TheMitchells

a Viessmann 29kW combi boiler.

That answer from Jeremy was interesting. we are renovating and the house has hardly anything turned on when we are not there yet it still uses a surprising amount of electricity. As we have never been there during the night, I assume the fridge and combi are using the whole 60kW as that is all that's connected. the charge for electricity for the 3 months was only £30 so I suppose £10 a month isnt too bad. But having read the above, I think it is the combi boiler using the most - I can hear it come on regularly even when we arent using any water. and its only the kitchen sink that uses any hot water at the moment as we haven't got the radiators or bathroom in yet. Electricity readings Period Meter no. 22 Oct 16 to 23 Jan 17 Day 158 Night 60 kWh. Does it sound too much and should I be turning off the 'ready and waiting' mode that Jeremy mentions? The gas costs £18 for the three months and the only thing using gas is the boiler. Again, I wonder if thats too much when we are using no heating and very little hot water.

I have the baby wipes ready! The walls are covered with ply, I would guedss then wall papered but the pipes are already in place and hidden witin the wall. we will do as you suggest re sealing all the pipes that come through the panels. No - I hadnt read about the supplied trims - would you recommend agaisnt using them? I'll have a look for the posts. Thanks for the help.

I'm thinking about the shower my parents are planning to install instead of the current bath. it is in a Mobile Park Home so like a caravan but static. therefore the walls are not solid. we plan to take out the bath and replace with shower tray, use B&Q Splashwall panels around the area and fit a shower enclsure. I am wondering about whether we'd need to tank the walls before fixing the wall panels. The plan is to use Nicks sikaflex stuff on the tray to create an upstand.(as described here) and then the panels would go on top of the shower tray. Should we use some tanking stuff on the walls first? And which one? I have looked at Aquaseal wet room system for around £30. would that be enough? Or are the panels sufficient by themselves.

the one thing I learnt when we took out a wall out between our kithen and dining room, was to make sure the RSJ's are in place on the floor before setting up the accro props. it is very difficult to get then in afterwards, espcecially in a small space. sounds an exciting project - welcome to the forum and good luck.

Opps. You are right - just checked and it was 0.087! It was the lowest that the air tester had ever done in 30 years of testing. http://www.houseplanninghelp.com/hph183-how-to-achieve-an-outstanding-airtightness-result/

Wow is all I can say! Looks great.

It is reading posts like this one that convinces me that if ever I do find a plot, I will go for a company who provides the full package to a watertight house. I'm looking at the PH15 system by Passivhaus Homes as they supply everything and have contractors who know their system and are trained in its use. They are currently doing a Passivhaus in Buckinghamshire and their airtight test came back at 0.8ACH!! and the guy who did all the work had never done passivhaus before. But they have a known system and components that all work. And that seems to give an awful lot of confidence and hopefully less stress. Sorry I'm not able to help with your problem but at least you know we all feel for you. You'll get there in the end (hopefully!).

welcome and, definitely, we need a blog with lots of pictures please. I'm quite green as still looking for a plot but one day............

Just had a conversation with Door Supplies Online and must say I was impressed. no hard sell but plenty of (hopefully) good advice and suggestions. we have two doors to get for the bedrooms which appear to be rather unusual sizes. If I get a normal sized door, it will mean taking 100mm off the height which may look rather strange and will invalidate any guarantee. But they do made to measure so waiting to hear back with a quote. And when we do the bathroom walls, we will make sure we have the doorset and make the doorway to fit!

What was I worried about. I just spoke to Building Control and they are happy to issue the completion Certificate for the main work (removing the kitchen pillar and installing rsj's) which they checked and passed months ago. They dont need to come out for the stairs!

