Sheila writes...

Day 3/25

And the internal painting is complete. That’s to say that the ceilings have all been painted whilst the walls have been given a first coat. Somewhere in the next few weeks/months, the walls will need a second and third coat. But for now, the painting job is done.

The next critical step is for Aidan the floor tiler to turn up on Monday and tile the area where the stairs will be in the hallway as well as tile the flooring where the kitchen will be installed the following week.

And now we rest, or rather now we head to the UK for a very short weekend visit. More updates on what will be the 6th day of 25...

Oh and I just happened to spot a lovely empty field across the way from us #justsaying

And here are some snaps from Sheila

Entrance hall. The ladder indicates where the staircase will be installed on Janury 9th

The guest bedroom

The area for the kitchen and dining room, the stairs will rise in the bottom lefthand corner of the photo

Another view of the sitting room

The decorator has been.

Most of the walls and all the ceilings are being painted the same colour, prosaically called RAL 9002. It coordinates with the colour of the window frames. The ceilings are all done to a finish and the first, mix coat has been applied to all the walls. The walls will need to be hand-finished when the joinery second fix has been done. This is due to be underway on January 20th.

Next Monday will see the start of the tiling. All the floors, except the bedrooms, are being tiled so there is something like 140sqm to be done.
This snap will give you an idea of the wall colour - it catches the view from the two main windows in the sitting room.

Happy new Year to all our readers

Thursday 2nd January
Sheila writes

First day of 25.

In 25 days’, time we hope to be in our house… As someone with a vast amount of experience on builds pointed out to us yesterday (after seeing the current state of the house) with a look of shock on his face, that’s only three weeks’ away! Everything must go right over the next 25 days if we are to achieve our dream of moving into our new home.
The first part of that needed to happen today, Thursday 2nd January
Today the house is being painted internally. It was with relief/joy that we saw the painter's van, along with his mate, in the house at 9am this morning. He is due to finish the job by the end of Sunday. When I say finish, he’ll have finished painting all the ceilings and given all the walls the first coat of paint. The 2nd and 3rd coats will be completed during January and February.

The next critical step will take place on Monday. The tiling of the floors will begin. The tiling of the hallway must be completed by the end of Wednesday. Thursday sees the staircase being installed. An exciting few days ahead.

The heat pump being installed. It is not yet connected to the electricity supply and so we are seeing it as an art installation

One month on....

Although we are just about at Xmas Eve only, this will be the last post of 2019. As previously indicated we have not moved in, despite a huge shove and a push from Sheila to motivate all concerned...well perhaps to leave it to her...
Sheila writes

November and December turned out to be a couple of roller-coaster months. Progress on the house has been at a pace, even though the plastering took longer than planned. We’d been promised four guys would be doing the work, then only two ever seemed on the job at any one time. Maybe the builder meant there would be four doing the work but never at the same time! 

In early November we had notification from ESB Networks that after completing their initial inspection to reconnect our house to the main grid they had to upgrade the wiring and three telegraph posts. In order to run a heat pump to power the underfloor heating, we needed to have a power rating of 16KVA’s rather than the 12KVA’that the site previously had. We also received a bill for just over €1,200 for this work.  

Getting electricity to the house was/is mission-critical because the concrete floor and newly plastered walls need heating to dry out. Only after the heating has been on for at least two weeks can the walls be painted, stair installed, floor tiles laid, kitchen installed, and carpets laid. The electrician also does not want to complete the 2nd fix unless the heating is about to be turned on because he is worried that the damp walls will corrode the fittings – he is probably right. 

Early December had us on the phone to everyone lining them up to come the week of 6th January. Tiler on Monday 6th, Tuesday 7th and Wednesday 8th, staircase installed on Thursday 9th and kitchen installation beginning on Monday 13th. 

All of this to happen by working on the key event that the electricity would be reconnected week of 9th December and the heat pump installed and turned on by Thursday 19th December. This would allow two weeks of heating in the house ready for the 6th of January. In order to complete their work, the ESB had to gain permission from each of the landowners to access the poles. There are two landowners, our direct neighbours and a neighbour with a field across the road. Our direct neighbours said no problem whilst the neighbour opposite said yes but…. the ESB can only gain access when the field is dry. In truth, the farmer might as well have said no. We will need a sustained period of no rain for fields in Ballyferriter to dry out, a prospect that is unlikely for many months. 

