Following the experience with the house so far I decided to set up a new website

After the experience we had purchasing the house a long time ago I decided to look at starting a website for people to sell or rent their home direct and therefore bypass estate agents, and not pay any fees.

Finally this website has gone live and you can see it here at www.movegroove.co.uk

It aims to let anyone list their house for sale on-line and is completely free at the moment to get the site established. Anyway check out MoveGroove and see if it is something you may find useful to save some cash.

Landing

The landing is looking good with the beams exposed and theatre type spotlights. Again doors are needed and will change the look completely.

I cleaned up the beams and finished them with beeswax.

We decided to add a cupboard to help with the storage issues we seem to have, I was told I should have done this before we plastered everything but of course I knew better and didn't think we would need one. Anyway looking back I should have done this before we plastered everything!!

The cupboard should be getting skimmed this week and I should just need to fit shelves and doors then. Still have the balustrade to finish, so some temporary bits of wood are in place in a vain attempt to stop any tumbles over the edge. No injuries so far though!

We jazzed it up by adding a large stags head made up from pre-cut ply wood sections. Nice!

En Suite Complete

The en-suite has been completed for a while and is more of a wetroom, where the shower flows straight onto the tiled floor and drains through the specialist wetroom system.

The tiles are large 60cm square in a charcoal colour with a dark grey grout. The tiles on the back wall are glass with a pink painted backing and the same dark grey grout.

We got an illuminated mirror cabinet from ebay and a white sink and wc from Rak ceramics. The Hudson Reed Mistral shower is fantastic with large top shower head and multiple water jets.

Pics below:

View from outside

Here is a night view of the outside of the house, one of them done with a panorama setting on my phone.

Lounge Update

We have had walls plastered, painted in fetching bright white for now, and carpets fitted for a few months now. The big red fire sits on a granite base and looks cool, and kicks out some good heat too.

We are yet to get doors and blinds and we badly need some storage to put books and things in.

The room gets loads of daylight and great views but still a lot of finishing touches to do.

Pics below:

Kitchen Complete

It's been a long time coming but the kitchen is finally complete, bar a couple of final touches.

We had a horrendous time working with the kitchen company Milligan & Jessop, totally disorganised, arguments with granite suppliers on-site, and a basic lack of courtesy. Their only saving grace was their kitchen fitter who did a good job despite the owners efforts to mess it up. Something that should have taken a week or so got strung out for many weeks and out of all the people we have dealt with so far they have been by far the worst....farcical at times!

Anyway pictures below of the finished kitchen, we are hoping to get doors on next as the house has been skimmed and painted, and we have fitted skirting and architrave as well as the door casings. Also found a nice tambour door that we will look at fitting to cover the door opening under the stairs where we have managed to squeeze the boiler, washing machine and dryer!

Update

The Kitchen is almost complete, but we have had a few issues here and there that I will get into when it's finished.

In the meantime we have plasterboarded around the circular window and the room has now been skimmed and painted. Sockets and four of the six lights have been fitted also.

The pre-skimmed round window

We have also started tiling in the en-suite. After preparing with concrete Hardiebacker boards and tanking out with a marmox shower tray and a tanking kit the tiles have started to go down.

We purchased 600 x 600 porcelain tiles from a company called Mandarin Stone and had them delivered on a pallet prior to Christmas.

The way the wet room shower trays work, means that the tiles must be cut to follow the contours of the tray to allow correct drainage. In order to do this we needed a large tile cutter and found one at B&Q that could cut up to 900mm long tiles so was ideal for the diagonal cuts we needed. The cutter was just over £70.00 but is far cheaper than other brands, and to be honest it is fantastic, giving a very straight cut with no scruffy edges.

The start of tiling the en-suite. If you look close you can see the diagonal cuts we needed to make.

Kitchen Arrives & Fitting Starts

The Kitchen arrived this week and the fitting began. Unfortunately some parts have been damaged in transit from Europe and lead time on these parts can be up to nine weeks. However we still have plenty to do elsewhere.

