Floor's floors and drawers...

Since Flo's given an update on the baby project, I feel obliged to update on the house project. So here goes...

Flo and I decided to take this week off in order to try and get on top of things... with such a lot to do it's difficult juggling everything while keeping a full time job going at the same time.

We're still waiting to hear back from the local council for planning approval to knock down some load bearing walls. Although this is delaying things, it's really a bit of a saving grace at the moment since it's giving us time to choose what we want and to plan things more effectively. We received the updated drawings from our structural engineer last week, now incorporating our new kitchen layout and bathroom and with new calculations for the steel beams that will support our neighbour's house when the load bearing walls are knocked out. He's been in contact with the council and seems to think that we'll hear from them within the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we've come up with an electrical plan for the entire house and already been through one revision to incorporate some of the existing electrics in an attempt to keep the costs down. We've been to a few bathroom showrooms and are getting a quote for the bathroom fittings, tiles and shower base; we're getting a quote on having a custom made Belgian bluestone base made for the shower cell.

We've had a guy 'round to look at making some new stairs and we've organised for a couple more to come 'round and give us some quotes. We were supposed to have a guy come 'round to survey the chimney to determine if we can install a log burning stove or at least a gas stove in the lounge... but after him not turning up for three appointments over the course of the day he decided to loose our business when he hung up on Flo while she was explaining to him how disastified with his service we were (the company was Griffioen in Rotterdam... steer clear!)

This evening we showed a Scottish carpenter around the house and asked him to give us a quote for fitting double glazing in the back windows, making a trap door over the stairs to the cellar, fitting some shelves in the wine rack in the cellar and making the division between the front entrance and the dining room/kitchen area. He smelt of stale beer (not pish) and cigarettes, but I suppose that's par for the course being a Scott's man. Seemed like a pleasant chap though and he comes with good references from my work colleagues.

Flo's also been busy chasing gardeners, so we should soon be getting some quotes for realising the chosen garden design that Harrie came up with.

Still to do this week is visit the showroom where we're thinking of getting the cement and epoxy floor from and chase up a lead from a local knicker shop for supplying a wooden floor; we asked the shop owner where he got his wooden floor from and it turned out that he got it very cheap and fitted it himself... so a very promising lead and one I got some pants out of... some new Calvin Klein's!

Although we have the kitchen pretty much decided, I still need to write it up and source the parts, so that'll keep me busy over the next couple of days. The radiator plan is sorted and we're planning on re-using most of the radiators that were in the house, with only a couple of new ones. We've also decided that we're going to buy a new toilet to try and save some space in the upstairs toilet; since this is a pretty small room, we need to be economical with the space and the existing toilet isn't.

We're still waiting for the quote from the building contractor. Flo spoke to him this evening and he indicated that it was looking like it will come in over the budget that we've given him. Fortunately, we gave him a low budget, but even so, we may have to start cutting back in order to reduce the expenditure... we'll find out in the next couple of days.

To help pay for it all, we've also seen a couple of financial advisers this week... we managed to sponge a free lunch from the ones we met today, so that saved us about €7.00 already! So off to a good start...