Also posted on www.HomeandDecorating.co.uk

The light is at the end of the tunnel. Finally we can start to see how the finished house is going to look.

The last bit of skirting board in the playroom is now firmly fixed to the wall and awaiting a bit of wood filler at the corners before it's final paint tomorrow.

Still to come is the carpetting of the playroom and the stairs-and-landing which will be the finishing touch although having carpetted the hall, I know how hard it's going to be so not sure I'm neccersarily looking forward to it.

So yet another weekend passed, working on the house (still) and dreaming of a day when it's all finished. Saturday was spent hardoarding the landing; laying sheets of hardboard in a brick pattern (for strength) on top of the floorboards to give a more smoothed out surface for the underlay and carpet.

Firstly I had to find all the loose floorboards, loose from the electrician's rewire and the plumber's re-plumb and then screw those down, being careful not to locate either of the aforementioned tradesmen's works of art. I'm sure I probably left one loose board just so it can irritate me over the next few months as it squeaks everytime you walk over it, near it, or the heating kicks in.

Now that's done, I had a ceremonial burning of the hardboard scraps which, incidently, burn really quite well and are possibly cheaper than the logs from the petrol station which don't burn well due to the fact that they have been left out in the rain.

Sunday morning we visited the outlaws as it was Mothering Sunday, gave my wife the card from our Daughter, complete with drawings and stickers, and then returned to the house for an afternoon of cutting skirting board.

Cutting skirting board would be so much easier if the wonderful bench mounted circular saw I bought could have a 'random adjustment' button which would vary the angle of cut between 40 and 50 degrees to match the random angles of my walls. Instead I have to rely on wood filler to fill the gaps at the corners.

I was introduced to the Ronseal wood filler by my father-in-law who swears by the stuff, and to be honest it does give a really good finish which is easily moulded into shape and then sanded back to an almost un-noticeable finish... but the stuff does stink. It does exactly what it says on the tin, but it also contains all the chemicals that are on the tin too and the solvents in it drifted through the entire house giving anyone within shouting distance an instant headache. When it says use in a well ventilqated area... they aren't joking. But the stuff is magic.

With a birthday coming up, one's mind drifts to things-wot-I-would-like and having tried to bash through wood at the weekend using my blunt saw I think that maybe a sharp one would make a big difference to my life. It would defintely help prevent me trying to push the one I have through the wood and they are so chea p now you can almost buy one per project!

The saw I have is one I bought about 5 years ago from a Stanley Tools outlet shop and it's been brilliant. Right up until I hit a screw in an old bit of skirting I was cutting up for firewood (house dried pine burns very well). Oh well, maybe if we finish the house soon I can let the new saw rust away as a symbol of DIY success.

So December has arrived, and the wind has definitely increased to
expected autumnal levels, but with winter temperatures... now surely
that's not fair!

As H&D regular readers may remember, I'm currently renovating an 1895
Victorian House, and when I say renovating, I don't mean from the
comfort of a caravan in the garden, 2 weeks and you're done kind of
project, I mean 12 months slow frustrating progress complete with
fed-up wife and overly helpful and underlay productive 2 year old.

We're within sight of the finish line now and the Electrician tells me
he only has one day left on the total rewire (and that's basically
just the snagging list). The plasterer is long gone (in a cloud of
pink dust), and the plumber still has a sink and ensuite to plumb in,
but that can wait until the new year.

But the project still left to do which is causing me the most
heartache at the moment is the carpet. We ripped up the old thick-pile
orange carpet (not our choice of colour, but felt lovely on your
feet), preparing for new carpet to be laid throughout. And now we're
cold.

So cold.

I don't think I'd really though about the draught-excluding properties
that a layer of hardboard, a layer of underlay, a layer of carpet, and
actually having skirting boards has on a house, especially a house
with floorboards, and a 2 foot air-gap underneath.

You can feel the wind coming up between the boards, and from the gaps
where the skirting boards once propudly sat nailed to the walls.

I will get around to laying the new carpet, once I've done the
hardboarding, and the cutting, painting, and affixing of the skirting
boards, and the repair of the floorboards the plumber split when
laying the new central heating. But for now, we're relying on having
the central heating on and the fire burning - that's one thing the
victorians definitely got right, the fire is fantastic, and we're
currently experimenting with the most efficient fuel to burn - in fact
we've set up a poll we'd like you all to vote on... what is the best
fuel to burn on a fire?

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Things are moving forward nicely with the renovation of our Victorian
House. We've had the electrician here today planning out the elctrics
for the new kitchen.
 
