Week two - the windows to our hearts

Look. At. Those.

No, no, really - really, look.

LOOK.

Our beautiful, perfect, gorgeous windows have arrived.

Here's a reminder of what they used to look like:

Here's the new kitchen window from inside:

Here's the sitting room window:

 And our favourite (sssh, don't tell the others) - the library window:

I KNOW!  It's EPIC!

What's that?  A close up?  WHY OF COURSE!

*deep breath*

Stand back.  Be in awe.  Be struck by that awe.

And, and - look at these lovely frosted windows for the bathroom:

Oh, and I'm assured that the window-man is coming back to trim the marshmallows that he's used to stick the window frames in with.  So that's good.

Phew.  Now, there is other news this week.

The rubbishy dry-stone wall downstairs I blogged about last week has gone:

And the ceiling in the bike store has also gone, revealing some particularly yukky looking insulation:

The electricity has been re-connected, so we have light:

And we have a new ceiling under the stairs:

The kitchen now has walls:

And the eaves storage cupboards are now reality!

And these ones come with a free builder!

Unfortunately the upstairs bedrooms also come with their own wasp nests.  

The wasps will now be kept extra warm and toasty because we've acquired some pretty serious insulation in the roof space:

And, the upstairs bathroom now has a wall!

In less positive news, Ilyian tells us that there are some instabilities in the brick work outside.

That's Rob and Joao, looking concerned.

Now I realise it's a bit tricky to see what the problem is here.  So I've helpfully photo-shopped it:

Hmm.  So that's two piles of bricks, both of which look slightly less stable than if I'd attempted to put them together.  

Well, let's not dwell on that but instead finish on another bit of window indulgence.

You're welcome.

Week one - appearances and disappearances

What a difference a week makes.  A week, four men, and a packet of HobNobs.

The hideous fireplace in the sitting room has GONE:

The walls blocking off the library have GONE, as has the bathroom suite in that room - GONE:

The kitchen has (almost) GONE:

And the ceiling has GONE:

Things have have appeared have included - brace yourselves - MORE WALLPAPER!

Look at that!  A whole new breed!  

Discovered by this man, who is hiding under the stairs, painting the bricks with milk.  Or at least that's what it looked like to me.

Now upstairs caused Rob and I to actually gasp, Grand Designs style.  We somehow seem to have managed to do a reverse building job on the upper floor, in that we appear to have gone from a completed bedroom level to the beginning stages of a loft conversion.

That's big piles of insulation there, because it turned out (don't know why this surprises me at this stage) that there was absolutely no insulation in this house.

Not easy to show in a photo here, but this is the eaves storage.  Extra exciting that Ilyian and his team 'found' some more space in there, so we will have even more cupboards to 'fill with Siobhan's tat' as Rob charmingly put it.

Hopefully Ilyian will be filling in the floor before we move in.

You may have noticed that the walls have all been stripped right back to the brick, or even completely down to the wooden studs.  This is because (again, why is this a surprise?) it turns out that every single piece of plaster work done in the slum was complete rubbish.  

Apart from three walls.

Three hero walls.

Three walls that have not GONE.

Three walls that are standing tall, taking one for the team, defying the chaos going on around them.  

Three walls Kevin McCloud would be proud of.

Here they are.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

Well done walls.

Not doing so well on the actually-behaving-like-a-wall stakes is the wall making up the bike storage cupboard.  You may remember I commented a while back that it appeared to be made in the style of Welsh dry stone walling, and was being held together by the sole strength (considerable strength, I'll grant you) of wood chip wallpaper.

Turns out I was right.

It wobbles when you push it.  And, to be honest, when you don't.

It's going, don't worry.

Finally, something that hasn't GONE but has ARRIVED - we have a skip!  A skip of our very own!  

It's not big, but small is beautiful. 

It's also in camouflage, so I'm helpfully pointing it out here in case its disguise is so good you can't spot it.

   

And we're off!

D-day is here!  The builders have landed!  We have lift-off! 

WORK ON THE SLUM HAS STARTED! 

Readers, I'm a bit over excited today.  Finally, eventually, at last - the builders have started work and I couldn't be more thrilled.  

The road to architectural perfection is, of course, paved with HobNobs so I made sure we started off on the right foot:

The builders have started off by, er, knocking more stuff down...

I didn't think it possible to create any more bags of rubbish from this flat, but apparently I was wrong.  

And the reason for all this rubbish is almost too painful to type.

*sob*

Have a look for yourselves - I can't bear it...

Yes.  That's wall, after wall, after wall of exposed brick.  Because we are going to have the whole place re-plastered.  Which means there was no need to remove any of that flipping wallpaper.

*SCREAM*

And that's the last I'm saying on the matter.  We are never mentioning wallpaper removal, steamers, or fabric softener ever again.  EVER AGAIN.

To rub salt into our wounded, wallpaper soaked wounds, they've actually totally removed the wall between the study and kitchen:

They have also knocked a hole in the ceiling.  That's the lovely blue/pink paint in the main bedroom you can see there:

And this is the kitchen, viewed from the main bedroom.  Hmmm.

Other freshly revealed details include the news that not only was one wall made of wattle and daub upstairs, it seems all of the upper floors were constructed in the Neolithic period:

This isn't the case in the sitting room, which is all made of brick, from the looks of it.  Now, I'm no expert, but I'm not sure this looks like the most well constructed brick wall:

Hmmm.

Finally, I was pleased to see that the builders are using the provisions I sent them.  I also note that it seems to be the done thing to leave your boots in the property.  And also to leave a set of overalls hanging from the roof in order to freak out the person who comes to have a nose around after dark.  

So today, I have learnt three things.

1. Builders like HobNobs.

2. Don't bother to neatly sweep up before the builders start on your property.

 And 

3. Don't EVER mention wallpaper removal to me or Rob.  EVER.