far and no offers to date. I am not worried about this although it would have been nice to have had an offer of some kind – even one to turn down! At least that would stop Tim pointing out signs in estate agents windows saying "Under Offer" and reminding me how much I have lost in interest payments during the time it took to eat a curry!

The agents initially estimated that they would "sell the house in a fortnight". The last time she made a prediction was when we sold our old house and she got that right. I think that somebody is going round for a second viewing today so you never know – she could be right again.

February Statistics

2009-03-02T19:45:00.000Z

After the sudden and surprising peak at the end of January things have settled down again in APD blog land although there have still been 55 people visiting the blog a total of 350 times last month. 11% of these have not visited before.

The international readership is ever present so hello to Brazil, Romania and Turkey among others.

Off Topic Post

2009-02-28T13:24:00.002Z

I hope nobody minds but as this is my blog I think I should be allowed to hijack it with an off topic post if I want to!

I am running the London Marathon in April. If you would like to sponsor me (all donations to Asthma UK) I could really do with the support. You can get to my donations page by clicking here or by using the widget on the right hand side of this blog.

Thank you.

Mark (aka APD)

The Final Scores on the Doors

2009-02-26T05:30:00.002Z

There has been a last minute flurry of activity with some bills I had not anticipated (mainly for materials) but I believe everything is now accounted for. The house is finished and I am led to believe that all the snagging is done.

In the end the total expenditure on this project against budget is show below.

Budget	Actual	Variance (£)	Variance (%)
£40,677	£42,123	£1,446	3.55%

It is clearly disappointing to be over budget at the end of all of this but I am not sure there is much I could have done to have prevented this over spend. I have yet to see the final receipts for all the materials but there is not much I can do about it now. It is certainly the case that much of the variance was caused by legal and professional fees and materials.

So that's it. We move to the final phase of this project – selling it.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

2009-02-22T09:45:00.003Z

As mentioned before, Mrs APD was round at the house yesterday giving it a quick clean before the viewings started. She heard a knock at the door and went to investigate. It was a representative from a rival estate agent who clearly wanted to sell the house. I had assumed that this type of door stepping had long since stopped but it appears it is still alive and well in this part of the country. He appeared very keen to gain entry and has such phrases as:-

"We sold one over the road for more money recently"

We have loads of buyers that would want this"

Can I just take a look inside?"

Would you like us to sell it for you?" and so on .... you get the idea.

Anyway the line that re-enforced his credentials and reminds us all why estate agents are not universally popular was "Are you the cleaner?". Mrs APD is not one to take offence but enjoyed the retorting "No I'm the owner" before closing the door.

No victoria sponge for him.

The Official Snagging List

2009-02-21T16:21:00.000Z

When it can down to it there is very little snagging in the house and what there is I hope will be sorted out tomorrow (Sunday). To those that are interested here is the full list.

Upstairs

Sort out tiling on the window sill in the bathroom.
Make good where the fan has been fitted.
Touch up paint around and about where it has been knocked by carpet fitters etc.

Downstairs

Touch up paint around and about where it has been knocked by carpet fitters etc.
Sort out a couple of loose plinths in the kitchen
Secure the oven in the cabinet now the electrical work is done.
Box in the pipes below the sink and feeding the toilet in the cloakroom and make good.
Touch up the grouting around the cloakroom furniture.
Ease the door into the cloakroom so it closes properly.
Touch up the paint by the dishwasher space.

Outside

Paint the gas pipes and seal the hole where it comes in the kitchen.

In addition there is a slight concern we may have a small leak in one of the pipes for the dishwasher but we need to monitor that as it may have already been resolved.

Not the "Horrible House"

2009-02-21T08:29:00.001Z

Looking back I created a collage of photos called The Horrible House. In all the best makeover programs they do a before and after.

Here is my attempt at the same thing. This is a little montage of what the house looks like now.

When I get a chance I am going to try and show before and after pictures from the same perspective but this will do in the meantime (click the picture to enlarge).

Viewings

2009-02-20T11:24:00.002Z

The agent has been in touch to say they have four viewings organised so far. One later today, one tomorrow and then a couple next week.

Mrs APD is dashing round to the house today to have a final whiz round with the hoover and polish the work surfaces etc.

There is still some snagging to attend to but I hope this won't put anyone off.

Budgets v Actuals

2009-02-20T05:30:00.003Z

I have mentioned before in this blog how difficult I have found the process of keeping an eye on the costs. As we have just about reached the end of the refurbishment I now have to try and reconcile it all. This caused me to wake up far earlier than I intended to this morning to review all the figures again.

So how does it all look?

The revised estimate last discussed here was £40,677. I have sent the builder what I believe to be the final reconciliation and having received the final accounts from everybody else involved it now appears that the total expenditure on this project (excluding the cost of money) will be £41,389. An over spend of £712 or 1.75%. This is still subject to minor changes as there are some small additional invoices for materials that I have estimated. I cannot be too upset about this although there is a small part of me that wishes we could have nailed it to the penny.

The main variances were "Legal and Professional" mainly because of the additional cost of insurance and the HIP which I hadn't considered and "House and Garden Clearance" where I had under estimated the number of skips required by some margin! There were other items that turned out to be more expensive such as electrical works but that is because we increased the scope of the job from first estimate by including outside lights, wired smoke alarms and so on. There were some savings to be made as well with the decision not to re-point one of the flank walls, fitting carpets instead of laminate and the price of all of the bathroom furniture helping to keep the over spend down.

The cost of money has been higher than expected. Back in September I estimated this to be £2,959 based on three months @5.49%. It has been nearer four months since we completed so this figure is (which is of course going up every day) is currently £3,329 and has been calculated line by line on when money has actually been spent. This figure will rise by c. £31 per day now for every day the property remains unsold or unrented. This is a sobering though and one to keep focused on.

The Horrible House II

2009-02-19T21:29:00.003Z

My daughters have now been round to the house and have announced that we are still the owners of a "Horrible House". Unfortunately they believe that this is the one we live in now rather than the one we are trying to sell.

I don't think they wanted to leave. Got to say, they have a point!

Are We Nearly There Yet?

2009-02-16T22:51:00.003Z

I am told, but I have not seen the evidence with my own eyes, that work has now finished on the house. The electrician and the plumber did their last stint today and all that is left now is for the main builder to move all of his things out and then give the place a thorough clean.

I am not going to be able to visit until late on Thursday at the earliest so I hope I will be able to take a complete and final set of pictures before too long.

The only stress left now is the biggest one of all ...... will it sell?

Kitchen and Bathroom

2009-02-14T11:12:00.000Z

At last I can publish some photographs of the kitchen and bathroom looking almost finished. They need a good clean to remove all the dust but we are pretty much there. You cannot see any more of the bath in this picture as it is full of water having just been sealed.

I am very pleased with how the kitchen has turned out. The cupboards on the left hand side work really well but there is still plenty of room to openthe oven door and get access to cloakroom through the door at the end.

Energy Performance Certificates

2009-02-14T06:30:00.000Z

I am now in possession of two Energy Performance Certificates for the same house. I don't suppose this has happened that often as there cannot be that many houses that have been bought and sold since the introduction of HIPs. I have never really bothered to look at these things in too much detail before but when you have two of them it affords you the opportunity to compare them.

It is difficult to know why the Government (or more particularly the EU) have decided to make these things compulsory. I am not sure they tell you much that you wouldn't already know and they do not impose any type of obligation on the home owner to actually improve things. If they were designed to persuade people to improve efficiency I think they may have failed in their mission.

The certificate measures two things and gives a rating. Energy Efficiency and Environmental Impact. As far as I can work out it gives two measurements for each rating, what you are now and what you could get to or Current and Potential as they describe it. I assume that the Potential rating is what you could do at a reasonable cost. Otherwise you could get a maximum rating by knocking the house down and rebuilding it in an environmentally friendly way. This is clearly not practical.

Anyway to get to the point when the house was first assessed (before we did anything). We achieved the following results.

