Renovation Update

Our renovation is at that stage where I’m a little less scared but also, y’know still pretty damn scared. We moved out for two weeks and a huge chunk of work happened in that time. The whole house was stripped back to brick and the majority of it re-plastered. Our entire house has been rewired – although we have to wait for plastering to finish, for them to give us actual switches in each room. Our old bathroom is long gone and is now slowly becoming a spare room and an old spare room has magically turned into a bathroom.

For one week we lived nearby in an apartment hotel, so we could swing by to check what was happening each day. They discovered a lot in those first few days – rooms they thought would be a simple plaster skim actually needed to be stripped back, sured up and boarded, then skimmed. Floorboards were missing here, there and everywhere and the builder seems to think a patch of damp by the front door is only caused because of the direction in which the decorative bricks were laid in 1904- turning them into a makeshift water spout! Everything in these areas has been sorted but obviously, this added on time and a slight increase in cost.

We travelled 3 hours south to stay with Mr Thrifty’s parents during the second week, which was great in parts because we got to see family and work comfortably from a home environment but it also meant we were separated from the action. We only saw updates via phone and text photos which was incredibly frustrating. When the tiles went into the bathroom I threw a bit of a wobbly because they just didn’t look right at all, they seemed to be totally different than what I had asked for in regards to layout. There may have been a few tears – although surprisingly few for me!

In good news, our bathroom pipes were signed off and our bathroom was boarded and tiled. The suite went in this weekend, in time for us to move back in on Saturday (more on that in a second). Alas the antique sink we had bought for the bathroom is no more. The old waste pipe was screwed on so tight that it snapped off and took with it a chunk of the inner basin with it. I think a few people expected me to hit the roof about that but I’m of the thinking if that’s the worst thing that is going to happen during this renovation then I can live with it – plus it has ‘garden feature’ written all over it.

So, once the water was in we could travel back up the country to move in. We were well aware that the house would be a state. Our requirements were a bit of electricity so we could turn on the internet, run an extension cable up from the cellar to have electricity upstairs and a space to set up a bed. That’s all we require for a couple of weeks. No doors, no warm water, no heating, no lights, not much of anything was here. We were prepared for this, our builder wasn’t – he just couldn’t see how anyone could live in such a state with builders working around them, especially because I work from home 80% of the time. As we were packing up our car to leave the in law’s house we got a text saying ‘I don’t think you should come back, it’s a mess.’ But we didn’t have a choice, we both couldn’t take time away from work and there isn’t a bottomless pit of money available for us to stay in hotels and board the dog.

When we arrived the builder was visibly nervous (he was scared we’d have to drive back 3 hours when we saw how bad it was) but as we walked through Mr Thrifty and I could see how much they had done and were happy. He kept saying “really, are you sure, I was so worried – how the hell are you going to sleep here?!” he had even thought about buying us booze so we could take the edge off sleeping here that first night.
As it was, we went to a Thanksgiving party at our friend’s house and came back to sleep on a mattress with the windows open so the plaster could dry.
We have since put our bed back together and we’ve set up a mini kitchen of sorts in the cellar – we have a kettle, slow cooker and microwave down there, so all is well.

I’m using Instragram to keep people updated with our progress as we go along so follow me here @AThriftyMrsUK and using hashtag #ThriftyReno
Anyway the internet works so I can work, at least a bit and it also means we can snuggle up in bed and catch up on Netflix. Our bedroom has become dog den, dumping ground, bedroom, dining room, living room, office and storage container.
As of yesterday we have heating in the form of an £11 heater from Argos, our bedroom is 100% plastered which means I don’t have to pack up our belongings each morning anymore and we have lights upstairs!

The builders will continue on with our kitchen tomorrow, we will build the units, the plasterer will be smoothing out the stairs and landing and hopefully the tiler will come to put some finishing touches to the bathroom. There is still a lot more to do but man we’ve come a long, long way in a few short weeks.

It’s getting there, it’s getting there!

I’ll share more very soon.

P.S. Please excuse the grainy iPhone photos!

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