The calm before the warm

Almost nothing happened on site today, just more builders clearing their stuff out. They've even brought a new small skip to the front yard. The kitchen fitters had wanted to come and finish the utility room, but the builders weren't for hanging around so it didn't happen.

Tomorrow, however, will be different. The utility room will get finished, which could even mean the fitting of the laundry appliances. Best of all, however, the gas man cometh, and the plumber thinks he can have our heating working by close of play tomorrow. He's a bit of an optimist, our plumber, so I'm taking that with a grain or two of salt.

Coldness update

This afternoon I was given instructions on what I needed to tell the gas company to make them run gas through the new pipes into our house. This I duly did, but it seems that they can't actually show up to make it happen until Friday afternoon. We're still expecting another full day's work after that before the heat comes on, so one more weekend without heat is on the cards. Sure what's one more after the past hundred or so? Just as well the rain has started and the temperature has crept up.

Apart from more clearing out of builders' stuff, nothing else happened today.

Brrr

It's cold. Our super insulation and not-so-super electric heater are keeping the raw chill out of the room we're still camping in, but it's not exactly what you'd call comfortable.

Still, there's hope: by the looks of things the gas people have finished the installation, leaving a strip of tarmac on the pavement where they'd been digging yesterday:

There was some documentation signed by the plumber lying around as well, so there's an outside chance we may have central heating this evening, if the man has an ounce of human sympathy about him.

He also moved us one step closer to completion yesterday with the installation of the outside tap:

A minor win, but one more thing off the list. Still no painters, though.

More later...

Utility and utility

It was still dark at 7.40 this morning when a truck from the gas sub-contractor showed up and unloaded a shipment of plastic crowd barriers into our front garden. I've no idea how long it then took for the engineers to appear, but they didn't get finished. At the garden wall we're left with a big hole, a mound of earth and one end of a pipe which disappears underground:


It surfaces at the corner of the house where it's attached to our brand new gas meter, just under the electric one:

I sincerely hope they show up again on Tuesday to finish this.

The other big news is another unfinished project, the utility room. They didn't complete it, but they got most of it done, and we're delighted:


And that's us for the long weekend. Next week will be all about the plumber and painter heading for the finish line. However, I can still see another week of work beyond that.

Contagious absenteeism

The painter hasn't showed up this last two days, which I think means that the cleaners won't be coming on Tuesday now. The front door furniture has been fitted, but of course it still needs several coats of gloss:

You can just about see at the far right the space where our temporary electricity meter used to be. This has been switched over to a permanent location on the other side of the house, the temporary mains cable has gone, and the holes through which it ran have been patched:


Unlike the painter, the plumber has been here and has finished off the sink under the stairs:


It just needs a bit of paint. He has also installed our blingtastic dressing room mirror-radiator:


However, there has been no word at all from the gas company who were supposed to give us a day's notice before they showed up. On calling them, they had no further information to give us, other than that their subcontractor has been instructed to visit us this week which, by a process of deduction, means that he'll have to be round tomorrow. Smells very fishy to me.

Even if they don't show, the plumber should still have plenty to do tomorrow as the utility room is due to be fitted out, and there are plenty of adjustments to be made to the plumbing here:

Note that the daft overlapping sockets have been moved down to facilitate the washer and drier. We'll have to leave a patch panel where they used to be, however.

Finally, as the clock struck 10 this evening, the tiler finished grouting the bathroom which completes the whole tiling project. So this is our bathroom:

Words cannot describe how much better this is than the old maroon affair.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

A representative of our (Danish) window supplier called to the house to have the book thrown at him on the general incompetence and unprofessionalism of his company. The highlight of his stand-up routine concerned those damn handles: the ones the showroom said didn't exist but were attached to the windows on delivery (mentioned here). Turns out, he had never seen them before in his life. So we watched open-mouthed as he took a couple of pictures of one of our leftovers to bring back to show the guys at the office. Hopefully that will demonstrate to the management just what sort of half-assed amateur operation they're really running.

