Tuesday 15 October 2013

Plodding on

I haven't posted in a while… much of the work we have been doing has been repetitive: putting up more of the two kinds of insulation on different walls, mainly bedroom, knitting room and… library? there's only gonna be bookcases and cabinets in there so I guess that slightly pretentious name will have to do.

First layer of insulation

Old fashioned measuring technique

Second layer of insulation+ plasterboard, first stages of finishing

Drilling holes for pipes and cables into the basement.

Fun with power tools


Also in the basement, Pim has begun installing a water softening system (very helpful in this town with extremely hard water) and water pipe bypass.



4 radiators are up and connected: knitting room, hallway, bedroom and living. 4 more to go: bathroom, workshop, attic bedroom and dining room/kitchen. The latter is a monster of a thing and will probably get delayed indefinitely together with the refurbishing of the entire furthest building, we'll possibly move before that and improvise a temporary kitchen (we are experts at that, judging by our current "kitchen").

The last radiator installed, still wrapped up
In the places where the heating pipes aren't coming curved out of the wall, which sadly happens in a few places, we have covered it with brass (coated, sadly) tubing, which looks rather nice together with the brass valves, I think:




We've already ordered and picked up part of the electrical material, since cables, etc needs to be done at the same time than putting up insluation+plaster boards in the places where there will be outlets, switches and light points.



Definitelt the most difficult part of the renovation is figuring out what has to be done before what. Sometimes it gets paralysingly complex, when you feel you're stuck in a loop!

Contractors have started working on our back building flat roof. The thick insulation and asphalt (boo) fabric over it is placed, but the dome for the roof window is out of stock, so we are waiting for that (meanwhile the hole is covered with a board and asphalt). Then guters and finishing will also get done. And soon, hopefully, they'll also get started with the main building roof. Autumn has started and it rains every day, so a dry spell in the weather is going to get more and more challenging… hopefully it won't set us back too far. We need the roof to be placed before we install the kettle in the workshop and get the heating working, and we need to get the heating working because it is starting to get cold! So many contingencies ;)