We used a company called Milligan & Jessop on Leeds Road in Huddersfield. Really good to work with and have been planning the kitchen for a while. Can't recommend them enough so far.

Pics below.

Kitchen ready for fitting

The kitchen is ready for fitting so we took all the appliances we have sourced over the past year up to the house over the weekend. The room has been given a few coats of white paint and downlights have gone in. So we are hoping it will look very different in here in the next few days.

Landing Skimmed & Almost Dry

Thelanding is skimmed and almost dried out. Plasterer Guru Simon from Honley does a top job!!

Landing Plasterboarded ready for Skimming

Some images of the landing after all the plasterboard was put in place. The skim has now been applied so more images when it's dry. We are also expecting the kitchen next week so plenty of action to come.

Fun & Games With Drains

While we have been getting the first fix plumbing and electrics done the builders have been getting the drain ditches dug and the pipes connected. It's been a hard job as a lot of the ground is rock at the left side of the house so the drains have to be quite shallow there and run deeper to the right of the house to allow the fall.

Building regs have checked it all and it just requires some crushed stone as back fill to protect the pipes as they are n a driveway.

When the builders went to connect up with the existing combined sewage and rainwater pipe they found it to be a 3 inch pipe and not the usual 4 inch. This goes through our small garden and into the neighbours stretching down to the road. We asked Yorkshire Water to check the pipe and they sent a contractor (DrainsAid) out to have a look. They told me there was a blockage just before the boundary with the neighbour and it was our responsibility to sort it out.

Consequently we had to call in our own drains company for them to tell me there was no blockage but there were tree roots 25-28 meters away. This was way off our property so Yorkshire water have again attanded to take a loook, I'm now expecting a visit in a week to look at getting rid of the tree roots...anything past our boundary is their responsibility.

We also contacted Yorkshire Water about re-newing the lead pipe that feeds the house but this would mean either digging up my neighbours garden as it follows the same line as the drains or getting a new connection down the access road to the property. Neither option is viable financially or practically so we have asked Yorkshire Water to test the water to make sure it is ok. We are expecting them today...at some point.

First Fix Plumbing and Electrics & Some Plastering

The first fix electrics have been done for a few weeks now, with the plumbing just about done so we took the opportunity to get some plasterboard up in the sections we could.

Took to ebay and got myself an auto screwdriver and a plasterboard lifter and set to work. On all the downstairs ceilings and any stud wall I have put in 100mm of earthwool type insulation to help deaden sound between rooms. I have also put soundblock plasterboard on the downstairs ceilings to stop noise/footsteps from upstairs.

The soundblock boards are much heavier than standard boards, about another 50% at 33kgs, but they are much denser and stronger than standard so hopefully they do actually block sound. We have also used the Soundblock board offcuts on areas that may get a lot of traffic and could be whacked and damaged as it is much stronger.

The plasterboard lifter has been worth its weight in gold. It meant we could lift the heavy boards onto flat ceilings but also onto the pitched ceilings upstairs too.

We have already had the kitchen skimmed by a local plasterer from Honley...The Plasterer Guru! Really good finish, took three days to do the kitchen and very impressed.

All we had to do then were cut holes for the downlights and speakers. Make sure you keep accurate measurements, or you might not get the holes right. We know from experience now!

Pics Below

The kitchen after being boarded and skimmed.

I cut the light holes with a downlight cutter and the speaker holes with a rotozip

Speaker and downlight holes

The boiler mounted on the wall under the stairs.

The living room with sound block plasterboard on the ceiling.

Living room again. We cut the hole in the floor here to get the big window upstairs.

The landing with celotex insulation and plasterboard up.

The en-suite waiting for concrete boards around the shower area. We cut the floor out for a shower tray so it can be tiled on top of.

Master Bedroom.

Office from the landing.