New window is in

A visit to The Burrow this morning saw Rachel's dream come true - her new sash window had been put in upstairs, and was looking fantastic. We stuck our heads in the door briefly to see the joists going in for the floor, so all is going well on that front. By the time we came back from town at 4pm everyone had cleared off, presumably to go and watch the world cup!

This was a welcome distraction from Monday's site meeting which saw us waiting for 20mins in the rain for Mr Architect to turn up (he's not once been on time) and then finding that my fears about the kitchen layout not matching his plans were correct. We waited until today to get any word back from him about what the scale of the problem is, but it looks to mean we have to lose 100mm off the width of the kitchen. This pretty much wrecks our chances of having a double sink (we'd had our heads turned by Jenny & Mark's) but should mean everything else will fit in. Off to Wickes tomorrow to get the plans re-drawn and our order amended.

We will be back on Sunday for the Cowley Road Food Festival so will take the camera and get some updated photos

The extension takes shape

A quick visit made to check brick samples for the extension revealed a lot of progress since our last visit.


The front wall has now completely gone...as has the floor! The skip was full of the ugly terrazzo, and inside you had to take a step down of about a foot to reach solid ground. The old dining room has had the dampproofing applied to the walls up to 1.2m high, and this left a bit of a chemical smell in the air.


The real surprise was waiting for us in the garden when we saw how far work had got on the extension. The walls have gone quite high, although not full height yet. The frame for the door was in place, and it made us realise just how high the thing is going to be - the door must be 7 feet high and there is another 3 feet on top for the pitched roof!


Our ever-tolerant neighbours let us through to take a look in the garden - they have had to put up with so much noise, and even a drill coming through to their side, leaving a small hole.

Another site meeting on Monday (or it might be Tuesday, Mr Architect can be vague sometimes) to select brickwork. Finally we've settled on a choice for the kitchen worktop. Emerald Pearl - a safe bet but will look amazing. Should do for the price!

Floor today, gone tomorrow

After having the prices through from Mr Builder, which came in a little cheaper than we thought, and a chat with Mr Architect, we decided to go for the replacement suspended timber flooring. This means that the same flooring system will be used throughout the ground floor and returns the house back to how it was designed to be when built. Not a cheap option but one that should do the job.

We're off to see Jenny and Mark on Saturday, armed with plans and photos, to show them how a conversation with them last October has led to all this happening. Now that we've decided to take the plunge and go for a granite work surface in the kitchen we'll have to take another look at Jenny and Mark's, which caught our eye all those months ago.

No, THIS would be the crisis

Ok, to follow on from an earlier post, the issue with the windows simply isn't destined to be the problem with the project - it's the floor.

We've had a damp problem in The Burrow, which was pretty much self-contained. That is until they removed the laminate flooring and the wallpaper, and the stench of damp became much more apparent. It seems the previous owners, for reasons best known only to them, decided to rip out the practical, functional suspended timber flooring and replace it with a nasty terrazzo surface laid on a pile of loose rubble. Messrs Architect and Builder are pretty sure that this dubious move has laid the foundation for our damp problems. We have to do something and it's all going to cost.

Option 1 (not that cheap and cheerful) is to patch up the terrazzo (hoping that its poor construction and wafer-thin construction will hold) and paint over with some painty dampproof stuff. May solve the damp problem cheaply but structurally not a great plan

Option 2 (getting pricey) is to rip up all the nasty terrazzo and replace with a big concrete slab, some damp proof membrane and insulation. OK, so not great for the environment but does the job.

Option 3 (about the same as option 2) is to hark back to Victorian times, rip up the terrazzo and replace with a suspended timber flooring. Working with the elements to allow natural ventilation, but worrying about the fact we'll have a big bath full of water and two people on it.

We're going to wait for the fully costed options before making a decision. Personally I'm up for option 3 because it's how the house was meant to be, but we'll see.

The return of Mr Architect

Our brief brush with doubt and uncertainty over the window design has ended with the triumphant return of Mr Architect from holiday. He thinks Mr Builder is making too much of a fuss about it and will be telling him just to get on with it. We've made a slight compromise in terms of the width of the crossbeam above the doors but otherwise the designs stands! He's also gone so far as to guarantee the 'warp factor' himself, so we won't get stuck with a bill if things do go wrong. I love him!

Last contact with Mr Builder started to sow seeds of doubt about the kitchen worktop. He's saying oak isn't a good choice, and how about granite? But will this compromise the elegant curve of the breakfast bar? We'll see at the site meeting on Monday....

After a great deal of hassle to get the funding for the project into an e-savings account to enable online payments we're now told that maximum permissable payment is £1,000 per day. So in the "interests of fraud and online security" we'll be paying Mr Builder by cheque!!!

Is this the crisis?

OK, so as you may have gathered from reading this blog we haven't exactly been inundated by crisis in the development of this project. I know it's still early days but all seems to be plain sailing.

Or it was until Tuesday when we had the site visit. Mr Architect was on holiday so we had Mr Other Architect there, his partner. It's a bit like changing surgeons mid way through an operation, to use an over-dramatic metaphor, but you did get the feeling he wasn't quite all there with us. Comments like "so you're having a glass roof" left one with the feeling that an extra 15 mins reading the plans would have been a help.

So, part way through the visit he mentions, almost casually, that the contractor making the windows and doors for the extension (the focal point ofthe whole project) says he can't guarantee the doors won't warp as they're 2.3m tall, so we need to reduce their height to 2.1m. He starts talking about a 20cm strip of glass going in at the top. I start to burble about raising the step height he we keep the same lines at the top, but Rachel steps in sensibly and suggests he draws something up for us to consider.

When we got the designs by email I was not impressed and dived into misery. None of the revised designs looked any good to me










Anyway, Rachel decided to call him up and say we weren't happy as we appeared to be loosing the design concept we signed up for, and asked if it wasn't possible to try again or ask someone else.

Yes, he said. No problem. Huh? So why did we get asked to change it in the first place? Hmmm.