This is a bit of a sequel to a rant I made here. It's okay to skip this blog: this is personal stuff I've got to rant.
INTRODUCTION
It's been a year since my girlfriend and me officially bought a house. However, the then-owners needed our money to buy a house on their own, so they rented their (former) house from us until April this year. In addition to the pre-purchase situation, we had about 7 to 8 months to fully prepare for things. Not just packing our stuff, obviously. Because the house we bought would need some renovating. Some THOROUGH renovating, even.
The problem with this is that when you look at programs like house flipper or house rules, it doesn't portray reality. Not only are those experienced couples (who generally don't live in the specific house), but there's also camera work involved so the "boring parts" are either cut or sped up. To top it all off: my girlfriend has never truly seen a renovation. I have, but my past experiences were either when I was a child (meaning: just following along) or had it (mostly) made for me. For this house, my girlfriend wanted the following:
* remove the wall between kitchen and living room
* remove two obsolete remnants of chimneys (it's an old house)
* remove all the plumb works and (on the ground floor) add floor heating
* a brand new kitchen
* redo 'some of the windows' (this later got changed to 'all the windows+front door)
* a total do-over of the bathroom
* make a staircase to the attic
* total do-over of the attic to create some actually habitable rooms
* (added later) remove a second wall between two rooms in the back of the house
* (added later) new floor in the entire back of the house (2 or 3 rooms+toilet)
THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS
Does that list sounds like a lot? Then I've got bad news for you (and more so to my past self): you've seen nothing yet. What I saw coming but underestimated nonetheless is that these kinds of renovating works tend to either surface or to cause other tasks. For instance: you all (hopefully) know that you can't just remove a wall in your house and call it a day. To make this work, we had to plan to put a 'poutrel' in place (translation is lintel or crossbeam, but I honestly don't know the English word). This would be the most dangerous task, as this is a 3 meter long, steel rod weighing over 200 kilograms...that has to be placed against the ceiling and into specifically made holes in the wall. This was a pretty hefty project involving lifts, lots of manpower (and thus: co-ordination) and quite some tense moments. But it got done. And we were even lucky, as the wall turned out not to be a "carrying" wall (meaning: we probably could have removed it and called it a day anyway, as the wall on the floor above turned out to be NOT directly above this one. But as this is to be our home, it's not something worth risking).
The project to put it in place took a whole day (with 6 people) of balancing it onto two lifts that raised it to the ceiling. This part was calculated. But obviously: the holes in the wall have to be a little bit bigger than the crossbeam to make it fit in (you can't just bend the steel a bit to make it fit the holes). But that means that the crossbeam sits at the BOTTOM of those holes, a little bit (less than a centimeter in most parts) below the ceiling. And that is where the extra work comes in. A crossbeam carrying the ceiling isn't very useful if it isn't, y'know, TOUCHING the actual ceiling. So my girlfriend and me spend an entire (uncalculated) weekend standing on ladders with a bucket of dough-like concrete in our hands, patiently pushing that in a just-smaller-than-finger sized line between the ceiling and the beam (basically extending the ceiling on that part).
This was one example (one of the harder ones, as standing on a ladder and working above your head is a hateful job. We both had headaches after half an hour...and it took at least 3 hours to get it done). I've got numerous others. Breaking the tiles and the concrete below was calculated as 'a weekend'. It took three (with a special drill we had to rent as our own drill lacked the oomph that was needed), mainly because breaking your floor doesn't exactly get rid of it. And then there was sand: floor heating meant redoing the floor work by first digging 40 centimeters deep. On our surface, that amounted to three containers full of garbage. A container we couldn't obtain until later, which means we had to first create a mountain in the front lawn and then moving that into the container next to it (read: about two weeks extra work on a daily basis that wasn't calculated).
THE PLUMBING NIGHTMARE
It was an old house, which were represented in chimneys. Previous owners had put central heating in place, but with (admittedly: A LOT of) pipes all over the place. We have equipment to cut it (a "slijpschijf"...I guess 'power saw' is the best translation). On the surface, that thing works fine. What you don't see on television, however, is how incredibly LOUD it is. And you're cutting metal, so expect sparkles and dust to fly everywhere, making the job exhausting and tense in a bad way (even with all the safety gear, it feels like ascending in hell). The old central heating was quite heavy, which means that it was seriously bolted into the wall at numerous locations. Bolts that had to be removed by a drill AND the power saw in strategic locations. This also tends to leave clear holes in the wall that have to be filled up (and later painted, but that's months later).
