Over the Finish Line

Welcome back! I was busy at the drawing board from the end of September until mid-January but have since been working towards getting some more of the house finished. Feast your eyes...

Airing Cupboard Passage

This small area has been painted, carpeted, architraved and skirting-boarded.

A Milestone

Anyone who has seen this blog before may well recall that one of the major issues with this house has been low pressure on the hot water. We had to fit a noisy pump to the shower to achieve adequate flow. But now, Coleman Plumbing and Heating in Taunton are about to change our lives.

Unfortunately, this does involve some demolition in the bathroom to gain access to the hot water cylinder. I spent half of Saturday ripping out the stud walls Richard built around it.

Then yesterday, Stuart came to work and we drained all the water from the house including the central heating, before removing the old vented hot water cylinder.

This is the new stainless steel unvented, pressurized cylinder that will take its place.

Before installing the new cylinder, almost all of the old pipework was cut out and replaced. I particularly like this bit here with all the curves and angles.

It fits, just.

Look at my passage

The last couple of days I've spent clearing all the tools and dust and rubbish out of the airing cupboard and repositioning some electrics. Janine can start putting towels and fluffy things in it now!

The old...

The new. The plastering was done a couple of days ago by Jack, now it just needs a lick of paint, some floor tiles and a few bits of skirting and architrave. Job done.

Latest progress

Once again, blogfans, I am practically buried under a deluge of stroppy emails from frustrated viewers demanding an update. Highly remiss of me to have kept you all waiting so long.


All the water and heating pipes have been run, and will be
hidden behind skirting and insulation board.

The lobby/dressing room area won't have the full-height sloping ceilings so the
stud wall has been insulated against the cold void which will be behind it.

The dressing room area will be lit during daylight by a sun pipe. That's a highly reflective pipe that links the ceiling with a hole in the roof covered with perspex to let in daylight.

Things are starting to look nice and tidy around the skylights. The ceilings have foam board insulation between the rafters, and are further covered in insulated plasterboard.

The outside walls are covered in that too.

The corner round the hot water tank will be neatly boxed in and the sink will go next to it.

Spot of bother looming for the portholes: I had some bendy board to line the holes with but it was just too short. Need to find another method, so any sensible suggestions are welcome. In fact it's so long since I had a meaningful number of comments on a post, I'll happily accept stupid ones too.

Coming together

One of the things about an airing cupboard is that air needs to be able to circulate, so you need gaps in the shelves, unlike the shelves in the previous version. Its amazing how many metres of wood you get through making slats.

Lordy! That was quick! Make the panel, whack the louvre doors (to let air in) on and Bob's your uncle.

The shelves in this one are fully capable of supporting the weight of a tin of varnish, unlike the old one.

Construction and demolition

The first, and very pleasurable task, was to rip out the old monstrosity and permanently remove the panels hiding the hot water pipes.

You can see how big the cupboard was. This space will now become part of the new family/guest bathroom.

Arne helped a lot with building the frame for the new airing cupboard.

Here it is all coming together where those orange panels were. The big orange tank is the pressure vessel for the central heating which we recently had installed to make the system more efficient.

Another view... duh!

A new era of splendour dawns...

Now that we have sold the car, let me share with you some snaps of the ghastly, unsightly past with which we have been living these last six years.
Before entering the bathroom, you have to pass through this small vestibule down a couple of steps and face these doors which don't open or close properly, behind which is a large (you might have guessed, if you have picked up any recurring themes from this blog) but massively inefficiently used space with just two really flimsy shelves where there ought to have been four strong ones. It is an "airing" cupboard around which air cannot circulate because there is no way for it to get in or out.
On your left as you face the doors, are these panels behind which is another large space, which is simply hidden; not used at all. Lots of the hot water and central heating pipes run behind here, so the space gets warmed up all the time to no useful purpose whatsoever. Hmmmm..... An ideal spot for an airing cupboard, you might think.