And after all the work has been done we got this.

I am pleased we have improved (we certainly should have done with the amount spent) but why is there such a discrepancy in the potential figures. Surely a properties potential is it's potential and that should remain the same. The only recommendation we had was "to install low energy efficient light bulbs" which we didn't do as we had some old ones to use up. It rather makes a mockery of the system if the potential figures aren't the same.

The Other White House

2009-02-13T10:00:00.002Z

The outside of the house has been painted now. It looks so much better.

The estate agent took a picture yesterday. Here is it on their website.

Connecting the Drain

2009-02-13T07:10:00.001Z

Recent comments on this blog have descended into the sewer so in that spirit here is a picture of said sewer now it is all connected. The building inspector will be round to look today, this should be the final inspection.

In case anybody is wondering, the green cable is the Virgin Media cable for the house next door.

A Quantity Surveyor

2009-02-11T23:19:00.002Z

The kitchen floor was being installed today and Mrs APD has been told that she failed to order sufficient tiles. This has come as a surprise as we were told what quantity was required but there is little we can do about that now.

Tomorrow morning, Mrs APD is off to order another 4m2 of floor tiles (luckily Topps tiles has then in stock) so the kitchen and cloakroom can be finished off.

We just may be done by the weekend .... but there again.

A New Clock

2009-02-10T21:46:00.000Z

As the original date for project completion has been and gone there seems little point in keeping the project clock up doing nothing.

I have found a new gadget that is counting up from completion to completion. I hope it doesn't get too high.

The Carpets are In

2009-02-10T20:24:00.002Z

The carpets have been laid and fitted and they have made a huge difference to the look of the house. It feels warm an cosy now. The warmth is helped by the fact that the gas has been fully connected and we have had all of the radiators on. The house is so well insulated they had to switch them all off again after only 20 mins as the house got too hot!

I hadn't seen this new stair rail before. It looks better than it does in these photographs but it still looks pretty special. In the near future there is a danger this house may look like a home.

Here is an older picture of the outside of the house. There is some more painting to be done as you can see and then that is is another job completed. The agent is keen to get a proper picture. I did suggest we could use this one and then "PhotoShop" it but as we are hopeful of improved weather over the next couple of days it shouldn't be necessary.

A Big Day Tomorrow

2009-02-09T22:37:00.003Z

I confess to some nerves at the moment. Tomorrow is that day the carpets are being fitted. As of 4PM today there was still plenty of painting to be done. Everyone has assured me it will be fine and the carpets can be installed as planned as "there is no further work required that will have any impact on the carpets".

We shall see.

Project Update

2009-02-07T13:26:00.002Z

There still seems a lot to do before the carpets go in on Tuesday morning.

Here is an update of inside work still required before then.

Upstairs

A little bit more decorating and touching up especially the loft hatch now the insulation is all in.
Grouting to be completed on the bathroom wall tiles (should be done on Sunday)
Showers and other services to be connected
Floor tiles to be installed (should be done on Sunday)

Downstairs

The kitchen needs to be painted
The cloakroom need to be installed and painted
The floor of the cloakroom and kitchen needs to be tiled
The walls need a second coat of paint (this is happening today)
The radiators need to be connected
The front door needs a second coat of paint

Everyone is working flat out today, tomorrow and Monday so I am sure all the areas where the carpets are going will be done but there will be work left in the tiled rooms (hopefully not the bathroom). There is a little more to do outside but the weather has been so poor that there has been no opportunity to paint yet. I am hopeful that we will be finished completely by the end of next week which is still behind schedule.

The good news is that it looks fantastic. I won't publish any more pictures until the carpets are in.

Hip Hop

2009-02-05T22:32:00.002Z

The order for the HIP (Home Information Pack) for those who are not in the know has been ordered.

You can get an estate agent or a solicitor to get one made up for you but one of the best ways is just to organise it yourself. A quick search on-line to find the cheapest offering (they all do the same thing so there is no need to pay more) and you just order it on the website. We have used www.hips4u.com and the turnaround time is quite impressive. They send regular emails keeping you up to date and a login to see how the pack is coming along. Ours should be completed by 16/02/2008 and will cost £174.80 including VAT. I think that is quite good. I was not a fan of HIPs when they first came out but if spending this sort of money assists in speeding up the sale, it is worth every penny.

We shall see what transpires.

One of the constituent parts of a HIP is the efficient report. The survey for this is happening next week. The results of this should be interesting as the house was about the most inefficient building it could possibly have been before we started. We have spent a lot of time, effort and money in insulation so we should get a really good report. I will have a go at publishing both on this blog side by side when we get the new one.

Up for Sale

2009-02-03T19:45:00.000Z

The estate agent who you will know (if you follow this blog) has a daughter in my daughter's class at school went to review the unfinished house today.

We had a chat afterwards about prices and markets and so on and as a result ……… the house is now on the market.

It appears that the trick to marketing a house that isn't quite finished is to put "Awaiting Photograph" then you can get some interest and get people round by which time the work will be done (10 days or so). If you want to see the official details they are here. If you want to see everything else they have to sell you can go to their website here. The website opens with a bit of cheesy talking so if you have your speakers on loud or are in an office you may want to turn mute on first.

It is a big day for this project. I am pleased that the agent feels that the price we are after is realistic and thinks we could get a little more. I am comfortable with the idea of selling below market value (yes I know there is no such thing before you all start) and I am sure that "Meat on the Bone" who has commented earlier on this blog will appreciate the sentiment behind that.

I am sure that the agents website will attract potential buyers but for the benefit of Google and others who might get there though this blog………..

Detached houses for sale Surbiton

Detached houses for Sale Tolworth

I know that search engine optimisation is more complicated than that but it will help!

The Snow

2009-02-02T23:54:00.002Z

The snow today brought mixed blessings for the house – most of them causing further delays.

The local schools were closed which means that the plumber and kitchen fitter (both of whom have children at my daughter's school) were pressed into child minding duties and not house building duties. As the school is going to be closed again tomorrow I think we will have the same problem again.

Painting is being delayed because the plaster refused to dry out over the weekend so that has caused some further problems. I hope that painting will resume tomorrow.

The good news is that the electrician was supposed to be at a job some distance away that he couldn't get to because of the snow. As a result he went round to the house (unannounced but as he has keys that was fine) and finished off the electrical work bar connecting the fans and the oven. As a result the new fuse board is in and we have proper lighting in the house for the first time.

I spoke to the builder this evening and while he remains positive I cannot help but think I may have to delay the carpet fitting. I really don't want to but I will have to make a call on that by Thursday or I will be liable to pay for the fitters time anyway.

January Statistics and a Milestone

2009-02-02T01:04:00.000Z

January has seen a record number of visits to this blog but I am not really sure why. The 30^th and 31^st January saw a relatively large number visits from all over the world. I can only assume they arrived from people browsing blogs in blogger and for some reason my mediocre efforts were at the top of the list. Anyway here is a world map showing where all my visitors came from (click on the picture to make the map larger).

The deeper the green the more visitors. It is all quite exciting but in truth none of these visitors hung around very long. In total in January I had 406 visits from 108 individuals in 24 countries.

I am sure I have mentioned it before but I also know what words people key into Google (and other search engines) that get them to the blog. Most of them are as you would expect but I imagine that the person who searched for 'Amateur "Shower Head" Insertion' wasn't that interested in property development.

Also – this is my 100^th post. There are many (me included) who didn't think I would keep it up. We have all been proved wrong.

More Pictures

2009-02-01T13:10:00.001Z

I published a picture of the stairs early in this blog, here they are completed. There is just a stair rail to put up on the right hand side and we are done (apart from the carpets). I am pleased we did this in the end even though there were some (me included) who were worried about the impact this type of cladding would have on the raisers.

Whilst the new bathroom has been installed it is not working yet. This picture of the outside of the house gives you a clue as to why.

Looking at the current state of the soil pipe you wouldn't want to be standing outside if somebody were to flush the loo!

