A long overdue update

Firstly, sorry for the delay since the last update but I've been busy at work of late and haven't spent much time outside of that on the PC. We have been making progress though since I last posted though.
As I was talking about tiling on that last occasion, here's what has developed on that front.

This is the kitchen detail prior to the grouting which was completed shortly after in ivory.

The bathroom tiling is also now completed following the protracted delays in getting the tiles shipped.



Here you can see the mosaic splash back in the bathroom that runs from floor to ceiling. The rest of the bathroom is just tiled plain with these tiles.

This room is more or less complete now, just needs a floor laid and the skirtings back on.

Next update, hopefully tomorrow, will be about fireplaces..

Until then...

Tesselations

Quick update -
Tiler has now finished the ensuites front and back and they now need painting.

He was nearly finished on the kitchen last night when he ran out of tiles. Unfortunately, these tiles originally took about 10 days to order so I am going to have to put some pressure on the tile place today to get some as soon as possible.

The bathroom tiles STILL haven't showed up although they are saying they will be in on Monday....I'll be greatly angered if they aren't as the tiler is waiting on them and we may lose him to another job if they don't turn up soon.

The bathroom taps would appear to have a solution in the form of replacing the quarter turn spindle inside the taps with a regular turn affair. This should hopefully increase the throughput on the taps whilst maintaining their outward appearance which is a win-win for all !

No more painting done since the first coat went on that front room. I intend to push on with that this coming week after I finish my round of shifts.

On a separate note, thanks to everyone who sent gifts, cards or well wishes for my birthday this week. I had a most agreeable time (followed by a not-so-agreeable morning-after but hey, I didn't get any younger !)

You can see some of the results from my new lens and other stuff on flickr which is linked up ----^ there somewhere.

I'll try and post some pictures of the tiling efforts just as soon as I take some !

All the best
Pete

It's been a while

Well a Happy New Year for those that I haven't spoken to recently....

It's been quite a while since we updated this blog as there hasn't really been a great deal happening over the Christmas period. Since then though, things have started moving again now that we're into the New Year (and the builder is obviously keen to complete sooner rather than later).
First off we went through the snagging list with the builder just after Christmas and whilst there wasn't a great deal to do on that front, most of them have now been completed, so there's just a few things left for them to polish off.

January has seen us picking and buying tiles for the en-suites, bathroom and kitchen. These are the wall tiles rather than floor tiles which are going to come later.

For the en-suites we have opted for some called Esmira Blanco which are a kind of off white. This is going to be for two walls in each en-suite with the remaining two walls being painted.

The bathroom is going to be cream tiles with a brown mosaic, floor to ceiling, splashback behind the sink.

For the kitchen, we hunted further afield as it seems to be harder to find nice kitchen tiles locally here. We've opted for a green and cream chessboard style marble tiling job.

Right now the tiler is in working on the en-suites as these are the only tiles the places had in stock at the time of ordering. We are awaiting a second delivery of tiles early next week.

I have also now started painting the interior walls. We have opted for simple magnolia for much of downstairs so I have bought a couple of 10l tins of paint and all the necessary tools to get to work. The family room on the front was the first target which was started on Tuesday night.




This is the first lick of paint to be applied to the house internally. (the wires you see are for wall lights)
Shortly after -


The first wall was finished. It seems I started on the easiest wall in the room ! The rest took significantly longer and it was around midnight by the time I'd finished and cleaned up.



This is my first attempt at videoing, uploading to youtube and then embedding in blogger so bear with me if this doesn't work right.

I had intended to do some more tonight (painting not embedding) but I have contracted the cold from Sophie & Erin so am feeling under the weather today and will likely give it a miss, continuing next week.

Furthermore, we were in the solicitors on Wednesday signing more paperwork and he reckons we could be looking to complete in a couple of weeks when we can really get started on the rest of the stuff that needs completing.

I will try and get back into the habit of updating now we are getting stuff going again.

All the best for the New Year to all (even if it's a bit belated).

Getting there....

Ok, so now we're getting somewhere close to finishing the build before the house is "handed over" as it were.

The kitchen is more or less complete, the plumbing work appears to have been completed, most of the internal woodwork has been done. There's still a number of jobs around the place that need sorting out but soon it will be down to us to start decorating from top to bottom (and slightly beyond).

So on to the latest pictures-
Here's the view that greets you as you come in the door -


This will be wooden floor by the time we've finished. You can also see the sink in the downstairs cloakroom from here. Moving in through the doorway you can just see on the right into the larger, more formal lounge


This has been massively cleaned up since the last time I was there as this room seemed to be the storeroom for all the stuff that was going in, coming out and being chopped up. You can still see that there's some things lying around; the brown box is the shower doors for the master ensuite.
The fireplace has been picked out and will be in fairly dark wood. I will try and find an example picture for next time.
Over the other side of the house, we have the conservatory (which some are trying to denounce as a conservatory due to it's lack of a glass roof, but that's what it says on the plans!) -

The garden as you can see is still a large mud pit but there are some signs of grass trying to break through....
Turning around and back into the kitchen -
We can see that we now have a nice shiny new oven and hob -



Moving upstairs, and we can see the main bathroom has now been put in -



With a close up detail of the taps on the bath -

You can see the detachable shower head on the left with the retractable cord going behind the bath to keep things tidy.

Finally, when you live too far away from the local Eircom telephone exchange, in order to get broadband you need to live within direct line of sight to a transmitter and get yourself one of these...

Then you can get 3Mb broadband from these guys - http://www.nwewn.com
Happy days !

