One of the things I haven’t mentioned much on here is the amount of research and planning that’s going on in the background. In week one I mentioned visits from electricians and joiners. While the electrical work has gone well the joinery has taken a lot longer to get going. From the beginning I’ve been planning some major changes which depended on taking down and installing new walls and facings. It’s taken nearly three months and two joiners but we finally got started on the work today.
There’s a lot to be done:
- demolition of the old partition wall and removal of the glass door
- removal of the remaining kitchen unit
- demolition of the fireplace
- construction of a new partition wall in kitchen
- re-facing of the other kitchen wall
- construction of two feature walls in the bedrooms
- construction of a fire safety wall in the loft
A reminder of the old kitchen partition wall…
And the demolition…
Followed by some construction
The new wall is built from OSB which has the advantage of being cheap, looking good and not requiring a lot of finishing. I really like the texture and colour of OSB, possibly something to do with growing up in a converted farmhouse where we had loads of it. It’s not typically used for domestic work but there’s a growing trend for it’s use in interiors and it seems to lend itself to imaginative applications. What you see here is more or less the finished surface though there will be quite a few more developments in the structure and function of the wall.
And so to the fireplace. This has been a thorny issue since the start. There was no way I could keep something as big and ugly as this but taking it out was bound to leave a huge hole and a mess requiring a creative solution. Just how much of a mess and a solution couldn’t be predicted until the demolition was done.
Before…
And the demolition…
As you can see, the results are pretty horrific. Mercifully, Mike (doing the demolition here) came up with a creative and cost effective solution which we’ve added to the schedule. Day one complete. More exciting developments tomorrow…
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