A Kitchen in Progress

2009-01-31T18:43:00.000Z

Here are a couple of pictures of the kitchen beginning to take shape. There are only a couple of wall mounted units, the rest are floor mounted so I hope it will be largely completed by Monday.

The estate agent is coming round to value the house (and I hope give some advice on getting it ready for sale) on Monday. The guy fitting the kitchen is married to the agent so he better get it finished or there could be a domestic!

More Kitchen Appliances

2009-01-31T12:45:00.000Z

The only appliance not yet purchased is a dishwasher. Whilst I am probably not under an obligation to provide one (there is nothing wrong with freestanding) a kitchen looks better when they are built in and I don't want to give a potential buyer a reason to walk away.

As we could not be totally sure about how much space there would be in the kitchen when we were planning it, the original plans had a slimline dishwasher. It now appears that there will be space for a full width until. I will need to pop down to Homebase to buy a suitable door (£45.00) and then I just need to buy the dishwasher itself.

Taking a look at Redhill Appliances again after they did such a good job last time they appear to have a couple of suitable units in stock. I am tempted by the Hotpoint. It is £30.00 more expensive that the other model I looked at but 4dB quieter which is quite a bit in a small kitchen. It is £260.00 plus £1.00 delivery so with the new door I will have spent just over £300.00 on the dishwasher. That is much better than it could have been as there is a limited choice of slimline units and they tend to be more expensive. I am pleased we held off from buying this until we knew how much space we had.

Avoiding Another Skip

2009-01-31T09:14:00.001Z

We are trying hard to avoid the need to purchase yet another skip so have resorted to making ourselves popular with the neighbours by burning some of the garden waste. I am not particularly comfortable about this as I would prefer to see it recycled but we have still not addressed large scale recycling in this country.

If I put all the waste in a skip I still have to pay to have the skip collected and even then I am not sure it doesn't end up in landfill anyway. I could put it all into a van and take it down the dump (sorry - I meant the Local Authority Re-Cycling Centre) but I haven't got a van and making multiple visits using a car and queuing every time is not my idea of fun.

So - we are burning it. If the council wanted to introduce a free (or inexpensive) large scale re-cycling collection I would have used it. The problem is the council have a target to reduce landfill so they don't care that much about bonfires.

Look at my Beams!

2009-01-30T19:18:00.003Z

The painting is continuing and the beams in the front room, which always looked quite good, have now been painted in a fresh coat of black and they look excellent. Now the walls and the ceiling have been painted as well the room looks so much bigger.

Slow Progress

2009-01-29T06:30:00.003Z

I am concerned that progress on this project appears to be slowing.

I am sensible enough to know that at the beginning of these jobs there is a huge flurry of activity, much effort is expended and the results are obvious. As you near the end the work gets fiddlier and the impression is given that things take a little longer. Never the less we seem to have less forward momentum now. I was told that the kitchen would be fitted this week and would be completed by Friday. I was told earlier this week by somebody else that this is looking unlikely and it now appears that the kitchen won't be started until tomorrow (Friday) and it will be installed by somebody else. The somebody else is someone who I know well (I wonder how many other parents of my eldest daughter's friends I can get involved) and he will do a first class job but these additional delays are very frustrating.

The fitting of the carpets on 10^th February is the last job to be done so we have (from today) seven working days and two weekends to get everything finished. Will we do it? If you had asked me on Monday I would have been confident but now I am less sure. I am a born optimist and the glass is always half full so I remain positive but I have a double shot of realism in my half full glass.

I had naively hoped to have completed the sale of the property by the end of this tax year so I could take full advantage of Mrs APD and my CGT allowance for the year. I think that would have been a challenge two years ago let alone in the current climate.

Carpets and Tiles

2009-01-28T06:56:00.005Z

Mrs APD is venturing forth this morning to visit the house and then, after getting some inspiration, setting off to buy carpets and tiles.

I fear we will very shortly be going over budget. This is not because Mrs APD has a tendency to purchase Italian marble flooring (although she does) but because even the initial quote we have had from the carpet suppliers indicates that it will be £1500 to supply and fit the carpets and with the tiles probably being another £400.00 on top of that we will have spent too much.

There will (I think) be one or two savings to be made elsewhere so I don't think the damage will be too bad unless she comes back with one of these in which case we are in deep trouble!

The Gas Man Cometh

2009-01-26T18:35:00.006Z

The famous Flanders and Swann song starts

"Twas on a Monday morning the gas man came to call.

The gas tap wouldn't turn - I wasn't getting gas at all."

If I am permitted some poetic licence to change the second line to "The gas tap would turn but I wasn't getting gas at all" it gives me a perfect link to our weekend trials and tribulations in relation to what should be a very simple challenge. Getting gas to the house.

On Sunday morning – unannounced and with no fanfare, our Corgi plumber arrived to so some work. He took a risk as there is never usually anybody around on Sunday but fortunately the builder was there and so he could get on. Everything was connected and the time came to switch the gas on and fire up the system. On went the tap and out didn't come the gas!

I got a telephone call saying "could I telephone British Gas and get them to reconnect the supply". Obviously they don't answer the telephone on Sundays so at 8:00am this morning I got through to be told that I would have to phone the emergency number that you would usually use for a gas leak.

I did that and in fairness they came out pretty quickly and diagnosed the fault. It appears that that when the gas main was relied a few month ago they sort of ……...... forgot our house and didn't put a connection to it. This is despite the fact that the house has a gas meter, an account an account number and so on. It did make me wonder quite what our Corgi guy was up to three months ago when he came round to cap the gas! You might have thought he would have noticed that nothing was coming out.

At the point of writing this we are now waiting for someone to come round and re-connect us. I have no idea what that will entail.

All of this reminded me of the classic Flanders and Swann song mentioned above.

If you have never head the song before the words are listed below and a really funny lego animation is on You Tube here.

The Gas Man Cometh – Flanders and Swann

'Twas on a Monday morning the gas man came to call.
The gas tap wouldn't turn - I wasn't getting gas at all.
He tore out all the skirting boards to try and find the main
And I had to call a carpenter to put them back again.
Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.
'Twas on a Tuesday morning the carpenter came round.
He hammered and he chiselled and he said:
"Look what I've found: your joists are full of dry rot
But I'll put them all to rights".
Then he nailed right through a cable and out went all the lights!
Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.
'Twas on a Wednesday morning the electrician came.
He called me Mr. Sanderson, which isn't quite the name.
He couldn't reach the fuse box without standing on the bin
And his foot went through a window so I called the glazier in.
Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.
'Twas on a Thursday morning the glazier came round
With his blow torch and his putty and his merry glazier's song.
He put another pane in - it took no time at all
But I had to get a painter in to come and paint the wall.
Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.
'Twas on a Friday morning the painter made a start.
With undercoats and overcoats he painted every part:
Every nook and every cranny - but I found when he was gone
He'd painted over the gas tap and I couldn't turn it on!
Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.
On Saturday and Sunday they do no work at all;
So 'twas on a Monday morning that the gasman came to call...

The Mythical Boiler and other Pictures

2009-01-23T21:44:00.002Z

Here is the proof I promised from my earlier posts and comments that the boiler has finally been installed although not yet commissioned. In fairness the pipework looks pretty good.

This picture shows some of the work being done on the stairs. They were just supposed to replace some of the treads but subsequently decided to cover the stairs with a new MDF cover. This is a brilliant idea as it makes all the treads even (which they weren't before) and means that we don't have to spend ages trying to fashion wood to replace what was already there. This picture doesn't really show how good the lower, completed stairs look.

They still seem to think they will be done bar the shouting by Friday 30th. I think it will be very tight but they are working over the weekend to get it done.

Budget Update

2009-01-23T06:18:00.002Z

As this project gets ever closer to completion I have been looking again at the budgets and forecasts to see how close to the original projections we may end up.

I am not normally renowned for keeping detailed financial records (in fact detailed records of any kind) but I have forced myself to be very disciplined with this project and looking back at all the figures now I am very pleased I did.

