Plasterers Nearing The End

Today's visit provided us with the luxury of seeing the house in an almost completed state from the outside. The walls ahve been plastered and there is a uniformity about the house which is reassuring.

The walls might be the colour of plaster-work which is almost the complete opposite of the final colour (spectrum-wise), but there is a cleanliness about the walls which is very satisfying - once you forget about the scaffolding still standing all too proud in front!

Digital cameras have allowed us to capture hundreds of photographs during the project thus far. The selection shown on this blog are just a small selection of those taken. But photographs only tell part of the story which is why I have another "walkthru"...

The video clip is a short waddle around the first floor starting from the en-suite, through the dressing-area into the Master Bedroom, into what will become Emily's room, on to Rachel's room and then magically suspended in mid-air in the hallway looking out towards Slemish Mountain, as per this photo taken from Emily's bedroom:

A Day Of Planning And Budgetting

I spend my working life on IT projects so the concept of managing plans and budgets isn't alien to me. Having said that, I'm pretty much a "hands-on keyboard" IT Consultant rather than a project manager. I'm a doer - not a planner.

Today, I spent a considerable amount of time going through the plans for Carnhill and working through costs and budgets.

On the one hand, I felt like I lost a significant portion of my life. On the other hand, I felt as if I found a few "sheckles". Fixing the spreadsheets, re-budgetting based on the new VAT rate and an examination of the state of our accounts has provided the result that I want to see - there's still enough funds to complete the project. That said, there's no place for complacency. There's not enough room for complacency.

Of course... a lottery win would still be most welcome!

10 Weeks To Go

We're well over the half-way point in our construction and with just 10 weeks to go, things are looking very good.

The large front window frame has finally been re-installed and looks fabulous. It has also allowed the plasterers to push on inside. The ceiling in the front extension has been clad and is ready for "skimming".

The back-sitting room's drop ceiling is now in place and skimmed. It looks terrific:

With a long rope light placed up above the dropped ceiling, we should have quite a feature that ought to be a talking point at our Champagne receptions (whatever they are). The recesses in the walls will be flooded with co-ordinating light too which should really set off the room.

It won't be long before the floor has been installed which leaves just the fixing of doors and electrics and carpets and tiles and.... actually, there's still quite a bit to go after all.

Anyway - a 40th birthday party over the first weekend in April needs to take place in the house. Will we make it?

Our newest neighbours

After a lot of searching last night, I found this plan of the plots around our house. I am relieved to see that there is only one site left behind us (where the building work started the other day). I was rather worried that they might try to squeeze 2 houses in there! It is better from a security perspective to have a house there, saves us increasing our garden wall height too!

No. 34 Update

Our next stage is to get No. 34 officially back on the market!

There is a lot of tidying up to do as the bad weather has played havoc with the garden! There is a broken palm tree to be removed and a lot of tidying up to do outside. Mr. Swann has a nice weekend planned for him, I hope the good (allbeit cold) weather holds! Inside we have a few small jobs to sort out which the survey raised, all minor, and then a good spring clean. Lucky me :0)

On a positive note I noticed today that some daffodil shoots had appeared. Having the house on the market in spring with some new greenery around will definately be helpful. In fact, our garden always looks at its best in the springtime. Fingers crossed that we get our buyer as quickly as we did before.

What About A Bit Of Smooth

So the plasterers turned up, as expected, and did some plastering. No big surprise there.

Most of the upstairs has not only been plastered, but skimmed to a smooth finish too! The wires for the ceilings lights haven't been pulled through but I guess everyone knows what they are doing and will be able to find the wires when the time comes to fit the necessaries!

Downstairs, however, shows slightly slower progress presumably because we are currently missing the glass frontage, the back-sitting room's folding doors and everything glass in the utility room. Plaster work and dampness don't go well together. So the crucial next step is to ensure that these are installed before we can push on.

Screed
In other news, a decision has been taken on the screed and the good news for RTU is that the Ultraflo liquid screed has been chosen. This will give us a quick heat-up time for the underfloor heating and also reduce our energy costs (in theory).

New Building Work
Behind our shiny new house wassome barren land. I say was because this week a digger has turned up along with a truckload of building blocks. It looks like we will have neighbours. It's a bit annoying that we didn't get notification of this but at least a route into our house for the "baddies" will no longer exist.

And Finally...
Interim Certificate number 5 has turned up and it is a whopper! I'm expecting only 3 more certificates and am hoping that they will all be tiny. After all, we still haven't sold our current house!

Plastering & Tiling

Tomorrow should be an exciting day because tomorrow is the day that the plasterers go on-site and start to give the walls a bit of "polish".

Upstairs, the walls and ceilings have had the necessary plaster-board applied in readiness as demonstrated by "the girls":

So it shouldn't take too long before the scaffolding comes down which will then allow Phoenix Gas to move in with their equipment.

Also this weekend, those kind people at McCartney's Tiles provided plenty of food for thought as well as what seemed like a reasonable quote for the provision of tiles to cover quite a large area of the ground floor. The food for thought was provided during the conversation on liquid screeds! McCartney's have provided tiles for such screeds over the past year and covering relatively large areas - 10m². They believe that within 3-5 years, the majority of new floors will be liquid screed based. Crucially, their belief was that choosing a liquid screed would not be a mistake as long as all necessary preparatory work is completed before the screed goes in and before tiles are laid on top of the screed.

The screed decision needs to be taken within the next 10 days, so the conversation was timely.