Patio

I don’t often take time off, so today has been doubly special. First, because I have taken the day off and second, because I’ve spent the day working on my house and I don’t think I’ve ever really done that before aside from at the weekend and sometimes in the evening. When I went to the Allington Waste and Recycling Centre this afternoon, that was the first time that I’ve been there on a Monday which just seemed very strange, but was also very enjoyable.

There were three of us today and at one point very nearly 4, but R, the electrician, left a bit early so we had him, inspecting my existing distribution board and ordering the new one. He has also run the cable for the heat pump where he is going to install a radial isolator switch on the wall next to where it will be installed. He is coming back to do that on Wednesday. What’s interesting to me is looking at the work that he’s done, now I’ve seen it done, I feel more confident I could also do it. I would say that before I saw it done, I didn’t have any of that confidence. I don’t think I made a mistake in hiring him, quite the opposite, I think hiring him has helped me gain the confidence to do more myself.

There’s plenty more to do. When I think about the rest of the house, there’s a lot of electrical chasing to do, pipe chasing, boxing in and so on, and I now feel much more confident doing some of those tasks. Also, the structure of the house is quite helpful. There aren’t any noggins, for example, there are some sort of braces, but that means there is plenty of space to run pipe across the house. Running the pipe around isn’t going to be quite so difficult as I thought and I think I might take a bit of time when I get home this evening to try to plan how much pipe I need and perhaps get the pipe purchased too.

Z has suggested using plastic pipe, but this is my house and I kind of want it all done in copper and he has said that he is willing to learn how to do the copper piping. So we are going to go for it. We’re going to do copper pipe and worst case scenario, I have to hire a plumber to come in and help out with any leaks or pressure issues or whatever. So, umm, Z already has a gas burner and I’m willing to buy the stuff, so we’re going to go ahead and have a go at doing proper copper piping. The next step of course, is to get that run everywhere, and now that I’m exposing the ceilings and things, I think this is going to be much more straightforward. I was a bit worried, but it’s going to be doable.

Another big change is there is no longer any plasterboard on the ceiling of the living room, which means you can now see that space between the ground and first floors. So I can run wires and other things in those spaces. I’m going to think very carefully about what I want to do there, especially for things like the TV, et cetera, network cables like this is a great opportunity. I now plan to remove the ceiling from pretty much everywhere apart from the living room or my current living room which is the dining room and kitchen. Uh, then I will lay the cables everywhere. And maybe I will remove it from here because the floor still acts as a sort of insulation layer given that it’s tongue and groove. So perhaps I’m overrating how important the ceiling is.

I’m just really feeling quite upbeat and positive now there is more work getting done.

Last thing to mention is that on my way back from Screwfix I saw a couple of guys laying a patio on the Landay. I asked for their phone number and one of them, E, came around in the afternoon and gave me a quote for bricking up the window in the utility room, building out the brickwork for the heat pump base and bricking up the door into the kitchen.

That’s another three jobs which will soon be out of the way. I need to allocate some time to preparing all of those areas and can also then order the window (potentially also the two windows for the garage too. Steady progress there too. I think that in terms of order of operation, I need to think carefully about how to get that installed. I don’t think I’m going to have quite enough space for side by side tumble dryer and washing machine and that’s a bit of a disappointment. So I need to think carefully about that because perhaps I do want that to happen and I need to then think very carefully about how I can make it work, I took the wall down to give myself the space to do it so want to make sure I can now have the layout in there that I want.