The final bills are all coming in and there are only relatively small balances left outstanding. So where are we?

This table shows three columns. The first estimate, the revised estimate and the amount of money committed (although not necessarily paid out) so far. It is the revised estimate I am using as my budget as that is the one we used to re-negotiate the price of the house in October last year.

First Estimate	Revised Estimate	Committed
£30,370	£40,677	£39,000

If I have calculated this all properly and assuming the builder doesn't remind me of some extras I have forgotten about, I have just over £1500 left in the pot to deliver this project on budget.

I still have to purchase the following.

Bathroom and Kitchen Wall and Floor Tiles
Laminate Flooring for Downstairs
Carpet for the bedroom, stairs and landing
A dishwasher (not sure what size yet)

There is also the possibility of requiring yet another skip!

I think it is going to be very close but I might just do this. The flooring will be about £800, the tiles about £300 and the dishwasher should take the balance. Avoiding another skip could be crucial.

Ultimately, going over budget by a small amount will not be critical but I have been so focused on trying to stick to the original plans it would be great to deliver on it.

A Christmas Present

2009-01-20T22:51:00.003Z

Just before Christmas I received a present addressed as follows:-

APD

From

PPD

Like a good boy I didn't open my present until Christmas day and found a copy of........ NHBC Standards 2007.

Now far be it from me to show anything other than gratitude for a present but I have noticed that the 2008 regulations have already been published so my enthusiasm for this gift remains muted. I was reminded of another present given to me many many years ago by somebody (you know who you are) of 100 gross of out of date condoms. That is 14,400 condoms!

I must get some new friends.

PPD by the way stands for Professional Property Developer. I bet he has the 2008 standards!

Buying Kitchen Appliances

2009-01-18T21:42:00.003Z

Possibly for the first time on this project I have got bored. Not with the whole thing, just over working out what oven and hob to buy and how much to pay for it.

The attempted purchase on eBay failed and looking at all the other options, by searching online was going well until I realised the huge gulf in delivery charges between different companies which makes comparison difficult. I don't really trust the price comparison websites as regular readers will recall from attempts to insure the property before we exchanged.

So I have taken on board some of Tim's advice and purchased stuff from Redhill Appliances on the grounds that they only charge £1.00 delivery. Their prices were there or thereabouts and whilst they didn't have the Electrolux I have bought an oven and hob from the same place.

I will soon be the proud owner of:-

AEG 21602GM Gas Hob	£114.00
AEG B21005M Built In Single Oven	£272.00

I am sure I could have brought cheaper or more effectively but as I said, I am bored. Tim, if Which? claim that this is the worst oven in the history of cooking please don't tell me or if you have to tell me break the news gently!

The one bit of good news is that I have sorted this out in a fraction of the time that Mrs APD (who is working in the same room on the other computer) has spent trying to find somewhere for us to go on holiday this Summer.

Corgi Update

2009-01-18T08:01:00.002Z

Our Corgi plumber from last week has still not started. He apparently made an appearance briefly on Friday to tell everyone he will round to start work on Monday.

I am not sure he was that convincing and I won't be holding my breath. Builders will never get rid of this poor (and in most cases undeserved) reputation while some individuals continue to think this sort of behaviour is acceptable.

Hopefully he doesn't read this blog or he won't be round at all!

Oh Look - A Bathroom

2009-01-16T20:00:00.001Z

It's all beginning to take shape and the bathroom looks really good. Here are some pictures which begins to give you some idea of the size and layout. Now I can see all the furniture in the room I am delighted with how much space there is. It really does make the house look fantastic.

The holes in the wall are where the shower unit controls will go.

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

2009-01-16T07:05:00.002Z

Well well, you couldn't make it up.

Less than a week since a thread on this blog mentions The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin the BBC announce a plan to remake the series with Martin Clunes and others. They must have been reading this blog.

Now the likes of Tim who claims to be too young to remember the original will be able to enjoy it for the first time.

I was originally going to make this post last night but was delayed by a dead badger on the line at Berrylands.

Buying on eBay

2009-01-15T06:42:00.002Z

The kitchen was delivered on Tuesday as scheduled but we did not buy (deliberately) an oven or hob. We need to source one quite quickly as the kitchen will start to be installed next week.

Whilst not completely necessary I am keen to install a multi function oven to ensure that a grill is provided in the kitchen. It is only a small point but one that may make a difference. The only problem is that multi function ovens are more expensive.

After having a good look around on the internet I thought I would look at eBay. I am (at the time of writing) the highest bidder on this oven and hob. I haven't bought anything on eBay in over a year but this seller is on my way to and from work so I can easily pick the units up if I am the highest bidder and examine them before handing over the loot.

I didn't expect eBay to be a supplier for this project but there you go.

More Progress

2009-01-14T20:03:00.004Z

The brickwork arch above the front door has been taken down and replaced which has effectively repaired all of the bricks that could have fallen down. It turned out to be quite a tricky job and you can see the template the builder has used to get the curve right. Obviously the mortar will be weathered and everything painted when it has dried.

I think you know you are reaching the end of a project when small detail like door furniture starts being added. This picture is taken upstairs where the only thing outstanding now is to fit the bathroom. That work started today and I hope may be done by the end of the week.

The builders worked hard to finish of the under stairs cupboard so the boiler could be installed today but unfortunately the Corgi plumber didn't turn up. This is the only "old school" builder we have had on this project. No show, no apology, no explanation, no idea when he will turn up. It was bound to happen sooner or later!

I don't know why I felt the need to publish a picture of a plastered under stair cupboard. The advantage of having your own blog - you can do what you want.

This Week

2009-01-12T10:23:00.002Z

There is much happening this week and whilst we won't be finished by Friday, as the project clock suggests, we should be much closer to knowing how close to completing by the end of the month we will be.

Without trying to put the kibosh on things, by the end of the week we should have a bathroom installed (although not working), a boiler installed and commissioned, a kitchen delivered, tiling completed in the bathroom, all plastering finished throughout (except the kitchen), the under stairs cupboard finished, the garden clearance completed, the cracked brickwork repaired (subject to weather) and a start on the downstairs decorating.

I probably shouldn't have said all of that. They will probably all walk off site now.

The Problem with the Weather

2009-01-11T20:01:00.002Z

This is quite an old picture that I haven't used before. It shows the brick work above the front door which is not in good nick. Some of this needs to be taken down and repaired / replaced as appropriate as the cracks you can see are not supposed to be there!

Whilst we can postpone (indefinitely) the re-pointing and re-rendering this job is not something we can leave however we cannot do it while the temperatures are so cold. The builder had hoped to do this on Saturday but there was no opportunity and we will need to look ahead and get a couple of days of warmer (not freezing) weather so we can get this done and let the cement set.

Recent Pictures

2009-01-09T19:09:00.003Z

Work carries on at a decent pace and the upstairs (except for the bathroom where the plaster is refusing to dry out) is almost complete. The doors are on and only a second coat of paint is required.

I am particularly pleased that the upstairs bathroom now looks like it was part of the original house and not added subsequently. As soon as the plaster is dry, hopefully by Monday, this can be painted as well.

APD Project 2?

2009-01-08T06:32:00.000Z

I have received details of two more houses that I think may suitable for the APD.

I am off to see one of them at the weekend and I have been tipped of that another will be on the market very soon. One is close to the current project and the other is much closer to home. With the current project beginning to reach a conclusion (apart from selling it!) the timing is good.

Mrs APD is rather less convinced and thinks we should do our own house next. She is probably right but ........

Skip Rip Offs

2009-01-07T10:44:00.001Z

We needed a new skip to be delivered to site and one was duly ordered. It was £45.00 more expensive than the last one (ordered just before Christmas).

When I queried this I was told that the local authority insists that all skips are collected over Christmas and all permits automatically expire. As a result I need a new one.

I am either being ripped off by the skip company or by the Local Authority. I cannot be bothered to find out which as I will only get annoyed and then I will feel obligated to complain.

Life is too short.