OK, I thought, I’ll track down who the farmer (the ESB would not divulge their identity) and appeal to them directly. I’ll explain why we need the connection. The farmer lives quite close to the house, about 6 doors up from us on a small farm. The short version of the conversation was an adamant no and it would not be an exaggeration to say I was told to take a hike.  Under no circumstances would they let anyone in the field to carry out work. Did I not understand the land or farming? Did I not understand that trying to make a living out of that field is hard? I have no idea what it was like for farmers, and so on. Safe to say Christmas Cards will not be exchanged. 

Once I relay the story to the architect/project manager, he gets on the case to come up with some solution to power the underfloor heating without the heat pump. The issue is that the heat pump needs the upgraded electricity supply so was there a way around it.

He phones to say that what he is looking at is a mechanical heat recovery system and has asked a company in Kenmare to quote on the job. The company says they have time to put it in before Christmas. We await the quote and all the time I am googling what such systems are and their costs. 

Thursday morning and after back and forth conversations between everyone, it turns out that the only option now on the table is a Gas Boiler. He describes it as a gas boiler on wheels that heats a tank of water, with a pump that is connected to the underfloor heating manifolds.

We call the company installing the heating who have been fantastic. His initial reaction is “ah feck” what’s this? Ok leave it with me he says. He phones back an hour later with his solution which he is confident will work. His version is just the same but powered by electricity. All he needs is our electrician to put in a 6sq metre twin and earth cable in the utility room. And of course, the electricity to be connected - but it only needs the same level of power output that was connected to the house before we started the work. Can we get hold of the electrician, can we heck. Now I am googling twin and earth cables whilst trying to track down the electrician.  


The upshot of the week is that my google profile will be thrown into disarray with the variety of searches recently. 

In the middle of all this, we were given notice to move out of our rental house at the end of January. That’s fair enough because I had said to them when asking for an extension we’d probably be gone by the end of January. But as there are new tenants ready to move in, we cannot ask for another extension. 

Friday, December 13th was a momentous day in many ways. The UK committed itself to 5 years of a right-wing government led by a person who could not lie straight in bed if he tried.  But more importantly in our world, we met with the architect and builder to work through what is happening in the next 6 weeks in what was a really good and positive meeting with everyone agreeing on the tasks.  

Monday 16th and the electrician confirmed that the necessary work to get the essential certificate off to the ESB has been done.  And they confirmed the y would reconnect at the old level.

Monday 16th we took delivery of all the tiles for the floors. We also took delivery of the hot water cylinder plus the equipment to run the underfloor heating in the short term. The house has no stairs so today’s challenge is to get an 84kg cylinder upstairs to the utility room. Another round of panicking phone calls between the plumbers, builders and project manager means that on Tuesday morning 17th there are 5 lads on-site to lift it upstairs using a ladder! 

Tuesday 17th and a team from Cremur was on-site installing the system to get the underfloor heating working. All is going smoothly. I drop Peter off at the airport only to receive a phone call on my return from the plumber panicking over the wiring for his connection. Sorted by Denis about 8pm, gin and tonic time. 

Wednesday 18th I meet with a potential painter and decorator. He is set the challenge to do the initial job before 6th January which would be fine, we both agree if the little matter of Christmas and New Year were not in the way. He is originally from Neasden and we have the inevitable conversation of “how mad is it all over there, can you believe it...

Wednesday 18th and it’s more saga when the builder calls to say the ESB Network are ready to connect the house but cannot see that we have a supplier. I call Electric Ireland to establish if this is true and it is. Sheila had dropped the ball on this task and immediately sets about setting up electricity supply. Electric Ireland then need to tell ESB Networks that it’s all ok to go and they expect this to take about 24 hours = sigh. 

Thursday 19th ESB reconnect the house.  The plumbers install the temporary heating fix and we hope for at least two weeks of heat and dehumidification to ready the place for the decorator, the tiler and uncle Tom Cobbly in the new year. 

