The Kitchen - Part 4

It's taken nearly 5 weeks but here we are - we have a room ready to be a kitchen.  This room has now been transformed from a tiny kitchen with a strange utility and WC into one square space. 

We've taken out 4 rotten windows and replaced 2 new windows.  We've closed up a door and opened another door on the side of the kitchen we wanted it to be.  We've moved waste pipes on the outside, we've dried out damp bricks, injected the walls with damp proofing.  We've discovered an unsupported chimney breast and re-supported it.  We've screeded the floor so it's all on one level and we've replaced the ceiling.  We've re-wired the room and re-piped the room with water and gas.


Once this plaster dries out, (these are the beige stripes where the joins are waiting to dry) this room will be one big white space - just waiting for a kitchen....

Kitchen to the right hand side with new window and door into the garden

Kitchen from the dining room doorway with window overlooking the garden

Spotlights in the new ceiling - plus temporary electric heaters

The Skip

This may look like a lot of rubbish and dirt but this marks a very important day in the progress of our house renovation.


The builders have left and the house is now free of strangers.  On this skip you will see a bathroom and kitchen and lots of very old carpets and underlay.  Good riddance! 

The Garden - Little Shop of Horrors

A peak at the shed that is no longer

Judging by the rest of the house, it won't be a surprise to see the garden is completely overgrown.  At first we thought it would be as easy as hiring a strimmer for a day or two and just chopping down the overgrown shrubs.   As with every other hurdle so far, this was simply not the case. 


Mr V spent days burning shrubs that had grown over the patio and managed to successfully clear some space but then we discovered that this wasn't enough. At the back of the garden there was a lot of work to be revealed...

We called in some wonderful help on a very cold November day (Thanks MM) and discovered that the garden wasn't just overgrown and in need of some TLC, it was completely taken over by plants that had roots so big that it took two grown men to carve through them all day.   The plants had wrapped themselves round brick walls and fences and even pushed their way through the bricks and mortar. 

The Bathroom Update

The bathroom is coming along nicely - the tiling is completed with just a little bit more grouting to do. The bath, sink and toilet are all in place and it's not long before the water is connected. 

The Bathroom Floor

Preparation for the bathroom

Moving on from the damp concern - let's get at least one room ready.

We were thrilled to discover that the bathroom is looking good.  What do you think?

Replica Victorian tiles

No Damp?

We thought we'd escaped the damp!! Very wrong..  Despite being told we didn't have damp and taking all precautions to fend off future damp, we suddenly discovered that the kitchen walls were dripping with water.  Damp from the bricks.  


This now means that everything else is delayed.  We can't plaster board the walls or screed the floor until the damp dries out.  We can't connect the electrics until the damp dries out.  We can't connect the central heating until the damp dries out.    


Nothing is going to get in our way.  We made our way to the local hire shop and this is what we hired for the weekend: Industrial strength space blower.

Space blower up close

Damp on renders in the corners

Calor gas operating the space blower

The Back of the House

Finally things are looking brighter. (from the outside at least)  Despite still not having plastered walls, ceiling or floors, running water or gas in our kitchen, we do now have a new back door in the place we want it.  We've closed up two door frames that we found covered in damp plaster while closing two windows and creating garden facing window.  

The new brick work really stands out but next summer we will be having all the brickwork weathered so hopefully we can get it to look less obvious than in these photos.  The old brick work is particularly dusty - this is due to recently having all the outside rendering removed to expose the bricks.


Now we have the kitchen structure, including windows, walls and doors in the right place, next stop is the plastering and plumbing inside the kitchen....

The Damp

The good news is that we don't have rising damp.  We don't have wood worm or rot! But we do have regular damp in the kitchen; the entire kitchen.


Before we commence the plastering in the kitchen, we invited a damp inspector round from Kenwood Plc. (http://www.kenwoodplc.co.uk//index.php)  We suspected there was damp as we knew water was getting trapped in between the brick and the outside rendering before we pulled it off.  This may have been there for many, many years before we removed the rendering.  

