Hurricanes, floors and camping

Our temporary kitchen was made possible by the existing yet hidden plumbing from the old apartment number 2. If you have to camp upstairs it’s good to have a working sink and dishwasher. As you can see the wall is still ‘distressed’, I quite like it, but I’m told in no uncertain terms, “you’re dreaming”. We are shy a cooker, which will lead to some inventive hot plate and microwave magic, and/or time to explore the takeaway cuisine of Cork city. Sure it’s winter soon, you need padding for the cold.

Luckily the sojourn to West Cork fell during midterm so the kids and Daisy enjoyed their time away – lots of nice weather and plenty of long beach walks. Oh there was a hurricane also.

Ophelia has meant we need a new roof also. Lots of slates gone and the rest fairly loose, so once the electricity people come and insulate wires to facilitate scaffolding then we are into an unexpected stage two of our build.

The plumber is brilliant, he has doubled our water pressure and ensured hot showers that don’t stop working whenever anyone flushes a toilet.

The downstairs has been transformed by taking out the separating wall, we now have glorious light flooding into what will be the kitchen and was previously horribly dark all day long.

Today the plasterers are on the job, the awful artex ceiling has been slabbed and ready for their touch. The back return has been fully insulated and will be plastered also.

We decided to open up the downstairs fireplace and future proof it for a stove by getting the chimney lined when they are doing the roof.

The wood floor downstairs will not go back down again, while being from the early 1900s and wanting to keep as much of the original building as possible, it wasn’t high quality and suffered a lot when coming up. So we sourced some salvage pitch pine board that have been re-milled. It’s beautiful. It will be laid over the two main downstairs rooms, the back return will, we are hoping be polished concrete.

The wiring is in for the Everhot range, but looks awful surface mounted, so I am getting it chased back into the wall. We have pretty much a good idea of units for the kitchen and scullery, I fear a trip to IKEA is beckoning, but we may use the wood from the original front floor to make the cabinet doors. Watch this space as they say.

It’s all progressing very quickly now yet we are getting that ‘can we have our house back’ anxiety that comes with any home build.

Work has started

The problem with recessions is that they end. And the correlation to recovery is the decrease in the availability of builders and tradesmen. I quote the plumber who did our boilers when we moved in and I was able to get on the phone after weeks of trying, “Fiacre Boy, people have money again and they’re spending it.

So to cut a long boring 6 tenders, two submissions, huge price tag, reduced scale of build, another quote, still too much, story short. We have at last got a builder to dig out the ground floor, take out a wall and a window and give us somewhere to put our everhot range which is due in mid November. The people at Browsers and Everhot are very flexible and understanding in their delivery, as we’ve changed the date a few times now.

The plumber, a new one, has deemed the gas pipes need replacing so we are decamping to west cork for a couple of weeks.

The joy of finally getting underway is immeasurable. The new light which now floods into what will be our new kitchen reflects my mood. The Job is finally underway, hurrah!

Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight

A thing of beauty, yet no way to anchor it to the ground. Auction time came around again, Danielle wanted this loo, unfortunately I fancied its future was as an extravagant flower pot so declined

We are awaiting the builder to get back to us with the final quotation to do our much paired down design excellently supplied by KOTA architects. The first quote was for a little under what the house cost us! We have, therefore, cut our cloth to suit our pocket. 

Our raised terrace site is one of the reasons we bought the house, yet is also why the costs of building are so expensive. ‘Access is a bitch here’ as it was more bluntly explained to me by a visiting opinion giver. No shit Cumberbatch!

A full school year into the house, the kids are on holiday and we are little further in our renovations. Gone are all the vast swathes of wallpaper, leaving our walls a bespeckled landscape of ancient flakey Victorian paint. Thankfully the slow unpeeling has not uncovered the feared evidence of subsidence, dry rot nor rising damp. We have a dry  sound box to play with for the foreseeable future. 

