What is the collective noun for builders?

 After a week of teeing up builders to come by and visit Rita, we spend a freezing weekend running through the initial build plans with three sets of builders and a damp-proofing specialist in a merry go round style. What's the collective noun for builders? I reckon it's "a crack of builders", yes?

We are asking all the builders for quotes on gutting the house - removing all the partition walls from the various rooms, getting rid of the plaster board, floor coverings, the loos and showers, the cooking points, the wood panelling, and the piping. Everything. I still can't get over how much crap the vendor left in the house even when he said it would be left empty. We've managed to sell a bar fridge on eBay as well as a chest of drawers over the week, so that's something at least. 

The sauna effect in the loft. As lovely as it is, I think we'll get rid of it.

Our very own fold down bed.
Richard suggested getting another  so we could just have them side by side.

The first guys who come round come recommended by Ben our architect. They are keen to get their electrician and plumber round to also survey the work. They are a small partnership of three builders  who do all the work themselves and are keen to tell us that they don't put a premium on any of the contracted services that they get in. I feel confident that they would be able to get the work done and would do a good job, when he mentions that he is just finishing some work for Ben himself.

The second builder  heads up a large building company in Oxfordshire. It's obvious as soon as he turns up that he's the top banana and probably doing little labouring himself, but that business is doing well. Nice Audi station wagon, some lovely threads, and hair that reminds me of Hugh Grant in the late 90s. He asks for a cappuccino when I offer to run up the street to grab us coffees because the house is so freaking cold without any heating on. He's a nice guy and clearly with the size of firm he can get cracking (there's that word again) quickly. He helpfully gives us a rough idea of the quote while he's there - but I'm most impressed that he gives us a figure for how much we might get back for the copper piping and how we can dispose of the wood in an environmentally friendly way that will keep the costs down. The first builders had asked whether we thought the neighbours would be annoyed if they built a bonfire in the backyard to burn the rubbish. I am sure they were joking. 

All the builders have laughed at the dodgy cutout for the boiler. That's craftsmanship.

Our third set of builders come round just as Builder no2 is leaving. They are good guys who did work for us at our old place. There's a funny moment when they ask us whether Builder no2 is the architect. It tell them who it was - after all, it's good for people to know if they are bidding against someone else - and they remark on how nice his shoes were.  When Richard mentions that he's "dying to see what's behind the built in fireplace" in the front bedroom on the ground floor, one of them asks "How much? Shall I get the crowbar?" and starts pulling at the fireplace. And voila! Lovely Victorian fireplace discovered!

Look what we found!

Needs a bit of TLC

That discovery makes our weekend. 

Finally, a visit from the damp-proofing specialist who tells us that we really need to "tank" the whole of the basement floor. It all sounds very sensible - and very expensive. He also chucks a great big spanner into our build programme. We'd assumed that we would do the damp proofing first and then everything follows after that. But with the idea of extending the basement and then integrating it to the sitting room with stairs, he tells us that the tanking needs to happen some way down the line. More thought required on that then. 

The basement flat

We also then have a chat about dogs and walking in the countryside, and he helpfully tells me that all Travelodges accept pets. Nice tip. 

Rita meet Ben. Ben meet Rita.

This week we had our first meeting at the house with our architect Ben to walk him through the house and to share ideas. Rita has a pretty basic configuration – basically two large rooms on each floor of the main house with stairs running up the centre. The lower ground basement flat is self-contained and so slightly larger.

Working from top of the house to the bottom, we discussed how we would like to open up the top two rooms in the loft by removing the stud wall to make one super master bedroom. The loft has a gorgeous view of the park down the road and Ben’s suggested we take advantage of the aspect by replacing the current Velux window, with a couple of new fandangled Juliette balcony style Veluxes. I’m not convinced about whether I would want to stand high above the street over my roof on one of those. Apart from it perhaps looking a bit odd it might give me the heebee jeebees, but it’s something to look into.

The view to the park from the loft

We would also want to incorporate a new master ensuite bathroom in the loft (who wants to be tottering downstairs in the night to go to the loo?), so what is helpful is the sheer volume of plumbing that is already running along the outside of the house, which will make that task a bit easier.

On the first floor, we plan to have a bedroom at the front, again taking advantage of the view to the park. Ben points out the lovely art deco fireplace and surround that is still in the room. That makes me happy. We notice that someone has painted over the tiles. Ben suggests that we could remove it and Rita might reveal something special. And I guess if we bugger it up, we could always paint over it again!

The art deco fireplace

 At the back, we will divide up the back bedsit into a bathroom, separate loo, and a utility room (or as I am used to calling them, “a laundry”). Ever since moving to the UK, I’ve never had enough space to have a laundry and the effort to ignore the vibrating sound of the spin cycle and the constant problem of dropping my clean clothes on the kitchen floor has often tried my patience. It’s so great to wander about with Ben who helps us to think differently about where walls could go and about moving windows to create proper sized rooms, rather than just working within the confines of what we see. We agree to keep the current loo where it is and separate from the bathroom. There’s nothing worse than waiting for someone to get out of the shower so you can use the loo!

We have A LOT of fire extinguishers. And loos.

 On Rita’s ground floor – which is I suppose properly an “upper ground” floor, we will continue the bedrooms down the front of the house theme. It’s at the back that the interesting stuff will happen.

The back bedroom looks out over the garden. We would like to – and it’s also a condition of our mortgage – to reintegrate the main part of the house with the basement flat so that Rita is restored back to her original glory. The idea is to use the back room as a TV/sitting room and to create a small mezzanine overlooking the main kitchen and extended dining space in the basement. By extending the roofline slightly at ground level, we can visually bring the living and dining spaces together as one. Stairs will go from the sitting room down into the basement, popping out by the kitchen. We are a little bit concerned about how much space this will leave us upstairs and down, but I am sure Ben will come up with something snazzy.

The view over the back garden

 As we wander through the basement, Ben also points out that the heavy wall that we thought was structural, probably isn’t holding anything up above so that is good news and means much more flexibility and space for us to begin our kitchen.  This also means that instead of extending the house by 5 metres into the back garden, we might get away with applying for less. Permitted extensions are only 3 metres at the moment, but we know we will need more than that. And although the Government has proposed a relaxation of those laws, word on the vine including from the Planning Officer is that the Councils will oppose it so there’s not much hope there. I then get really excited when Ben suggests building a pantry/larder in an area of dead space in the basement a la Nigella style, picturing it in my head with fairy lights and all.

Heading down to the basement flat

Throughout Ben raises all sorts of things like fire doors and whether we plan to replace the windows. Rita’s windows are pretty much all dodgy and don’t close, but she does have some beautiful arch shaped windows on the first floor. We probably can’t afford to do those as a first run as good windows are so expensive. But starting at such a low base means that any improvements we make to the house will make it more environmentally friendly, which is a good start.

Ben says he hopes to get the plans back to us before the end of November so that we can get into the Council Planning Office at the beginning of December all going well. So the first task for us to get some preliminary quotes from builders, at least for getting the gutting of the house sorted and for the tanking of the basement so that we have a good shell to work with.