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Blog posts about home renovations.

Nesting

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A photo of our Nest thermostat with the heating set to 19 C

Along with our new boiler, we also got a new thermostat – a Nest Learning Thermostat. I’d actually bought it in January, in the hope that it could be fitted to our existing 1970s central heating system. With both Christine and I being on maternity and paternity leave respectively, we were at home most of the day and so the heating was on almost constantly – I hoped that a better thermostat would cut the amount of energy required. Alas, the fitter who came to install it told us that our system was too old – he could fit it, but it would only power either the hot water or the heating, and not both at the same time.

Now that we have a more modern boiler, we could also make use of the new thermostat.

The previous thermostat also dated from the 1970s and was a basic model that, theoretically, would heat the house until it reached the set temperature and stop. But I’m convinced that it didn’t do the latter – the heating would still be on even when it was utterly roasting. With such an old system, the fault could have been in any one of several places. Either way, it’s not an issue now.

Whereas the old thermostat was upstairs, we’ve fitted the Nest in the dining room. You can install it using the standard thermostat cables to your boiler, or there’s a micro-USB socket and an AC adaptor included. We decided to go for the latter, in case we want to move it somewhere else. It’s quite easy to fit to the wall and the backplate even includes a spirit level to help you align it correctly.

The Nest offers several useful features:

  • It learns how long your heating system takes to warm up. So if you want the house to be warm by 7:30am, you tell it that, rather than telling it to come on at 7am in the hope that your house will be warm enough by then.
  • You can tell the thermostat that you are away, allowing it to maintain the house at a cooler temperature, thus saving energy.
  • Your thermostat can be managed using official apps for smartphones or tablets, or on the web.
  • It has a motion detector, so the display turns off when no-one is about. It can also turn your heating down if it detects no motion in the house for some time.
  • Integration with IFTTT and other smart home technologies.

Whilst it’s been a warm couple of weeks, thanks to the Nest our heating has only needed to be on for an average of 30 minutes per day. I’m hoping that it will save on our energy bills – my mother-in-law has one, and she credits hers for halving her gas bill.

New boiler

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A photo of our new Bosch boiler in our kitchen

In addition to a new downstairs bathroom, we’ve also invested in a new central heating boiler for our house.

This was mainly a necessity, rather than a desirable enhancement. The existing boiler dates from 1976, making it 40 years old. This is far older than most boilers – by comparison, my parents have had their boiler replaced twice in this time. If it broke down, I doubt we would have found anyone able to fix it. In which case, we would have needed a new boiler anyway, so we might as well get a new one at a time that’s convenient for us. With Christine still on maternity leave, and the weather warming up, last week seemed like a good time to do it.

The old boiler was a so-called ‘back boiler’, located in one of the chimneys in the house and with a gas fire in front; there were also two other gas fires in the house that we had removed in the summer. We also had a large hot water tank upstairs in what will be Elizabeth’s room.

Boiler installation

The new boiler is a combination boiler that provides both heating and hot water, so the old boiler, hot water tank and gas fire were all removed as part of the works. Additionally, we had to have the boiler in a different place, as it wouldn’t have fitted in the chimney and would’ve been awkward to access even if it did fit. So it’s now in the kitchen.

As it’s a newer-style condensing boiler, it should use significantly less gas than the previous boiler. Which is good – we spent a fortune over the winter as Christine was at home all day with Elizabeth during the coldest months of the year. It’s manufactured by Worcester-Bosch – one of the better makes and comes with an 8 year guarantee. There’s also a filter, to remove impurities from the water in the system, thus pro-longing the life of the boiler – that’s the black thing on the pipes in the photo.

Cost

We got two quotes for the work. The first was our current energy supplier – a large British firm specialising in Gas, who quoted us over £6000 for the work. Thankfully a local firm quoted us less than £4000, so we went with them. They managed to do the job in two days, rather than three, and we got an interest-free credit deal for two years.

As well as the new boiler, we also got a new thermostat (more on that later), and four new radiators in the downstairs rooms. One of these, in the kitchen, replaced a hugely inefficient electric radiator; the others replaced existing radiators that were removed and stored during our earlier renovations, but haven’t worked well since they were reinstalled.

