I was fortunate enough to have a hotel room with a balcony this week while in East London, and this was the view from my room every morning.
My kitchen was also installed this week while I was gone, and now looks like this:
It is not complete – there are still many things to finish, including the plumbing, but the feel is there. I cannot wait to start using this beautiful space.
I took this picture in the hotel room I stayed in this past week, because I liked the colours. It matches the colours we chose for our new bathroom.
I honestly cannot believe that ten weeks of this year have passed already. Ten weeks. Seventy days. With all the building stuff happening, we have been living in limbo for such a long time. Seventy days is nothing really, in comparison to the two years that our belongings have been in storage and our lives have been in disarray. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, because we have another 6 or so weeks left and then we can unpack our lives again. I can’t wait.
So much has has happened since my last update on our little building project, so today you are getting a big update, with headings and everything. Because, yes, we are now at about 50% of the build!
The wall is a glorious, magnificent beast that is now waiting for a couple of coats of paint.
Painting should hopefully happen over the next week or so.
The laundry is a beautiful, 100% completed sunflower 
Our new on-suite bathroom is in progress, finally. After breaking down, many, many walls inside the house to accommodate the new shape of everything, the guys started building the curved wall that gives our bathroom shape. The other side of the wall facing the rest of the house will be the new spine of the house and hopefully one day, host a glorious curved bookshelf.
My new bath has arrived, as well as the rest of the bathroom fittings (taps, tiles, shower, etc). They have also installed the bulk of the plumbing and built the shape for the window.
They will hopefully complete the plumbing today, and install the window early this coming week. Then they can assemble the bathroom. We should have a functional bathroom in about two weeks from now.
Our front door was removed this week, as well as the window and the rest of the wall, to prepare for our new front door.
This is our front door at the moment.
Our new door should arrive in this week.
The kitchen will be done last. This was always the plan, but the plan also included a ready new kitchen to be installed as soon as the major construction has been completed. This is no longer the case.
When we applied for the extended loan from the bank to finance this project, we included the quotes from both the contractor and the kitchen company we had chosen at the time. The full amount (with a little extra) was approved by the bank on condition that it is a building loan, rather than a normal bond extension. This means that the bank controls the payments, thus placing some of the risk on the contractor too. This was fine and acceptable, except that we needed the kitchen company to be paid a deposit on confirmation of order. Bank didn’t think this would be much of a problem.
The original quote for the kitchen from the kitchen company was R170k, of which R88k would be a deposit. When the construction started, we decided to just contact the kitchen company again to see if quote is still valid and may we go ahead, and discovered that the sales person we dealt with no longer worked for the company, and did not process our quotes into their systems. They didn’t know about us.
They were happy to come out and requote, which they did. New quote is R190k, of which R95k would be a deposit. My heart stopped a little bit, as the original price was already more than I was comfortable with, but we took the quote and requested the payment of the deposit from the bank. To discover that the bank is not willing to pay deposit. After much crying, gnashing of teeth and looking at things from a different perspective, we cancelled the order with the kitchen company and decided we will relook it once the construction has been completed.
Bank then made an unfortunate error and paid a small deposit into the kitchen company’s account, which the kitchen company took as a deposit and suddenly decided we had not cancelled the order. The bank and the kitchen company are currently fighting it out.
This is what our kitchen looks like most days.
The biggest change to the kitchen right recently was the bricking up of the window and door.
This has now been plastered too, and the electrical wiring has been laid.
We can really start getting a feel for the space of the house now, and I dream about the bookshelves every time I look at the curved wall.
Expected work to be done in the next two weeks includes:
Living in the house while all this work is going on is not easy. Every single thing we have is covered in dust and it feels like all we do is clean. As soon as the builders leave site in the afternoons, normally around 6pm, we start cleaning and it often takes us around 90 minutes to at least return the house into a state where we can breathe. Some days are better than others.
The husband has also been working from home most days to oversee what’s happening. Because he is a bit of a control freak, he tends to get involved and he’s been trying to manage the build much more than he should. This has been placing an immense amount of strain on him, to the point where I am now forcing him to take time-outs and play Xbox games.
Project budget: R600 000
Updated projected spend: R540 000
Total spent to date: R90 000
Expected spend for the next 2 weeks: R120 000
This week got off to a slow start, due to a delay in the delivery of the bricks for the front boundary wall. The bricks were finally delivered on Thursday afternoon and some progress was made in building the wall.
The husband also contacted the kitchen company on Monday to confirm if the quote was still in order – the quote we got in October 2013. Turns out it wasn’t, and one of the very nice reps came out yesterday to requote.
The delays caused by the approval of the plans really messed with our budget considerably, and we are already about R80k over budget *eep*
I will be travelling for the next 3 weeks, so updates may be slow. Expected work to be done in the next 3 weeks includes:
Project budget: R600 000
Updated projected spend: R680 000
Total spent to date: R0.00
Expected spend for the next 3 weeks: R120 000
Our contractor came back from the holidays with a bang, and presented us with a project plan and a start date, which was the 7th of January.
Work done this week:
They placed a temporary fence in the front garden, and started breaking down the current wall. In order to do this, they also had to move the pool pump from its current location to a spot a little deeper into the property.
This made me very happy, as the poolpump right next to the wall was a bit of a security risk, providing anyone with a bit of a foot up and over the wall.