Change of Specification

2009-01-06T20:40:00.003Z

After much thought we have decided to change the specification and not re-render or re-point the flank walls.

This is not because the jobs don't need doing but because the weather is making it pretty impossible to do any meaningful outside work that won't need to be redone is few months time. I would hate to dress a house up for sale and then the new owners have to spend money on repairing it all again.

I spoke to the estate agent who was of the opinion that provided we are up front with potential purchasers it shouldn't cause a problem i.e. don't wait until their survey points it out. Overall it is likely to be cost neutral to us as we won't be paying the builder for the work but may have to reduce the sale price accordingly. Having said that we are not going to be greedy with the resale price so it is possible that we end up making slightly more without having wasted money on work that will need to be redone.

11 Days to Go

2009-01-05T08:22:00.000Z

According to the project clock we have 11 days to go to finish this project. That isn't going to happen and the end of the month is more likely but will still be tight.

The terms of the insurance policy state that the house must be visited once every seven days so as nobody has been working I paid one visit over the holidays.

As we start the New Year – this is where we are.

The bedrooms are largely finished bar final painting and second fix plumbing and electrics. They look really good and more work will be done this week.
The bathroom needs to be installed and the new soil pipe run. This is the largest job outstanding upstairs.
Stairs – there is some repair work to be done to the stairs.
All thermaboard need to be applied downstairs and then plastered. This is will start this week as the materials will be delivered this afternoon.
The kitchen needs to be installed.
The cloakroom needs to be installed.
The new boiler needs to be installed and commissioned.
The under stairs cupboard floor needs to be re-laid.
Second fix plumbing and electrics need to be completed.
The garden needs some more work.
The outside brickwork needs to be tidied up and painted.

That's about it although I am sure I have forgotten something.

I still hope to have the house back on the market by the end of the month.

Blog Off

2008-12-24T00:05:00.000Z

It's Christmas tomorrow and quite rightly the builders are not doing any more work until the New Year and I have already finished for the holidays.

As a result this blog will be on holiday now (for new posts anyway) until 2^nd January. You can comment as much as you like. This is as much to prove to Mrs APD that I can go more than a day without posting anything!

If you are reading this shortly after it is published then I am probably in the pub / having a curry and taking full advantage of blogger's ability to delay publication to a time of my choosing.

Happy Christmas

Decorem

Watts = Volts x Amps

2008-12-22T14:13:00.000Z

I went round to the house today to take some more pictures; all the plastering in the upstairs bedrooms is finished as you can see from these pictures. The problem is, in this weather, it is taking a long time to dry out especially as there is no heating in the house at the moment.

In effort to speed the natural process up a bit the builder invested in a couple of cheap convection heaters. A first class idea except they were being run off an extension cable rated to a maximum of 10 amps.

The heaters (according to the box) are rated at 2Kw each. If I remember from my school days Watts = Volts x Amps so 4000 watts of heat from a 240 volts supply requires 16.6amps. That will probably account for why the heaters kept switching off!

Just as well we have RCD circuits everywhere.

A Slight Diversion

2008-12-20T10:13:00.000Z

Sarah has posted an end of year update on her blog.

I am not sure I agree with her that house price falls are largely down to money supply – I am sure greed was a significant factor in sellers expectations of what their properties were worth as well.

I remain convinced that there is money to be made out of property development provided you can buy cheap enough in the first place. Let's face it, if you could buy a three bed house for a £1.00 and you would make money provided all the other houses in the road were valued at £5.00!

Is Sarah right to wait with her property rented out until there is a recovery? Perhaps, but don't forget that it always takes longer for a price to recover than it takes to fall. £100.00 to £80 is a 20% decrease but £80.00 to £100.00 is 25% increase!

Personally I will sell out if I can make a reasonable profit and then look to do another one straight away. Whilst I won't view a profitable rent as a failure, it isn't what I set out to do so is very much the second best option. There is a limit to the amount of debt I feel comfortable with (always assuming you can raise the money of course).

Kitchen Delivery

2008-12-20T07:33:00.000Z

I have to say I am impressed with Homebase.

Just two days after ordering the kitchen they are on the telephone to find out when we would like it delivered. It could have been as soon as the 8th January but with Christmas between now and then I don't think we will be quite ready. You don't want a kitchen hanging about in the house getting damaged so I think it is better to delay delivery until we are ready to start fitting. The 13^th January it is.

The insane optimist in me say that if we can get it done in 3 days we will hit the project deadline. That isn't going to happen so I think this revised date of the end of January is ever more likely.

I shall go round on Monday to take some more pictures.

Project Update

2008-12-18T22:09:00.004Z

I am told that the upstairs will be finished by tomorrow evening ready for decorating, skirting boards, door fixing and bathroom installation etc much of which will start on Monday.

I am still hopeful that we will come in slightly under budget although I think the deadline of the middle of January may be a challenge.

Disappointingly will will need a least one more skip (that will be the 6th). I hadn't anticipated spending around a thousand pounds on skips - and this is not a huge job in comparison to some. If I ever do another project like this I will work out how many skips I need and double it!!

Kitchen Design (Again)

2008-12-17T21:23:00.004Z

The kitchen has been bought and paid for but we will have to wait four weeks (maybe longer) for delivery. Here is the final version. The floor tiles and wall colours are just here for effect and probably won't be what we will actually use.

We ended up spending a little more than I had wanted as all of this cost just over £1200 including the sink and taps but excluding any appliances. The worktop looks like granite and I have bought the splash back to go with it as that adds a nice finishing touch.

In order to deliver a kitchen within the initial budget (£1500) we will need to buy an oven (we already have a hob) and a dishwasher for less than £300.00. That might be a challenge. I think it will be nearer £600.00 as the oven will need a grill as well. We could elect to go for a free standing dishwasher which will reduce the costs.

I don't intend to buy the appliances yet. It is possible that we will have enough room for a full size dishwasher rather than a slimline one but it depends on how thick the plaster is!

Kitchen Design

2008-12-14T13:34:00.003Z

Here is my first attempt at a kitchen design now I know how big the kitchen will be. The cupboards on the right hand wall are wall cupboards placed on the floor but I couldn't persuade the design software that I didn't want them on the wall. The 3D picture looks a bit strange as a result but I am sure you get the idea

The final choice of finish and flooring will not be as shown but it looks nicer if your pick something.

I think the cost of this will be something like £600 plus the appliances which means we are just about in budget. I hope to place the order for this lot next week when I have finalised everything.

A Fellow Traveller

2008-12-13T23:25:00.000Z

I was talking to a work colleague the other day (about management reporting for solicitors since you ask!) and it turns out that she has also brought a property in a recession to do up and sell on / rent out. Not only that but she blogged the experience as well. You can read about it here. I would put a live link in but it appears her blog may have come to an end with the end of the project but I'll put a link up if that changes.

Funny what you find out about your work colleagues. Maybe we should have compared notes a few months ago.

Kitchen Designs

2008-12-13T09:27:00.004Z

It has become abundantly clear that the current kitchen design won't work. The (I thought) very clever idea to build a staggered stud wall between the kitchen and cloakroom looked really good on the plans (see here) but on the ground it doesn't work as well.

This is mainly to do with the toilet and the amount of space you need in front of it to errrr do your business! I remember having a similar problem before when we installed a small cloakroom under the stairs in our last house. The conversations that follow are quite formulaic in their style.

It involves a succession of people (always seems to be blokes) who stand in front of (or sit on) a real or pretend toilet and work out if there is enough headroom if fitting under the stairs or leg room if you are trying to position door as close to the toilet as you can get away with. Nearly everyone get's involved in the discussion even if they are somebody unknown who has just delivered a load of plasterboard to the house. After plenty of sitting and standing the usual toilet humour (sic) starts along the lines of

"Well mate I am sure it is ok for you but as a larger gentlemen I would stand further away"

and

"Have you considered where to put the newspaper rack"?

……and so on. I am sure you get the idea!

