Home improvements - time the house had some TLC!

[Tom...]

Sorry 😋 Work has paused while we wait for the electrician to do his thing. He's booked in for the 7th March so things should pick up again after that

We have decided on a minor addition while the ceiling is down; we're going to put a second aircon unit outside to run an indoor unit in the living room. The pipes can all be easily concealed now so they'll go in before the ceilings and walls are finished and the units can be installed later. Fun times 😄 This will be handy in Summer, but also gives us an option to heat most of the house without gas which could be useful in future

Why not swap out the existing unit for a multi-split, and run two indoor units off of one condensing unit? It'd reduce running costs and negate the need for two units outside.

 

[JhnBssll]

Why not swap out the existing unit for a multi-split, and run two indoor units off of one condensing unit? It'd reduce running costs and negate the need for two units outside.

Considering it, but looks like it'll work out more expensive to install and we would have to scrap the existing outdoor unit which is only 18 months old. I should really have asked for a multi-split capable outdoor unit the first time round but bit late now there's plenty of room down the side for a second unit anyway but I'll wait and see what the installer suggests before making a final decision

 

[jowwy]

Considering it, but looks like it'll work out more expensive to install and we would have to scrap the existing outdoor unit which is only 18 months old. I should really have asked for a multi-split capable outdoor unit the first time round but bit late now there's plenty of room down the side for a second unit anyway but I'll wait and see what the installer suggests before making a final decision

Air con, you lucky bugger….i would have killed for that last summer. So i bought a portable one instead. Was soooooo nice when we switched it on

 

[MontyVeda]

Why sit indoors wishing you had aircon when there's a bike to ride?

 

[jowwy]

Why sit indoors wishing you had aircon when there's a bike to ride?

Probably because i dont ride my bike at night, when aircon would help with sleeping as it was so hot.

During the day im either in work, working in my garden or riding my bike…..at night im relaxing and getting ready for bed, which is were aircon has its advantages.

 

[JhnBssll]

Update! Finally The electrician has been today and made good progress. The new consumer unit has been installed which required new meter tails to be fed through the cavity in to the meter box. Fortunately the existing internal wiring didn't need extending merely diverting to the new location so it all looks rather neat, certainly better than the original installation He's run the cables for the additional circuits in the new rooms, both light and power, and moved the living room light switch from the stud wall that's coming down.

It's now up to me to put the plasterboard up in all areas excluding inside the new cupboard; this will be left off so we can run the aircon bits and bobs when he comes back to connect everything up and test the whole house.

Here are the old (right) and new (left) consumer units during the swap:

He's done a very neat job of wiring the new one up, my OCD approves

The new unit is quite an upgrade over the original; it's got surge protection for a start so the whole house is now protected from incoming voltage spikes. With the old board there was only one RCD to protect the ring main but the new board has each circuit on an RCBO. These act as a combined RCD and MCB so each circuit is individually protected from both overcurrent and earth leakage

Here's some of the new cabling in all it's glory, including the hole in the wall at the back there for the new toilet ventilation fan

I now need to crack on and finish the studwork and get boarding so he can come back and finish off

 

[Colin Grigson]

Quality work again John

 

[jowwy]

Hows it all coming along john??

 

[JhnBssll]

Slowly but surely I haven't had much spare time recently but have been planning my attack and had a few hours spare this morning to make some progress. I know what I'm like and sometimes I need a quick win with some big visual progress to spur me on so I decided to do some smashing 😄

I pulled away the plasterboard from the first end of the wall to investigate - first to check whether the beam was properly supported in the wall (which it was) and then to work out how the studwork had been assembled (badly).

It quickly became obvious that my initial assuptions that this was not an original wall were correct when I found the underside of the beam was still plastered and painted

So I did some more smashing...

I figured since I'd already made a mess I'd keep smashing, so removed the TV from the wall and moved some of the building supplies out of the way and carried on...

It was at this point I realised that not only was the underside of the beam plastered and painted, but they hadn't attached the studwork wall to it at all so it's almost entirely intact

Anyway, I ran out of time so this is where the smashing had to finish. There's a little more to go as we're taking the corner of the understairs cupboard out at 45degrees to make a new angled wall for the TV, I'll do that another day 😊

The living room already feels massive with the wall down, it'll feel even bigger once the piles of plasterboard have been loaded in to the van but I'll do that later as it currently has my sister in laws new fridge freezer in the back

 

[MontyVeda]

I'm presuming the wife is expecting to discover the sitting room has been trashed when she gets home

PS. I'm loving the dedicated vacuum cleaner accessories rack

 

[JhnBssll]

More progress today with the last of the old stud wall now gone and the van loaded to the rafters with smashed up plasterboard

I started by first stripping back the plasterboard in the living room to see what laid beneath; I knew I had lots of cabling to deal with in this area.

Next I tried to disable the alarm panel in order to remove it but quickly realised I wasn't going to be able to do that without making some noise After trying a few methods and triggering the syren outside I called my alarm fitter friend who confirmed there are two ways to do it - 1), unplug it and set off the syren then wait 20 minutes until it stops on its own or 2), go up the ladder with your ear defenders on and tackle the problem at source I knocked on a few neighbours doors and checked they were ok with option 1 and fortunately they were so the ladder wasn't needed

As well as the alarm panel the under stair cupboard housed the sky box and CCTV recorder so there's a decent amount of wiring coming in to this small area...

Here's some of the kit once I'd removed it...

And here's the rats nest of cabling its left behind with the internal skin of plasterboard removed At some point soon I'll be needing to extend all these to bring them through to their new home so theres a decent amount of soldering and heat shrinking to be done

Next was to remove the wall under the stairs...

As you can see my piles of debris were growing at this point... Here's the last of the wall down before I started tidying...

Now the original plan had been to keep some of the understairs cupboard but it was so badly built I had to tear it all down. MrsBssll and I decided the room feels so big without the stairs enclosed that we'd rather keep it like this, so that'll save me a bit of work I had already bought a new TV bracket so after a bit of tidying we put it up - I also refitted the thermostat temporarily as I realised the boiler was running flat out without it connected

So there we are. Lots of progress this weekend but still tons to do. Next job will be to finish the new studwork and run some cables for the CCTV and alarm before I board and plaster

We've got some tiles now to do the kitchen so thats another job I'm hoping to tick off soon

 

[Colin Grigson]

As fast as I’m building mine up you’re knocking yours down - nice

 

[MontyVeda]

so to summarise...

Trashed the hallway✅
Trashed the kitchen✅
Trashed the lounge✅
Trashed the front garden✅
Trashed the back garden✅
Trashed the van✅

Fixed the hallway❌
Fixed the kitchen❌
Fixed the lounge❌
Fixed the front garden✅
Fixed the back garden❌
Fixed the van❌

Shall i mention the flashing and drainpipe over the porch?

 

[JhnBssll]

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs

I'm beginning to like the 'industrial' look, and it would save some effort trying to plaster it...

 

[JhnBssll]

I started putting tiles up today in the kitchen MrsBssll chose them remember, I'm not so keen myself but she's very pleased with them

I spent a bit of time working out where to start - We wanted the tiles to line up with the hob and extractor but that leaves a row of small triangular cuts in one corner - I tried laying out a few alternatives but decided this was the best option so got started.

Once they started going on the wall I was happy to realise they weren't going to look as awful as I'd first feared

Once I'd got to the corner I cut the tiles and laid it all out dry to check it would line up as best as possible, given that the walls are of course all wonky

Once happy they went up too... This is as far as I got today, I'll crack on tomorrow morning but will likely not finish as I'm off to see my mum in the afternoon