ollibees

Rain = Tarps

• By Julia Pankratova
• 2013, 30 July
• No Comments

There is nothing like killing creativity and inspiration than a blog post that gets lost in cyber space!

This is my second attempt to write this same post after the first draft mysteriously vanished without a trace (pressing “Save Draft” button would have helped enormously). It can be nothing like the first draft, should I have tried to recreate it. So I won’t even bother.

What a week and a half it has been across the board – house-build and work included! Successes and failures, feelings of elation and frustration, drinking to celebrate and drinking to forget (none of this lot was mentioned in the first draft!). All in all, we are still here, still going about our lives, still on top form with the house and still forever in love. And that’s all that matters!

The heat wave we had recently was great for stripy tans, veg at the allotment and the roof build. The blessings have been counted. It was not however all that good for the men on site or the neighbours’ lawns, which look brunt out, yellow and super thirsty!

Past weekend’s rain and wind really caught us out to say the least! (Allegedly we are meant to have the heat wave until mid-August!!!) Covering the roof with four 9 x 7 m tarpaulins is not an easy task. Doing same job having just learnt about the latest rain forecast, after a day’s work, on an empty stomach, on a Friday night, in the dark – makes it less easy still! Holding flapping-in-your-face tarps with one hand whilst trying to pin them down with batons and screws with the other in impossible-to-reach places makes the task an MI4 (Mission Impossible sequence continues)! It took Malc and me two hours to get the roof semi-waterproof. I would not recommend anyone to endeavour on this adventure unless absolutely sure in their relationship! 🙂 The lesson we learnt is to build the roof quicker and / or build the roof smaller and / or use smaller tarps.

On Saturday morning we woke up to a giant blue flapping, gaping monster. We were lucky all four tarps were still affixed to the roof so we didn’t have to go looking for them all over Olivers Battery and the golf course.

On a separate note, our first set of windows and bi-folds was installed last week. We decided to go with Kloeber after some painstaking research, many showroom visits and numerous quotes. The overall “package” felt right : the product, the price and the right people. We went for triple-glazed aluminium-framed bi-folds and windows, based on the U-values and build quality. The 3-man installation team took two days to do the job to a high standard without any grumbles-mumbles. They even installed a window in our not-yet-built master bedroom dormer. It represented a stand-alone giant glazed screen on top of our roof, to much amusement of our neighbours I am sure. The sales team are the patience itself too. The number of times we revisited our quotes begs belief. Yet they are still there to offer friendly advice every time!

Eastleigh’s Travis Perkins team are also a gem. Friendly, helpful and super creative in finding alternative solutions where needed. Having a cash account with them saved us so far quite a few quid on materials and tool hire. The more we spend, the more we save. And they beat anyone else’s quote to win the business whenever we ask. We like them 🙂

Velux UK, to our nice surprise, was also super fast to respond and spec out our requirement. TP Eastleigh won the sale in the end based on the above-mentioned reasons and we had our first two Velux windows (out of the total of seven) delivered last week.

One thing we do seem to struggle with at the moment is getting quotes for the roofing slate :(. The Welsh mines have either enough business not to bother with us, or they just really struggle with my accent (spoken or written :))! Numerous phone calls and emails later, I am still non-the-wiser as to what and how much of it we need to cover our roof!

Otherwise, the overall progress is good. All roof rafters are in place and the dormer window is complete. Malc and the guys have made a good start on insulating the warmroof with the first layer of Celotex. Judging by today’s progress, it will take them the rest of the week to complete the insulation and waterproofing, before we can move onto the rest of the house.

The living room floor has now been temporarily floored, which allowed to get the feel of what it will eventually be like. The floor is yet to go up to install our “home-designed” underfloor heating system.

Outside, the only change is the lawn, which is getting greener and lusher by day and is in need of mowing! The lawn mower has now been purchased on Amazon, subject to the unpredictable delivery dates the free Super Saver Delivery service has got to offer.

This is a completely different post to the one I wrote earlier, yet, it is still readable… provided you digested as much cider to read it as I had to write it! 🙂