And there's the idea of having a second toilet upstairs. Oh, God...I already hate that thing and it's not even unpacked yet! I mean...sure, it's going to be very convenient in the future, especially if the attic becomes inhabitable (without it, you'd need to descend two floors and cross three rooms in the main room just to get a toilet break). But while the waterworks isn't that much of a problem, it also requires a sewage pipe leading to the cesspit in the back of the house. The problem with that is that it has to go down continuously. It's not really a problem in the kitchen (it can be hidden behind the wall and into the open floor)...but the current toilet is all the way in the back of the house. Meaning: we had to break open even more floor: a ditch of about 15 meters long and 10 centimeters wide, straight through the quarters we use for living. Granted: it's not "just" for sewage: we also have a bunch of water pipes for the back of the house (previous owners never had a washing machine, sink or outside crane in their house) and rewired electricity.
Of course, not all the plumbing works was out in the open. But that's actually a major disadvantage. Some just go in the floor to unknown locations. We had to make educated guesses and checks to see where each needed pipe came out. Those pipes are about five thousand years old, meaning that the drain not only smelled (at least that was a temporary worry: it was gone after a day) but made of lead. We pretty much immediately decided that ALL the existing plumbing had to go. Not only the waterworks, but everything concerning heating as well. I don't know how many pipes I've removed from the walls, but I feel it's got to be measured in kilometers. And why? To basically replace it with other pipes. Ones we made ditches for in the wall and the aforementioned floor. We're now past that stage, but everything that had to be opened had to be filled with pipe (which flexes somewhat but not much), secured to the wall and then closed up using more concrete-like substance (no, don't know the English term...I can barely tell the difference between "beton", "knauf", "polyfilla", "finisher" and the like in Dutch).
THE MENTAL ASPECT
I could just go on and on about details that are pretty hard to vision without pictures, and even then you'd be hard to visualise the setting, let alone the work that went into it all. I can talk about just about every room in our house where we've spent countless hours tearing things down or removing the wallpaper. Where I'm going with this is the following: it really started to weigh down on me and my girlfriend mentally. The way your home is layed out says a lot of your personality, and that goes in both directions. From april until september, we've spent each weekend either tearing something down or laying the groundwork for later jobs, and it's only since september that there is any progress in the DIRECTION of a livable habitat.
In a weird way, I think this reverse of the house degrading is what causes a rising stress level. Tearing down is easy in the sense that you can hardly screw it up. But the rebuilding holds the risk of having to tear things down again. And there's friction in that. As an example: one large sleeve in the wall was made by my dad and myself from the attic all the way to the ground floor, for purposes of gas. the gas comes in at the attic, and my girlfriend was hellbent on cooking (on the to-be-placed cooking island) with gas. That pipe is relatively large, so it needed a relatively deep sleeve in the wall. However, we did not have that pipe yet until later, so we had to measure and guesstimate when we were deep enough in the wall. And then add some more when we obtained said pipe. So far so good...but shortly after we placed and anchored that pipe, my girlfriend suddenly piped up with a "by the way...that sleeve also has to house two electrical wires (and safety coating). That's okay, right?". That was NOT a good way to break this information after my dad and me had spent multiple hours working from floor to bottom, covered in brick dust and pieces of wall (and the bathroom not containing a bath). Those two electrical wires were only about the thickness of a finger, but even so: getting it all to fit simply became harder.
...which became obvious in the next step: closing up. This is done by mixing knauf (I honestly don't know the English translation here) with water so you'll get something slightly more solid than mud that hardens over time. It has to be placed perfectly vertically in the wall. Which...takes some liberty when actually doing it (meaning: it's only by doing this that it really starts to show that the pipe isn't fitting in the wall properly.