Rear wall with damp showing through the brick

Today the engineers arrived with drills and lots of chemicals.  First they drilled holes around the three kitchen walls from the inside and the outside about 6 inches apart. Each hole was filled with a damp proof course and injected with a chemical that makes the walls waterproof.  Around the bottom 6 inches of the wall from the floor up, a grey gel was pasted on.  This is a technique called Tanking. We had to have this done as the ground outside of the house is too high so we need to take extra precaution against damp.


Once this damp treatment dries, we will have 1 metre high of rendering plastered on the walls before we can dry line the walls.

Right side of kitchen with grey layer of Tanking

Priorities

The Sky dish and tv cables were installed today.  We still don't have a kitchen, bathroom or doors but I now have a very happy man.

The Doors

Behind the chipboard

Behind the white doors which were all covered in chipboard, we discovered beautiful Georgian doors - well, they will be beautiful once they have been cleaned up.



Today they were collected by a company called Dip and Strip; a company that are known for renovating old, tired doors.  They are put into a vat of chemicals that strips and removes all of the old paint.  Hopefully they will be returned to us looking restored and ready for painting. http://www.dipnstrip.net 

Taking out the nails that have been hammered around the entire door

The door, uncovered!

The Bathroom - Part 1

The kitchen is going to be a huge job so we're clearing the space, starting the rewiring, putting up the new walls, new ceilings and if all goes to plan, we will have a blank canvas in 3 weeks.

Let's move our focus to the bathroom instead...


This is how it currently looks.

Hole in the ceiling.

Front facing in the bathroom.

Our bathroom fitter is meeting us at the house tomorrow to start stripping the walls and taking the suite out.  Timing wise, we may have a new bathroom within 2 weeks.


Really useful websites that we have been ordering from are:
http://www.victoriaplumb.com/    
http://www.bestbathrooms.com/

The empty space - The Kitchen - Part 3

So now we have an empty space in the kitchen area what do we do next........

Empty kitchen space, garden facing.

It's just cosmetic - The Kitchen - Part 2

"It's just cosmetic!"  Famous last words.

Rubble from the kitchen walls and ceiling.

When we viewed the property at the start of this project, our intentions were always to close up the side door and move the door to the back of the house, remove the toilet in the utility room and open the utility room and kitchen into one larger space. Simples!! You would think.


It started two weeks ago when the builder started with - "no can do."  The positioning of our back door wasn't possible.  We settled with putting it on the other side at the back of the house where there once was another door.  (You can see this from the mismatched brick work from the outside.) Lovely builder called again. "Mate, there's a problem with the door again; did you know your kitchen floor is on 3 levels." "No, what do you mean?"


Since knocking the walls down, it has become apparent that there are 3 parts to our kitchen and each part sits on a different level.  


As with most Victorian houses, the WC was outside.  Some 50 -70 years ago there was an attempt to bring the WC inside and at this stage it was built on a raised floor level.  In more recent years, a shower has also been added to the space - again - on a different level.  So now we are left with a kitchen on 3 levels.  Since the floor is concrete the easiest option is to level out the floor to the highest level and so the work begins!  We'll add the new floor, to the new ceiling, new walls, new windows and new doors, why not!


But wait.....today's discovering gets even better.  We were called to the site this morning to find our builder shaking his head and pursing his lips.  In the process of stripping the kitchen bare, he discovered that behind the slated ceiling, concealed by tiles is remnants of a chimney breast.  This is kind of expected - as long as it's supported it doesn't cause a problem.  But guess what??  It's not supported.  


In addition to the new floor, new ceiling, new walls, new windows and new doors we now need to have the chimney breast supported with gable brackets and lintels.  Take a look....

The kitchen from the door. To the right is the newly discovered, unsupported chimney breast.

The wall and chimney tiled over.

Unsupported chimney breast and some pipes.

Starting to remove the ceiling.