A better view

Some weeks ago, in early August, my pro gardener brother joined us at Lynton Towers to add a bit of grit and determination to Christopher's ground force efforts. The aim was a basic garden structure to give us a pleasant view through the winter months, avoid a mud bath, and be ready for planting up next spring.

We began the month with a week off work in which Christopher filled a skip with rubble, bricks, weeds and poor soil, which had the effect of lowering the garden level by a couple of bricks. Matt arrived the following Saturday to help lay the lawn and start building the patio. After many discussions about shape and form, they laid the top soil and turf in a perfect rugby ball design in honour of this year's rugby world cup (not really).

To build the patio they built up a base of sand and laid the found terracotta tiles that we unearthed from the garden. They edged the patio with bricks also dug and reused from the ground. As I supervised from the dining room, I remarked that if I had been a paying client I would have asked these two cowboys to leave my garden immediately, but perseverance and determination made up for where skill and experience was lacking and we (they) got there. Aim achieved: a small but much improved city garden.

Here's a photographic step by step...

A leaf? A lemon? A rugby ball? 

Whitewashed walls, terracotta patio, lawn, and even an outside tap.

Labours of love

We have been working, but as yet haven't had the satisfaction of seeing anything completed so I've been resisting posting. It's all been about the preparation, the sanding, the priming, the clearing. None of it very inspirational. Sanding the floorboards was exciting, until the plasterer turned up in his boots and wrecked them all again. Note to selves: must do things in right order.

We may be about to turn a corner. Our solid wood kitchen from Woodstock in Bristol arrives tomorrow. We failed in the quest for a second hand kitchen. You could get lucky, or you could wait years for the right thing to appear on ebay etc. But it's handmade, and it's supporting a local Stokes Croft based business, so happy with that. Painted in F&B Borrowed Light. We've chosen Cornforth White and Wimbourne White for walls and woodwork to go with.

We've done quite well foraging for other reclaimed items. Wessex reclamation yard in St Werburghs has provided us with a limestone slab for under the range cooker, a Victorian fireplace for the bedroom, and a radiator for the bathroom. Second hand range cooker found on Trade It in Portishead for £250. 

My parents came for a weekend of stripping, sanding and digging (up pets from) the garden. Good progress made. Lots of jobs started. A few weeks on, lots of half finished jobs still hang around. But this time next week I should be able to post a beautiful transition from ugly duckling to swan.

Some of the work done so far.

Black, green, yellow, cream... a hundred years of paint layers stripped away from the door frame in a lead-filled haze.

New bifolding doors in F&B Light Blue, finally seal us from the elements

Sanding... boring. Foreheads well protected from particulates

Painting the back of the house

Digging for surprises

In case I wasn't sufficiently poisoned with the lead paint, I then set about filling gaps between floorboards with resinous glue and sawdust.

Kitchen walls, stripped and plastered

Bringing the house down

Time to get the boys in. Well, Kev, Daz and Trizzle anyway.

With the neighbours placated with Easter eggs and Pinot Grigio, we brought the roof down on Friday. Then, tooled up with kango, sledges, chisels, goggles, gloves and pure muscle, we hit the walls and floor yesterday.

Nothing like a hard day's work, sustained with a few beers and the promise of a meat feast at the end of it. I imagine anyway. I was upstairs painting doors, popping down once in a while to supply lemonade and sandwiches.

Everyone loves a before and after...

Demolition Easter

We're back on it, with 10 days off work and a lot of work to do. 

It's Good Friday. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. What better way to spend the day than armed with crow bar, saw and sledgehammer? B'bye manky old lean-to.

This morning, inside and out:

This afternoon, inside and out:

Al fresco conveniences.

Tomorrow, we hit the walls. 

Choosing a builder

What we learnt about employing a builder...

Check that your builder belongs to a recognised trade body. You can contact a local builders' association for a list of registered members.

Put your project requirements into the Your Project section of the Federation of Master Builders website Local builders will contact you.

Check that your builder has public liability insurance.

Get several quotes. We got five. Each one spotted things the others missed, so we got a good overview of the extent of the work.

Ask your builder for references. It was reassuring to hear from satisfied customers.

Get each element of the work itemised and priced.

Make a written agreement - outline the work to be done, the date of completion, arrangements for waste and rubble disposal, hours of working.

Agree a payment schedule in advance. Don't pay a deposit up front before the builder starts work.

Agree that the builder won't do anything or specify anything without checking with you first.

Check that the work won't affect your home or contents insurance.

Get in plenty of tea, coffee, sugar and biscuits.

Live with an architect, primarily so you have someone to blame if things go wrong.

Moved in and dusty

Move day was Saturday 26 February. Team Thompson were on hand to ferry three van loads of stuff from Clifton to Bishopston, and all the way up to the attic, well out of the way of the impending devastation. All approached the mission as if it were some kind of time trial and our work, plus several Maria-made-cake breaks, was done by 5pm.

Fit to flop, we set off on our first foray into the local hostelries and got as far as the Flyer on Gloucester Road for an easy pint / glass of wine and some decent pub grub.

Team Thompo were on form again the following morning, helping to organise us into some kind of domestic shape.

Keen to get cracking on the building work, we already had a few builders' quotes by this point. After a couple more the choice in the end was Wayne and his Inspired Builds. See my other post about choosing a builder.

I'm writing this in a dusty corner of the living room, just two weeks after we moved in, and one week after the boys started on site. We already have an entirely new roof on the extension section of the house, including all new insulation, timbers, tiles and fascias. We have electrics and plumbing for a kitchen in the current dining room, and plumbing for a new downstairs loo and washing machine under the stairs. We also have a hole and lintel in the chimney breast ready for a range cooker in our new kitchen. Pretty impressive rate of work.

Though we're discovering new issues as fast as we're meeting the neighbours. It's a friendly street. They've been knocking at the door and introducing themselves in the street. There are lots of parties apparently. And no one ever leaves. "Once you've moved in, you leave in a box."

We're learning about our seller: a bit of a recluse with lots of cats. That would explain a few aromas. The neighbours tell us the house has not been touched for many years. Um, yep.

Under a thick layer of dust now, but grinning and bearing it and thinking about how it will all be worth it in the end.

But it feels like a happy home already. A dusty, cosy, happy home.

Blocked up in June 1952 - when the Bristol Evening World was advertising new season nylons for just 9/4

The new kitchen, if you use a little imagination

Picture stylish range cooker here

As good as ours

Contract employment issues - mine. New job probation issues - his. A burst pipe and a flooded ceiling. We've had, and overcome, a few nail biting pre-purchase issues. Embarrassing to admit, this is the fourth property we've gone so far as to suggest to an estate agent that we plan to buy, but it's the first that I've jumped up and down in the street about before even opening the front door. We wanted it, in all its shabby and not at all chic, rundown dampness. We have a vision!

Yep, yesterday we officially exchanged on the little Bishopston terraced house we're going to call home. We get the keys on Tuesday 22 February, and we'll say goodbye to our rented Clifton lives by 9 March.

Hello mortgage, hello builders and plumbers and plasterers, hello spreadsheets, hello dust and rubble. Hello interior magazine dreams and ebay reality.