Fitting the First Window

So we had possession of our first window. It was decided by all that it would be best if we got one window, a smaller one, all finished and fitted so that everyone was happy with the process before the rest were all made. This obviously made things slower, but seemed worth it.

Job 1: Taking out the old window.

Seems like the easy bit surely. Apparently not.

Each window was made up of parts that were hinged so they could be opened, but also parts that were non-moving and totally sealed in by window putty and paint. The hinged parts weren't too bad, rusted screws more often than not, but if in doubt a crow-bar solved the issue.

The old window (and some damp wall mess).
The top part is hinged and the lower part
 sealed in place.

The rest of the windows were less than co-operative. While I found the idea of gluing pieces of cardboard to either side of the glass and smashing it very appealing. I wasn't entirely convinced about the practicalities. Smashed glass and dogs feet don't mix well. The best tactic we found was to chisel away the putty on the outside, also uncovering any nails holding the glass in place in the process. Then, cut through the adjoining bar to the gap where hinged part had been. As carefully as possible knock the bar away from the glass so that it lifts from each end and remove. Then, with a lot of slow and careful wiggling, try to slid the glass from.

More often than not, the glass would break at some point. But hopefully in large relatively controlled chunks.

Once all the glass is removed, cut angles into each of the sides so they can be levered away from the walls.

Job 2: Preparing the gap.

Cleaning up the area is essential, including removing any loose mortar and debris.

We were advised to make certain we used damp proof membrane. So we bought a roll of the thick plastic membrane. A staple gun was by far the easiest way to keep it in place and lay it around the sides of the window gap like in all the youtube videos I watched.

Later we discovered that actually just laying the plastic membrane along the bottom and a few inches up the sides, and then painting the outside of the window frame with liquid damp proof membrane was far more practical. Also make sure all sides are well covered in a good undercoat - again, to avoid damp rotting the wooden frames.

Job 3: Get the window to fit.

Offering the window up to the gap to check how it fits is fairly self explanatory. If there's a big gap, it will need centralising with some kind of frame. If its only a small gap, wedge it so that it is level in all directions with a spirit level.

Once in place, we used expanding foam. Doesn't seem like the most environmentally friendly choice, or the most Victorian house sympathetic. In fact the foam degrades pretty quickly when exposed to UV and its strong enough to hold the windows without having to drill new holes in the old walls to hold the windows in place. Its got brilliant insulation properties, is so easy to use and relatively cheap.

Using a gun with screw-on cans, instead of the cans with plastic nozels is much easier, especially when doing lots of windows. Put enough foam into the gaps to fill the area but not overflowing. Its touch dry within about half an hour, and hardens properly overnight. 

Lovely dear!

Sealing from the outside.

The next day, you can use a stanley knife to cut any excess foam and damp proof membrane back to about a cm beyond the level of the window. 

This gives enough room to add some frame sealant (again to stop water and also protect the foam from UV), and either fill with wooden dowel, or build some sort of frame/architrave on top. Basically, to hide all the ugly parts of the window fitting.

And hey presto the room suddenly felt so much warmer and brighter!

Getting the First Window

Just as the walls were moving, and we were gaining doorways, we received our first new window. It was a very exciting day, having spent so much time making a mess, having to undo old problems, finding more new problems to undo later, and generally feeling like we were going nowhere fast as far as having a house to live in, the first new, finished thing was definitely a big deal!

The only problem being Mat and I don't know how to fit windows. This was, as it happens also preceded by me not knowing how to measure for ordering windows. My older brother Ryan made the windows for us. We knew we wanted wooden windows, we wanted double glazing and we wanted them to look in keeping with the house - obviously. Originally we'd hoped to go for sash windows, this was most likely what would've originally been in the house and would have looked great. Unfortunately, the amount of technical work involved made the cost too high. We were looking at at least £2000 plus per window. Which, while I believe is a good cost for such an item, simply wasn't available in our budget. So after a fair amount of agonising we opted for casement windows. I did some research and found that most houses of that age had slightly larger panes of glass, rather than the later style of lots of much smaller panes of glass. Wanting to keep it simple, I drew up this basic design. On the left are the larger windows with a central divide, on the right, the narrower back windows.

As always with these things, there are compromises to be made. I wanted the windows to have minimum surround, maximum glass, allowing for as much light as possible. Older windows tend to be very elegant and have just this, whereas new plastic double glazing has thick chunky divides between each bit of glass. What I didn't previously realise is that the shear weight of the double glazed glass makes this necessary. The casement has to support the glass and keep its shape without risk of twisting or warping, or simply breaking with the weight of holding the glass up when the window is open.

