Ripping out a staircase

Next on the massive list of things to do is remove and replace the old staircase. I know I have posted several times on the blog about how much money the house is costing us and being first time buyers haven't taken on our first project lightly, but we want a safe house and some things just have to tip our budget over the edge.

Since moving in I have tripped up the stairs several times, the stairs are narrow and steep and both myself and my partner are tall and have feet on the rather large side so replacing the stairs was always a priority for us, especially after I face planted the top step!

Wanting to modernize the house and utilize all the space possible, we decided to not only remove the old stairs but to also change their layout and to come down from the opposite side, with a quarter turn at the bottom meaning the stairs could be wider and less steep whilst utilizing the same space.

The old staircase is ready for removal, the cupboard under the stairs removed and the top step detached ready for removal.

EDF energy reconnect our home

When we moved into our new home one of the first things that we knew needed doing was the electrics. The house was built in the 1930's and i don't think the electrics had been looked at since then. Shockingly there wasn't even a fuse board anywhere in the house, I'm not quite sure if i was the previous rented tenant i would be too happy living like that but as the new owners we want everything safe and so got the electricity board to come around and help us out.

With the mains turned off to the property the old electrics was kind of condemned, we were set up with a temporary safe supply until they could come back and run a more permanent supply.

In the mean time we had an electrician around who started running all the new wiring, you can see in the above image the old wiring painted to the walls with the new wiring in place ready to be connected.

We now have not only shiny safe new wiring, but also a shiny new fuse board :@)

A new roof on our Cornish House.

With bad weather holding us back we are finally given a dry day to get back out and work on the roof. In the above picture you can see the final beams in place ready to cover and get roofing tiles. Unfortunately there are only so many jobs my lovely boyfriend can do himself and laying the roof tiles is slightly out of his skill set so although he did the majority himself we had to get the professionals in to finish the job for us. 

It might be late and now dark but here is the very nearly finished roof. Need to work on the render around the edge but at least we are water tight and hopefully a little warmer. It's another job ticked off the massive ever growing list, and a job we hadn't realized we needed to do. Hopefully there aren't to many more expensive surprises for us!

Why do we get torrential rain when we have no roof?

We should have realized that a whole day in the dry with no rain was too good to be true and in true Cornish style today is wet. Very wet! Waking to find water pretty much everywhere is not a good way to start the morning, See below the little outhouse for our gas bottles under about 3inches of water. 

With all hands on deck we tried to sweep as much water away into the drain as possible to stop the water ingres into the house.

With the water steadily pouring outside, that means that the water is steadily pouring inside. Here water is coming through the kitchen cupboards.

The worst area for leaking was around the chimney were the roof was removed, here the water was literally running down the walls.

As the night drew to a close the water started filling up in the porch. Hopefully the next day working on the roof is a little dryer and we can get the roof finished and get the house dry.

New roof to our new home

With a bright sunny day it's time to start attacking the rotten roof, the roof we have since found out that is built from several layers of roof. You can see in the picture below just how rotten the roof was. 

Striping off the roof tiles and beams 

It was quite an apocalyptic sight seeing my kitchen without a roof, the kitchen isn't great anyway and the plan is to replace the new kitchen once the roof is repaired and the room actually dry but here i really felt like there wasn't even much of a house to live in anymore.

You can see on the below image the scarring left on the wall from the additional roofs that had been built over the top of each other. Hopefully now we will just put the one roof back on and this time it will be done properly, with real roofing materials and not a wardrobe panel in sight!

The new beams are being cut into the roof.

With the night drawing in it was time to stop the roof build for the day, with some roofing felt an a few beams in place we were relatively dry for the night and will continue the rest of the roof ripping it off and repairing it tomorrow. 

We have finally got an internet conection

Today is a very important day, a day where BT finally come and connect us a phone line and get us set up with a land line telephone number and most importantly the internet. You'd think that when it comes to installing new lines and signing up new customers they would be straight around and get us connected so that they can start charging us bills. But after 5 weeks of waiting we finally have an appointment with an engineer to come and connect us. 

Happily I can now blog more, shop more, watch TV online and do all the things online like internet banking that you take for granted until the internet has gone. 

Although no one has our new telephone number yet and the only people to ring are wrong numbers but i'm sure that will soon change!

Lean To glass roof uncovered.

After pulling down the plaster board from the kitchen ceiling we uncovered the most weird botched up ceiling and roof we had ever seen. Underneath the plaster board was a glass lean to styled roof. This was then boarded over with wardrobe panels. Including door fittings in some places. This was then covered again with roofing tiles. Removing each layer of roof carefully and filling up another skip we could finally access the roof and put on a new roof. This time with just the one layer and not 4!!!! 

I dunno what the Cornish do when building houses but the guy that put this together was... lets just say resourceful to say the least! Our roof is now being rebuild using timbers and slates and not a wardrobe door in sight!

Plaster boarded ceilings

Now that the front room is repaired and the wiring put in place the battens have gone up and the insulation in place this can all be hidden by shiny new plaster board. 

Now I know these pictures are extremely boring, but to me this is quite a momentousness occasion where all the months of ripping stuff down and tearing stuff out we finally start putting some rooms back together. I know we are a long way off but this is keeping me happy for the time being. 

You can see the dining room in the distance starting to get insulation so this will be next to get the finishing treatment.

How to cure a damp roof

So when I say how to cure a damp roof, I actually mean rip the old roof out and start again. When we moved into the house it didn't look to bad, but this was the appearance of plasterboard and a lick of paint. Once the old plaster board was ripped down we uncovered not just damp but soaked wooden ceiling boards. This hopefully is the rest of the reason for the damp smell throughout the house. 

After seeing just how much water was coming through the roof, and seeing how the roof was 'botched' together the only decision was to replace the whole roof. Now to start removing all the rotten wooden beams and replacing with fresh beams and a watertight roof.

Ripping out the old kitchen

Next on the massive list of jobs to do was to rip out the old kitchen. The whole kitchen area currently sits at a lower level then the outside patio and this has resulted in years of water entering the property.

When we received the keys to our new house the first thing you noticed was the rotting smell of damp throughout. Now it has become clear why this is and where it is coming from, Through a combination of water entering the building from below and the roof that leaks in several places above. Ripping out the kitchen was a really satisfying experience the more that got ripped out the less prominent the smell. Although some of the mustiness is still present we are hoping to uncover and remove that soon. 

With the kitchen units being removed we are having to make do with a painting and decorating table for a kitchen work top.

The kitchen looking really sorry for itself, but I guess we have to make a mess before we can make it nice again.