This is obviously done in two steps: first the applying and broadly making it flat, and afterwards abrading (polishing?) it with sandpaper. Since I did the former and my girlfriend the latter, we both ended up blaming the other one for the situation (I spent way too much time desperately trying to push the pipes/wires back where there wasn't enough place to begin with...but all she sees is that the end result seems a bit sloppy and polishing means that you'll make the front of the pipe visible again). So...not our best family moment.
...and then my girlfriend had me and my father-in-law drive to the store because she couldn't connect the end point of the gas pipe. Seemed like a simple request, but as we relayed this to the store clerk, she told us flat out that we were doing it wrong (hint: if you want to split a gas pipe, do so at the START of the gas meter...not somewhere halfway(1). I made the world's cringiest cringe when I had a store clerk tell me to just make a hole in the wall next to the entrance and go under the floor to the cooking island. This was cringy because this was my initial plan...but it got rejected by my girlfriend who considered a hole in an outside wall (even one that went below the floor level) a no-go. So basically...my father-in-law and me layed in about two hours the pipe line that took my father and me at least five hours of wall-butchering.
On the positive side: this was our rock bottom. We had initially planned to have all of it done by the end of June. Then that meant 'the not attic stuff'. Then it was 'perhaps it'll be in september'. And so on. It's not fun to realise your planning sucks (note: I've been told by many that it's very normal to overestimate your abilities, just as we've been told by many that we're actually making tremendous progress). And it's excruciating mostly because we had never anticipated having to work in the cold. But we do...my girlfriend and me warm ourselves by an electrical heater in the one room we currently leave as it is (okay: there are three such rooms. but the other two are connected to the front of the house, which means you'll need more than a simple shower heater to warm it up).
BUILDING UP
Since I'm writing this in november, you probably wonder about the next steps. Well...for that I've got to point one last time at those pipes. Our main room (where the kitchen will be) is one huge-ass collection of wires, pipes and cables, all thoroughly secured to the floor. Why? Because this is going to be UNDER the floor. All of this resides on a 20 cm layer of concrete we had layed after hitting that 40 cm depth in our floor. The next layer was pur isolation. This is a somewhat polystyrene-like layer of 10 centimeter. It resembles snow a bit. It was also one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen because it effectively hid the largest part of those abominable pipes.
By incident, this is also the point in time where our windows were done. This took about the largest cut out of our budget aside from the house itself. And that they're pretty windows is, alas, the only good part. The firm that delivers it had it delayed for months (and we'd probably still be waiting if I hadn't called everyone up until their dog until they responded), and when it came there was a problem with the window. Granted, one outside their scope, but the end result was more delay and 1000 euro extra cost.
And then it turned out that they were missing some glass and one of the blinds was incorrectly communicated somewhere. So more delays. The windows look nice, but they're not finished yet. That's yet to continue.
Meanwhile, that pur isolation is needed for our next layer: floor heating. Floor heating works by having some pipes containing hot water running on a circuit underneath your floor. And I've got to say: this was actually nice to do. Perhaps in a few years I can say whether it was actually nice, but it's at least very nice compared to earlier work. The reason: on top of the styrofoam you place essentially a plastic bag with a chessboard-ish pattern on top. We've been given five circuits and some clusters of plastic pipe (100+ meters). It wasn't exactly easy to put everything in a 'double spiral' shape, but it was absolutely doable. It was work that required some co-ordination but not too much that it got frustrating. And our preparation was good, so in one weekend we had everything done. If for nothing else, it was good to have a job that took as long as anticipated.
It also means that the next layer could be placed much sooner than I had come to expect. This is 'chappe'. Looks like concrete, feels like concrete and probably tastes the same as well, but it's not as hard. And more importantly: this is an actual FLOOR. As such, we had it placed for us. Not cheap, but it was as anticipated. And needed: we'd be the ones laying tiles on top of it shortly after, so the difference between "almost horizontal" and "horizontal" is a huge one.
...and that's where we're currently at: as I'm writing this, we have layed about a quarter of all the needed tiles. This is a slow job as well (I estimate it's going to take at least four more days to lay them all), but the warnings we've heard against doing it ourselves have thus far proven to be wrong. Sure, just laying them (and securing them to their neighbor(s) ) isn't all the work, but the place really starts to resemble a house now.