So the window surrounds had to be thicker, but the compromise to obtain thinner cross pieces as well as making the windows cheaper in terms of materials and build time was to have one large piece of glass with the cross pieces laid on top of it. This helped the support the window, but was not to essential to the structure and so as thick as would have been necessary if there had been 4 separate panes of glass.

This is a cross section of the window Ryan sent me, handy to explain what the components of the window are.

Measuring for window sizes is awkward. If there were no existing windows it would be much simpler, there would be nothing to get in the way of seeing where the edges of the hole are. As it is, people tend to hide the messy edges with boxing and architrave, looks lovely but not very helpful for the person with the tape measure. However, taking the windows out just to measure and then boarding them up for the next couple of months while you wait for the windows to be made isn't very practical either. Especially while you only have no lights.
I had to guess a fair amount, which was frustrating to say the least. I'm sure any builder will tell you this is ridiculous, and the guys on Grand Designs are always so scathing of anyone who doesn't manage to measure for there windows accurately, but in all honesty, its not easy. I say this now with a fair amount of experience on the matter. Its also scary, when you're paying up to £1000 per bespoke window, its a big responsibility on your semi-guessing shoulders. I'm owning up to this embarrassment in the hope it might help someone else in the future. The windows turned out to be a little too small, only a few centimetres, I was outraged at myself, there was going to be even less light!! But in reality, or so Mat reassures me, no one but me will notice, and once everythings finished I will barely notice either.

If I did all this again, there are some really simple things I should've tried, but simply, despite a fair amount of research did not know.
First of all, if you can, just remove all of the boxing/architrave/whatever is covering the edges of the windows so that you can't actually see where the frame meets the wall. The edges of the wall are where you need to measure to.
The other thing is that in older houses - or at least Victorian ones, the windows tend to be set back further - often slightly recessed behind the external skin of bricks. Newer houses tend to have the windows in line with the external layer of the house, meaning a deeper window ledge. So quite simply measuring the external window gap and adding a centimetre at each side for it to sit behind the outer brick layer would've made them perfect. It seems a little inaccurate to me as a principle, but would in the case of our house have been totally correct.

So after all that - and a lot of work on Ryan's part that I couldn't begin to explain - our first window arrived:

Holes in walls

This happened at the same time as the "moving wall", but I thought it would be clearer if I put it in a seperate post.

Because we lost part of the corridor, the only access to the bathroom became going through the master bedroom. So for practicality, we put a doorway from the spare bedroom into the bathroom as well. As with the wall we moved, this one wasn't load-baring either, so nice and straight forward (if pretty awkward) to make a new doorway in it.

Door to the master bedroom - and lack of door to the spare room

New hole - from the other side

To the master bedroom and the spare room. Terrible photo, sorry!

Moving Walls

Its been a while. Again. There's lots to talk about so I'm not going to waste time writing and just put lots of photos up instead.

So next on the to-do list. Time to loose a bit of corridor and gain a bit of bedroom. Quite a lot of work for not a lot of space.....but now our bed will fit in the room. It was an important couple of days.

now you see it

Now you don't

New wall

Ti   

The Disappearing Wall

.......oh wait, it didn't disappear, there was a huge pile of rubble and mess left on the floor. Thanks Mr Kilby.

I think Mat got a little jealous that I'd been demolishing stuff in the kitchen. That and an extra stressful week at work. It was decided the walls between the porch and bathroom needed to come down.

I was showing someone the photos of this wall removal afterwards and they asked how long it took? "Hmm, I don't know" Mat said, "maybe half an hour, 40 minutes". So I have included the time stamps on the photos in the captions.

12:24 Double Denim Man is ready, sledge hammer in hand

12:25 The first strike

12:25 Yep, definately a bit missing there

12:29 Less wall, lots more mess

12:29 And a very pleased Mat

2:15 So it took him literally 5 minutes to knock the wall down, and 1 hour and 45 minutes to clear up

2:16 

.......typical this gets done after Mat and Richard did battle to get the bath out of the corridor and 2 doorways that no longer exist!

2:16 Anyone would think he was pleased with himself

On a much sadder note, I am very sorry to announce that the sledge hammer died along with the wall.

The Disappearing Kitchen

Well, its been a while, sorry everyone. My excuse pretty much entirely consists of - we've been too busy working on the house, to write about the house.

So I am, I'm afraid massively behind on the updates. I'll keep putting everything in order, and hopefully before too long catch up with myself so that whats on the posts is actually whats happening - as opposed to now, which is very different indeed.

Anyway! Enough waffling. Get on with catching up with the posts Lana!

The time came for our lovely lime green, orange and brown kitchen to go. I think the photos pretty much speak for themselves, however until this point I must admit I had been deceived into thinking there hadn't been too much damp in the house. I saw behind the kitchen units and was educated.

