The Money Pit

One Year On

Today is one year to the day since we moved in to this house.

Normally this would be where I'd say time has flown, but, on the contrary, it's been a long year. Not half as long as the weeks leading up to our move though. Have any of you been reading that long? If not, you missed one hell of a farce. In which the buyers of Karen's old house risked the collapse of the whole chain for the sake of their summer holiday. God damn, they were dum as hell. It stills makes me smile when I look at our fireplace though ;o)

Although we moved house a year ago, the house has not been ours for a year. It wasn't until late October that we completed the deal. I can't tell you the amount of stress this caused while making serious structural changes to somebody else's house. Not just stress for us, but for the couple who kindly let us move in to their house in the first place, unaware that we would start knocking it to bits and take so long to pay up. At one point they did call and say that they were running out of money and would have to pull the plug if things weren't sorted soon. I didn't sleep much that night and got a little irrate on the blower the next day.

Anyway, one year gone, what have we achieved? A lot I think. If I had to put a figure on it I'd say we'd "done" half of the house. In another year's time I hope to have the majority of the house to our liking (finances depending that is). The only expensive room left is the bathroom really. The landing/hallway will be expensive as well, as it all needs skimming once we've got rid of the woodchip. Apart from that we just need to re-decorate a few more rooms.

Talking of finances, we're really pushing ourselves to the limit at the moment (it really is a "money pit"!). Whenever one of us gets down (in terms of bank balance as well as metaphorically) the other will tell them to look at "the bigger picture". In a year's time, when most of the changes are made, there won't be the regular £600 expenditures on this and that.

Will we get the house re-valued when we're done? Maybe. Whether we do or not at least we know it's not exactly pouring money down the drain. The value of the house has doubtless increased in the last year. Will the market crash though? That's the big question.

One thing I am glad of though is that I've kept this blog ticking over. It's nice to look through it from time to time and remember just what (and when) we've been up to. During the year I've been taking endless photos and documenting the whole process. Hopefully in a year's time I'll still be both blogging and photographing the whole arduous process of DIYing your own house. People thinks it's an odd thing to do, but I'm hoping it will be worth it.

I want to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to my dad. He's been an amazing help over the past year. I don't think we'd be anywhere near the point we are without him. Thanks dad! Oh, and mum too. You've both been great!!

Parquet Done

Woopeee. That's the last of the parquet down, done and dusted. No more parquet for me.

I've spent hours and hours on my hands and knees these past few days, applying some seriously smelly varnish. I ache and I feel light-headed. This must be how The Rolling Stones feel?

What smells? This stuff:

The tin on the left is the sealant they recommend be used to prevent reddening of "heartwood". For both it cost £100 (although we have 2 of the 5 litres left over). Expensive but I'm hoping it's worth it. You can tell this stuff means business. It's like the wood now has a thin plastic coating. it's not like the cheap varnish you can buy where you clean the brush with water (how good can that be?), With this stuff you have to use cellulose thinners, of which I had none, so we chucked the brushes after each coat.

I was reminded of a joke while down on all fours:

Q: What do floors and women have in common?
A: Lay them right first time and you can walk all over them for the rest of you life!

With this stuff I think we might be walking all over for a long time before I need to worry about a ne coat. Needless to say I'm going to be using this stuff on any wooden floors I lay in the future!

Finally. We have some left over! Probably enough to do a room of the same size (4x3m). Anybody interested? You'll need a lot of spare time and endless patience. Mind you, it's cheap at £8 per m²!!

Tracking Down VP67

A quiet blog can sometimes mean a quiet life for the author. More often it means the author's life is quite hectic, as is the case for me at the moment.

For a few weeks now we've had the parquet laid in the kitchen:

This weekend we hired the floor sanders and I've been getting the floor ready for varnishing:

It's been interesting doing the kitchen with the blocks after having done the backroom. I've definitely learnt some lessons, which I'll share with you.

My one piece of advice to somebody buying parquet blocks would be to check they are all the same size. I can't stress how imortant this is. Our blocks aren't the same size and I doubt whether the story that they all came from one school hall in Northumberland is actually true. More likely they're a collection of similar sized blocks from all over the place. The difference in size is minimal but it's enough to make using them a nightmare.

The effect of the size differences is two-fold. First there's the difference in length and width. In our case the difference was only in the region of 1/32" but it's enough. The trouble is that laying them in herringbone formation exaggerates this difference and after a dozen or so rows the pattern starts to wander. In the back room this started to really take off as we neared the far wall. With the kitchen being a much bigger room we didn't want to risk this happening and so went for the "basket weave" pattern, as you can see above. To get any chosen pattern perfect the blocks must be exactly the same size. No two ways about it.

