Insurance says we're covered

 The insurance company says we have a valid claim.  This is good.

Now the fun part.

We have started emptying all the rooms.

They all must be emptied and the floor boards removed.  

How did we get so much stuff?  I thought I had been good about not keeping things.  I was deluded. We have way too many possessions. 

We have started the process of getting rid of things.  Some larger things went today.  The sofa bed in George's room is gone.  

The games trolley that held all the family games has gone.  The games themselves are going tomorrow. 

The piano is gone. Nobody plays anymore.

The 300 litre aquarium left this evening.  It's been empty for almost two years.  It took up a lot of space.  I loved having it, but I'm glad it is gone now.  I hope the new owner is happy with it.

Henry moved his record and CD collection.  He put all the guitars in cases and moved them to the loft.

Art has come off the walls and been stacked in the attic next to the guitars. 

We have a place to move the furniture.  That will be moved in the next couple of days.

I expect a few trips to the dump will happen and then the rug will be rolled up and the work can begin.

I don't know what stresses me out more.  The fact that our lovely extension has to be redone or the fact that there is way too much stuff in my life.

Do Over!

In February, we discovered that some of the oak floorboards in our lovely extension had started to warp.  

It was obvious that they were getting wet.  

I put a call into the plumber and he came out and had a look.

When he lifted the boards in the hallway there was a lot of water!

The plumber found the cause of the problem within minutes.  The hot water tank in the far bedroom (George's bedroom) had a faulty valve.  It had been running for weeks!  

Because of Covid-19 restrictions, George has not visited us since July.  We had no reason to go into that bedroom so we never heard the water running.  The water leak didn't affect the heating system or affect the water in the bathroom in that part of the house so we didn't notice anything was amiss.   

The damage to the walls wasn't apparent until furniture was moved! 

This meant a call to the home insurance company.  They sent a claims adjuster out on Monday.

We had to empty the office and the bedroom so that the adjuster could see the extent of the damage.

This is the cupboard that holds the hot water tank 

It was merrily leaking in silence for weeks. 

The insurance company says we have a claim.  The hard work and upheaval is just beginning.  The entire extension is going to be affected.  

The floors have to come up to allow the concrete to dry properly.  The walls have to have the bottom three feet of plasterboard removed and replaced.   

Every room has to be emptied.  We have to find a temporary home for all this stuff.

There is more but I can't bring myself to write about it yet.  It's like having a big "do over" with the entire extension. 

We have been here at Whitelees for twenty years now.

It's just me and Henry now.

We like our lovely home and quiet life.

It is a long time since I posted anything on this blog -

Just to say that a bit of a small step has been made in the last two days.

The Man of the Place managed to power wash all the moss off this side of the house and then replace the render.

It looks good now. Imagine what it will look like when the wall is painted and the patio slabs are down . . . .

Merry Christmas everybody!

We're almost done with this extension project. The Man of the Place is enjoying a well deserved nap in front of the fire. Faithful hound is there too.

A few more things need to be finished - but over Christmas, no work is going to be done. Look forward to these finishing touches in January.

The heating was installed. The boiler has now been commissioned and is legal to heat our house. It does a wonderful job. We haven't been cold since. We're not quite used to all this warmth. I'm waking up very thirsty in the morning. Having the boiler commissioned sounded so formal. I was half expecting to have to smash a bottle of champagne over it. "I hereby commission this boiler! Bless her and all who are heated by her!" In reality, it was an unassuming man who came out, checked all the wiring, the exhaust, fuel line to the boiler etc. . .. He had a cup of coffee (milk and one sugar), gave me the forms for the guarantee and went on his merry way.

Henry cutting a channel for the thermostat. This makes for another area that will have to be repainted.

It has been all hands to the pump the past couple of weeks. We now have beautiful oak floors.

There are two places where the oak floors wouldn't be practical.

The orangery and the bathroom. You can see Polly inspecting James' work as he puts down the tiles in the orangery that connects the two buildings together.

This is Andy, helping out James the plumbing and heating guy. The lovely white bathroom tiles are just out of shot.

Holes in the Floor

We are getting so close to being finished with the extension. So close in fact that last night, I asked George if, when the heating is fired up next week, would he like to move his bedroom furniture across. We still don't have doors on his new room, or the bathroom but he could move over.

The major thing going on at the moment is that the heating system is getting hooked up.

The electrician has put up thermostats and control panels for the two different "zones" in the house and the plumber is working on getting the heating system connected to the boiler.

To connect things to the boiler, the floor boards in the corner our front room needed to be removed. This meant disassembling the dining room table and lifting the carpet.

This is what it looks like . . . .

This is The Man of the Place with the enormous power tool he had to hire to do big stuff under the floorboards.

Done by Christmas?
You can see the packs of oak floor boards waiting to go down.

Let there be Light!

We work along and it seems like we get nowhere and then all of a sudden there is a giant leap forward.

The above photo is a picture of the some of the lights in the ceiling of the new front room. It isn't this orange. We have a white ceiling, but with the halogen bulbs, it comes across as orange in the photo.


The electrician got to the point where some of the lights work in the new extension! He will be back tomorrow to make the lights work in more of the rooms and to start getting the boiler hooked up to electricity.

This is the light in the new back hallway.

This light is in the new office. You will notice that the office has been painted a lovely duck egg blue. Pretty pretty!

The oak planks for the new floor has been delivered. The next step is that the heating system is to be completed. We expect this to happen within the next couple of weeks.