Day 23 Plastering again, the house is humid!

All the water from the plaster is evaporating and a lot of moisture everywhere.

Plasterer has opened all windows upstairs to help speed up drying process.

Bedroom 1 is drying up:

Stairs are plastered:

Lounge is being plastered: 2 walls to go, he will come back tomorrow morning:

Day 22 Plastering again and electrics are finished.

I think the electrics are finished, just waiting for a report from the boss.

Entrance hall and fuseboard

Before-after of the panic button for the alarm:

Before

After

The new motion detector in the entrance hall was installed, however it caused the alarm to go off every time someone walked past it. They have disabled the alarm as it probably needs resetting:

Motion detector next to front door

Alarm controller with new panic button (yellow) fitted properly

The new fuseboard. along with earth wires to gas and to water pipes:

Nice fuseboard

Fuseboard cupboard

Apparently there are some wires around the alarm area that do not have the correct type of insulation (I am not sure what the word for this was) that the electrician was not too happy about. He will contact us to talk about it.

The electricians have removed the light at the bottom of the stairs and replaced with a simple light. You can also see the ceiling has been plastered in the stairwell:

The plasterer at work at the top of the stairs. He has said he has done the hardest bits in there now:

Bedroom 1 ;beginning to dry up and all the equipment: 

The plasterer uses ready made plaster and mixes with water

Kitchen

They have wired in the extraction fan, so that is proper now.

Here are the sockets then.

A double socket to the left of the cooker (was already there):

A single socket/cooker switch that is new:

The sockets above the dishwasher unit/to the right of the sink. We have discovered the function of the unknown plug (in white) :

White plug connects to socket in pic below

The plug in pic above is basically an extension cable to the single socket that was on the left of the sink (that connected to the water pump,, pic below). They have replaced single socket with double socket, but weren't too pleased with how it was connected up to other socket, but without taking apart kitchen it is hard to rectify... (Hard to explain this).

Socket on the left that connects to plug above

Bedroom 2

The plasterer has filled in the chases:

Outside

The electrician has connected the outdoor socket to the inside plug (I think):

I think that is all for today.... 

Plasterer was busy at work when I left him at 6pm so he will be there again tomorrow.

The electricians have now finished the jobs from the initial list.

Day 21 More electrics & plastering

Where to start....  From the bottom....

Lounge - plastering 
Andy has scraped off all the wallpaper from the other 2 walls in the lounge so it is ready for the plasterer. 

Before-after shot of the radiator wall (we have removed the bookcase/radiator cover, not sure whether to replace.... 

Slight issue was when the plasterer tried to take the radiator off, the radiator knob broke off. Luckily he has a plumber friend who will come on Friday to replace the knob:

Andy tried using some foam filler yesterday to even out the plasterboard on the fireplace, sadly it didn't work so we have lost that plasterboard. You can see some really really old wallpaper under there:

The plasterer will add new plasterboard and skim over with plaster. Before-after shot of fireplace:

Kitchen Electrics
The cooker cable is in:

As is the socket and cable going up to the first floor - had to run in under floorboards through bedroom 3 (so floors were lifted in there): 

Dishwasher socket is also in:

An after-before shot:

The dodgy extraction fan hood situation is gone, but new socket will still be needed:

New socket above dishwasher (although still need to investigate what the plug is??!):

Hall plastering
The plasterer was very busy at work when I got there at 5pm manually scraping back the artex - a really really tough job, he has worked so hard. This is done and will be ready for skimming over:

Electrics - getting the bonding cable from the fuseboard to the downstairs loo via the bathroom and bedroom 2. All the cables run in the floor of the 1st floor, so to get to the downstairs loo and install the bonding for the water they have to go up, under the floor and then back down. A bit of a job as they have to go under the floor in the bathroom. 