Blimey! I didnt realise this would be so complicated. This is the current state of the stairs. I have moved the orangy post which we had, next to the thrid old one and jammed it in really tight to give extra structural support to that large beam above. The plasterboard will go round and cover all of these on the left. Then I plan to get two nice posts and abutt one to the right of the orange post, which will have been covered by PB by then. And the far right post will also be replaced by a nice new post. and hopefully it will be filled in between by glass or if too expensive, some nice spindles. I think I wil get the stairs/woodworking company to come round and let them tell me what wood would be suitable. and price up for those spindles too. 1. what about delivery?? But thanks for the offer. I'm down to 2 posts so price is coming down. 2. I know.... but it will look nice! And its the one extravagance in the whole house. yes, it is to resell but it is the one feature that will be the 'nice' thing that we didnt need to do. And walking round from the lounge, it is nice to be able to see through intowards the kitchen. Shouldn't all houses have that little extra touch. 3. Its not that twiddly! It will look classy..... hopefully.

I did speak to the Structural Engineer today to ask him what it is I need to do. He promised to ring me back in 20 mins. 12 hours later I am still waiting. He did say that using a hardwood would be fine as that would be better than C24. So I popped into a local woodworking place that does lots of projects including stairs. They quoted me £340 for 3 oak posts, planed to size. Which doesnt seem too bad, till I told the OH and he said 'no way'. I guess we could just put ordinary posts in and cover it with plasterboard but I had that vision of creating something that little bit differernt. Tomorrow I will ask at the BM about those 75x100 lengths....

Thanks for looking Peter - I did say the first 10 pages were all to do with our kitchen rsj's and not this problem. I am sorry in that I have obviously confused you all - the newish bottom post currently there was put in by us, when we removed the two bottom most origonal posts. we thought we shuld put something in till we get the new stuff. re point 1. I dont know why the engineer assumed the wood to be C24 - they were just branches, cut to size and most still had the bark on. I will get a close up today. None of the origonal posts were anything like 50x100. but if thats the size we need, I can do that and yes, my new bottom most post (when we get it) will be within the 1.25m from the wall. So I think from all that, as long as I get 50x100 (actualy I will get 75mm as thats the current depth of the origonal posts) C24 and place it within 1.25m of the wall, it should be okay. I will try that and see if the Building Control like it! I doubt they'll come out just to look at a stair post but you never know? Thanks for all the imput. Will let you know how I get on with the BC.

But is that what the engineer specified as I am not sure I understand his report?? Was I correct that this is what he is specifying? Thats the main question I am asking.

Please ignore the last two photo's - they werent supposed to be added and now I cannot delete them.

yes, I am considering a mirror. We will not be adding a window as we dont want to add costs that we probably will not a return back when we sell. Just painting the area white or pale colour will help - it was bright orange with black woodwork! Each to their own!

that diagonal will have to go and yes, we have added a couple of posts to hold up the beam while we get the proper posts. these ones are only things we had around and neither are structural. Hope that helps.

In our renovation, the middle room was always very dark as it has no natural light. We have removed the wall between that room and the kitchen which helps and on the other side, we have removed the plasterboard and exposed the staircase posts with the aim to leave some of it exposed, while plasterboarding the left hand half of it. the idea is to get some of the light from upstairs, down into that room. Also, as the space from the lounge into that room is rather tight, I want to remove completely the bottom-most post and instal new structural posts slightly further back to hold up the beam above. As this is structural, I did ask an engineer to check it was okay while he did the calculations for the kitchen rsj's. However, I cannot understand his report at all. This is the stairs as it was when we took off the platerboard. You'll notice that the 'posts' and cross pieces are all just tree branches, with the bark still attached. I guess there were no building regs in those days! Picture above is from the stair side and you can see the beam at the top which supports the upstairs. Here is a plan which I hope explains what we plan to do. The new plasterboard will cover the three old posts and the bottom triange between old post 3 and the bottom of the stairs. Between 'old post3, new post 1 and new post2, we plan to get glass from the balustrade companies if possible to allow light through and also, when entering the room from the front, it will open up the middle room in a much nicer way than previously. if the glass is too expensive, then good old fashioned spindles will have to do with a handrail. I am hoping someone can interpret the engineers report and confirm what I think he is saying, which is using C24 timber, using a 75 x 112 mm post, it must be within 1.2m of the wall. But I have been to a timber merchants and TPerkins and neither have C24 timber. I shall try another timber place tomorrow but it would be useful if I knew exactly what the report says we should do. Any advice will be gratefully received. ignore the first 10 pages as that relates to the rsj's for the kitchen which have all been done. And any suggestions of where to get the right timber posts. they need to be reasonably nice as I want them to be seen, maybe painted. AB2782-01 for pillar.pdf ab2782 calcualtions for pillar.pdf Picture of stairs as they are now.