One of the problems when you buy an old house is that the electrics
will quite often need updating. We've chosen to opt for a re-wire of
the whole house following a periodic test revealing many faults - not
impossible to fix each one, but a re-wire seemed the best long term
option.
 
Now the re-wire is underway we've found that it was definitely the
correct decision.
 
As the electrician uncovers more an more of the historic wiring (pvc
and rubber) we're discovering just how dangerous some of the circuits
are and know that we'll be left with not just a safer house, but a
safer family.
 
We've opted for double sockets above the worktop either side of the
induction hob and a couple more on the other wall. Switched power
supplies for all of the appliances; dishwasher, fridge, 2 ovens, hob,
and... my favourite... the wine fridge!
 
For lighting we've decided on 6 downlighters whichb can be angled to
point to where the light is needed, plus two undercupboard strip
lights to give task lighting for the worktop which will be shadowed by
the wall cupboards.
 
Tip: remember to allow for the height of the upstand/splashback when
deciding on the position of the worktop sockets.

We've been ripping out the downstairs cloakroom (WC) which is located
in the victorian single-storey extension which also houses the
utility.
 
Unfortunately the cloakroom had been used as a downstairs shower-room
as well which meant the room had been tiled from floor to ceiling.
 
We're now going to use the room to house a megaflow unvented hot water
cylinder along with new toilet and cloakroom sink, losing the shower
in the process.
 
Not needing the tiled-cell effect and due to the uneven surface we
started to rip off the tiles to see what was underneath. You never
know what you are going to find in this house!
 
Underneath the tiles was damp and rotten plasterboard and a few
scrapings of old wallpaper - what a fantastic design, I just wonder at
what point in the history of the house was this wallpaper design
fashionable. If anyone knows, please add your comment below.
 
I think a combination of damp coming through the single skin exterior
walls along with damp seeping up from the bottom of the shower led to
the battens and plasterboard soaking up the moisture and creating it's
very own micro-climate hidden from sight by small white ceramic tiles.
 
The plumber had been in and removed the shower, sink and toilet, and
the electrician had disconnected the old electric shower. Most of the
tiles just peeled off the wall but above waist-height the board seemed
a little more resilient and lacking a bolster chisel I gave up for the
night.

We've decided to change the layout of the groundfloor of our Victorian
House. We've been slowly renovating our house since moving in, in
August 2008, but things are about to move with great pace.
 
We're embarking on our first 'major' project. Moving the kitchen from
it's current location into the biggest room of the house, an open-plan
space created from one of the original rooms with the 1970s/1980s
extension.
 
We feel that the existing kitchen lacks usable space and storage space
considering the actual amount of space it takes up. the main problem
being that the existing kitchen is in effect a galley-kitchen as it's
also a walkthrough to the utility/claokroom and back door. It also
houses a chimney breast and fireplace which also takes up wall space.
 
By moving the kitchen into a corner of a room means that you will only
be in the kitchen area if you purposely enter the kitchen, but you
don't need to enter the kitchen to get anywhere else.
 
The move will mean that we need to remove the chimney and fireplace
from the new location... but that's not necessarily as complicated as
it sounds.
 
We have discovered (measured, re-measured, checked and checked again)
that the fireplaces and chimneys at the rear of the house don't
actually go straight up, into the rooms above and out of the roof.
There are no fireplaces in the rooms above... and that's not because
they've previously been removed.
 
The flues from the rear fireplaces go through the wall at about
head-height and into the side of the chimmney breast in the rooms
which back onto the fireplace. They then go up inside this chimmney
stack on the otherside of the wall... the chimmney stack which does
continue upstairs in the rooms above, complete with smaller fireplaces
and then into the roof and out from the loft.
 
We've organised a quote from the builder to remove the original
chimmney breast where the new kitchen will be located and arranged for
a structural engineer to come and check out the situation with the
ceiling joists above as we need to check that the chimney breast is
not supporting the bathroom floor above.
 
Assuming this all goes according to plan, we'll remove the chimmney
and fireplace, have the wall re-plastered and then we have a massive
free space ready to house the new kitchen.

(download)

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First of all I marked out the spot on the ceiling where the centre of the extractor fan should go. I checked from the loft that this was clear of any joists etc. and cleared back the old blown-insulation away from the prospective hole, so as not to be covered in it once the hole drill had sawn through. I did this simply by drilling a smallish hole in the centre and poking a biro through it so it was visible from both sides.

Next up checked the hole saw against the size of the extractor fan only to find that my hole saw fits neatly inside... meaning it's about 5mm too thin (from a radius point of view).

