Our colourful house by the sea

We’re so pleased with the render colour (and quality) and how it looks against the dark metal and the teal window frames.

The cork floor on the two upper levels is great - a click float floor system, it’s Granorte Naturtrend in Rustic - no plastic but a hardened tough surface. https://www.bricoflor.co.uk/flooring/cork/granorte/natur-trend/granorte-natur-trend-1211100-element-rustic.html

We’ve spent this weekend alone here at the house getting things done before we’re all locked out for two weeks (a week with the ground floor surface going on and a week for it to cure). We started with a trip to City plumbing to collect shower cabinet, loos etc so they are ready for the plumber.
Then we put down the Marmoleum (old fashioned Lino made from linseed and hessian) tiles.
We’d planned fairly neutral tiles but they are out of stock till January so… really pleased with these bright ones! I can see the errors, micro cracks between tiles here and there, but pretty pleased overall!

And this is the colour scheme in the snug/tv room - the dark colour has a little more green/teal in it than this shows. It’s Earthborn clay paint in Bobble Hat (just a bit lighter than the window frames); the lighter colour is Painthouse paint in Arlo. The switches are really brushed steel, the yellow is tape!
Love the beautiful plywood cills.

And just a little framing scarlet in the hall, this time Claybrook paint in Claire’s Lippy!

Here’s the sockets - the switches are all similar, C very pleased with the choice of grey inserts and surrounds.

Not the easiest time to be building a house....

So a few further delays but progress is being made!

All the plastering is done, and beautifully smooth. Much has had a mist coat (thanks Ron!) and the rooms look more and more like themselves.

This weekend has mostly been the underfloor heating boards and pipes going in upstairs, which means the cork flooring can go down next week, hopefully!

The roof is done, and the cladding has only a tiny bit to be done above the oriel window - apparently should be done tomorrow. (More fingers crossed!)

Our pantry has shelves in it!

Everyone is finding the delays pretty trying, including poor Dai our lovely builder - trying to navigate cancellatoins and delays from various sub-contratcors (most of whom are themselves trying to do their best across multiple projects).

So we decided to have a weekend of making! We’ve been thinking about the lights in the hall and landing, wanting to use lots of bike bits we have, so I found some wire adjustable frames and Clare has attached loads of cogs with twists of wire. Amazing shadows!

Lovely cousin Pete has passed on some old industrial lampshades too, one of which was a little battered so we’ve Hammerited them better :-)

We’ve also got hold of two second hand director’s chairs - the wood is ok, the bolts a little rusty and the fabric knackered. So we’ve taken them apart and I’ve sewn new fabric for them - one is complete!

A corner window! Lots of plastering! Render! Metal roof!

The glass has come from Europe, the fitters have come from Yorkshire and we have a wonderful corner window! It’s going to be fabulous sitting in this window and seeing the bay!

(And people can see Clare waving from the inside).

We’ve got all the underlayers of render done, and two walls are fully rendered. We are so pleased with the colour! It reminds me of that gorgeous golden syrup light you get late in the day…

And the plastering! Most of it is done - a tiny bit on the top floor, parts of our bedroom and most of the large room downstairs (kitchen/dining/sitting room).

And some wonderful views, from the skylight that Dai managed to manhandle into position alone (hench!) and also from the toor of the scaffolding.

Still a way off but definitely getting nearer. The plaster getting nearly done is so important -THE SECOND FIX ELECTRICS and the underfloor heating upstairs can go down and then the cork clickboards (and a bit of marmoleum in the bathrooms), the skirting boards, the architraves, the doors and the concrete surface layer downstairs. Then the second fix plumbing, the kitchen, oh it’s still lots!

July 2021

A start on the flat roof, the DPM goes on. Looks good from where we can see it, and the pictures are reassuring. Great things for preventing leaves clogging things in the outflows (though think we will have to remember to clear leaves from roof every autumn).

A delay with availability of the metal roof installer, and then it turns out a problem with the measurements of this metal raised-seam roof/walls means a really significant delay in this going on (now due second week of September). It was NOT Dai’s mistake is all I’m saying…. manufacturer measured… Ah well.

Shenanigans too with render - availability, colour, warranties etc. Sorted in the end.

The original ASHP is no longer being made, we can have the same but larger for the same price or go for a higher spec one, which is greener (the refrigerant fluid), sits lower outside which is better, improved anti-corrosion for coastal areas, and heats water hotter which should mean no need for weekly anti-legionnaire heating of the tank with the immersion heater, so that’s all good. (Of course like everything else, more money!