And bedroom 2 where they have lifted the floor boards to run the cable:

Bedroom 1 plastering
Is now complete! Looks pretty decent:

Some before-after shots:

Flooring samples
We will need to seriously start deciding as will need new floors, definitely in the bedroom and most likely in the downstairs area. Here are 3 options, all engineered wood

Top one: Engineered European Oak 3strip lacquer, £18 per m2
Middle one: Engineered European Oak Natural oil brushed, £27.50 per m2
Bottom one: Engineered European oak flooring lacquer, £26 per m2

Area for bedroom approx 3.64 x 3.65 = 13.3m2
Area for lounge approx 4.86 x 3.65 = 18m2
Area for entrance hall approx 1.8 x 3.98 = 7.2m2
Area for bottom of stairs approx 1.96 x 1 = 2m2

Thinking either middle/bottom for bedroom 1 = 13.3 x 26 = £345
Thinking top one for lounge/entrance hall = 27.2 x 18 = £489.6

Plus some costs for underlay and scotia....


Tomorrow: Plasterer will get on with more plastering (from what he said he wants to be finished by Saturday).

Electrician coming in early tomorrow (as he started at 11am and clocked off at 4p). Electrician needs to sort out bonding for water, bonding for gas, fuseboard, extraction fan hood, refix panic button/motion detector in hall, loft light and switch. 
We need to email the boss and get him to tell his employees to also look at weird plug in kitchen and the single socket, want the downstairs hall light fitting replaced with a simple pendant, and Andy suggested we get him to fix an outdoor socket for the lawnmower (run cable through the hole in the utility room). 

Day 20 Electrics & plastering

So much progress is just 2 days!

We had 1 plasterer, 2 electricians, and 1 Andy (who equals a million people)!

Lounge - plastering 
Urmmmmm, So it turns out we are redoing the lounge as well, this wasn't our initial plan but the plasterer asked if we wanted to do it, so here we are!
Andy has scraped all the wallpaper off and removed the fireplace completely so that he gets the wall ready for the plasterer. This was a huge job as you can see: 

Before

After - outside wall

Wall between lounge and kitchen

The fireplace is resting in the shed for the time being:

Before - the board over the chimney is plasterboard so it can be replastered

After, apparently the bit in red cannot be replastered as it is not plasterboard, so we will have to paint over the wallpaper

There was a vent (hidden under the wallpaper) on the left of the pic above which Andy has sealed up ready for the plasterer to do the walls.

Lounge - electrics
We also have new sockets in here:

New sockets on wall between lounge & kitchen

New sockets on wall between hall & lounge

Kitchen - electrics
So the cabling is in place for the cooker - just needs to be wired in:

Entrance hall  - electrics

They have yet to replace the fuseboard. But, we have a new fused plug for the lights in the hall:

Before - the plug was for the lights in the hall

After, new set up

 The electricians have switched off the electrics upstairs so photos are in the dark.

Entrance hall - plastering
The plasterer is preparing and scraping back the artex on the landing, a big job.

He has removed the shrine!

Top of the stairs - lots of scraping 

Bedroom 1 - plasterer & electrics

You can also see the new socket at the bottom

We have a modified vent in the bedroom: 

Plasterer has made the vent smaller

A brand new ceiling: 

Andy said the plasterer is really meticulous

What is missing in this photo? 

He has taken off the radiator!!! 

The electrician has added 2 double sockets around the bed:

The plasterer had troubles with this wall (below) as he added the glue/bonding and it bubbled. Apparently this might be because of the orange paint so he had to work really hard to scrub back the paint to the wall and start again. 

 

Sockets and scrubbed back wall in bedroom 1

The electrician lifted up the floorboards in the bedroom (1) entrance from the landing: 

Bedroom 2 electrics - they have chased in the cables:

Before

After - chased in alarm electric cable

After - chased in light switch cable

A huge amount of progress and lots of work has been done by Andy, the plasterer and the electricians. 

Tomorrow the electricians are coming at 11am. The plasterer is coming early in the morning to continue.