So, our builders (which I will tell more about later) started a week ago. They are usually booked up a year in advance but we were lucky to get a cancellation slot. The weather is getting warmer here now so it's an ideal time to start the building works. Well, as ideal as it's going to get really.
On the first day, they managed to demolish a good part of the old conservatory which was pretty impressive. The noise was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. There was drilling and knocking down walls so all pretty much what I expected but my daughter still managed to nap through it which was unbelievable.The builders had to leave part of the roof intact so the electrics wouldn't get wet in case it rained. You can see below how the room looked like after day 1. They certainly didn't waste much time.

Seeing the old extension in pieces was pretty liberating I must say :). I hated that room. We couldn't use it because it was so badly insulated and leaking. Whoever built it was in a rush and wanted to cut corners. Not ideal at all! In fact, my builders told me that most of the 1930s houses is London were built in a rush (pre-war) and that is why some of the decisions that were made make very little sense today. Interestingly, these houses are still standing today and some might even say that they are built better than new houses.
I definitely want to 'project manage' to an extend. It is our house after all and I think being around when the building works are happening gives you a great opportunity to make sure everything goes according to plan. Of course this depends on the size of your project. We are lucky that it is only one room that we are rebuilding. I haven't lost (yet) the access to the kitchen and noise levels have been pretty much the same when we did our kitchen renovation. The builders boxed away the room they are working on which I have found very handy (less noise and dust).
On day 2, the builders continued demolishing the old extension and dug app. 1 meter down where we could see the foundations of our house. It was quite a sight. It was exciting to see the amount of brick that was holding up pretty much the entire kitchen and first floor bedroom. Obviously, the foundations for the new extension will need to be deeper than that due to current building regulations. But, there is nothing wrong with the old ones and they have been going strong since the 1930s.

The builders had to leave the new foundations to settle overnight but on day 4 new walls started going up! I literally couldn't believe how quick these guys were. I have seen many houses being extended in our area and I have looked at our builders versus few other ones, and I must say that if your builder is taking too long to do their job they are either lazy or don't know what they are doing. Neither scenario is good let's face it!
We still have 3 weeks of building works ahead of us and probably towards the end I will be fed up with it all. It is getting more exciting though as I can really start to imagine what the room will look like. I do hope that all the endless hours googling extension projects, reading magazines and pinning ideas from Pinterest will pay off in the end. I don't want to get my hopes up but so far it's looking good!
A very useful article to read.Thanks a lot for sharing this.Fine Work.Keep up your good work.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your comment Ken!
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