February 2004

February started with all the rubble being removed from the front drive. Kelvin's dad knew someone who wanted rubble to level out their car park. Chap came out and had a look, said he was quite happy to have all the rubble that was there. Digger was duly hired, tractor, trailor and man were duly hired for the day and hey presto all the rubble was gone!

Trailor being loaded up.

Two full days were spent clearing rubble. Hopefully there won't be a huge amount like that again.

	We have stairs! Originally we thought we would either have to have stairs made to measure (expensive) but with a bit of creativity one standard flight of stairs had the top chopped off and repositioned and it worked!
This is in the dining room under the top part of the stairs. We have two understairs cupboards (one on the side and one on the end) built with tongue and groove and they look good. (Plenty of storage!)
	The studwork has been started upstairs. This wall is the one between Billy's bedroom and our bedroom. The wall has been moved 6" further into Billy's room to gain us a bit more space. It was very strange seeing walls upstairs after seeing it open for so long.
Billy's room gets a ceiling.

A milestone this month was the first fix for the central heating. The guys doing it came and laid all the pipework ready to be connected up eventually. It is weird seeing pipes everywhere that don't go anywhere! We have marked out where we would like radiators - it was quite difficult deciding where to put radiators in rooms that don' have complete walls!

The plastering was done in the dining room, lounge, Billy's bedroom and our bedroom. Where there is plastering over granite we are having the walls rough plastered. The studwork walls will be smooth plastered. Rough plastering is much quicker than smooth plastering.

	This is the wall between the lounge and the dining room. The airing cupboard has been roughly plastered inside to even out the wall
The lounge walls have been plastered. Apart from under the window this is all the plastering in here. You can see the central heating pipes hanging through the beams.
	In Billy's room the rough plastering around the window has been done, we have left a few granite blocks exposed as a feature.
In our room most of the plastering has been done (the joining wall between us and Billy hasn't been done yet). Again we had the granite around the window exposed as a feature.

 

The ceiling was put up in the kitchen. This felt like a milestone because it almost made the kitchen feel like a proper 'room'!

February - a conclusion

February was a good month with regard to the builders turning up. If I remember correctly the only days they went home early was when it snowed and they were worried they wouldn't get home!

Quite alot was carried out this month - plaster, ceiling, rubble clearing etc etc. We have however passed the deadline that Kelvin was sure we would be moved in by - the middle of February. Will this ever be finished?