THE NEAR FUTURE
Once the tiles and plinths are laid, we can put up wallpaper and paint it (yeah...it's women's logic as to this order, but I don't argue with my girlfriend over these things). And after that, we can FINALLY move a lot of our furniture out of the garage. It's currently stacked up so high that we can't even reach a few things that would be nice (our shoes are currently everywhere...the shoe cabinet is somewhere in the back). We can move out of the veranda, place the huge-ass couch we bought nearly a year ago in our living room and lie on that.
This all syncs up quite nicely with the dates our heating is going to be installed (the end of november). Our electrician estimates to have the final touches done in that time period as well. And that, in turn, syncs nice with the installation date of the kitchen, which is early december.
In the same time, our bathroom is...well...it's currently not much of a bathroom, but at least the walls are shaping up. It'll probably not be finished by the time the heating is installed, but it won't be much longer afterwards (mid december, perhaps?).
The current goal is to have all this done by the end of 2019. The attic and the back of the house are projects for the near future, but the large advantage we'll have is that we'll have a livable area (thus far it's like camping out).
Last but not least...those who follow my blogs might remember that my girlfriend got pregnant around the same time we moved in the new house (congratulations here, please ). This had the effect that she couldn't help as much as she'd like, but I'm managing reasonably fine. In any case, our fathers are a major help in the works. I've also had friends come over on quite some occasions, which is nice as well.
The finance is probably the hardest part. With all the hidden costs, we're well over our planned budget. It's in part because our savings, in part because of my parents and in part because I'm renting out my former appartment that we don't have to quit halfway (which would be a total disaster). On the flipside, there's of course the expenses my girlfriend occupies herself with: the baby. We're lucky that there's plenty of help coming our way in this regard, but we won't be able to spoil her as we otherwise would. Then on the other hand: the money we put into the house isn't exactly lost either. It's not like we're going to move soon, but we've had the house estimated on its current and projected value. A good chunk of our loaned money for renovating makes the house worth more.
Last but not least: our to-be-daughter. It's a comforting thought that we're rebuilding the house much better than it ever was, just so she can come live with us (girlfriend, me and our dog).
(1): okay, and for good measure: MAKE SURE THE DAMN GAS IS TURNED OFF, MORON!!!
INTRODUCTION
It's been a year since my girlfriend and me officially bought a house. However, the then-owners needed our money to buy a house on their own, so they rented their (former) house from us until April this year. In addition to the pre-purchase situation, we had about 7 to 8 months to fully prepare for things. Not just packing our stuff, obviously. Because the house we bought would need some renovating. Some THOROUGH renovating, even.
The problem with this is that when you look at programs like house flipper or house rules, it doesn't portray reality. Not only are those experienced couples (who generally don't live in the specific house), but there's also camera work involved so the "boring parts" are either cut or sped up. To top it all off: my girlfriend has never truly seen a renovation. I have, but my past experiences were either when I was a child (meaning: just following along) or had it (mostly) made for me. For this house, my girlfriend wanted the following:
* remove the wall between kitchen and living room
* remove two obsolete remnants of chimneys (it's an old house)
* remove all the plumb works and (on the ground floor) add floor heating
* a brand new kitchen
* redo 'some of the windows' (this later got changed to 'all the windows+front door)
* a total do-over of the bathroom
* make a staircase to the attic
* total do-over of the attic to create some actually habitable rooms
* (added later) remove a second wall between two rooms in the back of the house
* (added later) new floor in the entire back of the house (2 or 3 rooms+toilet)
THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS
Does that list sounds like a lot? Then I've got bad news for you (and more so to my past self): you've seen nothing yet. What I saw coming but underestimated nonetheless is that these kinds of renovating works tend to either surface or to cause other tasks. For instance: you all (hopefully) know that you can't just remove a wall in your house and call it a day. To make this work, we had to plan to put a 'poutrel' in place (translation is lintel or crossbeam, but I honestly don't know the English word). This would be the most dangerous task, as this is a 3 meter long, steel rod weighing over 200 kilograms...that has to be placed against the ceiling and into specifically made holes in the wall. This was a pretty hefty project involving lifts, lots of manpower (and thus: co-ordination) and quite some tense moments. But it got done. And we were even lucky, as the wall turned out not to be a "carrying" wall (meaning: we probably could have removed it and called it a day anyway, as the wall on the floor above turned out to be NOT directly above this one. But as this is to be our home, it's not something worth risking).
