Updated pics from the house

Flo and I intended to spend the day painting. To her credit, Flo managed to put a third layer of paint in two of the bedrooms, while I had to drive back home to pick up a ladder and some tools... the builders have almost completely cleared out! This means we can no longer abuse their equipment and instead have to use our own.

With all the builder's junk out, we're starting to get a completely different feel for the house. It feels much bigger in the front now, especially with the addition of an echo with no furniture to absorb the noise.


Most of the electric sockets and switches have now been installed, which means we can now switch on the spot lights... and I have to say that I'm really happy with them! As you can see from the picture above, the spot lights give real mood to the house... I like the way there's light and dark areas and the way the shadows are cast... using single sources of light to light the entire area would have really washed out the rooms.

If you'd like to see some more pictures of the house, I've posted another thirteen at the end of this house album.

It's been an interesting week... while walking 'round the house with the builder on Monday evening, we were bouncing on the floor in the study wondering how to tackle the problem of the uneven floor. We had been toying with the idea of pouring some cement on the floor so that it found its own level, but since we suspected the problem to lie with rotten floor beams, we figured that in the long run this would not be the best solution. So we decided to just pull up the floor there and then and take a look... a very empowering moment! And I'm so glad that we did... since indeed, the floor beams were rotting, but not half as bad as I expected. It seems that when the previous owners decided to plonk their new garden on top of the old one, they were in a bit of a rush or perhaps were unwilling to pay for a skip to remove all the rubble from the existing garden. As you might recall from a previous post, lots of rubble had to be removed before the new garden could be installed. Well, underneath the floor boards we found a whole lot more rubble! This, coupled with the fact that the garden had been previously raised and in the process the ventillation grills covered, had trapped in damp beneath the floor and caused the beams to start rotting. But fortunately, the beams were only rotten at the point where they are supported in the foundation of the house.

Although this is quite serious structurally, it meant that it was easily fixed by removing the rotten section and bolting on a new beam to rest in the foundation bearing. The builders also installed a new vent to allow air to flow beneath the floor to keep it dry and rot free in the future.

We met up with the building contractor this afternoon and he advised us to get on with the preperation for painting the walls and the wooden bits like windows and stairs. We therefore decided to pop to the builder's supply center and get some sand paper, a sanding machine and lots of acrylic filler to fill up all the gaps and holes before painting them up. We can then spend the weekend sanding and filling. The good thing is that it's supposed to be crappy weather this weekend, so at least we won't be tempted to spend the weekend at the beach or off on cycling tours.

After our not so hard day's work, we treated ourselves to a steak dinner since today we officially started our IVF treatment again (and so I get the please of finishing off Flo's previous post with "...GO!"), which meant that I got the pleasure of injecting hormones into Flo's belly. But I'm not complaining... I think I've got the better half of the fertility treatment deal, plus if it all works out we'll have a little fella (or missy) to share our shiny new house with (and smear banana all over the freshly painted walls).