We now have a lovely moat in front of our house (begging for some flesh eating fish or similar, but I must resist, as it will soon be the bed for our brand new wall)
Initial budget: R600 000,00
Spent to date: R0,00
Balance: R600 000,00
When we were house-hunting last year, we had some very specific requirements for our new home:
We were happy to either buy a house checking all the boxes or buy a house that checked some of the boxes and allowing us to check the rest of the boxes with some renovations.
We were lucky enough to find the perfect house in the perfect location that had a swimming pool and oodles of potential for the rest. We called a couple of contractors and invited them to come hear our plans and quote us for the work. In the end gave the job to a contractor we’d worked with previously because he could visualise what we wanted to do, and he drew up the first draft of the plans for us. We sat with him and tweaked the plans a little until they fitted our vision.
When we were house shopping, we looked at houses ranging from R1.2 to R2.5 million. Our private banker ran our budget through the numbers, and said we could buy for up to R2.5, hence the range. We saw a lot of really bad houses, and some really beautiful ones, and got a good feel of what the market was like. We ended up buying for R1.4 million, and, after pouring over our budget for a couple of weeks, decided that we were willing to spend up to R600K on the proposed renovations.
Our contractor came back with a quote of about R450k to do the following:
This work also includes rewiring the entire house, as the current DB board is located in the old kitchen/new bathroom, and replacing all the lights in the house with LED lights.
We then met with a couple of kitchen companies, and gave the business to Weizter in the end. Their consultant was passionate about his job and the service simply wowed us. The kitchen quote came in at R153k.
Great, so we’re a little over the R600k budget, but not to a point where I feel uncomfortable and panicky about money and we live on baked beans every month.
We’ve applied for a R600k additional home loan from the bank, and it has been provisionally granted, pending council approval of the plans. And that’s where we’re at now. We have employed someone to provide us with some architectural services and take the plans to the council for approval. This process will probably take another 8-12 weeks, which puts our estimated start date sometime towards the end of April 2014.
Astera Compositae
For you I'll be a dandelion
A thousand flowerettes in the sky~ Einstürzende Neubauten – Blume
I really do love the camera on my phone, especially for shots like these.
We got some good news this week. Our bank approved our extended loan for the renovations, which means the project is a go, probably to start mid to late January 2014. We can, however, start looking at tiles and taps and all sorts of things, which is going to be so much fun. We have some interesting spaces to make decor decisions about, and we still need to decide on colours for certain spaces too. I am really really really looking forward to having a brand new bathroom (never been used) and a nice new (never been used) big kitchen with loads of cupboards and storage and counter space, all at my height*.
I am contemplating doing a Grand Design style journal of the project, but I am not sure I can convince myself or my family to make videos, so I think I may just take loads and loads of photos and document the project that way instead. Ok, yes, right, I will document and keep track of the progress here.
* we’ve found that, generally, the counters in kitchens are slightly lower, and so we all have to stoop to use them, resulting in poor posture and back ache. We asked the kitchen company to raise the height of the counters by 10cm, so that we don’t have to stoop any more.
Since we’ve been back, we’ve been busy busy busy. The new house has a fair amount of work for us to do to make it ours, and some of it we are able to do ourselves too.
Our first priority was to set up our office/study, as this will be our base from where we plan all the other work to be done. And this space needed a fair amount of work before we could use it. There was a carpet on the floor, which the husband ripped up before I could even get a picture. We chose a lovely blue for the main walls, which immediately changed the space once it was applied.
We also tried to do a polished cement floor ourselves, but we weren’t that successful. Took a trip back to the hardware store, and invested in some self-levelling screed and laminate flooring, which worked like a dream
Replaced the lights with some cyberman-inspired spots, fitted blinds and painted the bricks and suddenly we had a very nice space.
I also framed the bits and bobs that I collected at the Discworld Emporium and put it up over my desk, along with the Assassin's’ Guild flag that I had acquired at the same slice of heaven.
My desk is set up and ready to go. Let’s hope my muse loves the new space as much as I do.
We also gave the kitchen/dining room a bit of a make-over, with some new curtains and accessories, and I am really enjoying this space as well.
My favourite, however, is the sparkly things dangling in front of the big sliding door – most of which we bought from the Christmas store in Bremen – and the rainbows they cast across the kitchen as the sun shines through.
We met with our builder last week-end, and he is currently busy drawing up the plans for the other renovations to be done. Can’t wait to see the pictures in our heads become a reality.
This is what the back garden looked like before the renovations started:
My biggest problem with this space was always the amount of concrete. I am part hobbit and love to walk around barefooted, but the concrete is hard on the feet. The rest of the layout has also been frustrating, and, just in general, the space did not work for me.
We (and by we, I really mean Quentin) have been working tirelessly to get the back garden into shape. First step was to build a small retaining wall, and fill in this space so we can cultivate a lawn. We did take a little shortcut, and purchased instant lawn, because of our tight deadlines. This made a massive instant impact to this space, and the rest of the bits just started falling into place.
Have also been reorganising the garden beds, replacing beds with potted plants and planting some flowers into this space.
Quentin has also started paining the house, and it is already starting to look much better. Can’t wait for it to be finished.
Now, we just need a bit of rain.
Next up, rebuilding the front garden.
