July 2006

Another fully artexed, anaglypta and polystyrene covered igloo! But this room will need to be used as it is until we have time to work on it. As with the other rooms there is minimal insulation. There are strange wooden boxes/shelves on the walls and a boxed in section above the area where the stairs are.

September 2006

As part of the extension for our bedroom the builders had to make a cupboard in this room to install the saniflow unit for our ensuite and to run the electrics for the room. They also had to remove the boxed in section to do some work above the stairs, but what they left behind is not particularly useful. A plastered slope above the stairs and they also plastered up to and over the anaglypta wallpaper! The builders themselves were pretty good, especially Greg, but the trades they hired in were rubbish!

September 2008

With help from Emma and Luke I moved Sarah's furniture out of this room into the downstairs bedroom so we can start renovating this room.

September 2009

We haven't made any progress on this room due to work on other things like the garden and getting the heat pump installed. More recently the games room has gone slightly off plan and so we have had to empty the entire contents of the games room and store it in this room until the building work is finished. There are so many boxes to store that we can hardly move in the room and the ceiling downstairs has cracked under the weight.

May 2010

The first weekend of was spent clearing the last of the boxes back into the games room so that I could then lift the floor and install the final cables for the alarm which we had moved from under the stairs into the upstairs service cupboard. I pulled up part of the the floor to relocate the cables in the hallway and study and I put in cables for smoke detectors in the house and games room. The alarm was moved and now covers both buildings.

August 2010

In August we finally started to work on the front bedroom by removing the plasterboard wall into the eaves, stripping out the old central heating pipes, removing some old electrics and insulating the eaves.

October 2010

Work on the bedroom has stopped again due to big problems in the lounge! It feels like we are never going to get this room done, although a spare bedroom is a nice thing to have rather than a necessity. All I've managed to do is take a small amount of plasterboard off the front wall to reveal a bit of fibreglass insulation containing a maze of tunnels and nests of mice. I have no idea how long ago these were made but they look old and we haven't seen any evidence of the little critters. The walls would have literally been crawling with mice!

August 2011

OK, another year on and loads of other things have been done but still nothing has happened in this room. Time to turn our attentions to it and get it finished, not least to stop the heat from disappearing out through the walls and eves. Luke helped me remove the floor and prepare it for the underfloor heating. I had a lot of tidying of cables to do before I could think about refitting the floor. I got rid of redundant cables and replaced some of the older wire with new as well as re-routing many that were tangled.

September 11

The month started by working on the room which I am determined to get finished. The remaining floor was removed and the electrics were tidied up. I built a false stud wall to allow for a bigger door into the service cupboard and provide an accessible route for the household electrics. I also moved the opening for the access hatch for easy access to the eaves and the ducting. Unfortunately the floor joists in the room were very uneven so I had to plane some down and build some up to get a roughly level area before I could insulate between the rafters and put down the spreader plates.

October 11

Luke helped me install the underfloor heating pipe and then we then put down the new floor and then began to work on removing the walls and ceiling ready for re-insulating with celotex. I installed the hot air ducting in the bedroom and then Karen cut the celotex to insulate the roof and front wall before I then started to put up new plasterboard ready for plastering.

November 11

I fitted new a door to the room and also a door to the services cupboard as well as putting up new plasterboard ready for plastering. Over the awkward slope at the top of the stairs I built a cupboard which will be used for storage and will have a tv on top. The underfloor heating was connected up before Jason and Steve came in and plastered the room in one day. I top job from them as usual!

December 11

We finally completed the front bedroom, well almost. It is completed enough for Anne to stay over Christmas. Karen painted the room and waxed all the woodwork while I fitted the sockets, lights, new window handles and skirting ready for the carpet to be fitted. We moved all the furniture into the room the weekend before Christmas and the final bit of work this year was to insulate the loft space above the ceiling on Christmas eve, a difficult job in a very tight space to put me in the Christmas spirit. All that is left to do now is buy a double bed, make a small cupboard door and replace the window seals. It is good to be able to say that apart from some small bits the upstairs of the house is finally complete! Merry Christmas!