Ali and Dave's DIY Adventure

Extra Help on Hand

We have a new member of the renovation team!

Freya Lily Hartley was born at 00:35h on Wednesday morning, weighing in at a sizeable 9lb13.

Alison and her are both doing very well, they had 2 nights in hospital together and everybody had their first night in the new loft rooms yesterday.

I feel that general house progress may slow down now, but that's just fine with us...

posted by Ali & Dave @ 11:50 am 7 comments

Just in Time Deliveries

Hartley junior was due over a week ago - luckily delivery is running a little bit late which has meant that we have managed to squeeze in some essential tasks in advance of our meet & greet.

Despite upping the uselessness stakes ILVA finally managed to deliver our bed after a week of calling them twice daily to ensure progress. Alison was especially pleased that she could unleash her 'home staging' skills, observe the artistic arrangement of pillows. A comfortableness test was in order too... We can now move up to the loft room finally, we'll wait until baby arrives then move up en masse.




Not every company is useless however - we destroyed our Dyson by vacuuming nails and masses of ultra find brick dust, they came and out and serviced it. For £55 (on time) they replaced the motor, the brush, drive belt, all the seals, the filters, a pipe and updated the cyclone assembly. Very impressed as we were expecting to have to buy a new one, it's better than new now.



The kitchen doors were delivered last week, we had our builder Alan around to help with the installation this week. Unfortunately there were no instructions so we stalled half way through after getting the frame and sill installed. After a quick conversation with the manufacturers they assured me that 'drilling a few holes and whacking in some self-tapping screws' was the correct way to proceed. Not the scientific answer I was expecting, but they were all hidden out of sight. I was able to finish getting them fitted today (Saturday) after much faffing about. Alison was on hand to ensure that the glass panels didn't end up in pieces during installation. It will be some time before we get the garden renovated, but we'll construct a deck so you can step out of the kitchen into the outside at the same level. Before and after (though not quite finished yet) below:

Another last minute delivery (or take away to be precise) was the 3rd visit of the grab man to remove the last of the soil. We've had nearly 30 tons of soil carted away now and there's plenty to get rid of at the back as well, an unbudgeted cost! After smashing up a few of the old tiles liberated by the loft conversion, we were able to get our car on for the first time. Not exactly a neat solution, but much safer than crossing the road all the time.

posted by Ali & Dave @ 7:31 pm 1 comments