Whilst the work has been costly, I’m hoping it will pay off in terms of lower gas bills, and should mean that we’re not stuck with a broken boiler in the middle of winter.

Making a house a home (part VIII)

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A photo of our new downstairs bathroom

It’s been a little while since my last update on renovating our house – January to be exact. We’ve actually been spending time working on other peoples’ houses in the meantime – my mother-in-law needed her hallway repainting and we returned a favour by helping a friend who helped us a lot last summer.

The big change is in ‘the triangle room’ – for context, see this blog post from September. We’d always intended for this to be a downstairs cloakroom with a toilet and washbasin, and, now it is. We bought the toilet, washbasin and a matching tall cupboard from a local bathroom store at a decent discount, and then got a local plumbing firm to fit it. The main aim of this is to allow my mother-in-law to visit – she’s disabled, and can’t get upstairs, so having a downstairs facility will mean that she can finally come and visit us. For this reason, we’ve bought a taller toilet.

Alas, we can’t use any of it yet. The location of our sewerage pipes means that we’ve had to have an electronic macerator fitted, and that still needs to be wired in. And when that’s done, we’ll need to be very careful about what actually gets flushed down the toilet.

The rest of the room needs finishing off – there’s no paint on the walls, no floor covering and no tiling around the washbasin – but we’ll get to these jobs in time. We’re also looking at buying some more wall-mounted cupboards, so that we can carry on using the room as a storeroom – albeit, a more tidy one.

Making a house a home (part VI)

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A photo of our dining room

Well, we did it – we’ve finally moved into our new home, at long last. About 99.5% of our possessions are here with us too, with just a handful of things still in our flat. We moved the bulky items last Sunday and so we have been living in the house for the past week.

We also now have a laminate floor in the kitchen, dining room, hallway and living room, which was fitted on Monday. It looks great, and is a huge improvement over the old carpet that was down when we moved in.

We’re now at the stage where we can finally get coloured paint on the walls. So far, just the one wall in the dining room has been painted, and we’ll be doing the same with the living room. These are the walls where the radiators will go, and as it’s now October and beginning to get cold, we’d like to get the radiators back on the walls as soon as we can.

Finally, we’ve given notice to end our tenancy agreement on the flat, so we’ve been focussing on getting that clean. The contract expires in a couple of weeks. It’ll be nice to only have to pay bills for one house.

Making a house a home (part V)

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A photo of a hole in the floor that has been filled with mortar. It's in a corner surrounded by skirting boards

We’re making some more progress with the house (here’s the previous update). The big news is that we will, finally, be moving in next weekend.

This is partly because all of the main jobs are done, but also because we’re basically broke. Trying to run two houses for four months has been very expensive, and the longer we stay in the rented flat, the more money we’re throwing away. In hindsight, the £2000 or so that we’ve spent on rent in that time could have been better spent on getting professionals in to move things on a bit quicker, but never mind.

The main bit of work that I have done is filling in holes in the dining room floor. Unlike other rooms in the house, the dining room has a solid floor, but there was a channel along the back wall which originally housed a gas pipe. That’s been removed, as after we took out two of the gas fires it became redundant, but it left a long gap between the floor and the skirting board, and quite a deep hole in one corner. I’ve filled it all in with mortar; this was the first time I’ve ever done such a job and actually I’m quite impressed with the result. The photo was taken just after I had put it down, but now that it’s dried and I’ve sanded down the rough edges, it looks just like the rest of the floor.

However, it won’t be there for much long as we are having laminate floor laid over the top next week. This will be after we’ve moved in so we’ll have to limit how much stuff we have downstairs.

Having a car has meant we’ve been able to take more of our belongings over and we’ve probably moved at least a third of the contents of our flat now. The big stuff remains, until the weekend when we’ll (hopefully) have some help shifting things.

It’ll good to finally be able to live in the house after all this time.

Making a house a home (part IV)

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Back in mid-July, we anticipated that we’d be 6 weeks away from moving in to our new house. Well, it’s been more than six weeks and we’re still not in.