Anyway, we're hammering out a package which will involve them making good everything except the ill-fitting back window, doing a repaint job for free in a year or so's time, and giving us some of our money back. And if we save someone else from handle-related horrors, then that's good too.

Meanwhile, the electric company are due out today to move our temporary supply (see here) to its new permanent home in the meter box at the side of the house. This will mean the big mains cable which runs right through the downstairs front rooms can be removed and all sorts of tidying and patching up can be done.

The plumber gave us an update on his end of things: he has only just taken delivery of the two missing radiators, and he reckons he only has a day's worth of work to do (!) after the gas supply is switched on. There's still no word from the gas company or its sub-contractor, however, though we're expecting the utility room fitting tomorrow.

And the builders are still very much in clean-up and clear-out mode. They will be provisionally booking a squad of cleaners to do us over on Tuesday. And after that, it'll be time to repopulate the house and start snagging.

The Prodigal Plumber

The plumber made a welcome return to the site today and has now hooked up the bathroom and the understairs toilet, though there's a part missing from the below-stairs sink and we're not allowed use it:

So we have three working toilets and they're all white. Bliss!

The plumber has also been talking to the gas company who are due out this week. They won't tell which day they're coming though, which is a bad sign. If it's tomorrow, we'll have heating for the weekend. If Thursday then it's possible we might, but if they don't show to Friday we'll have nothing until into next week.

Meanwhile the painter continued in the back bedroom:

He'll be here all week.

And finally the builders fitted our shiny new bathroom vents, both in the main bathroom:


And the en suite:

Lovely.

The chances of tomorrow's site meeting being the last are fairly remote. And we'll have to arrange a new venue for it too.

Top-down approach

The painter was back in action today, starting a couple of days' finishing-off work. Most of what he did was in the recently replastered back bedroom:


But he's also put the first coat of gloss on some of the doors, and has painted the frames of our kitchen rooflights:


This evening I got to wheel my bike down the side passage and into the shed for the first time since the fencing went up way back in the spring: one of those precious bits of normality we occasionally get these days.

However, there was no sign at all of the plumber today -- neither by phone nor in person -- so full normality still seems a long way off.

Those crazy glaziers

So, the window fitter arrived on site yesterday morning as scheduled, as did our foreman. The job was to replace the upper-central and upper-right panes. And what had been delivered? The upper-central and upper-left panes. And the new centre one was exactly the same width as the old one (i.e wrong), but several milimetres taller (i.e. wrong)


Furthermore, the frame of the original centre piece is engineered to form a straight diagonal seam with the frame of the side panels, like so:


On the new one, this diagonal line goes in the wrong direction, totally ruining the look:


So the foreman sent the window guy off in fairly short order, and we all had a good laugh at what a bunch of clowns the window company are. We are also minded not to give them a third-time-lucky further attempt at making windows which are the correct size and shape. We'll get them to do the necessary fixes of the others and we'll live with the misaligned ones, but it is going to cost them.

In other news I managed to solve the mystery of the whine and tick. It seems they were a bizarre side-effect of my electronic thermometer (stashed in a box in the living room) running out of battery power. I don't think anyone saw that coming.

Out of joint, but not for long

When the big kitchen window was installed, two of the upper panes were misaligned to the left:


Shortly afterwards, the company came back and made a cack-handed attempt at making it look right on the inside, but it was just a mess:

There was nothing else for it but to replace both panes, and this morning they're coming out to do just that.

Yesterday, meanwhile, the side passage concrete was poured:


And all of the fencing, the site office and the skip were removed:


Similarly out back:


Yes, the builders are abandoning ship, and the floor sanding is finished, but I can't see any work done yesterday by the plumber. Grrr.

A volatile situation

The floor sanding team were back to put the second of three coats of varnish on the floors and the place smells even more like a glue-sniffer's dream. It's looking paler than it did yesterday, which is a good thing.