With dustsheet in bath and lotions and potions cleared off the side, let the drilling commence! Oh and let the plaster dust cover everything, including me. A few seconds later the core from the plastered ceiling pops out with a clean circle left above me.

I broke through the wooden slats after a few tries, as they tend to spring away from the drill, but once through I could stare in awe much like a channel tunnel engineer (although obviously on a smaller scale).

As the hole wasn't quite large enough, I then cut around the edges using a plasterboard knife, using it more like a file just to shave away the edges giving me that few extra millimetres. A bit wider on two 'sides' allowing for the fixings to poke through and a quick wiggle and push and the extractor fan was in (the downlight and extractor opening).

Next up I secured the fixing screws which hold the unit in place in the ceiling opening and went back up into the loft to wire the electrics up. We already had a pull switch in the bathroom for the previous electric shower which we had removed, so it was a case of taking this switch live and neutral feed and splitting in parallel to the downlight transformer and the fan unit.

Once all the connections were made and tested, I attached the flexible ventilation hose from the ceiling unit to the fan unit and secured it in place using the cable ties provided.

The final job still sitting on the to-do list for the extractor fan job is to get the ventilation to the outside... but we'll save that for another day

The problem is that we only have limited loft insulation, there is about 1"-2"s of insulation between the actual roof joists and then in between the ceiling joists we have an inch of sprayed polystyrene-ball-type insulation over some of the ceilings and crucially not over our bedroom (1980s extension) or over our daughter's bedroom.

This means it's very difficult to keep the house warm as any heat finds it's way out into the loft. PLUS on top of that we have 2 chimneys, one open fireplace in the dining room, one wood burner in the kitchen, 1 bricked up fireplace and 3 poorly blocked off fireplaces. The bay windows, the porch and the utility/WC have zero insulation.

So I turned the thermostat up to max (about 40°C) and turned the boiler temperature up a notch too - we managed to stabilse at around 19.5°C too cold!

I registered with the energy saving trust to find out about free or grant subsidised cavity wall and loft insulation. They forwarded our details to all the energy suppliers (as that's how the government distribute the funds) and you would hope that all 10 (approx) of them would contact us? 3 did.

Atlantic Electric and Gas (our energy supplier), part of Scottish and Southern Energy Group wrote to us to tell us they would write to us when they could to arrange a survey when they could fit it in... great. EON phoned me (proactive, like it!) told me they were too busy too, but would write to me to tell me they were too busy and would write to me again when they weren't. British Gas said they would send around a surveyor on the 31st October - brilliant! We might just get the house warmer by Christmas.

British Gas... saviour of cold brits!

British Gas use another company to actually carry out the insulation survey and following work, in this case Mark Group.

Mark Group wrote to me yesterday cancelling tomorrow's appointment and rescheduling for 2 weeks time. Points for apology, points for using 1st class post, loss of points for not telephoning me, not sticking to the appointment, and not giving a reason for the cancellation.

Call me a pain, but I don't mind people making mistakes, I don't mind problems, I don't particularly want blame to be pointed at an individual, but I do like to know the reason for problems, not to appease some weird necessity for information gathering, but to know that there IS a reason and more importantly that someone has understood the reason and can learn from it.

"No surveyors in the area that day" said the very nice lady who answered the phone. Hmmm, ok, so why was the appointment booked for that day? "British Gas booked that appointment for you". Ok, it's not her fault and I'm not going to push the point. I've worked in a call centre and I know that being an arse on the phone does not get you anywhere. BUT I can't help wondering why British Gas, surely one of their biggest business referrals is allowed to book appointments for them ON THEIR SYSTEM without some guidance on the availability of a human being to actually carry out the work.

NOT IMPRESSED, although still better than any of the other energy companies have managed.

I recommend you check out the energy saving trust website and apply now as the waiting time seems to be 6-12 weeks from application to completion and it looks like this winter could be a cold one!

The tiler finished last week, the plasterer somewhere then too (although the bags of old removed plaster are still by the front door where he promised he'd pick them up from), and the plumber was in yesterday and today to install the new suite.

Well the plumbers assistant is, anyway.

I arrived home last night to find the toilet still in the kitchen (please don't use it, it's not plumbed in) and the sink and bath installed. How exciting! The bath was full of water. Apparently not, as I suspected as a mosquito farm, but in order to ensure the sealant settles correctly.

The bathroom obviously looks smaller now, having enjoyed it empty for a couple of weeks (great for admiring your tile choice, not so good for bathing), but it will be a relief to be able to use a brand new bathroom, you know isn't leaking into the ceiling below!