Plasterboarding is go! Amazingly fast when you know what you’re doing, it seems. We can really start to feel and understand the spaces.

Clare’s bolts for her to hang strange exercisey swingy rings from are up, too!

And stairs are in! (Albeit the bottom ones need swapping out for slightly shorter steeper ones - next couple of weeks).

June 2021 some more progress...

We got into making decisions… First, we questioned whether we should have door handles or door knobs. I (Emily) woke in the night thinking about how few bruises I have since moving to this house with doorknobs not handles!

Clare posted on FaceBook and got MANY responses, mostly preferring handles.

I found an amazing half handle, half knob. Turned out to be £1000 per handle, so not those! THen found some rather nice stumpy handles (Torie calls them Nandles, half knobs, half handles. Should that be Knandles? Anyway, we ordered one and liked it so this is what we are having.

We also decided on plain plywood for our skirting boards, architraves etc, showing the striped edges.

Sorted out re sprinklers - these are now mandatory in Wales (though not in England in single household residential buildings). We will have tanks on the top floor.

And - on the 16th June the airtightness OSB lining - the green stuff - (including in place of the pane broken in the big corner window) had been completed and the first airtightness test was done. Excellent result! 0.15 ACH at 50 pascals air pressure differential. We are thrilled.

We can lock the doors! (Though I forgot that on 2/6/21 the builders found most but not all of the window keys had been stolen, and someone had grubbed under the cills outside hoping for lead we presume?)

Fully externally boarded!

29/6/21 Oh dear, the plasterer who was all booked in has cut a tendon. Everyone we know asked for more contacts.

30/6/21 and the ducts are all in for the MVHR!

May 2021

We visited Source Antiques, now in Bristol on 10th May 2021. We last visited them before we did our refurb in Nottingham in 2010, when we had their English Rose kitchen in a deep pinky purple.

This time we will be having their Paul Metalcraft version in the same deep teal as our lovely windows (click the link in their name above for images of these latter kitchens).

We inadvertently bought some reclaimed lampshades and a rather wacky corner light.

We went to chose bathroom stuff on 12th May as advised by Dai, and Michael (at Bathroom showroom based at City Plumbing in Plasmarl, Swansea) was very helpful in sorting us out the cheaper end of the solidly made bathrooms from our initial choices - he’s helped us solve a couple of issues since, too, when it turned out our quadrant shower base outflow was just where a joist was in the floor…..

27th May and the windows are in! Small issue with a glass fracture in the corner window, but otherwise all wonderful, and we are so pleased with the deep teal colour of the frames.

Topping Out (restarting the blog!) 5th May 2021

We haven’t written here since early May - and we want to catch up!.

On 5th May we had a topping out session, with Gil (our architect, Gil Shalom), Dai (our builder, Dai Rees) and the building peeps. Gil hadn’t seen the building before and was pretty excited having driven down specially from Nottingham. He got to look round, everyone wrote and drew on the walls, we had fish and chips on the steps opposite and a few beers. Fun!

So Topping Out is a very old habit of builders, traditionally including yew branches and celebration when the top structure is in place.

Beautiful edible bouquet from Penney Poyzer.

Looking out of our windows…

Glassless currently. And somehow, no pictures of the big corner opening in the main room.
First small accident - a piece of glass broken in the unloading. Not a catastrophe, but a shame. but soon to be fairly watertight…. wow!

Looking out of our windows (the fence will go, the view will be of a raised bank with sycamore bases, behind that the track round to neighbours’ garages and behind that allotments).

Two of our bedroom windows, facing down the gardens - south - but high so we don’t overlook.

And the smaller window towards the sea, also our bedroom!

View out of what used to be the main bedroom - big window seawards and the smaller one north to the woods.
behind the big opening for what will be the oriel window in the bedroom behind.

The view from the top room, will probably be where C completes her doctorate.

Looking out from the scaffolding g! We won’t have this view 🙂

Timber’s up!

It’s been an exciting ten days or so since we last posted. Work has leapt on - you’ll see below how VERY chuffed we are with it all!

This is where the corner window will be with the view to the sea (and of course the busy Mumbles Rd!)

Hassen has kindly been carrying on filming - this is mostly downstairs and up the ladder to the first floor - you can see the metal hangers on the uprights for the beams to attach.