This one's from way back on the day we got the keys!

Minus some units.....

.....and a rather mouldy looking wall behind....

.....and after a couple of experimental knocks with a hammer......hmm!

So I took away the rest of the units. And all the plaster.

Snow Special

Well, you might have noticed (if you live in England anyway), its pretty cold at the moment. The car reckons most of the time that its about minus 1 degree C. I realise this isn't that cold in the grand scheme of things. My little brother Richard has just moved to Lake Louise in Canada for 3 months, don't be fooled, there are mountains along with the lake, I spoke to him on skype earlier, it was 10 in the morning and minus 11 degrees outside. The fact that he was in his room wearing shorts and t-shirt was apparently irrelevant. So, I admit, its not that cold by proper cold standards, but minus 1 is still cold!! Plus, I'm a wimp, I can get cold in the height of summer, 25-30 degrees seems like a far more appropriate living temperature.

So anyway, its cold, and!!! there's SNOW this is the most exciting bit. The cold I could live without, but the snow is awesome. We trooped over to the house today, we're troopers like that, Mat pulled apart more scary wiring, I chipped some cement off the wall, but lets face it, there's no heating in there, there was frost on the inside of the windows, our hearts just weren't in it for the long haul.

The dogs on the other hand loved it, Finn is half husky so he's in his element, this is his favourite weather. Bella is part dingo, but apparently dingos still love snow, they just need to curl up somewhere warm afterwards.

So today is a Snow Special with photos of the dogs playing in the snow and I will put some more pictures of the exciting house developments on soon.

In the back garden - its very exciting out there you know

Snow ball fetch!

I'm not sure either of them saw which way it went

Snow on shows is also quite incredible

I don't know what it is, but I love it. The Story of the Boiler Cupboard

One of best jobs we've done so far, and most satisfying, was take out the cupboards in the kitchen. These cupboards were basically small rooms, with serious stud walls and door ways. While they are potentially very useful for storage, we decided having the space was more useful to us.

Once the boiler had been condemned and disconnected by the plumber, Mat took it out and so we could completely remove the cupboards. We might be cold and without hot water for a while, but it did give us no excuses not to completely gut the kitchen.

As seen previously in the early stages

Once the boiler was out, the wall rest of the wall came down. It also became apparent the plaster board on the right had side didn't actually have anything behind it in certain places

Mat arrived with the crow bar.

After a bit of a poke I found there was a gap in the wall behind. We knew from the other side that it certainly didn't go all the way through, so we suspected another fireplace, which would take our current total to 5. Mat was immediately handy with the crow bar (I suggested something a little more delicate than the sledge hammer might be a good idea whilst we still didn't actually know what we were dealing with behind there!) Turned out there was a hole, complete with some very rusty fire tongs.

The fully gutted version. 

We have yet to work out what the inset in the wall actually is. It has what is clearly an original arch at the top so not a fireplace. Any suggestions anyone? I don't know what it is, but I love it.

A night out and I still find something house related

As I mentioned, we had my 'little' brother Richard to stay for the weekend. It seemed cruel to put him to work on the house for the entire time, so one evening we headed into Cambridge for dinner and some drinks. Mat and I don't know the restaurants in Cambridge as well as we should. My excuse is "I'm not from around here" even if I have been living in the area for 4 years now, I'm not sure what Mat's excuse is. However, anyone who lives near Cambridge will I'm sure agree that getting in and out is a nightmare! The roads are just stupid. Roll on the new house being finished and us getting to make use of the guided bus route.

So we went to this place we have found, Bills (bills-website.co.uk) its a really nice, chilled, friendly place, our kind of place. I'd never noticed until we went in that night, although it is probably one of the reasons I like it so much, that the décor is very similar to what I had in mind for our little Victorian place. Basically, its an old building, but with a very industrial feel. Lots of old angle poise lamps and metal shelves that my Dad used to have in his workshop, that kind of thing. I think a mix of classic old and industrial can look absolutely brilliant. We're going to have to be very strict with ours - possibly more strict with myself - the types of design we love are endless, so there's a chance for things to become very eclectic and interesting, but also, especially in the new, smaller house, a risk of becoming very cluttered. So classic Victorian and stripped back Industrial is the plan.

I thought it was a good opportunity to get some snaps of things I particularly liked that would be helpful for later ideas.

Sorry about the focus, but I still thought this chair was great. After spending 5 minutes trying to get my camera on my phone to focus, I noticed the girl sitting next to the chair giving me some very unimpressed looks. I stopped taking photos then.

I love these stairs, I know its extreme but I think this look would be amazing in our house.

Obviously a somewhat smaller version.....these ones would fill most of the downstairs in our house!.