So, I thought you’d all like to know what’s going on with the house? You wouldn’t? You’re bored witless of house stuff? You want more biting political commentary and discussion of the planned healthcare reforms? You want my environmental opinions? Tough.
So today, the green roof finally bit the dust. It kicked the bucket, and became an ex-green roof. We’ve been cutting bits off to try and get it cheaper, but even with timber construction, to make the roof strong enough, it has to be massive amounts of timber. I’ve accepted my fate and we’re now getting a quote for a reclaimed-tile roof. This is, it must be said, a cause of much sadness.
I was desperately keen to get a green roof on the building; it’d lower its environmental impact massively and look super-keen and had much reduced impact on our view. But it just can’t happen – and we need the garage now – and it’s not a case of ‘we can build it so it can take a green roof later’ because the green roof itself isn’t the expensive bit. It’s building a building strong enough to tolerate a green roof. It’s having a strong enough central beam to support that much weight.
Now, you could do a seedum roof instead, but then to do that we’d need a massive amount of money to buy seedum matting, which again puts it out of reach.
It is painfully frustrating to have the ‘good’ environmental choices removed because they’re more expensive. Not, in many cases, because they’re inherently more expensive; but because they’re not done that much and so lack economy of scale. Or lack any competition in installing them, so only ‘premium’ companies install them, and charge similarly premium’d prices. And I know that we’re the wrong age to be doing this, wrong age, wrong income bracket.
Adding a little salt to the wound, the Volvo this month has sucked 500 quid down it’s hungry fuel-tube. It’s not really surprising, we’ve racked up somewhere in the region of 30k miles since we bought it, and we’ve worn a few bits out. It’s just a bugger it didn’t happen after the Enfield was sorted – because the parts for these jobs? 150 quid. Labour to fit them is the killer, and with out a garage or somewhere to work on it, and while I’m trying to write an essay for my MSc, and with Kathryn needing the car… well… That just puts it into – we have to get the garage to do it.
Since the drive wasn’t finished last week, I couldn’t have done it then anyway… So. Meh. Just suck it up, I guess.
It makes me more keen to get the Enfield on the road, on which more anon (we have to get it onto our driveway first!). I’m optimistically hoping the builder can pop the garage up soon, although we’re still waiting on the non-green-roof-quote (reclaimed tile).
Instead, to cheer myself up* I popped outside and had a look at the ‘zed. Now Pirate Charlie, as she is known, was laid up** after deciding she didn’t want to run last year. Having sat for 6 months I thought it’d be a good plan to try kicking her over and seeing, well, if she fancied going.
And she did. Kept dying though. A quick*** look in the carb showed me a 2mm layer of sort of rust puree. I’m not quite sure where it came from, I’m assuming that it’s been worsened by the fact she’s missing the rubber covers for the carb where the cables enter, and so some water gets in… However, cleaning out the rust puree produced a bike which, while she’s not idling particularly well is running again, feeding that desperate optimistic streak which makes me believe I can cut our fuel usage/costs a bit.
Anyhow, I said house update, so:
Upstairs, we have the beginnings of a wiring system. We have lights (all new) and a smoke detector cable (mains powered). We also have wires going to all the places the sockets will be. Downstairs we have cables going to some of the places where there’ll be lights, and currently no lighting circuit whatsoever. The downstairs is currently lit by our camping lantern (hung from my old temporary plumbing), a worklamp hanging from a picture rail in the back room and Kathryn’s bedside light in the bedroom. There’s no lighting for the hall save that which comes from the other light sources. We’ve still got power downstairs though!
Our kitchen now has neither light nor water… and so we currently have a new kitchen. You can all say “URGH!” at once:
But seriously? It wasn’t working cooking with no water bar that you can carry. It’s made worse by the fact that the lead plumbing under the sink had, it appears, cracked slightly. And then I moved it, and the slight leak (I’d not noticed) became a big leak – so we now have ‘Do not use’ marked on the sink to remind builders/electricians/etc that it’s not for use, and a bucket sat underneath in case they forget.