The project to put it in place took a whole day (with 6 people) of balancing it onto two lifts that raised it to the ceiling. This part was calculated. But obviously: the holes in the wall have to be a little bit bigger than the crossbeam to make it fit in (you can't just bend the steel a bit to make it fit the holes). But that means that the crossbeam sits at the BOTTOM of those holes, a little bit (less than a centimeter in most parts) below the ceiling. And that is where the extra work comes in. A crossbeam carrying the ceiling isn't very useful if it isn't, y'know, TOUCHING the actual ceiling. So my girlfriend and me spend an entire (uncalculated) weekend standing on ladders with a bucket of dough-like concrete in our hands, patiently pushing that in a just-smaller-than-finger sized line between the ceiling and the beam (basically extending the ceiling on that part).
This was one example (one of the harder ones, as standing on a ladder and working above your head is a hateful job. We both had headaches after half an hour...and it took at least 3 hours to get it done). I've got numerous others. Breaking the tiles and the concrete below was calculated as 'a weekend'. It took three (with a special drill we had to rent as our own drill lacked the oomph that was needed), mainly because breaking your floor doesn't exactly get rid of it. And then there was sand: floor heating meant redoing the floor work by first digging 40 centimeters deep. On our surface, that amounted to three containers full of garbage. A container we couldn't obtain until later, which means we had to first create a mountain in the front lawn and then moving that into the container next to it (read: about two weeks extra work on a daily basis that wasn't calculated).
THE PLUMBING NIGHTMARE
It was an old house, which were represented in chimneys. Previous owners had put central heating in place, but with (admittedly: A LOT of) pipes all over the place. We have equipment to cut it (a "slijpschijf"...I guess 'power saw' is the best translation). On the surface, that thing works fine. What you don't see on television, however, is how incredibly LOUD it is. And you're cutting metal, so expect sparkles and dust to fly everywhere, making the job exhausting and tense in a bad way (even with all the safety gear, it feels like ascending in hell). The old central heating was quite heavy, which means that it was seriously bolted into the wall at numerous locations. Bolts that had to be removed by a drill AND the power saw in strategic locations. This also tends to leave clear holes in the wall that have to be filled up (and later painted, but that's months later).
And there's the idea of having a second toilet upstairs. Oh, God...I already hate that thing and it's not even unpacked yet! I mean...sure, it's going to be very convenient in the future, especially if the attic becomes inhabitable (without it, you'd need to descend two floors and cross three rooms in the main room just to get a toilet break). But while the waterworks isn't that much of a problem, it also requires a sewage pipe leading to the cesspit in the back of the house. The problem with that is that it has to go down continuously. It's not really a problem in the kitchen (it can be hidden behind the wall and into the open floor)...but the current toilet is all the way in the back of the house. Meaning: we had to break open even more floor: a ditch of about 15 meters long and 10 centimeters wide, straight through the quarters we use for living. Granted: it's not "just" for sewage: we also have a bunch of water pipes for the back of the house (previous owners never had a washing machine, sink or outside crane in their house) and rewired electricity.
Of course, not all the plumbing works was out in the open. But that's actually a major disadvantage. Some just go in the floor to unknown locations. We had to make educated guesses and checks to see where each needed pipe came out. Those pipes are about five thousand years old, meaning that the drain not only smelled (at least that was a temporary worry: it was gone after a day) but made of lead. We pretty much immediately decided that ALL the existing plumbing had to go. Not only the waterworks, but everything concerning heating as well. I don't know how many pipes I've removed from the walls, but I feel it's got to be measured in kilometers. And why? To basically replace it with other pipes. Ones we made ditches for in the wall and the aforementioned floor. We're now past that stage, but everything that had to be opened had to be filled with pipe (which flexes somewhat but not much), secured to the wall and then closed up using more concrete-like substance (no, don't know the English term...I can barely tell the difference between "beton", "knauf", "polyfilla", "finisher" and the like in Dutch).
