by Mark A » 03 Dec 2017, 16:15
Afternoon,
The house is a hotchpotch of 250-year-old stone collier's cottage which has been (badly) extended four times, so it's now a five bedroom house. It's situated in a valley, in Wales, with a stream nearby, so damp was a major problem which we seem to have rectified by pushing back the ground, installing good drainage and lime rendering the walls.
I'm able to turn my hand to most things, but there were some jobs we had to pay for, and that's were all the issues arose. We never automatically go for the cheapest quote; always the tradesmen who seem the most competent, the most knowledgeable and with decent references; however in practice the majority were equally terrible. That's were much of the time's gone - making good the mess they left behind, or overcoming problems later on which simply shouldn't exist when they had a blank canvas with which to work on. I can wholeheartedly recommend only two trades out of the twelve we used, and ironically they were both jobs I would have enjoyed doing myself, but time constraints meant we had to pay for them to be done - fitting two woodburners and operating the mini digger when renewing the drains.
All the structural work is complete. Internally I have two more bathrooms to tile and plumb; a kitchen and utility to fit; doors, skirting and architraves throughout; umpteen fiddly fancy lights to wire; and a whole load of cheap solid oak flooring to go down after I grind up the shocking self levelling floor and redo it myself. That will keep me busy until spring, then I'll replace the garage roof, re-tile porch and hack off most of the external walls ready for lime rendering. Then I visit a chiropractor to sort out my back!
Off to Toolstation now for plumbing supplies.
Cheers,
Mark