Last coat goes on tomorrow.

The plumber's work today, as far as I can see, consisted of installing our towel rail in the main bathroom:

He'll never get everything finished at this rate.

Enter Sandman

The floor sanding team arrived early this morning and we had a brief talk with them about what they were going to do. They sanded a section for us and clear varnished it. We were very happy with the results so left them to it. The builders said they were allowing two and a half days for the work, but this evening it looks like they're somewhere close to finished, and it looks great:

The extra time may just be for extra coats of varnish, though since the current coat is wet, I can't go looking into the other rooms. Maybe they're not done, so I won't cross this task off the list just yet.

Anyway, before that started we had a meeting with the builders and project manager. Surprise surprise, it looks like there's at least another week's work in the project, though the builders reckon their work is just about done: apart from the outside path, the door ironmongery and some minor repairs when the electricity supply is moved, everything else is sub-contracted. They plan to take their site office and the skip away in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile the plumber was working away, he put the sink into our main bathroom and installed the understairs toilet:

Like the main bathroom, none of this has any water running through it yet, however. Boxing off the pipes here is another minor task for the builders.

On we go. All eyes, as ever, are on the plumber.

List and grout

To make me feel the we are actually getting to the end of this, I've added a list of things to be done to the side panel. I'll cross those off as they happen, and add new ones I notice or think of. Here's hoping the list gets shorter rather than longer.

Anyway, it was a quiet one on site today. The tiler was back and grouted the bathroom walls (but not the floor) and the plumber has installed our shower.


Just about nothing else happened that I can see, other than the last bits of flooring in the hall.

This evening we went back to our kitchen people to make final preparations for the utility room. There are some potential stumbling blocks around the venting of the tumble drier -- getting the flex hose to turn at a sharp enough angle -- and the positioning of the sink. Nothing too difficult so long as the plumber is on board, we hope. We also gave them the rough plans of our dressing room for wardrobe design. So it's all good there, and if we're lucky we might have the utility units installed next week.

And lastly for today we called next door to see if they had recently installed any mass spectrometers or particle accelerators which might be the source of the whine and tick in our living room. They hadn't, and the sounds can't be heard on their side of the wall. This morning the builder switched off our mains power and the sounds remained; today he blocked up the chimney temporarily and the sounds remain. We're all stumped. It'll be high on the agenda at tomorrow's meeting.

On the way out

We had been told that the front hall would be floored at the end of the project, as the builders left. Well, they started that today:

There's still loads to do though: two radiators and the understairs toilet suite have yet to arrive on site, the phones still aren't working properly, there are parts to be added to the water heating system, the electricity supply and meter have to be moved and there's a mysterious electrical hum and tick in the living room which no-one has been able to identify, let alone fix. I really can't see these being resolved by Friday, never mind all the painting still to be done. Oh, and the floor sanding.

The tiler has been back, however, and tiled the walls of our bathroom:

The toilet went in today but hasn't been plumbed yet.

We still need the builders to make a side panel for the bath which will be tiled as well.


Down in the kitchen, the hob isn't so much installed as just dropped into its hole in the worktop:

Still, progress is progress.

But the most promising addition today is this hole that has been bored at the base of the utility room wall:

It's the vent pipe for the tumble drier, which raises hopes of having home laundry facilities at some point in the near future. Hooray! Tomorrow we're off to choose units for this area. And probably talk about wardrobes as well.

An Exclusive-Or gate

Both showed up, but there was war anyway. It's odd and not a little sad that, after all the big things that have gone wrong, all the carelessness which I'm sure plagues any project like this, and the various last-minute changes and compromises that have happened, that the most stressful incident concerned a minor cosmetic alteration. A two-day shouting match between us and the electricians was resolved by one man and three minutes' work with a screwdriver.