We haven’t hit any major snags but August has been a busy month for us (as evidenced by the lack of blogging) and so we haven’t progressed as much as we’d hoped. Here’s an update:

Plastering

The damp-proof plastering dried out mid-August, and so we have the first two coats of paint on the walls in the dining room. I’ve also been able to patch up some bits around plug sockets (for example) that weren’t quite finished to how we’d like.

I also mentioned last time that we needed some extra bits done – we had a builder in last week, who did these for us. So, the plastering is all done now, and we just need to wait for all of the new plaster to dry out. This means that we’ve finally had all of the holes from the old plug sockets filled in.

Bathroom

The bathroom was the one upstairs room that we planned to decorate, and also the one with the least amount of work required. However it ended up as a lower priority when we realised how much work the rooms downstairs would be. Anyway, we’ve got on with the painting in here and it’s basically done, but needs a little touching up to make it tidy with clean lines. The floor also needs a serious clean to get the paint splashes off, but otherwise, the bathroom is pretty much finished now.

Flooring

The living room, dining room and hallway all originally had the same dark blue carpet. We had to take this up as part of the re-plastering work, but we’ve decided to get rid of it. This is mainly because the new plaster is actually thinner than the old, so the dining room floor in particular now has a very slightly larger surface area – and so the carpet no longer fits correctly. We’ve instead decided to get oak laminate floor, with the same pattern across the kitchen, dining room, hallway and living room. The new flooring has been ordered and paid for, but we’re awaiting the last few bits to be delivered before it’s installed. As for the old carpet, a friend of ours took it off us for nothing for use in her house, which is great as it would have probably cost us money to dispose of.

‘The Triangle Room’

Beyond the living room is a room we’ve been calling ‘the triangle room’, as it’s roughly triangle-shaped. I assume it was originally part of what is now the living room as it’s separated by a comparatively modern stud wall. This part of the house used to be a shop, and the window in this room used to be full height. It’s been partly bricked up, but only on the outside, as we found when we took a bit of plasterboard off behind the radiator and opened up a void below the window.

I mentioned that we’ve had a builder in – he’s filled the void with insulation and covered it with some new plasterboard and plaster that is flush with the rest of the wall. We’ve also had an additional stud wall and door fitted in the room, as shown in the work in progress photo at the top, as eventually this will become a cloakroom with a toilet and washbasin. This probably won’t happen until after we’ve moved in as we’ll need to save up some more money first. It’ll also need flooring putting down, but again, after we’ve moved in.

Painting

We’ve started painting the dining room, as mentioned, and once the rest of the plaster is dry (which should be in the next couple of days) we can paint the living room as well. We’ve bought all of the paint already – the dining room is being painted green, and the living room a kind-of chocolate brown.

Exterior building work

We had two gas fires that we didn’t want, which both had external flues. Having removed these, we got the builder to fill in the holes in the external walls. He’s done a great job and it’s actually hard to see where the holes were originally. When the mortar dries, it’ll be almost impossible I reckon.

What’s next

We’ve not got many jobs left now. The flooring needs to go down, and we need to re-hang some skirting boards and lift some gripper rods that were left over from when the carpet was down. After that, it’s basically just painting, and then we can move in. Whilst this won’t be the end of the house renovation project, we’ll have done the most disruptive work before moving in. If all goes to plan, we’ll be living in the house by the end of the month.

It’s worth buying a new washing machine

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Today, I’m going to talk to you about washing machines. We bought a new one last month, and it is so much better than our old one in several ways.

The new washing machine is this Bosch model, which is normally £399 from John Lewis. We actually paid much less, by combining loads of gift vouches from the wedding and a cashback offer that was on at the time. This is now installed in our new house.

Our old washing machine is the one in our flat. It’s a Hotpoint washer-dryer, so it will wash and tumble-dry our clothes in one process. It’s probably around 10-15 years old as we assume that it was installed when the building was converted from a mill into flats.

For a start, washer-dryers are never as good as stand-alone washing machines and tumble dryers. Indeed, the dryer part of our old Hotpoint machine is pretty rubbish – if you’re lucky, it’ll get a half load mostly dry in around two and a half hours after the wash cycle is completed. Bigger loads will come out wet.