Anyway the long and short of this analysis is that the door needs to be further away from the toilet and slightly wider. This means that the "kink" shown in the plans on the stud wall ends up being a reasonably deep recess which in a kitchen of this size just doesn't work at all as the space is completely wasted. As a result it compromises the rest of the kitchen.

The only thing to do is to have a straight stud wall and design the kitchen to that. I shall go back round the house this morning to measure yet again (how many times have I done this?) and then I can do another kitchen design. Whilst the kitchen will be one of the last things to be completed I suspect I need to order it before Christmas to stand any chance at all of hitting the deadlines.

Oh Look - A Garden

2008-12-11T20:48:00.001Z

Here are two photographs of the garden and they both go to show how much of it has been cleared. I am not sure if the pick was actually used or whether it was just left lying around for the benefit of the pictures.

We don't want to clear too much more as it is providing some good screening. Another couple of days should see the rest of the rubbish cleared and most of the remaining ground cover.

And a nice pose from the best qualified garden clearer ever (probably!).

Shower head position

2008-12-11T18:12:00.000Z

I have been asked where I want the thermostat and taps to be placed in relation to the shower head. It is pretty obvious (to me anyway) that the shower head should be in the middle of the bath which means the taps should be to the right. Assuming that it cannot be connected from either side.

I don't really understand the point of this design. Why isn't the connector to the shower head on top of the unit and why it is not in the middle. There must be some clever design factor that is beyond me.

Windows Invoice

2008-12-09T21:10:00.004Z

The invoices, bills and demands for payment are coming in a little faster now and I have just received the final invoice for the new windows and doors; a total of £3470.00. This is £261.00 below the revised budget and £30.00 less than the original estimate and included more windows than original anticipated. They have done a fantastic job and I am very pleased with the whole effect.

If you need some double glazing contact Geoff at Warmlite and tell him you read about them on this blog. I don't get anything as a result but you never know – it may just assist in the negotiations next time.

The reduction in VAT has made a small but very welcome reduction to the bill.

Thank you Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling but I really must tell you that I would have spent the money anyway.

Bathroom Order

2008-12-08T20:35:00.003Z

I have finally ordered what I think will be everything not purchased so far for the new upstairs bathroom and the cloakroom. This order includes all the waste, wall hangers, panels, taps and so on. Everything. Everything that is until I am told what I have forgotten! Doubtless the plumber will take great delight in telling me.

The total amount spent on all of these bits and pieces is £683.66 which is considerably less than £3000 in the budget. This seems like good news but the budget also included estimates for the stud work, plastering and fitting etc which has now been moved to another line item. As I mentioned in an earlier post it is difficult to truly know how the budget is doing line by line but overall I think we are just about there.

Yet more pictures

2008-12-06T14:05:00.001Z

Now the bathroom window is in the light in the new upstairs bathroom is fantastic. This first picture is taken from the landing into the bathroom. The only part of the bathroom that has not had plasterboard (suitable for bathrooms of course) is the bit you can see. The ceiling is up and I am really pleased with how good it all looks.

These next two pictures are of the front bedroom. The ceiling is up in here as well and all the thermaboard and plasterboard has been attached to the walls.

My daughter (who visited the house this morning with me) accepts that whilst everywhere else is still "horrible" the bedroom looks pretty good. High praise indeed.

Bathroom Window

2008-12-06T13:53:00.002Z

The ultra thin render based wall has been replaced with a bright and shiny new window. I think it's look pretty good but it is even better from the inside.

More pictures to come and then it's time for kitchen design. I have the exact measurements now the stud work is in so design and ordering is next weeks priority.

New bathroom

2008-12-06T06:29:00.000Z

Much of the plasterboard for the new bathroom and landing has been attached to the stud work and the results are really good. These pictures are taken from inside the front bedroom and you can see the new door frame out to the landing and the next door to the stairs.

This next photograph is taken from the landing into the bedroom. You can just see the bathroom door to the right. It is coming together nicely.

I have been away for a couple of days and I am looking forward to seeing what has been done in meantime.

More Windows (and Doors)

2008-12-05T20:35:00.000Z

Here are some more pictures of the new windows and the back door. You can't see it too clearly in this picture as it is obscured by thermaboard and I couldn't be bothered to move it all fo the sake of a picture. It brings so much more light into this room.

These are the upstairs windows. The one with the bars is the front bedroom and obvioulsy the one without is the back. The flash didn't go off for the first of these!

Window in the front room.

2008-12-05T18:13:00.001Z

The new windows are in and the house looks great. This first photograph shows the new Georgian style windows and the front door which look really good.

This picure shows the outside of the house with it's two new windows. If you think the top window isn't straight you would be right. Well strictly you wouldn't be right. The window is straight - the house isn't.

More pictures coming soon.

The Public View of the Thin Wall

2008-12-04T06:24:00.004Z

I meant to put this photograph up with the last post. This is the outside of the "thin wall". It is remarkable that it stays there really. By the time you read this it should have been replaced by a new frosted window.

How thin can you make a wall?

2008-12-02T19:56:00.001Z

The new windows are being installed and they look fabulous. It makes such a difference. I'll put some pictures up when they have finished. I love this picture though. We are having a new window put upstairs in what will become the bathroom. In readiness for installation the builder prepared the hole over the weekend and installed the lintels etc all ready to go (as usual you can click on the picture for a better quality image). He rightly had a concern about security so moved the bricks from the inside leaving just the thickness of the render to protect the house. You can see a small hole in the top left hand side which is straight out to the outside world, you can all see the outline made by the angle grinder when the bricks were cut. Of course it was bound to happen that the windows installers didn't have this particular window with them which will now be installed on Wednesday!

I am not too bothered about squatters taking advantage of this. To get in they would have to climb up a ladder and knock out the render. This wouldn't be too hard but once they got in they may be a little disappointed. No heating, almost no electricity, no hot water and no toilets.

Whilst I wouldn't risk it there is no real danger in leaving the front door open except that some tools might be stolen.

The Importance of a Tape Measure

2008-12-02T13:12:00.000Z

The space where the bath is supposed to fit does not look very big and in truth does not look big enough. Everyone has commented on this including the builder who put the stud work up in the first place. We have usually satisfied ourselves with comments such as :-

"well is just looks deceptive"
"it will look fine when the plaster is on"
"it must be right it has been checked several times"

You can guess what is coming next.

We decided to re-measure the space and it is too small by about 7cm. We either have to buy a 1500mm bath or move the stud work.

The plasterboard is being delivered tomorrow so hopefully the stud work will have been moved by then. it was tempting to switch to a 1500mm bath but I think that 1700mm will make a lot of difference and it is what we wanted.

Large mea culpas all round.

November Statistics

2008-12-01T21:53:00.004Z

I cannot believe that another month has gone by which gives me another excuse to see how many people are reading this blog.

In November I had 390 visits from 49 different visitors.

Obviously most were from the UK but I have had visitors from America, Canada (see the "Steve Austin" search earlier in the month) and Sweden.

Thank you for continuing to read my assorted ramblings – I think it is fair to say I don't know who you all are anymore.

Creating Space

2008-11-30T19:42:00.000Z

Since all the work has been done to strip everything out of the house and the floorboards have been put back down and made "true" it is possible to walk around the house and take more of it in. If you excuse the body in the following photograph you can see through from the rear reception room to the front room and out of the front door (across the road etc .....). This had led to the suggestion that we should consider not replacing the doors between the rooms as it helps to open out the space. This makes sense but it has made me wonder about whether we should open it out further.

The pictures above and below show both sides of the same wall. You can see in the picture below, the wooden lintel although as the wall is solid and non load bearing there is some doubt about what it is doing there. I have come up with the idea of removing much of this wall and opening out the staircase to the rear reception room. I would like to remove the wall completely but this cannot be done without an RSJ and by the time that was installed and clad with fire retardant material it isn't worth the extra cost.

