A Busy Day

Work on the garden has been continuing apace over the last few days. It's still full of buddleia, only it's all horizontal and in pieces now. There's still lots of rubbish, only it's... well, actually, it's pretty much all where it was. We're trying to keep everything on the other side of the fence so that the garden remains baby-safe, which means that until a load of the buddleia is gone, there's not even room to start sorting the rubbish. In the process of hacking down the shrubs, we've found numerous buckets, many shower components, a terrifying number of tiny polystyrene balls, and a sofa which has been buried so long most of the biodegradable bits have gone, leaving only the metal and foam elements to haunt us, amongst other things.

Honestly, you couldn't make it up.

Lloyd hard at work

Tomorrow we're planning a co-op work day to try to clear a section near the fence so there's room to start sorting the rubbish into plastics, tiles, rubble, glass, polystyrene, landfill, etc. That's a lot of sorting, but we'd rather recycle as much as we can, even if it's a palaver.

Because this is a massive job, and dedicated though we are, it's going to take forever, we're also planning a work day on Saturday to which we're inviting willing victims volunteers. If you'd love to wade through sedimentary layers of skank in the pursuit of us one day having a magnificent permaculture plot, then please do get in touch. If you don't fancy that, but do have a vehicle, we'd be over the moon for you to take a load or two of chopped up vegetation to the dump for us. Being vehicle-less has it's downsides, and the inability to cart stuff away is definitely one of them. If you can help, there'll be tea, biscuits, and one of Flick's delicious dinners in it for you.

All this and more awaits you!

I feel I should note that this is not for the fainthearted. We don't know what we're going to find, and it's all pretty gross, but if you like a challenge, we'd really appreciate your help. In the event that our garden pursuits are rained off, we'll have some work ready to do inside the house, though this is likely to be of a more fiddly DIY nature, just so you know.

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In other news, we have a shower... sort of. The mixer tap in the upstairs bathroom looked ever so shiny and nice when we got here, but it turned out that it was perpetually stuck in the limbo between spout and shower, spraying water pretty much everywhere but where you wanted it. We dismantled it and tried to fix it - oh, how we tried! - but to no avail (nothing made of metal should have a tiny, vital moving part made of plastic), and new taps are too pricey to contemplate.

The downstairs bathroom... well, that's another blog post, but it did have a working mixer tap which we decided to purloin for upstairs. The mission involved in this was pretty epic, and resulted in the realisation that the bath would have to come out to get the taps off. What luck then that today the washing machine waste pipe, which runs under the bath, sprung an almighty leak! We are lucky golems indeed. Within ten minutes of this discovery the bath was out in the garden, the pipe was bodged back in place pending a decision about the layout of the bathroom, and Rob had the precious taps off.

Getting them back on the upstairs bath was another matter, but he persisted, and lo! We now have a mixer tap with shower attachment upstairs, which is dead exciting after weeks of washing your hair with a jug, even if there's no bracket on the wall yet. Sometimes it's good to be easily pleased.

Our new workflow chart - blutacktastic!

In the midst of all this activity we also had a workshop. I know! We're basically superhuman. Anyway, this thrilling workshop was run by yours truly, and involved sticking lots of coloured paper to the wall. We were trying to get to grips with all the essential and non-essential jobs that we need to do, and put them in some kind of order. Although we didn't quite manage the order bit today, we did sort things into sequential and stand-alone jobs, and group things together into related tasks. An example of this is that we need to scaffold the building and fix the roof, but it will be easier to get scaffolding in once the back wall is rebuilt (possibly with steps to street level in) so it makes sense to do the wall first. It's much more complicated than that, but you get the idea. I've included a picture above for your enjoyment.

So, a busy day, and everyone is buzzing and planning on playing board games, and I'm feeling all happy to live with such a lovely bunch of people.

Fun times indeed.

- Hannah

Hidden Corners

So, there's this thing where we bought a house without being able to see all of it. Three lofts without hatches, lots of mysterious boxed in bits in the eaves, and half a garden which seemed to be one thing and then turned out to be another.

