Waste Not, Want Not - Part 1

While the planets realign themselves into the right position for the works to start, we have been mulling over some of the smaller details of the renovation. You'll remember the basement room, which you access from the front entrance and down a few steps. This will be the bike/shoe/boot/coat room or more catchily the vélo-vestiaire.
The problem is, to get bikes through the front door and down those steps is a very tight corner, impossible to negotiate without a third arm and a bruised shin. Our original idea was to widen the little staircase and add a bike rail on it - you know, the kind you see in railway stations. But having got the quote back from the wood man, we decided a re-think was needed. Maybe we could use the large window onto the street. It opens from inside onto street level, and is easily tall enough to push a bike through (or a cart with the shopping). But how to manoeuvre the drop down on the floor?

The DIY Recycling Fairy had a great idea. We simply re-use the bottom three steps from the wooden staircase from the hallway down to the basement, which will be coming out anyway. We reinforce them with something solid underneath, and add on the bile rail down one side. And voila. It's all wood, so nothing a saw and a few nails can't sort out. Well, that's the theory. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out..

Unfinished Sympathy

(Massive Attack, 1991)



There were always going to have to be compromises.

We started the process of getting quotes from builders who could manage the whole project ("entreprise général") back in May/June. We had rather optimistically hoped to get these in before we went on holiday in July (but we did get one in - definite points for them).

So in August we do more house visits with contractors, hoping to have a few offers to chose from by the end of the month.

It was only at the end of August that we had enough offers to compare. And the prices we got back were fairly eye watering. So we decided to go back for another round, and also ask separate contractors to see if that made a difference (knowing that this makes the project much harder to coordinate and means the whole thing can take longer).

We have now, after months of hassling, finally got those offers in - all except one (which has been delaying and delaying for the last two months).

It's still not looking brilliant: if we do everything we wanted to do, it would almost double the cost.

So we have been painstakingly going through individual items, deciding what we need to do now (or never will) and what we can do later, and seeing what this does to the total budget.

Staying in are the under-floor heating in the kitchen, the rain-water circuit for the downstairs loo and utility room, the top-grade insulation needed to be 'low energy', the roof, windows, and the necessary water/electrics/heating etc.

The 'to do later list' is rather longer: re-plastering, all the painting, the green roof, anything in the garden, the second bathroom, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, sanding and oiling the wooden floorboards and stairs. Depending on how brave we feel, we might have a go at doing some of this ourselves.

Needless to say, we'll not be splashing out on any new furniture and fittings for a while.

But frankly, I don't care if we're dining off tea chests, as long as we're there...