Progress Update - Weeks 12th & 19th Nov

Oh so close, yet so far away! It's so frustrating to come home several days and see loads of progress and then come home the rest of the week and it seems like absolutely nothing has happened! But alas! We are making progress...slow and steady wins the race...or so they say. The past two weeks has seems some pretty big changes. They still say that we should be ready to lay our flooring upstairs by the end of November, which will allow us to get the kitchen installed before Christmas hopefully. They are also saying that we'll hopefully be "secure" upstairs by the end of the year, which means that we will hopefully be living in a bit less dust, and we'll be able to spread out from the 3 rooms we've been living in for the past few months. 

Progress for the week of 12 November...

The "entry", looking from the front door. On the right is a coat closet and the door to the study.

Looking into the study, you can see the window that was bricked up and how much smaller the front window now is.

Standing in the study, looking back towards the door.

From the end of entryway looking into the open plan living/dining/kitchen area

Looking back towards the front of the house. The kitchen will be in the left corner of the room.

The plasterer has been busy...the corner windows of the living area looking out to the back garden.

The stairway that will now be inside the house...getting ready for the windows and doors to go in.

The view from the edge of the balcony with the pitched roof finished...it will look good (once painted of course :))

Looking from the doorway of the house out onto the balcony...

So, for the week of the 19th, not only did we have Summit in doing work. We also had our own bathroom guy in redoing the middle bathroom. It's not quite done yet, but it's looking really good :)

The hallway and toilet with the new tiles installed...just have to install the actual toilet, do some finishing plaster work, and paint! :)

Our new bathroom, almost done! I like the way the feature tile turned out, and the bathtub looks good as well. Of course, we still need to paint the ceiling in here too :)

Just another shot...

Summit actually made some good progress this week as well...some...

You can see the sliding glass doors installed to the balcony.

And the windows as well :)

And the waterproofing has been painted on the balcony floor, and the rendering on the wall opposite has been done too.

Looking back towards the house at our lovely balcony...I can't wait to sit out here and chill on summer's evening!

Lots of progress...but still a far way to go before they're done! We'll just keep taking baby steps so we don't drive ourselves mad! 

Check back soon...we should be installing flooring in the next couple of weeks! woohoo!

Progress - Weeks of 29 Oct and 5 Nov

Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a bit of progress around the house in different places. We had a meeting on Tuesday with our supervisor and the electrician, so it's moving along quite well these days, even though the photos might not show it.

They have finished framing and tiling the roof extension, so it's nice to no longer have to listen to the tarps flapping in the wind!

                     

 

A couple photos showing the new roof over the balcony. It's beginning to look pretty good. I think this will be where we spend most of our time...at least during the spring, summer, and fall! :)

                     

 

                     

 

They found that the ceiling in the kitchen/dining area actually sits about 1/2" higher than the ceiling in the back living area. And since they'd already done quite a bit of damage to the kitchen ceiling, they are now going to be fully ripping it out and replacing it, including the joists to lower the level to be inline with the living area...very exciting! They have also been doing the rough plastering on all of the exposed brickwork inside the upstairs living area. This has to be done before they do the final plastering...so, in the photos below, you'll see a couple of shots before and after the rough render has been applied...

                      

 

                      

 

                      

 

The plumbers and electricians have also been around to run wiring and plumbing before the walls are plastered...so lots of work has been happening, even though we're still living in a disaster zone!

                      

 

In addition to all of the hard work that Summit has been up to, we've been keeping pretty busy ourselves! We managed to open up a can of worms the other week. We decided that the wooden window frames in the future "Games Room" downstairs appeared old and maybe a bit water damaged, so we decided to remove and replace...and check out what we found...

How are we supposed to cover that up?!?!? It's pretty crazy to think that this type of erosion can happen to limestone blocks that are "hidden" by a window frame. Obviously there was a bit of wind able to blow through there, I think! So, that's now another thing on the list to figure out how to fix...lovely!

We've also got our own guy coming in a couple of weeks to renovate the upstairs bathroom...of which you would have seen photos a couple of months ago when we gutted it. Well, we had never removed the linoleum floor from the entry hallway to the bathroom, so that was a chore for another weekend. And great fun that was! It took me about 3 hours with the electric jackhammer to get up the 2 layers of lino...absolutely ridiculous! It's hard to believe that a 1m x 2m space could possibly require that much work and cause that much pain...but it did! And it's done now...yay!

So, the Summit guys still insist that they will be finished upstairs before the end of November, so we'll see what the next couple of weeks bring! Check back soon!