And a few days later - you can see the boarding down on the first and second floor,. This is called CABERDECK and can be left in situ and will be our final deck, with the waterproof surface peeled off to allow the underfloor heating to go on and the final ply floor.

We’ve started to plan where switches, lights, sockets will go - thank you my lovely Dad for the giant A1 graph paper book I found in your stuff! It’s made it such a pleasure to do these plans and others.
At the weekend we had an outing to show (!) - exciting itself - and checked out some appliances (those we don’t already have, so hob and oven) and sinks and so on. So many decisions.

Getting up there

Popped in on my way home from work, on a beautiful sunny cool day, and wow!

The view on my way home - a reminder of why we want to live here.

Amazing ground floor space…

And upstairs! 

Decisions, decisions.

In between stressing about planning permission for bat boxes we’ve been trying to get ahead on decisions.

Decisions that have been called for are mainly very practical eg which Air Source Heat Pump to go for (recommended one) and location of drain for shower in plant room.

The more challenging decisions have been around things for the future. Lots of different thoughts for kitchen, all very much influenced by price as well as practicality and look as we know we will be very low on funds by the time we get there!

We’ve decided to have most of the kitchen along the back wall but turning forwards behind the stairs for the hob. And we’re going for a Paul Metalcraft kitchen (from Source Antiques in Bristol, like our English Rose one was in Nottingham) for the corner, drawers, oven and sink/dishwasher, but to get a plywood double deep drawer unit made for the hob nearer the time. The fridge and freezer will balance a plywood worktop over them with some filing cabinets between for extra drawers! (At least to start with).

The drawer and door fronts will be dark teal (to go with the window frames if the planners give us the goahead for thise and we don’t have to paint over them!) RAL 5020

We’ve had lots of toing and froing on door choice. It’s very important to Clare to have some consistency across the house, and I think she is right.

We want a couple of glass doors, and these we aim to have as similar to the external doors as possible, so a Pattern 10 glazed door such as this: https://www.xljoinery.co.uk/GWPP10C-FD-Product-Pattern-10-Internal-White-Primed-Fire-Door-With-Clear-Glass (choice of supplier will be on price as it’s a pretty standard door type!).

You can get Pattern 10 non glazed, too, but I’ve advocated for plain flat slab doors and Clare has come round to it… plan will be to consider painting the edges bright and exciting, we shall see. They are much the most ‘affordable’ doors, particularly for fire doors.

We will go for pocket doors (which slide away into the wall) for a few locations where there isn’t much space.

Now onto what is called ‘door furniture’! This means handles (or, I hope, knobs instead as they are less injurious to an Emily walking around the house). Light switches and sockets - do we care enough to pay more for metal ones? Do we even prefer those? OMG it’s difficult!

And floor upstairs - we are going with concrete throughout downstairs. Should we have cork or lino? Plan for either is to us stick down tiles (which are ok with underfloor heating specially v low temperature as we will have, with the Air Source Heat Pump running most efficiently that way). We will try to do this ourselves at weekends (so as not to be in the way of proper builders) as they are meant to be pretty straightforward, and after all we managed reclaimed parquet in Nottingham. Any thoughts? Experience?

We’re out of the ground and it’s getting exciting!

Bit of a gap between posts, apologies.

The process after last time was to pour additional concrete over the footings to bring them up to the right level, as the lowest blocks came out with the demolition. Replacing of pipes that had got a bit crushed with the demo, then block work on the footings, with lintels over the outgoing and incoming pipes (water in, sewage out, but also a pipe to take water and electric out to the future bike shed in the corner).
The insulation has gone down over the whole ground except for the inner supporting wall.

And this weekend the pipes for the underfloor heating were laid over the insulation, ready for the concrete slab pour on Wednesday!

View fullsize

The extra footings have been poured

Drains and pipes are go…

Getting exciting!

Blocky insulation is in

We will be warm this time!

Groundwork progress.

After the excitement of the house coming down last week, this week has been one of quieter progress. Tidying up the site, taking away all the separated waste so as much as possible can be reused.

We must reclaim the bench! And piles of reusable timber.

The stairs - can we use them again in the new build? I’ve asked… they can be used by the builders as they work. The house is to be timber framed and built up from the base, so once the first floor is in they stand on that to build up further, so these will be useful!

And you can see what remains of the old Gin Pit, too.

For some reason this makes me think of school trips to Tintern Abbey and all those foundations/drains!
http://www.redchairblogs.com/physics/2016/02/11/wet-and-windy-in-southeast-wales/

Blimey, it’s down!

