We are now 17 weeks into an ‘8 to 10 week’ build. I can still muster a glimmer of optimism that the last bits will be completed over the next few days, but it has been the ‘final week’ for 7 weeks in a row now and there hasn’t even been a snagging list compiled yet, so… The whole family is flagging as we negotiate ourselves around piles of boxes in every single room and shimmy through a narrow route through them just to get in to the house. It has never been so cramped, dirty and messy in here – and that is proving to be a big challenge when managing work and school demands now the summer holidays are over. I had to set up the beds in the right bedrooms once school started three weeks ago – but it took another fortnight to get the children’s clothes in the right places so they could get dressed properly in the mornings and more time still to get desks for homework accessible. My clothes had been in a suitcase for 8 weeks, but this weekend, I was finally able to hang them up but had to edit them, putting about a third in a bag for charity. Justin and I are sharing one of the children’s old wardrobes between us to save buying new furniture, and having been designed for baby clothes, there is limited space.
I have been using my mortgage to pay for building work, but extra costs like work space have to come out of our monthly incomes and those have been stretched. With my summer annual leave having been written off with small bits and pieces of painting in between repeatedly moving boxes around and cleaning, and Justin’s summer compromised with the same, we didn’t manage to earn as much as we needed for the winter buffer we usually rely on when freelance work goes quiet over the winter months. All that said, his new office space is proving fruitful for him, and I have my hands full in the autumn teaching a new semester at both the city’s universities again. I’m bracing myself for the cost of ‘extras’ – a project this late and requiring so many trips out to do the same things over again won’t be doing the loft conversion company’s profit margins any good. The building regulations approval still not being resolved is an ongoing worry but at least the radiators are all now fitted in the right place and the heating is working!
Being an architect should have made it easier as I knew what to expect – or so I thought. I knew I wouldn’t be able to project manage it all because of the time and stress involved, so asked a loft conversion company to run the works to the loft including repairs to one of the chimneys. I was recommended a handyman on our neighbourhood WhatsApp group and asked him to co-ordinate work to the rest of the house, namely new kitchen, bathroom, replacement garden decking, front door and all the repairs that had to be done with those jobs. He brought in his own plumber/carpenter and did the painting and decorating himself. I used drawings of the house to explain what work I needed doing, and scheduled it up in a list for them to provide costs and dates against each job. On top of that, I was on hand to let tradespeople in every morning, on the end of the phone during the day and often working at my new kitchen desk as they drilled and hammered in the rest of the house.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to prevent some extraordinarily shoddy work. From the ridiculous laying of insulation on top of the loft floor instead of under it by the Green Homes Grant contractors, to the continuously leaking bathroom fittings fitted by the plumber/carpenter, to the inordinate amount of foam filler used instead of masonry by the loft conversion company. You can find out all about those in separate posts.
For now, problems continue to be discovered after contractors have left. I was excited to receive a decal of the number and road of our house to place above the front door, but when I cleaned the fanlight above the door to fit it I could feel a draught. The brand new double glazed front door isn’t fitted snug to the frame at the top, and standing on a stool to reach the glass, I could see from above that there is a large gap between two strips of draft proofing material. It’s disappointing but can probably be remedied if I can find the same kind of strip to match it. Worse still, the timber frame around the fanlight seemed to be floating in front of the wall, and when I put my hand inside the gap, it went in about 20cm, all the way to the stonework at the front! The carpenter/plumber had left a huge gap around the frame on one side. It’s a massive cold bridge from a gap that needed to have been filled before the door frame was fitted because it is very difficult to access now behind the mains gas supply pipe that comes into the house on that side. It’s left me with a dilemma. Left unchecked, the cold is pouring in already and it’s only September. To insulate it properly is going to be difficult as I can’t get to the gap easily, but I think I have to try and cover it with some timber at least. It’s another item for my list because being a hidden problem that I hadn’t spotted before, I have already paid for the work. I hadn’t expected the carpentry to be as leaky as the plumbing. Seeing the mess he made of other gaps by filling them with expandable foam and bits of plastic carpentry wedges, I think it’s best he doesn’t come back anyway, but I do feel cheated. It does feel like my best efforts to retrofit this house are falling by the wayside as tradespeople just ignore what the simple point of the project is. The carpenter knew the front door was being replaced with a double glazed, insulated door (at huge expense) to reduce heat from escaping and cold from getting in, and yet he then took apart the walls around it so they would maximise heat loss instead.
Thankfully, I have access to a thermal imaging camera from a local green group to check the whole house for heat loss and compare the pictures to when I took thermal images before any work had been carried out in the early years of moving into the house. Fingers crossed all this work has made a positive difference to the fabric of the house even if the door frame needs to be patched up. In the meantime, I have enjoyed simple pleasures like having the front door painted pink and fitted with a brass rose door knocker to match the red rose in the front garden that was there when we moved in. It reminds me of my mum, whose name means rose pink in Turkish, and who somehow supported me on her own through all my education and endeavours to get me to this point. She won’t be able to read this because it’s in English, but here’s thanks to her and all the special people that make things happen for all of us even when no-one did that for them.
funda kemal 