THE MENTAL ASPECT
I could just go on and on about details that are pretty hard to vision without pictures, and even then you'd be hard to visualise the setting, let alone the work that went into it all. I can talk about just about every room in our house where we've spent countless hours tearing things down or removing the wallpaper. Where I'm going with this is the following: it really started to weigh down on me and my girlfriend mentally. The way your home is layed out says a lot of your personality, and that goes in both directions. From april until september, we've spent each weekend either tearing something down or laying the groundwork for later jobs, and it's only since september that there is any progress in the DIRECTION of a livable habitat.
In a weird way, I think this reverse of the house degrading is what causes a rising stress level. Tearing down is easy in the sense that you can hardly screw it up. But the rebuilding holds the risk of having to tear things down again. And there's friction in that. As an example: one large sleeve in the wall was made by my dad and myself from the attic all the way to the ground floor, for purposes of gas. the gas comes in at the attic, and my girlfriend was hellbent on cooking (on the to-be-placed cooking island) with gas. That pipe is relatively large, so it needed a relatively deep sleeve in the wall. However, we did not have that pipe yet until later, so we had to measure and guesstimate when we were deep enough in the wall. And then add some more when we obtained said pipe. So far so good...but shortly after we placed and anchored that pipe, my girlfriend suddenly piped up with a "by the way...that sleeve also has to house two electrical wires (and safety coating). That's okay, right?". That was NOT a good way to break this information after my dad and me had spent multiple hours working from floor to bottom, covered in brick dust and pieces of wall (and the bathroom not containing a bath). Those two electrical wires were only about the thickness of a finger, but even so: getting it all to fit simply became harder.
...which became obvious in the next step: closing up. This is done by mixing knauf (I honestly don't know the English translation here) with water so you'll get something slightly more solid than mud that hardens over time. It has to be placed perfectly vertically in the wall. Which...takes some liberty when actually doing it (meaning: it's only by doing this that it really starts to show that the pipe isn't fitting in the wall properly.
This is obviously done in two steps: first the applying and broadly making it flat, and afterwards abrading (polishing?) it with sandpaper. Since I did the former and my girlfriend the latter, we both ended up blaming the other one for the situation (I spent way too much time desperately trying to push the pipes/wires back where there wasn't enough place to begin with...but all she sees is that the end result seems a bit sloppy and polishing means that you'll make the front of the pipe visible again). So...not our best family moment.
...and then my girlfriend had me and my father-in-law drive to the store because she couldn't connect the end point of the gas pipe. Seemed like a simple request, but as we relayed this to the store clerk, she told us flat out that we were doing it wrong (hint: if you want to split a gas pipe, do so at the START of the gas meter...not somewhere halfway(1). I made the world's cringiest cringe when I had a store clerk tell me to just make a hole in the wall next to the entrance and go under the floor to the cooking island. This was cringy because this was my initial plan...but it got rejected by my girlfriend who considered a hole in an outside wall (even one that went below the floor level) a no-go. So basically...my father-in-law and me layed in about two hours the pipe line that took my father and me at least five hours of wall-butchering.
On the positive side: this was our rock bottom. We had initially planned to have all of it done by the end of June. Then that meant 'the not attic stuff'. Then it was 'perhaps it'll be in september'. And so on. It's not fun to realise your planning sucks (note: I've been told by many that it's very normal to overestimate your abilities, just as we've been told by many that we're actually making tremendous progress). And it's excruciating mostly because we had never anticipated having to work in the cold. But we do...my girlfriend and me warm ourselves by an electrical heater in the one room we currently leave as it is (okay: there are three such rooms. but the other two are connected to the front of the house, which means you'll need more than a simple shower heater to warm it up).
BUILDING UP
Since I'm writing this in november, you probably wonder about the next steps. Well...for that I've got to point one last time at those pipes. Our main room (where the kitchen will be) is one huge-ass collection of wires, pipes and cables, all thoroughly secured to the floor. Why? Because this is going to be UNDER the floor. All of this resides on a 20 cm layer of concrete we had layed after hitting that 40 cm depth in our floor. The next layer was pur isolation. This is a somewhat polystyrene-like layer of 10 centimeter. It resembles snow a bit. It was also one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen because it effectively hid the largest part of those abominable pipes.