Really excited about our everhot range centrepiece which is, as I write,  being made near Dursley in the old wool heartland of the south Cotswold valleys.  It will wing it’s way to the lovely people in Browsers in Limerick who will hold it until we are ready for installation. It’s an extravagance which I’m willing to bet will reap its rewards as the heart of our new home. Growing up,  one of my best friends had a range in their kitchen. It was one of the most welcoming homes, we all loved hanging out there. I have hopes it will be the same for my kids and their friends. I may of course live to regret these words but I hope not. A home full of people comfortable in their welcome is one of our main intents.

So a delayed decamp to West Cork is next up once we agree a figure and a schedule with our builders. I have been beavering away at little jobs to reduce the cost of preliminaries but nothing of note to report. I suspect the blog will be more populated with DIY reports when we re-inhabit. 

Wallpaper

It’s there for a reason and probably not the one you’d think. 

 Time moves slowly in the world of old home restoration. The work which I am going to do myself was put on hold until we knew what the final design was going to be and I knew I wasn’t going to waste my time doing a job that the builder was going to destroy or render irrelevant. 

So it is now the end of May and  we have submitted a second scope to a builder for a quote. Since the first quotes were coming in at twice the cost we envisaged. We would have ended up with a wonderful house which cost way, way more than it was worth. 

So we have reduced the ambition of the job, while increasing the amount of work we have to do ourselves. 

So, wall paper is onion skin which you painstakingly remove layer by layer until you reach flakey paint on top of old plaster, holes, cracks, new plaster on top of old wallpaper and so on.  Most people probably give up and just apply a new wallpaper over all the shite, pray it stays on until they can sell the problem to someone else.

So like an old car, an old house is a huge collection of previous owners problems that have been variously covered up with wall paper, tiles, and carpets. 

But on the plus side, railings wirebrushed and painted come up very nicely. 

First world problems

stuff awaiting integration, metaphor for a Dub in Cork

now integrated but in a temporary way

I have to wash the dishes and can’t wash the clothes. We have crocs distributed around the house so avoid snagging bare feet on the odd nail or screw in the woodwork. Our fridge is tiny with no freezer so I have to shop every day. I spend an inordinate amount of time on the phone trying to get things done. the temperature has dropped in the last few days, and I have no stove, so will have to put on the central heating. Not really anything to lose sleep over in our very comfy bed! A load of small potatoes. 
Washing machine, drier, dishwasher, and clothes horse are in-situe (note: don’t buy an integrated dishwasher if you aren’t going to integrate it straight away #door won’t stay open.) Man coming today to fix the rear leg, so yet again prisoner to a technician’s timetable. 

TV and cable, broadband and landline up and running. 

nice original victorian tiles and floor boards

Now the surroundings are a bit bare, yet hardly Spartan. 
So to renovation, well I drilled a hole in a wooden counter top for three plugs needing to access sockets . I angle grinded a lock off the bathroom door to allow access from the stairs and not just the Heath Robinson corridor add on to the back of the building, more of anon. I set up an alarm system then dismantled it and returned it to Maplins. They were brilliant, it was the eir modem it wouldn’t work with. 

I put together another Kallex shelving unit. I bought a doormat. I put up some kitchen cabinets cannibalized from what used to be a one of the apartment kitchens. 
Alphie went to the Circus with the parents of a class mate, really nice welcoming thing for them to do. He was, needless to say, delighted. 

Rosie is already throwing out Irish like a native, well almost, she was able to tell me loads of colors today. 

new school , new haircut

the smell from that bridge behind is wicked

Both of them get ‘obair bhaile’ , so now I really have to learn Irish to be able to help. South county Dublin school Irish is, for the first time in it’s life, being pushed to breaking strain and beyond. Thanks to the Duolingo App, I am struggling but just keeping up. 

Parenting note, there is nothing more pain in the arsey than getting two little kids dressed in uniforms in the morning. And I thought once choice had been taken out of the equation it would be easier. Eh! ..no. 

New home, new school, new city

The biggest shock of moving to Cork is how easy I have found the transition. In Ireland, I have lived in the southside Dublin burbs of Dalkey, Donnybrook, and Killiney, Then we moved as far from city or burb living as you can get to Ardfield in West Cork. So now for the first time I am living in a city, 10 minutes walk from the center. 