We were expecting to take at least a couple of weeks, but today…

Is artisanal Artex a thing?

You may not be familiar with Artex - it’s a strange ceiling treatment, widely used in the UK in the 70s. It’s a textured surface treatment, originally made with a mix containing white asbestos among other things. The company started in 1935 and named itself after Artistic Texture “reflecting the creative nature of the product”. https://www.artexltd.com/about-artex/history Alternative suggestions are that it was named after Asbestos Reinforced Textured coating, which warns of the health hazard that can come if it is sanded or carelessly handled on removal).

Really not my thing, but the care someone took in applying it to every ceiling in the house warrants respect. This was a hand-made, hands-on sort of finish. Thought I’d share some images (excuse the odd v grubby cobweb!).

That was a long gap!

Demolition has commenced! It’s exciting, nerve-wracking and expensive so far.
We’re staying in a house nearby with most of our stuff here but a bit in storage, and trying to think about what we want for a kitchen while also trying to get our heads round water supply difficulties (tiny supply pipe, apparently, which has implications for all sorts of things not least the Wales-mandatory sprinkler system).

So - great to have got started, but we are realising again what a low tolerance we both have for risk!

My intention is to blog regularly throughout, but I think there will be a flurry just now.

Some images of where we are aiming for with our house!
Oh - and we’ll have to tell the tale of how we got here, as although the intended outcome is the same as when I posted in October 2018, we are now demolishing and rebuilding, rather than refurbing and extending.

Beginning to start to commence (as Dad would say)

We’ve bought a house built in 1985 near the Mumbles in Swansea. It’s set back from the end of a Victorian terrace of houses, next to a wood that leads up to a castle, 500 yards from a greengrocer and a fishmonger.  

Oh, and across the road from the sea! 

We’ve lived here now for a year and our ideas of what to do with the house have evolved, with lots of help from Gil Schalom, the great architect who designed the refurb we did in Nottingham, which worked so well. http://www.superhomes.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Gil-Schalom-Binder-GSD-Architecture.pdf 

The house as it is now, in all its grotty glory

This picture (below) shows you the flat roof over one of the ground floor rooms, the funny shaped garage next to the house, the porch etc. 

The ground floor as it currently is, and showing the unusual shaped plot!  Also thenconservatory and porch which are to be taken down.

Current first floor, showing three bedrooms and the tiny one and the rather cramped bathroom

A CAD image of the proposed design, for which we have planning permission!  

The idea is that the pale surfaces will be a warm light-coloured render and the dark will be the timber extension and covered in probably dark wriggly cement cladding, or similar. We hope to vary the colours of the window frames. All these will have to be agreed on site with the planners.

The trianglular structure sticking out at 1st and 2nd floor levels allows for sea views from all bedrooms.

This shows the proposed ground floor including a much smaller bike garage behind where the current garage is (replaced by an area of garden where we can enjoy a G&T while taking in the view). The old kitchen will include the MVHR and the tank for the air source heat pump-heated water, and a shower to hose off the sea water and the biking grime.

1st floor showing the larger room including the space over the current flat roof., and the new view of the sea from the back bedroom.

2nd floor new space - but we won’t have the small kitchen but rather a larger bathroom with the bath (replacing that in the current bathroom with a shower). 

Now to see if we can afford it!  

Main things are to have great air tightnesss and insulation so we don’t need much heat at all. We plan a concrete floor downstairs with underfloor heating, and elsewhere just towel rails for heating. Intention is to only finish internally where we have to, with plumbing in place but a minimum of finished bathrooms. 

What d’you think?

Views - top from the garden, the other two are in either direction from the seashore across the road, at a very full tide. 

Remnants of Ophelia and storm Brian!

Over a few October days: 

Waves in our millpond bay.  

it’s blowy! 

I went for a misty wet run.  

Getting a little wild! 

Clare fought through a goodly headwind to get home.  

The woods to the castle

Just behind our house and to the side are some woods crawling up the side of castle hill to Oustermouth castle. 

From the path through the wood I can see the allotments and the back of our ugly lovely house (just barely through the trees now, will be clearer when all the leaves have fallen). 

There’s a bench on a clear grassy hillock from which I can see so much.  

This is looking at the bay over across where our house is.  

Oystermouth houses

and looking inland - Oystermouth castle!

The bay from croeso

Gil has just been to see the house for the first time and hasn’t laughed at us about it! We are thinking and planning and excited...