It concerns the two switches which control the light at the end of the kitchen. It seems logical to us that when both switches are off, the light is off. Logic dictates, therefore, that when both switches are on, the light is also off; and when one is on and one is off, the light is on. I'm no electronic engineer (if I were I'd have saved myself a lot of bother this past few months) but I know an XOR logic gate when I see one.

Our electricians disagreed. They had the switches wired in reverse, so that one switch had to be off and one on for the light to be off. Since both switches shared a plate with others, it meant that the switches were not in a uniform position when all the lights were off. The electricians were adamant that this was how every two-way switch worked, and that there was no other way it could be. A demonstration that the two-way switch they installed for the landing light worked differently, i.e. correctly, did not register. I ran up and down the stairs for about two minutes yelling "Both switches up; light is off. I put this one down; light comes on. You put that one down; light goes off -- this is what we want in the kitchen!", but I may as well have been speaking Sanskrit. Blank looks.

The situation got louder and eventually they broke. One of them took his screwdriver, made the change to one of the kitchen switches, and it was resolved. They still protest that our kitchen light switches are wired in a unique and perverse way. What do you do?

While he was fixing that, we had moved on to the sensor light. They've hooked it up in a way that makes it impossible to switch off: it's either in sensor mode or fully on. This won't do. The head spark is investigating two options -- one involves an on-off switch for the whole sensor array, which will allow the existing switch to act in a simple on-off capacity for the lights; or an amendment to the system whereby the existing switch selects between sensor mode and off mode, without a permanent-on option. I can't express how surprised I am that no-one in the world has ever wanted to switch their sensor lights off before, especially given that I've lived in two houses where it has been possible, one of which I wired myself with a light I bought for a tenner.

Next, we brought in the plumber who was standing by in embarrassed silence. We arranged the placing of some electrical plumbing accessories around the utility room. The proposed drawings for this area have arrived from the kitchen people and they're due out to take final measurements on Tuesday. Ideally, though, I'd like the applicances installed first, to bring an end to the three-hour round-trip misery of laundrette visits.

And with all that sorted, we left, taking big deep breaths. On our way out we met the tiler, who spent the day grouting the kitchen and utility room tiles. So the kitchen now looks like this:

Not long to go at all here.

I was very glad that I hadn't decided to move into the TV room yesterday, since that's where our appliances went to make space:

The tiler was also busy upstairs, having put a floor on our bathroom:

We decided this morning we're going to tile the side of the bath as well. You can see the soil pipe for the toilet has been moved, away from the corner it was previously jammed into.

The outside plumbing for this is still being installed:

Time for a bath

More trouble with the electricians this morning, and a disappearing plumber. Both will be front and centre for a special bonus meeting tomorrow morning or there will be war.

Meanwhile, work on the bathroom has moved on and it now contains a realio, trulio white steel bath:


We had been promised lots of grouting downstairs, but that didn't happen. Instead we got some skirting in the hall -- encouraging because this is officially the last place that will be done up, as the builders make their way out. October 17th at the latest is the date we've been given for this.

I got a non-committal answer to my question about the TV room being finished. They've left the plastic sheeting in place, so I'll read that as a "no" for now.

And another one of those floor levelling compounds has been poured where the kitchen meets the hall:

The two dark paw-shaped imprints on the right and one on the left show that we only use the board when we know we're being watched.

Patching up

I thought the heavy rain this morning was making a funny noise, but it wasn't until this evening I noticed our new guttering and downpipes had been installed:


Preparatory woodwork is still underway for the side passage surfacing:


Upstairs, the reshaping of the bathroom is just about complete, with the walls and floors about ready for the tiler:


Of course, they couldn't have got the bathroom floor in without someone putting a foot through the kitchen ceiling, but that's been patched now:


The tiler has been back and done the utility room

as well as the understairs toilet.

And finally, I don't believe you've seen our door handles, now all in place:


I think the TV room may actually be finished as of today. I should get confirmation or denial of that at tomorrow's meeting.