Water water everywhere...

All the water pipes are finally installed in the house! Here you can see the main water supply in the utility room. Above it the largest splitter for cold water and the one above for warm. Each exit from the splitter has a tap, in-case we need to isolate a particular room. The cold splitter has 5 exits, sink in utility, boiler, outside tap, kitchen (inc downstairs wc) and upstairs bathroom. The hot splitter has 2 exits, kitchen and upstairs bathroom.

The opposite corner of the utility is where the new gas, condensation boiler will be. The black stripe is soot from the chimney that we demolished where the wood-stove previously was. The blue pipe is the cold water supply for the boiler, the red is the hot water supply for the radiators which goes straight up to the upstairs bathroom first.

This is the new outside tap. The round plate that looks like a satellite dish stops the tap from sinking back into the hole in the wall, keeps the tap in the same position as it has claws on the back and generally makes it look better. We had to use a small piece of galvanised piping to go through the cavity wall which then connects to the alpex pipe on the inside.

Being a house of MANY chimneys we used one of the empty channels in the central chimney to bring the water and heating pipes upto the first floor. On the pic is the starting point in the kitchen. First we dopped a weighted cord down the chimney and then attached the alpex downstairs and pulled it back upstairs, it saved making a big hole in the ceiling :)

Here you can see the point in the bathroom where the pipes emerge out of the chimney. The hot water splitter goes to the sink, bath and shower. The cold water to the sink, bath, shower and toilet. The pipes downstairs where laid in channels that we cut out of the floor, the channels will be filled up with cement and the new floor laid over the top. Upstairs unfortunatly the base of the tiles was too thin so we will have to box the pipes in.

Here you can see where the bath will be on the far left, then the toilet (where the upsidedown U is) and the sink on the right.

This is where the shower will be.

Aliens at work!

U comment, I follow

Thanks to a reminder from
http://wahmonline.blogspot.com/2008/08/im-now-dofollow-blog.html
I've just removed the no follow code from my blog, join the movement and remove yours too!

All blog platforms (as default) have this dead-end code that stops links inside comments being crawled, remove it and we can all share some love and share some traffic!

Housekeeping

Well I got around to doing some housekeeping and maintenance on the site today. Like the new template? The three column layout is a lot more roomy than the standard blogger template that I was using. The colours are still fairly subdued which I think is best for sites that post a lot of pictures. It's still not quite tweaked but it should improve over the next few days. I've also started a links list on the left had side under the top Entrecard droppers, if anyone wants to be linked drop me a mail.

Off topic party...

This weekend we were invited to our first neighbourhood party! Maria & Louis, who live opposite our new house, celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary in style. As you can see a lot of preparation went into decorating the house. Every-one in the street had secretly been making plastic flowers and planning the decorations for months then on Saturday we picked them up in our old-timer for the big event. First a service was held at the local church accompanied by the Frizzante Achordian Orchestra that Maria & Louis' grandchildren belong to. Next a small service at the town hall with a drinks reception and then to the main party at the St Martinus Gilde function room where there was a delicious buffet and drinks a volante until the wee hours! We did not enjoy getting up at 7.50am the next morning...
Contgratulations Maria & Louis!

What light through yonder window breaks?

As of Monday 17th of this month the windows are official on order! They should be in within 6-7 weeks. Of all the window companies that we had asked come and make quotes we ended up choosing Houbrix (Royal Fenster Systems), pricewise they came out in the middle of all the quotes but it seems that they have the best customer service. They also make the windows in their own factory, a lot of the other companies ship them in from Poland/Germany. We wanted PVC windows simply because the maintenance is easier but they have a wood-grain effect and it is very hard to tell the difference between them and real wooden windows. The Gealan frames have 6 chambers which is the most on the market at the moment. The chambers are sections in the frame that insulate so the more chambers you have the more insulation. The glass is 1.1k (K-value which I think in the UK is called R-value, a way of measuring insulation). They also have hidden hinges and 'mushroom' handles in the same cream colour as the frame. Where possible we took tilt/open windows and a mosquito cover for each room.

In the meantime we have to start bricking up the kitchen window which has to come up higher to allow room for the cupboards and work surface underneath. We have to remove the windows and window ledges the day before they come to install the new windows which means leaving the house 'open' overnight. Hopefully it won't rain but there's still the possibility that someone could break/walk in so we might have to think about getting a tent and camping out in the living room!

Most of our money has been sunk into the windows so we have got plenty of time in the next few weeks whilst we are saving to get lots of small jobs done, the stove can be installed again, the rest of the wall paper stripped and a lot of tidying and cleaning needs to be done, busy times!

Full house...

We have at last found old doors that match the 4 we had previously bought! The first four we saw advertised on Kapaza but being unable to find anymore we had got used to the idea that the other doors wouldn't be matching. Then by chance I recognised a house that we had seen for sale when we where house hunting on someones blog on a renovation site. The house was built in 1942 but had a lot of the same features as our house and they had the same doors that we had already bought. They had posted a plan of the renovations that they are doing, which have a very modern style, so I figured they wouldn't be using those doors and I was right! We went to pick them up on Saturday and the house is even in the same village as us, couldn't get any better, thanks Jimmy C!