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.

Hopefully here is the downstairs video

Looks like the video did not go out in the email

so you should click on the link to the blog. Also, I think I just uploaded a video of upstairs?

A good week but..

Plenty of activity all week with the most obvious work being the installation of the plasterboard, - slabbing out, as they call it. But there have been a couple of key tings not achieved namely, not getting the electricity reconnected and not getting the roof finished.
We have not given up on electricity front as we want to get the underfloor heating working to speed up the drying out of the floor screed and subsequently the plastering.
This video should give you an idea of the progress of the slabbing on the ground floor.

I

It begins at the front door with a view along the hall. First right is the guest bedroom. The space with the ladder is where the staircase will go. Past that is the third bedroom and beyond that the main bedroom.

My sense is that we are quickly slipping to being two weeks behind the schedule.

September 20th update

The week finishes on a positive note. The site meeting seems to have resolved all the outstanding issues and cleared away all potential barriers to progress. This required a bit of compromise all round and I am still anxious about the builder's acceptance of the architect inspired plan for channelling the rainwater off the pitch of the original structure that fronts to Slea Head Drive.

This is the roof in question

The roof has three dormer windows and so has two small roof areas on either side of the middle window. The builder wants to put gutter along each of them with a fall pipe running down to the ground for each of them. We (including the architect) are resisting this and the architect has specified an alternative that the builder considers new-fangled and unnecessary. I interpret this to mean it involves more work for him. The section of the roof in the photo is the only part of the roof(s) not fully tiled.

One thing is sure, the builder is keen to get rid of the scaffolding, as are we.

Next week could see the electricity reconnected and we can then move to get the heating system installed and commissioned. With the heat on we can hope for the floor screed and plaster to dry out that bit quicker. And with just ten weeks to go to the end of November any help in this direction would be handy. As observed yesterday, I reckon it has to be a least a week later than that, but we can live with that.