Its been very interesting reading all the comments and I shall not be using Corian in my kitchen! In the end, we decided to not buy the show kitchen. after buying the units, we would still have £2k to buy the rest of the stuff and I know we will make it look lovely. I was also quite worried about how carefully the units would be dismantled and what damage stuff would have after being fixed/glued together for several years. And really, we are not quite ready for the kitchen yet so we'd have had to store it all somewhere and work around it. maybe another time.....

Am really happy for you and must be great to watch it all taking shape! keep the pictures coming.

that sounds like good advice and I dont think its something we'd want to do ourselves. I have played around with the units and our kitchen plan and I do think it would work without having to buy any extra units. I shall go and ask about fitters tomorrow. And to be honest, we were planning on a wooden worktop so if it didnt fit, its not the end of the world. I think the value of the extra's and hopefully the quality of the units (better than Howdens?) make it worth going for, even without the worktop. Im thinking of all the handles, sink, tap, hob, oven, dishwasher and extractor. They have to worth a couple of thousand?? I didnt really take in the models but Neff arent cheap. I also will need to see what sort of guarentee they come with.

I have my eye on a redundant showroom kitchen at nicholls which I think will provide a large part of our renovation kitchen at quite a good price - it includes a Neff induction hob and double oven, dishwasher, and all the extra's which would probably add quite a lot to our quote of £2k for the basic units from Howdens. It has a lovely Corian worktop which would need altering so my question is:- How easy is it to alter the worktop fit our use. I think most of it could be cut to fit two of the sides of our u shaped kitchen and we would need to buy the third side which would be a breakfast bar. But is it possible to join separate bits and still look good?

Thanks for all the best wishes and yes, he's recovering well - has a couple of scars which just add to his handsome good looks - he'd give Daniel Craig a run for his money now! Re the plastering - no - I did the prep and plasterboarded the rooms then we had a local firm in. I think they did a smashing job so will call them in for the next stage when we're ready. Its back to work tomorrow - painting the fence while I prep the bedrooms. He's working mornings only this week to ease him back slowly. Then its full on for next couple of months - we are over a year into this renovation and while initially we said ready to sell by spring17, we are now just hoping to get it sold before Christmas!

Its been a while since the last blog and lots has happened. We'd been busy with other things and planned to crack on with the house but while on the way to our house a couple of weeks ago, the OH was hit by a car which failed to give way at a junction. He was riding his cycle, got thrown up and across the road, landing on his head. Luckily, nothing was coming the other way, and he was wearing a helmet which took a lot of the impact and somehow, apart from lots of scrapes, his main limbs were fine, it was just his head that was badly hurt. He suffered a fractured cheek and eye socket but luckily, his eye appears okay. There were no fractures of the head or neck so after a night at the hospital he was sent home. A week later he had an op to fix the cheek and is now recovering from that. His good looks have returned with only a small scar around the eye. Another week and I'll be sending him back to work - he can do the painting at least! And in case you are wondering; the car driver was reported for careless driving and has admitted liability. Back to the house and a few pictures of the plastered bedrooms. What a transformation from their origonal state. The old windows had plasterboard added right up to the glass so I did take it all off and redid the reveals. It looks so much better now. The new cupboard on the landing and door to the front bedroom. and the back bedroom; This is the wall in the last blog which was my first plasterboarding attempt - it looks much better now. We are looking to start on the bathroom downstairs next. I have been busy sourcing everything and once the OH is back to normal, it should leap forward. The stud wall is in place, the bath is sitting in the bedroom and I am waiting for Nicholls to give me a good price on the rest of the furniture. More to follow...............