Plan was to move that to the intended location of the new sink, but the fact that there’s currently a door**** where I’d like the pipe to exit the building puts a bit of a crimp in that plan. So we’re waiting on hearing when the builders can come take down the wall. If that’s “soon” then we’ll have to just live with what we’ve got.
Today we had a plasterer come around to quote. The quote was good, the discussion was not.
Things we didn’t like:
– Appeared to want to cut every corner possible
– Didn’t want to replace the crumbling mould ridden plasterboard where there used to be a leak: ‘just paint it with stain blocking paint and we can skim over it’. No, no I don’t think so.
– Didn’t appear to understand the idea that we might have a clue about building, kept talking over us, repeating himself, and generally being irritating.
Which is funny, because he’s got lots of ‘good reviews’, but hey. He wasn’t recommended.
We’ve now got another three coming around to quote. It’s not that we don’t trust a general builder to plaster 4 ceilings. It’s just that we don’t trust a general builder to plaster four ceilings… we want an artist, an expert in plastering. Because plastering really, truly is an art.
Ah well.
The plumbers have been and gone. They were neat, efficient, on time every day, and have plumbed in an entire central heating system in a week. Colour me impressed. It’s nice and neat, and it works.
In the garden, the builders are completely done and we’ve temporarily erected a ‘fence’ using the salvaged panels and posts (plus one post from the wood recycling place). This is the massive amount of land we’ve reclaimed from the concrete:
And here’s the driveway as it currently stands:
The footpath down the back is fairly busy, and my neighbours inform me that Rebecca’s been photographed, and I’ve been chatted to about her. Which is not *entirely* comforting.
This, incidentally, is what’s at the back of the house:
Kathryn’s started work on the next pea support structure:
Anyone want to try to identify the poles? It’s not hard…but amuses us :)
Just as an overview:
And this is Alys Fowler, and my mum’s (and probably Kathryn’s Mom’s) fault:
And that’s no-where near all of the plants. Oh no. They’re covering virtually every available surface in the back room now. It’s not so bad when they’re in modules, it’s when you have to start potting them before they go out. Then as the next batch of seeds enters the propogator…well… it just spreads and spreads.
It’s awesome though. We’re really hoping that we’ll get a good yield this year. We’ve got some excellent and interesting varieties, both heritage/heirloom and more modern crosses (mostly from the Real Seed Catalogue). Purple tomatoes, Yellow carrots…It’s all a multicoloured variety pack of excitement. The potatoes are finally up (bit late, but we’re still optimistic). Next year we have to try some Peruvian varieties (yes, I know, not entirely native). And the Carrots are also finally showing their growingness. We’ve been quite worried about them, but there they were when we got back from Cornwall*****.
Hopefully, on Thursday a vast quantity of compost (and topsoil) will turn up at a friend’s house****** and we’ll lug it over here and attack the newly created vegetable beds (didja see the terracing? Kathryn’s worked hard on that…).
In bad news, our B&Q value spade which has served us well for 4 years started to get a bit bendy. Now we have a Spear and Jackson ‘Neverbend’. Which hopefully will do us a bit longer than 4 years.
Anyhow, I have to persuade myself to cook (challenging at the moment) and then carry on with my essay. More housey pictures are, as usual, in this flickr set.
*I must have been feeling seriously optimistic to try this.
** Err, okay. I stopped riding her and she sat, somewhat sadly, outside.
*** For certain values of ‘quick’.
**** UPVC double glazed, otherwise I’d just drill a hole in the damn thing… like I have done to the other back door to provide a supply for the boiler…
***** Went down to Cornwall for two days for my Birthyday. Some photos on Flickr here
****** The company can’t deliver to slopes (of any sort, tarmac or not) or to grassed/gravelled areas. Given that they exclusively deal in landscaping stuff, you’d think that this was a limitation, really. Thankfully our kind friends let us have it delivered to their driveway (it’s bagged, anyhow) (they were getting some too) so we can get the bulk-purchase discount.