But it’s also not that great at washing either. It’s okay, but takes its time, and the drum can only take 6 kilograms of washing – about 13 pounds in old money.

The new Bosch machine has a much bigger drum that can take 8 kilograms (17.6 lb), so we can wash a third more clothes in each cycle. It’s significantly quieter, and barely makes any noise apart from during the spin cycle, which is still comparatively quiet. This is good for us as the washing machine is in the kitchen, which is directly below the room that will become the baby’s room when it’s born.

As well as being a good price, we also chose the Bosch model because of its energy and water efficiency. It’s rated A+++ for energy usage, which is the highest possible rating, and it required the least amount of water. Indeed, it looks like it uses less water than our current machine despite being able to handle bigger loads.

Despite using less water and electricity, the Bosch machine still manages to be quicker than the old Hotpoint machine – even when you enable its energy efficient mode. So not only does it wash clothes more quickly, it costs less money to do so. And it has a countdown timer telling you how long it has left. Timers these tend to be standard on new machines nowadays but this is the first time I have owned one with a timer, and it’s really useful.

We chose to get a water meter fitted to the house, and so conserving water will save us money in the long term, as will the reduced electricity costs. Furthermore, as we’ve opted not to buy a tumble dryer, this will save us more money on electricity bills in future. The house has a drying rack in the kitchen and space outside for washing lines, which we don’t have in the flat. And with a little one on the way, we’re likely to be using the washing machine far more often than now.

If you have an old washing machine, I would advise you to consider a newer model. The improvements in energy and water efficiency may well save you money in the long term and make up for the cost of buying a new machine. We’re really pleased with ours.

Plus, if you get rid of your old machine, you can create silly YouTube videos like this one.

Making a house a home (part III)

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It’s been a couple of weeks since we my last update on the house. We’re now four weeks on from having got the keys, but it’s likely to be around 6 weeks before we move in unfortunately. Here’s where we’re up to.

Plastering

The damp-proof plastering is done. We had to get this done as a condition of the mortgage, but thankfully we’ll get money back from the mortgage lender now that the job has been completed. Considering that the cost of the work was a four figure sum, this is quite welcome.

We have some more plastering to do, however. Last time, I mentioned that the existing plaster was in a poor state; fortunately it’s not universally bad. Once we got more wallpaper off the walls we found some re-plastering work had taken place more recently, and bar a few small holes it’s in good condition. But there are still some larger holes that need re-plastering, and some (presumably original) plaster that needs replacing or skimming over.

Wallpaper

Most of the old wallpaper is now gone. In some areas, it was four layers thick – three layers of backing paper and then a thick outer layer – so it’s been a challenge. Several walls had some hideous woodchip wallpaper, which is also an absolute pain to remove. Others had wallpaper over the top of a thin layer of polystyrene, which, whilst insulative, is also a bit of a fire hazard. Especially behind radiators. Thankfully this was easily removed.

We reckon we’ll have the last of the wallpaper off this week.

Painting

We started painting the bathroom some time ago, but other jobs got in the way. We’ll be picking up on this once the downstairs is further on. The damp-proof plaster can’t be painted at all for at least another four and a half weeks, and the additional plaster that we’ll have done soon will also need time to dry before we can paint it. So we might as well crack on with the bathroom in the meantime.

Cleaning

Obviously all of the work that we’ve been doing has created a lot of mess, so we spent much of Saturday cleaning the kitchen – with friends and parents to help. The kitchen didn’t need any urgent work doing to it, barring the installation of extra plug sockets – those are now in, so the kitchen is basically ‘done’ for now and we can use it. We will need to do some tiling at some point soon but it’s a job that could be done after we’ve moved in if needed.

We’re slowly moving forward with the house. The offers of help that we’ve had from friends and relatives have been most welcome, and it’s stopped the project from getting too overwhelming. Still, I’m very much looking forward to it all being finished, and for us to be able to live there.