The other side to the size problem is the block height. Here we had differences between the two extremes of 1/4" or more. The effect of this is increased sanding times - as I've found today! The lesson I learnt though is not to use the really thin blocks. In fact I simply chucked them out. Tall blocks aren't such a problem. It's easy to sand one block down to level. However, if you've got a low block you have to sand all surrounding blocks down to that level. A nightmare. Avoid thin blocks where you can!

Apart from that it's all ok. There's no denying It's a lot of work but it's worth it. The pictures don't really do the end result justice.

The other lesson I learnt is not to use linseed oil. With the back room I had it in my head that I would use traditional methods to treat the wood once sanded. Mistake. Well, the mistake was really that I only applied the linseed and never got round to adding the beeswax polished protective layer. The result is a floor that's lacklustre and almost always dirty. I'm left wanting to varnish it but not being able to without sanding away the topmost layer with the oil in it.

With the kitchen we obviously needed something waterproof and hard-wearing anyway. My uncle suggested Sikkens, which he'd used on his kitchen's parquet floor to good effect. I called Sikkens and they put me in touch with their parent company's (Akzo Nobel) "Wood Advice Line" (01480 496868).  They recommended Sadolin PV67 (does what it says on the tin?).  Apparently this stuff is the mutt's nuts and it's what they use on nightclub dance floors. What they didn't tell me was that it's like rocking horse shit. In the end we had to drive 30 miles to Leicester to get some. It had better be good. Especially as it cost £60 for 5 litres.

Slammed

Sometimes being a home-owner is so much hassle.

Last week Karen went to Phones4U (spit) to get a new phone. While there the salesman asked if she was interested in moving away from BT to save some money. She emphatically said no, she didn't want to and pointed out that I had a business line and internet connection that could not be interrupted. Apparently the guy wouldn't stop going on about saving money and so Karen agreed they could "send her some information" and she'd think about it. They then asked her to sign for her consent to send this information. This is the point where I would have thought "hang on a minute", but Karen went ahead and signed.

Yesterday I opened a letter from BT saying they were sorry we'd decided to leave. This rang alarm bells as I'd only recently read about Slamming, whereby customers have their phone-lines transferred without their knowing about it. The first they know about it is when BT write to them, as was the case with me.

At first I'd thought it was Quinn (aged 11) to "blame" as she's recently had a new phone bought for her by her grandparents. When we called to register and they asked to speak to her I was worried then that they might try some Slamming exercise. But they didn't and I now know it's the sleazy salesman at Phones4U, hungry for his commission.

So, I called BT (they have a special number just for this, it's so commonplace now!) and spent a good twenty minutes on the phone as they filled out their forms. Having explained how Karen was tricked in to signing and didn't know what she was signing they told me I'd have to call HomeCall (the land-line arm of Phones4U and both under the umbrella of Caudwell Communications) to cancel and then call BT back a day before the transfer date just to make sure they had.

So, I called HomeCall and the first girl I spoke to was very apologetic and explained there's an internal investigation underway and, yes, they do work on a commission basis and the Phones4U salespeople have a terrible reputation. I calmed down a little after that. She then passed me through to the Cancellation Department. The girl I spoke to there was less understanding and I lost my calm with her. She insisted on following her drill: "Can I ask why you're cancelling today, sir?", "Do you not want to save money, sir?", "Why not, sir?". In the end I hissed at her "JUST CANCEL IT NOW!!" between gritted teeth.

What she didn't get is that their company is the last I want to ever have to do business with again. They aren't interested in saving me money. All they're interested in is making money. So much so that they employ a dirty tricks campaign to dupe unsuspecting customers over to their side.

I filled out a Contact Us page on Phones4U demanding a written apology and explanation of why this happened and what they are doing to prevent it. I doubt we'll get one, but, if we do, I'll at least know they wasted as much time on it as I've had to. Either way I've done my bit in giving them some negative publicity. It's the least I could do.

Craftsman

On the orders of the sparky I posted my £75 off to the Central Networks so they'd come and fit me a PME. This morning a letter came from their subbies informing me that I would soon be contacted by one of the company's, wait for it, craftsman to arrange a time to call.

Craftsman? Are they having a laugh! I hate this kind of crap.

If I was having a dry stone wall built I'd expect a craftsman to visit. I'm having a PME crudely banged to the cellar wall and so I'm expecting a tradesman to call.