Progress on the house continues apace. If it weren’t for the mould taking over the ceiling – and the struggle to dry out the damp, then I’d actually feel pretty positive about how things are progressing. We’ve put up about half the walls (granted, mainly the easier ones), tweaked the design ever so slightly (moved one wall about 10cm / 4 inches) when we realized that the en-suite just wouldn’t work as it was. Well, technically you could make your way past the toilet to the shower, but it would have been really tight. We’ve now got the lumber for most of the other walls in the house and it’s slowly drying out (it rained when it arrived). There’s just about a 4.5m / 14 ft stretch that goes above the corridor and bathroom that we’ve not got wood for yet, and all the ceilings are currently unwooded.
Having originally planned to mainly reuse the studs carefully extracted from the walls we realized that they have an odour – not a hugely strong one, but it’s definitely noticeable – and we really don’t want any more of that in the house than we have to. So we’ve opted for fresh timber inside – and that’s added about $1k to the cost. The good point about that is most of that lumber can be used in the garage, if we get as far as building the garage. We just need some treated timber to be the sole-plate. AFAIK here, you don’t put in a damp proof course – I’m not sure if it’s required for new builds – and instead just use pressure treated timber. Which is weird, because then you have this soggy wet piece of timber (at least, that’s what makes up the sole plate of our house).
Anyway, so that extra $1k is a little painful because this house was already at it’s value limit (we suspect), and now we’re adding $1k in shiny nice timber…
…as will the mould treatment. That’s about another $1k.
…and it turns out that contrary to all the estimators we’ve found online, installing a gas line is about $2k (the estimators pitched that at $400).
…and the cost of our chosen siding just went from the previous estimate to around $4k – an increase of nearly $2k (so I think that’s probably nixed).
But, on the plus side, our windows have apparently arrived at the supplier, so we can start actually installing windows. And we’ve paid for them already – so that’s good. In a move that I think is basically “go away and leave us alone”, our roofing company have decided to simply pay for replacement of the guttering they damaged (rather than painting it and seeing if we were willing to accept that). This is, I suspect, you’re getting nothing for the mould we caused on your ceiling, but now you can’t say we didn’t address the other issues with installation.
I’ve also been plumbing… well, sort of. I’ve finally given in to the call of PEX. It must be said, it’s certainly easier than copper – even if it’s less recyclable. The house should be roughed in, completely, in 2 days. Which is pretty impressive for me working on my own… Were we not building walls and framing windows when Kathryn’s working on the house too, it could probably have been knocked out in a day. Something of a change from days and days, which is what it took me to do the central heating plumbing in Slough.
Once that’s done – and the walls are done – it’s on to the electrical. We’re nearing the point that I can start that anyhow, as some of the walls are in. I just need to go buy a boat-load of cable. One of the delights of 110v electrical is needing a k-bilion separate circuits, because the current demands are so high.
Feh.
I have that planned out (sorta), but am kinda inclined to wait until the mould’s resolved, as that’s going to be a lot of time hanging about in the rafters, enjoying the delights of the currently mould-ridden space. Either I wait, or I put on a mask for it. And I like to reserve my mask-wearing time for when I’m enjoying the delights of our crawlspace. Sometimes (often) I wonder why we’ve done this to ourselves. It’ll be nice when it’s done, but it’s never going to be like the Bristol house – something that I can be unreservedly proud of. Yes, we’ve made the structure less shoddy, but it’s always going to be a 1970s tract house built to the minimum building standards of the time. Yes, we’ve made it better, we’ve dragged parts of it up to more modern standards. But it’s always going to leave me less than loving it.
So yeah, there we go.
