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Saturday 2 July 2011

39. A quote from the builders

Some basic plumbing going in.

We got Natchko and his sidekick in to quote for the renovations. We asked them to quote for absolutely everything with a view to prioritising key jobs once we got the quote. Boy did they quote for everything: taking all plaster off the walls and re-plastering, taking down all ceilings and putting up new ones, flooring, bathroom, septic tank, central heating, windows, indoor staircase, even a whole new roof. The quote came in at about £18k. Not bad at all, but a lot more than we have available.

So, we’ve got them doing key jobs only for now. These include: septic tank, fitting a whole bathroom and making ready for tiling, building a wall to make a pantry, fitting a new kitchen sink, reinstating the bricked up window in the kitchen, levelling the kitchen floor ready for tiling, fixing the leaky part of the roof and repairing a damaged bedroom ceiling, installing central heating (we’re going for a big wood burner in the kitchen feeding radiators in the rest of the house), and sorting electricity supply for each room. All for less than £6k.

You’ll notice that list doesn’t include an indoor staircase. Sadly, the staircase will have to wait a couple of months, but we’ll get it done as soon as we can afford to. Our plan is to brick in the outdoor staircase at the back of the house. At least we have a staircase for now. I’m not good on ladders. And this way I can get plenty of fresh air while going up and down our al-fresco stairs.

Aside from the staircase, there are lots of jobs for us to get on with. We’ve got to fit a kitchen, there is lots of tiling and plastering to do, one of the upstairs bedrooms still has an earth floor and needs covering with actual floor boards (who has an earth floor upstairs?), the windows frames need some serious TLC (until we can afford nice double glazed wooden windows), some window panes need replacing, the attic needs insulating, oh and we need to decorate and furnish every room. Rob is going to be a busy boy indeed. I’m not sure years of living in rented flats has really prepared us for this.