Right, that's me for now, we'll let you know when we are ready to hand over and the place actually becomes ours ....
Byeee....
(ps more photo's of us on flickr (link to the right) notably of us dressed up for a Christmas ball!)

Kitchen & Bathroom special edition.

As promised in the last post, we now have some internal shots of things as they are progressing. Starting off upstairs (or as was the case when these were taken last week - upladders).
There's still no main bathroom stuff in yet, so we start with the guest en suite -



A regular shower in a 800mm square tray with WC and sink, fairly standard stuff for the en suite that will be used the least.
Moving onto our own en suite -


Same WC and sink in here (they were on special offer) but this time there's a bigger 1000mm quadrant shower enclosure with an electric Triton T90xr shower
The shower doors themselves won't go on until the tiling is complete around the showers.
Lighting in both these en suites will be recessed spots.

Now then, moving downstairs, and today we can actually call them stairs as I came across the stair fitters this morning putting in the staircase which they reckon will be done by the end of the week!
To the kitchen -

This has only just started to go in this week and as such just the carcass is in so far here with the countertop.
Going from left to right -
- A shelf unit with cupboard space under
- Full height pull out larder
- Eye level Oven unit with cupboard space above and below
- Cupboard space under counter with glass display units above.
- Draw space inc. cutlery under counter with hob to go into counter and Stainless steel hood above
- "Magic Corner" under counter to utilise otherwise wasted corner space and another glass display unit above.
- Corner unit above counter around to open shelves (I think will be at least)
- Single cupboard under counter
- Double cupboard under 1 + 1/2 bowl sink with drainer under window.
- Space for dishwasher under counter
- Space for Tall fridge freezer out of shot to the right.

Then there's the door through to the utility room -

In here we've just got a double cupboard in the middle under a single sink.
Each side of this is space for the washing machine and tumble dryer
Above is another double cupboard.
The reason there's doors in here is that they are just PVC finished doors whereas the main part of the kitchen will have painted solid wood doors with the same finish.

The counter top can be seen in more detail here -

Hopefully the oven and hob will be delivered out to the house this week. The Kitchen guys will be finishing off then the rest of this week and early next week apparently.

The bathroom stuff might've been pending the stairs going in, (wouldn't fancy lugging a 2m long bath up a ladder!) so I have to chase that one this week.

The next piece maybe the fires which have been picked out but not bought yet.

On the outside, they've finished the perimeter fence, smoothed out the topsoil that had been laid and created a driveway. The site road is more complete now also so you get a nice effect driving up to the house, and up the driveway !!

I'll try to get some more pictures of the completed kitchen shortly.

Take care,
Pete

Nice day on site

It's mostly pictures this time to show. As the external paint job is about 99% finished here's how it's looking....


This is the view from the corner of the front garden, the guy emerging from the earth is just some guy working on the grounds.
Far left you'll see the green oil tank that's just gone in. This fuels the boiler around the back which we can see in the next picture -

The silver box to the left of the downpipe and under the utility room window is the Cosyman 90/120 oil boiler manufactured by Gerkros providing central heating. Remember there is no mains supplied gas in Ireland so fuel needs to come from some other source and in 90% of the homes in Ireland that source is Kerosene.
Any strange round holes near windows are the vent holes for extractor fans in bathrooms and the extractor fan in the kitchen.



These pictures were taken last Wednesday when I was in talking to the plumbers. Surprisingly, even though I'd only just put the deposit down on the bathroom stuff, they were already installing the sinks, WC's and shower trays.
Internally it's all been plastered now by the looks of it. We're still waiting for the floors to dry out before we put in the kitchen but now that the boiler and oil tank are all hooked up they reckon on getting the heating fired up this week. Obviously that should speed up the drying out process.
After that we can get the kitchen in followed by the rest of the bathrooms.

There's still no stairs in either which makes getting around inside a little tricky which is why there are no real internal shots yet. I'll do my best the next time I'm out there, promise

Bye for now...

Finally...after two (+) weeks of waiting...

Ok then, finally we are back making some progress with the house again. When I last reported in the plumbers were moving in. Now they have come and gone having installed all the plumbing and heating, with the radiators now in place.

Externally, the roofing has now been completed with the last portions of tiling getting finished last week. The scaffolding is down as they have finished rendering the outside. Furthermore, the external paint is now being applied as you will see in pictures slightly further down.

Here's the usual front shot (click for a larger version) -



Taken late on in the evening just after sunset you can see the smooth exterior prior to the paint going on. The light in the downstairs right hand window is actually the sun setting through the french doors at the back. The digger is there currently doing the groundwork for the drive and gardens.
The garden will eventually encircle the whole house with the drive going from the position the photo was taken down the right side of the house as we look at it with a parking area in front of the house also.
The gravel around the house will be the base for a path that goes right the way around.



This shot is more representative of the finished article with the cream paint's initial coat being applied here. The wooden guide around the gravel I'm assuming is the extent of the path around but we'll see.
Finally back around the front in the fading light....



As you can see they seem to have run out of paint by the time they reached the front elevation. Off to B&Q for more then I'd say.

So that's the progress on the house itself. Internally we've been deciding on bathrooms, flooring (still) and tiles (don't know where to start).

At least the deposit is down on the kitchen which means there's no going back on that one, which is one less thing to worry about !

Once the floors are dry internally then the kitchen can go in and then the bathroom stuff. After that we'll need to paint the walls and tile the bathrooms and then do the floors, or whatever order it all comes round to being.

Progress once again, so that's us for a couple of weeks now. Don't forget to click on the flickr picture up there on the right to see what else we've been at recently (Charlotte's birthday for instance).

Bye for now !