By incident, this is also the point in time where our windows were done. This took about the largest cut out of our budget aside from the house itself. And that they're pretty windows is, alas, the only good part. The firm that delivers it had it delayed for months (and we'd probably still be waiting if I hadn't called everyone up until their dog until they responded), and when it came there was a problem with the window. Granted, one outside their scope, but the end result was more delay and 1000 euro extra cost.
And then it turned out that they were missing some glass and one of the blinds was incorrectly communicated somewhere. So more delays. The windows look nice, but they're not finished yet. That's yet to continue.
Meanwhile, that pur isolation is needed for our next layer: floor heating. Floor heating works by having some pipes containing hot water running on a circuit underneath your floor. And I've got to say: this was actually nice to do. Perhaps in a few years I can say whether it was actually nice, but it's at least very nice compared to earlier work. The reason: on top of the styrofoam you place essentially a plastic bag with a chessboard-ish pattern on top. We've been given five circuits and some clusters of plastic pipe (100+ meters). It wasn't exactly easy to put everything in a 'double spiral' shape, but it was absolutely doable. It was work that required some co-ordination but not too much that it got frustrating. And our preparation was good, so in one weekend we had everything done. If for nothing else, it was good to have a job that took as long as anticipated.
It also means that the next layer could be placed much sooner than I had come to expect. This is 'chappe'. Looks like concrete, feels like concrete and probably tastes the same as well, but it's not as hard. And more importantly: this is an actual FLOOR. As such, we had it placed for us. Not cheap, but it was as anticipated. And needed: we'd be the ones laying tiles on top of it shortly after, so the difference between "almost horizontal" and "horizontal" is a huge one.
...and that's where we're currently at: as I'm writing this, we have layed about a quarter of all the needed tiles. This is a slow job as well (I estimate it's going to take at least four more days to lay them all), but the warnings we've heard against doing it ourselves have thus far proven to be wrong. Sure, just laying them (and securing them to their neighbor(s) ) isn't all the work, but the place really starts to resemble a house now.
THE NEAR FUTURE
Once the tiles and plinths are laid, we can put up wallpaper and paint it (yeah...it's women's logic as to this order, but I don't argue with my girlfriend over these things). And after that, we can FINALLY move a lot of our furniture out of the garage. It's currently stacked up so high that we can't even reach a few things that would be nice (our shoes are currently everywhere...the shoe cabinet is somewhere in the back). We can move out of the veranda, place the huge-ass couch we bought nearly a year ago in our living room and lie on that.
This all syncs up quite nicely with the dates our heating is going to be installed (the end of november). Our electrician estimates to have the final touches done in that time period as well. And that, in turn, syncs nice with the installation date of the kitchen, which is early december.
In the same time, our bathroom is...well...it's currently not much of a bathroom, but at least the walls are shaping up. It'll probably not be finished by the time the heating is installed, but it won't be much longer afterwards (mid december, perhaps?).
The current goal is to have all this done by the end of 2019. The attic and the back of the house are projects for the near future, but the large advantage we'll have is that we'll have a livable area (thus far it's like camping out).
Last but not least...those who follow my blogs might remember that my girlfriend got pregnant around the same time we moved in the new house (congratulations here, please
). This had the effect that she couldn't help as much as she'd like, but I'm managing reasonably fine. In any case, our fathers are a major help in the works. I've also had friends come over on quite some occasions, which is nice as well.The finance is probably the hardest part. With all the hidden costs, we're well over our planned budget. It's in part because our savings, in part because of my parents and in part because I'm renting out my former appartment that we don't have to quit halfway (which would be a total disaster). On the flipside, there's of course the expenses my girlfriend occupies herself with: the baby. We're lucky that there's plenty of help coming our way in this regard, but we won't be able to spoil her as we otherwise would. Then on the other hand: the money we put into the house isn't exactly lost either. It's not like we're going to move soon, but we've had the house estimated on its current and projected value. A good chunk of our loaned money for renovating makes the house worth more.
Last but not least: our to-be-daughter. It's a comforting thought that we're rebuilding the house much better than it ever was, just so she can come live with us (girlfriend, me and our dog).
(1): okay, and for good measure: MAKE SURE THE DAMN GAS IS TURNED OFF, MORON!!!