A cheaper and easier option is to take the wall down to just below the ceiling and but in a 4x4 lintel to say half way (or maybe just over) the wall by the stairs. This will open up over half the stairs into the main room and create a much bigger space as well as making a feature out of the stairs. APD Observer and MeatOnTheBone will probably remember doing something similar in a house in Cobham over 20 years ago. Any memories they have of this would be appreciated.

The picture below shows the wall above the door from the reception room side. The lintel would just about be at the top row of bricks and would need to be boxed in or painted black and made to look like a beam to match those in the front room.

If we did decide to do this I think it would make sense to replace the door from the front refeption room to the stairs.

I have the day off work tomorrow (mainly for Christmas shopping but Mrs APD has done most of it) so we will be have a chat with the builder about this in more detail.

Bathroom Shopping List

2008-11-30T14:46:00.004Z

The new cloakroom suite arrived and gave us the chance to offer the units up to the wall and see it fitted OK and that there was enough space. I am pleased we did this as it showed us that whilst the units we purchased would fit upstairs we need a much smaller sink (and no pedestal) downstairs.

So here is the list of all of the other items I need to purchase to complete the bathroom and the cloakroom except for the small sink and associated taps as I need to make absolutely certain the unit I chose will fit in the space we have available. I have sent this lot of to our plumber for his thoughts before I place the order. I also need to know what waste units etc I need to buy and get the specification of the cloakroom sink in the same order so I don't have to pay another lot of delivery. When I have finished the order I think I will have spent about £650.00 on all the bathroom units. I could have spent a little less but I think it is worth spending money on taps and things that have a high visual impact.

This is a much better shower unit and I hope that those that have been rightly critical in my choice of unit so far will think this one is more appropriate.

Bathroom (s) Shopping List

Fiscal Stimulus

2008-11-29T09:18:00.002Z

I did not expect the chancellors PBR to have a mention on the blog but the following story made me laugh.

I received a text message from the builder yesterday - "could I order another skip and settle the account." No problem with this. We have had four skips so far (the first we paid on delivery) and I hope that this next one will be the last. We have gone over budget on clearance fees.

I telephoned the skip company to be told that I owed them for three skips and another one would be the fourth.

He then said the first three skips were at 17.5% and the one delivered on Monday will be at 15% (it being 1^st December). I asked how come they weren't all at 15% at I hadn't received an invoice from them for any the skips so far and the tax point should be the day they raise the invoice i.e. Monday 1^st December. His response to this was that we should have been paying for the skips as we took delivery of them. The fact that they hadn't asked for payment nor had they issued an invoice was irrelevant.

I did try and point out that this was not how the new rules were supposed to work but he beat me with his response.

"Do you want the skip or not?"

I have read forum after forum about how the new VAT rules are supposed to apply for services already delivered and not invoiced and confusion reigns (I know this is sad but my real job has some exposure to this). Government seems able to make the announcement that VAT will change in one week without giving any meaningful thought to the difficulties this puts business in. I have a sneaking admiration for the way the skip company operated. They are wrong, they are not short changing HMRC and they know that reducing VAT by 2.5% will not make any difference to whether I buy their goods and services or not. In that respect they are right and I ordered the skip.

So much for a fiscal stimulus.

Quick Update

2008-11-27T20:22:00.002Z

Building work continues and good progress is being made. There will be 7 people working on the house tomorrow including plumbers and electricians. The damp proof render has started to be applied and things are good.

The picture shows the steel straps that we have used in the problem corner to hold the wall together. The gap has been fixed with sand and cement as a "glue" and this wall is all ready to have it's thermaboard attached. As usual you can click on any of the pictures to get a higher quality image.

Here is a close up.

The stud work that forms the new landing has been finished although it is difficult to see it from this picture here are the two doors frames. One leading to the bathroom and the other to the bedroom.

The windows are going in on Monday so all the lintels have been installed in readiness and tomorrow a suitable hole will be cut out the side wall for the new bathroom window.

Decisions need to be made on showers and sinks and I'll post something about that over the weekend when I have more time to research and plan.

Oh yes - and while I think of it. This is my 50th post. I wondered whether I would stick at it.

More Pictures

2008-11-22T13:49:00.003Z

Here are some pictures showing how how things are progressing.

This first one is my favourite as it shows the stud work for the new bathroom so the house is beginning to take shape. The new brick wall you can see at the back was the door to the cupboard holding the hot water tank in the back bedroom. The brickwork above the wooden lintel was "live" (got the use of this term sorted out now) so the builder decided to replace all of it with new block work and a lintel underneath it to hold it all up. You can click on all of these pictures to enlarge them.

This will be the door into the bathroom.

This is a better photograph of the new wall with it's lintel.

Just as impressive is the amount of work that has happened outside in the garden. There has been three solid days spent out here and it is amazing how much progress has been made. This photograph has been taken from the back wall of the house. Three days ago it was difficult to get to the back wall let alone take a photograph down the garden!

Squeezing past the sink

2008-11-21T20:03:00.001Z

One of the problems with trying to plan a bathroom or a kitchen is that you have to make decisions that cannot be easily revoked. Once the pipework is in etc the scope for change is limited.

It seems to me that this situation is worse with a bathroom as you are usually tying to squeeze three or four pieces of furniture of different shapes and sizes into a small a space as possible. With a kitchen you are trying to squeeze as much stuff as you can into the space you have. Kitchens have the other advantage of using equipment and furniture of a standard size; 600mm deep and so on.

As a result of all of this I think it is nigh on impossible to pick a bathroom suite and be certain that you have enough space between the wall and the sink to get to the toilet or the bath and the toilet to get to the sink and so on. Templates etc would work well but it is not like the real thing. That is why I ordered a sink and toilet today so we can see how it fits in the bathroom. If it works - great. If not we will use this kit in the downstairs cloakroom and buy something smaller for upstairs. It means paying more than one delivery charge (£40.00 each time) but I think it is worth it. It costs a lot more to send these things back if they don't fit and you don't want them anymore.

Bathroom Suites

2008-11-20T22:58:00.003Z

I have been told that it is time to start thinking about the bathroom suites we want (and buy them I guess). The type of toilet is particularly important as it makes a difference to the way that the soil pipes are attached.

I have looked at various bathroom suites on-line and have been quite surprised and how much they cost (a lot) and how much they get discounted to (also a lot).

So, here are links to the proposed suites.

Upstairs Bathroom

Downstairs Cloakroom

Thermostatic Shower Mixer tap

This all comes to about £550.00 with the taps costing £255.00. I have sent details of these over to our plumber for his thoughts but I am going to make life size templates of the units and take them round over the weekend to see how it all fits and to find out if you can get past the sink to the toilet and so on. We have decided (on advice) to move the sink and the toilet around upstairs which should make this easier. Apparently the stud walls are up so I will take some pictures at the same time.

The clock is running ..........

2008-11-17T20:39:00.006Z

The other thing that I agreed with the builder was a target completion date. This is set at Friday 16th January 2009. There are no penalties for being late (except a delay getting to the next job) and no bonuses for being early but we both have signed up to it.

I have set up a project clock on the right hand side of the screen showing the time from the moment we owned the house to the building work being finished. "Completion to Completion"! It works out at three months (give or take) in total.

Project and Budget Update

2008-11-17T20:10:00.003Z

The main work has begun on the house now with electrical and plumbing work having started today. I had a long conversation with the main builder over the weekend and agreed costs for the remainder of the work and I can now make a reasonable assessment for the first time on how close to our budget we will be.

It has proven quite difficult to work out how accurate my estimating has been as I seem to be forever moving items from one budget line to another. For example the original plan was to ask the DPC and timber treatment company to do the specialist rendering. I have subsequently decided not to do that as the people who are doing the rest of the plastering are quite comfortable about the type of render required.

The main builder has agreed a reasonably detailed schedule of works which includes (amongst other items) all of the plastering, brickwork, studwork, painting and decorating, kitchen fitting and tiling. We just have to provide the following.

Upstairs bathroom suite and shower
Downstairs cloakroom suite
Kitchen
Any floor coverings we want (carpets, tiles and laminate flooring)

Whilst I enjoyed my foray out into the garden recently I haven't got the time to finish this off so a friend of the family is going to do this for me starting from this Wednesday.