Making a house a home (part II)

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Man at work

It’s been a couple of weeks since we got the keys for our new house, and we’ve been rather busy with it. Things haven’t quite gone to plan, however…

Plaster

I mentioned last time that, as we started removing the wallpaper from the walls, that the plaster appeared to be in a poor state. This turned out to be something of an understatement, as we were able to pull off huge chunks of plaster from the walls with little more than our bare hands. Consequently, the dining room is now being completely re-plastered from floor to ceiling, using damp-resistant plaster.

Elsewhere, in the living room, we’re just having the first metre from the floor re-plastered, as part of the damp-proofing works that we’re required to do as a condition of the mortgage. We’re also having the skirting boards replaced as part of this, mainly because the original ones came off in pieces.

Plumbing

It was Neil, in the dining room, with the lead pipe. I suppose it was inevitable that there would be lead water pipes in a house that is over 100 years old, but we didn’t expect them to be still in use. Whilst most of the lead piping was redundant and disconnected, there were several metres that fed our main drinking water supply. As the EPA explains, this is not a good thing and so we’ve had these replaced with copper pipes. In doing so, we’ve also ended up with better water pressure, which is nice.

Electrics

I mentioned that the plug sockets were old and in weird places. But rather than simply have the existing sockets moved to sensible places, we’ve had a whole new ring main fitted downstairs. This is partly because the wiring for the old sockets was poor, but also because we wanted more sockets in different places. So now the dining room has 5 sockets rather than 4, and the living room has 7 rather than 3. Plus, we’ve been able to add a socket in the hallway which previously didn’t have one at all, an additional socket in the basement which will be useful if we decide to buy a tumble dryer, and several extra sockets in the kitchen, which only had 3 in nonsensical places.

However, as the remaining wiring isn’t great, we’re strongly considering having the rest of the house re-wired too, especially as one of the bedrooms only has one working plug socket.

Gas

When the house was built in the 19th Century, it would have been heated using open fireplaces. Whilst most of the chimney breasts remain, the fireplaces have been bricked up, and a series of gas fires installed. Later, probably in the 1980s, central heating was then fitted with radiators, but three of the gas fires remain.

One is upstairs and therefore not a priority for us. One is in the dining room and attached directly to the boiler, so we need to keep that for now, but there was a free-standing gas fire in the living room. We’ve got rid of it, and had the gas pipe connecting it capped off.

Bathroom

We started re-painting the bathroom, but haven’t progressed beyond a coat of white primer on the ceiling (which was varnished wood panels). We’ll get on and finish it eventually.

All in all, the house is, unfortunately, turning out to be more work than we’d originally anticipated. It wasn’t our intention to buy a house to do up – we’d hoped that it would just require a few jobs doing and then we could move in. We’re fortunate that we’re able to carry on renting our current flat for the time being, although we do need to move sooner rather than later. We’re paying rent, a mortgage and two lots of utility bills, which will cost a lot of money. But we have also been very lucky that a couple of friends have been able to do the electrical and plumbing work for us, rather than requiring us to pay an electrician, which has been very much appreciated.

I imagine that we’ll be able to move over in August, provided the house doesn’t throw up any more surprises.

Making a house a home (part I)

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Stripping wallpaper

We did it – we bought a house!

We got the keys on Friday, and have already started the job of decorating the house by stripping the wallpaper in the dining room and living room. These rooms need partially re-plastering as part of the damp-proofing works, although having taken some of the wallpaper off we’re looking at getting them completely re-plastered.

All of the paper shown above was simply peeled off the walls – perhaps an indication of how necessary the damp-proofing works are, but also the age of the wallpaper. We’ve attached the rest with a steamer. Christine is there for scale :) .

Old plug sockets

The plug sockets downstairs are all very old, and in weird places – mostly about a metre off the floor. Since we’re getting these rooms re-plastered, we’ll look into having them re-sited in more useful places with more modern fixtures.

We’re also working on the bathroom, which thankfully just needs re-painting.

My parents came over to help us shift some of our possessions over, but we still have a lot of packing to do. In any case, because of the amount of work that needs doing, it’s likely to be around six weeks before we’re able to move in there properly. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.