The view from Dalkey Island of where my family house used to be, now a building site for what I hope is a fitting replacement for my fathers modernist 1950’s design.

cork house

So far the focus has been on getting us set up in the house, but I am really looking forward to getting out and exploring. I do know where my closest petrol station is, how to get to Maplins, Argos, B&Q, Tesco and Aldi, all the greats. I know the quickest route to walk and drive to the kids school. And I know the route to the dump – essential when ripping as much crap out of a house as I have been doing. 
Alphie and Rosie have settled in with ease, both loving their ‘huge’ new house, new bunks beds, and in the absence of a tv, they have discovered the joy of RTE Jr radio. However, I broke yesterday and went out and bought a new set, I was missing bake off!

As for the house, the central heating has been rationalized from three separate boilers into one system. I now have one electricity meter instead of 4. All the plugs and lights are working. 

first floor

We now have bare wooden floors all the carpets removed, except for the stairs and the second floor. 
We have been shopping. IKEA’s delivery men hate us, when I bade him farewell with a “see you next summer with the kitchen” I think I heard a muttered “Fuck off”. We have got lots of rugs, a new sofa and armchair, a TV for dad. A washing machine, drier and dishwasher are arriving next Thursday. We are using Kallax storage units for all kitchen stuff.

So far, the camping is working fine, we are off down to Clon soon to fill up the car with clothes and Lego, Al has insisted. 
So, no real renovation has occurred yet, we are still getting used to just being in a new place. Once everyone is in a happy routine we will begin. Firstly prioritizing what we can do ourselves and what we will have to wait till next summer for the builders to do. 
Both the plumber and the electrician I got were excellent. I will give their contact details to anyone in the Cork area if asked. 

men at work

As for the kids, they are giving me a belly laugh every day. This was predicted and promised to many years ago me by Con, a teacher friend from the now gone Dublin School of English. When he heard we were expecting Alphie, this was the wisdom pearl he gifted me. And it’s true I have a genuine out loud belly laugh everyday, I could not ask for any more than that.

Distressed

While the children are raring to go to their first day at an scoil nua. The distressed bedroom wall look is so in vogue! With a hint of Tracey Emin thrown in. 

Sparks and gas

We have to move in before the end of the month as that’s when the kids school starts. First things first, the house is in three apartments, with three separate gas meters and three separate e…

Source: Sparks and gas

Sparks and gas

We have to move in before the end of the month as that’s when the kids school starts.

First things first, the house is in three apartments, with three separate gas meters and three separate electricity meters. That’s easy to rationalise, you would think.

Alphie here is standing on the first thing we fell in love with in the house, the victorian tiled hallway. To his right is the enormous meter box, the fire alarm and two other metal boxes which I’m sure are important.

The mail detritus on the rad and the floor are mainly from Irish water looking for money. There are also copious bills form other services demanding payment for the previous tenants. All to be filed under bin.

So I have put all the electric meters in my name and am waiting for them to transfer from various companies to the one I’ve chosen before I can request the ESB to shut off and remove all but one. Gas networks Ireland have locked two of the gas meters and I am awaiting a crew to come and upgrade and connect the one we will be using.

On Tuesday next we have a plumber in for the week to set up our central heating and water supply.

At the moment we have three kitchens and three boilers, and a lot of unwanted tiles.

We also had two sofas, an arm chair and some horrible carpets but thanks to Armenia that changed last week.

We put the sofas up on Adverts.ie and a wonderful Armenian and his mates, with a line in Corkisms “Ah sure, we’ll take the carpets too, Boy”, took care of all the above. There’s one more armchair on the top floor if anyone is interested.

The next challenge and huge surprise was the tiles.

Are we fecking mad?

So last week we got the keys on our new house in Cork City. What follows will be a narration of it’s transformation from a three apartment victorian/edwardian terrace house into our family home.

So if any of you who are thinking about buying a house are wondering how long the process takes then take heed, our bid was accepted in March. It has taken 4 months since sale agreed to us closing the deal and getting the keys. In a word, nightmare.

Anyhow, more about that later, here is what it looks like, we are very excited.