I think we will be very close to our revised £40,677 estimate. There is slight disappointment that we won't we thousands under but I guess if that were the case the estimate wouldn't have been very good. I am very pleased that we have now understood all the work that has to be done. There will inevitably be some more surprises but I hope that the amount of planning and preparation we have done to date will minimise this.

The Amazonian Rainforest

2008-11-14T19:35:00.004Z

I don't know much about the rain forest (it is one word or two?) and I have never been there but I think that because the canopy is so thick it is like having two systems in one. The bottom of the forest is dark and damp because sunlight never gets there whilst the area above the canopy is light and bright and is host to a totally different set of species.

The garden of the house is very like this.

I have never seen a garden quite so overgrown with very large trees and shrubs and this morning I did a job that all boys are born to do. Me, an overgrown garden and a chainsaw!

YeeeHaaa!!!!.

I still have all my limbs so I can tell the tale.

I think I said in an earlier blog entry that we bought the house without ever actually venturing down the garden. Subsequently I hacked, literally, my way to the end picking my way through brambles and round thorn trees, just to see what was there. Today's mission was to try and clear a wider path so that others could make the same journey.

It is very clear that this used to be a much loved garden. The things that had been planted had been planted with thought and care but they had, over several years of neglect, literally taken over the garden. The first challenge was just as you walk out through the back door. An enormous thorn bush blocking your path. This proved the most difficult thing to move out the way simply because it was so vicious. Beyond that were several more similar bushes and some thorn trees all of which have now received the attention of the chain saw. I am only trying to completely clear the trees etc on the left hand side of the garden. The growth on the right provide quite a bit of screening so it needs to be thinned, cut back and pruned but I want some of it to survive. The back garden is overlooked by some flats and it need to ensure that we have sufficient cover to block as much of this out as I can.

There will end up being an element of garden design in this project.

I spoke too soon

2008-11-14T13:05:00.008Z

Just as I said the house couldn't look any worse I have been proved wrong!

I have taken the day off work today to so some work on the garden (of which more later) and took these pictures of the house without the floorboards. In truth the news is not bad because all of the joists are in good nick but it looks terrible. The dpc is in and all the timber treated so it really won't get any worse than this! Where have I heard that before?

The quality of the pictures is not as good as last time as I took them on my mobile phone; I didn't have the proper camera with me.

UPDATE (17:00): Very embarrassingly I have just spotted that I used to and not too in the title of this post. I can't believe I did that. I am hanging my head in shame.

Radiator sizes – the final version

2008-11-12T23:17:00.009Z

After much debate and very welcome input from various people I have made a decision in conjunction with our plumber on what radiator sizes we are going to use. As we now know that the under floor will be insulated and thermal plasterboard will be put on the walls I have decided to assume that to all intents and purposes that the rooms do not have solid walls and there are not three outside walls for each room.

Here are the final calculations for those that are interested.

Room	Size (WxDxH)	BTU Required	Rad Size	Rad BTU
Bedroom2	3.65x3.05x2.3m	3494.54	800x600mm	4685
Bedroom 1	3.65x3.48x2.3m	3987.21	800x600mm	4685
Back Room	3.65x3.05x2.5m	4748.01	800x600mm	4685
Front Room	3.65x4.4x2.5m	6849.59	1200x600mm	7027

We are over specified on three radiators and slightly under on one. I think this will be fine and the slightly under specified unit will take some heat from the kitchen.

I have agreed the scope of works with the plumber today and he starts on Monday. If you want to see the pipe work diagrams he has them all on his blog here.

Building Control Report

2008-11-12T13:34:00.000Z

We asked the building inspector to visit the house yesterday so we could consult with them on some of the things we were planning on doing and making sure we had their support.

It is always a good idea to do this as apparently inspectors prefer to get involved at the beginning of a project and to be asked for their opinion. It saves them having lots of arguments subsequently.

The inspector will have been able to see anything he wanted as the house is completely stripped out now and this includes all but one of the ceilings and all of the downstairs floorboards. This may seem drastic but the dpc is being installed on Thursday and all exposed timber is being treated. As there is hardly an unexposed piece of wood in the building this will be fairly comprehensive process.

Overall the visit went as expected; here are some of the main points.

The use of steel straps to hold the upstairs corner walls together is acceptable and there is no need to rebuild the corner itself.
We will be expected to put thermal plaster boards onto the wall. In the case of the downstairs this will be over the special waterproof dpc render.
We will need to add insulation under the floor downstairs.
The proposed site of the bathroom and soil pipe is ok and there is no need to provide additional strengthening to any of the flooring.
We need to insulate the loft to the current standard.

We had not expected to add under floor insulation but have no problem doing so. It is anticipated that this will only add about £200.00 to the cost. All of the other insulation points were not in the original plan but that was only because I didn’t think of them or didn’t know about them. We had subsequently anticipated that building control would ask to add them and there is no surprise that they did.

All in all a very successful visit.

New Windows

2008-11-11T20:40:00.003Z

A big moment today as we placed the first major order for the refurbishment. The contract for the replacement windows and doors has been signed.

We obtained two quotes, one prior to completion, but have subsequently made some changes to the specification and the number of windows we wanted. Two local companies re-quoted for the work and after a short negotiation we have signed with Warmlite.

From a budget point of view their proposal is only just over our original estimate and less than the revised figure. As it includes two additional windows I am very pleased with the outcome.

They originally quoted four to six weeks for delivery and installation but after a bit of pushing they will start on 1^st December. The existing windows (which are in dreadful condition) were installed without the benefit of a lintel and the surrounding brickwork is poor so there is work to be done before they can start.

New windows make such a huge difference to how a house looks I am looking forward to seeing them installed.

On a separate note the salesman for Warmlite has been plying his trade round here for years and has approached us several times although we have never had use for his services until now. It just goes to show that selling can be all about building up a relationship without any immediate prospect of a sale but knowing that you will be first in line when the time comes.

Radiator sizes

2008-11-10T10:11:00.000Z

It is getting to the stage where I need to start buying some stuff and radiators are one such item. Easy enough I thought but what size radiators do I need? Obviously I will ask our plumber to advise but I do like to understand these things myself if I can.

Radiators are measured in Watts or BTU's (British Thermal Units) and there is a ridiculously complicated system for working out what sizes you need involving the volume of the room, number of outside walls, type of wall (solid, cavity etc), double glazing (yes or no), the aspect of the house (North, South etc), what type of room it is (bedroom, lounge and so on) your inside leg measurement, mother's maiden name and the number of pets you have.

I am convinced that this system has been made sufficiently complex and made to look like a dark art to stop the rest of us from trying to understand it. What makes it worse is that every different method of calculating you use gives a completely different result!

Room volume seems to be the biggest single factor in the calculation with the number of outside walls the room has being another important number. In this respect the house suffers quite badly as every room I need to heat has three outside walls. This seems to add about 40% to the calculation.

Radcalcs gets a lot of recommendation from various websites and is easy to use without being overly simplified. The only problem with this is that in one room it is recommending a radiator with 10,523 BTU's which is a very big radiator in quite a small room.

Ultimately I shall have to go with some common sense but I'll wait and see what the building control officer says during his visit tomorrow about insulation etc before making a decision.

If anybody knows of any other sites with a calculator I would be pleased to hear about it.

Incidentally my calculations state that the bedroom require 6546 and 7469 BTU respectively and the downstairs room will need 7294 and 10523. I know that Tim (see earlier comments) pointed out the downstairs toilet will be cold. Fear not; there will be a an electric towel rail / heater to take the edge off.

The "Horrible House"

2008-11-08T14:44:00.005Z

Our youngest daughter (3 next February) is not impressed with our new house and calls it the "Horrible House".

Most of the house is empty now and this collection of pictures is hopefully as bad as it will get. With a bit of luck it won't be the "Horrible House" much longer. (click the picture to enlarge it).