Wish us luck. 


Coda. Monday, December 23rd, site visit - its close to sauna time in the house as the underfloor heating drys our more than the dehumidifier can expel, goodness knows if this is good or bad.



Happy Christmas - Sheila

And Peter

Ten days on

If this building project was a sailboat and we were on the ocean, one might fairly say that we are in the doldrums. Nothing else has happened inside the house and we still don't have a date from the ESB (the electricity supply organisation that provides grid services) for when the house will be connected. This is why, other than the slow drying out of the plaster, nothing has happened inside the house.

The main contractors' chaps are working away on the site on a wide range of tasks, including getting all the drains connected to the main sewer, tidying up the site, prepping for the paths and drive and the like.

So, as this snap shows. We have water to the house and drains to carry it and all the assorted waste away from the house. If only we could get some electricity to the house we could get going on the plumbing, the tiling, the kitchen and the like. It looks extremely unlikely that we will be in by Christmas.


Bah, humbug

At last the plastering is finished...

...and now we have to wait for it to dry out.

Still, the scaffolding has gone and we can now see just what sort of views we will have from the living room, or do I mean the salle de Sejour?

Main window overlooking Smerwick Harbour

Not yet plastered

After three days away from the site, we returned on Friday for a site meeting with builder and architect. It proved to be a somewhat disappointing meeting and day.
First of all the plastering is not finished and won't be until close of play next Tuesday - that is a full week later than planned.
But that pales by the news that our scheme to get the underfloor heating up and running has been scuppered by not being able to get the electricity supply reconnected. The worst-case scenario for that is it could be eleven weeks away. That is to say in the week of January 20th 2020. Work goes on to shorten that lead time but we have already had to put back the kitchen installation by two months to mid-Janaury.
The underfloor heating needs to run for at least a week before the tiling of the floors can be done.  The plaster needs to dry enough to paint before the floors go down as it is being done by spray painting. The second fix joinery, including the installation of the staircase, can't be done until the tiling is done. Nor can the installation of the kitchen.

The one positive note is that the scaffolding is down and we can now get a good sense of the geometry and volume of the build.

Should have read "can't see" not "can see". Wishful thinking

Half plastered...

...almost.
Most of the downstairs is finished although, rather disappointingly, one wall that needs to be done before the staircase maker can measure is not done.
The slabbing out of upstairs is finished and the roof is probably less than a day's work away from being complete.
Here is a couple of views taken from the living room and looking into the (remodelled) first floor of the original house. This will be the kitchen/dining area. Can't see us cooking Xmas dinner here this year.

The gap on the left is where the stairs will rise. The kitchen units will be on the back wall and on the left, just beyond the stub of a wall and running up to where there are wooden planks leaning on the wall

The window on the right, nearest the viewer, is roughly where we will put the table on we get it from storage. The whole space has a rather odd geometry and will probably take while to get used to.

Getting plastered

stairwell

More steps forward, the work of plastering and such like began on Wednesday (October 9). By the end of the week most of downstairs masonry/block walls were covered in the base coat and the plasterboard ceilings had been skimmed. Oddly the only area of blockwork not given its base coat is where the stairway rises.

This needs to get done so that the chap making the staircase can come along and measure in advance of scheduling its manufacture.

Upstairs just about all the walls have been "slabbed", just one to go but it is proving very fiddly. The unfinished section is part of the original structure and includes the part of the roof we broke into in order to resite the windows.

Below is a photo of the area at an earlier stage of the build/rebuild. It runs out that all the old walls lean in by about 50mm and so the plasterboard has to be set so as to correct this. This requires a lot of the adhesive/bonding material to pack the gap and is proving time-consuming.  They need to get finished so the plasterers can move upstairs.

wonky wall

We were told the plastering will take until October 25th, but at the rate they are working it might be sooner. If only the slabbers don't hold them up.

The roof still not finished and there is no excuse the builder can come up with - the last piece was delivered last Saturday and he has chosen not to progress the work.

Hopefully, the progress next week will be a bit more photogenic.