The Other Stuff *shudders*

Joe has been hacking and slashing at the buddleia with gusto, and today Sven even got his machete out. Huge swathes of buddleia have been flattened in order for us to clear the way for the garden wall to be demolished and rebuilt (more on that in a minute), but there is still more to go. Much more. And once the plants have gone, there's the other stuff.

Previous tenants, or perhaps the previous owner, or perhaps previous builders working on the property, or perhaps all of the above, appear to have been using the garden as a rubbish dump for some time. Possibly all of the time. The ground level we thought we had is clearly not the actual ground. It's a sort of densely compacted layer of general building rubbish and household waste, upon which the buddleia have made their home. This leaves us pondering if our garden is heavily sloping, or perhaps even terraced. The rubbish is so deep, we can't tell. Honestly, it's disturbing.

This has led to a few more discussions about the whole private rental market, especially student and generally dodgy accommodation, such as our house once was before we rescued it. Somehow it seems to be a system set up so that no one cares enough to look after anything, so it feels good, if daunting, to be liberating this small patch of earth from it's use as a rubbish tip, even if it is going to take us forever to sort through it for recycling.

If anyone with a penchant for unearthing layers of tat, or generally hacking, slashing and burning stuff wants to come over, there's tea, and probably dinner in it for you, and there is plenty of work to go round :D

We've also been doing a bit more hand-wringing about what work we need to do and how we're going to pay for it, and we have two workshops scheduled for the next week to help us all to plan and understand things. Hopefully this will make us feel like we can forge on with some of the bigger stuff, and in the meantime, there's all that sorting in the garden to be done. After that will likely be the roof, and then... well, then, everything else under it.

In all seriousness, if anyone feels the urge to do get any building experience, we will probably soon be removing a couple of roofs and putting them back on, as well as lots of smaller DIY jobs. We're happy to cook for you and generally foist tea and biscuits upon your person, so if you fancy a holiday in Swansea or already live here and want to help out, do get in touch.

- Hannah

Buddleiacide!

Well, I meant to blog more, and I meant to do more, and neither happened. We're having a few weeks in limbo as jobs are planned, superceded, and abandoned for various reasons. Hopefully a workshop is going to occur to help us plan work and budgets better in the future, so there is less uncertainty about when things are going to be done.

Sometimes it's very hard to remember that we're new at this: new to budgeting, planning major works on a house, living together, doing huge DIY missions, and trying to do all this while still living our ordinary lives, going to work, studying and raising a child. There have been quite a few frayed nerves, and not a little grumpiness, but also lots of laughter to act as a welcome antidote. We clearly have a lot to learn, but being aware of that is a good first step.

Small things have been happening. A lid rack for the saucepans has appeared. A third of the tiling that needs doing in the kitchen has finally been grouted. Cassian has made some fab pockets for our post to go in so it stops wandering off around the house. Lloyd has taken on the role of treasurer and made all our records digital, so we can all have access to our ongoing accounts and it's easier to keep track of spending.

Joe has finally had some time off after working some truly epic shifts recently, and he's been raring to go. The other day he cleared all of the existing rubbish in the concrete half of the garden, and today he climbed over to the fenced off bit and made a path through the buddleia to the bottom of the garden. The fenced off bit is full of rubbish and enormous swathes of bramble and buddleia, and until today afforded us tremendous privacy and looked rather green and lush, with the odd flower. This section of the garden is actually bigger than the concrete bit, so will more than double the existing garden when we reclaim it, the very thought of which fills me with glee.

It would be lovely to leave all this greenery in place until next year when we might actually find the time to do a permaculture design and get some plants in, but unfortunately the shrubbery is hiding a rather dark secret. The retaining wall at the end of the garden is roughly 7 foot tall, and atrociously built. It has a big crack running right up the middle and the surveyor described it as "at risk of collapse". This is not only terrifying on a general level, but the lane behind is used very frequently to access parking spaces in the offices opposite, and the potential damage to cars, and heaven forbid, people if it did collapse is horrifying to contemplate. Our plan is to get this wall taken down as soon as possible, and for a new blockwork wall to be built in it's place, but properly this time.

To get to this bit of the garden to do work, almost all of the buddleia need to go, so Joe got started today with a pathway to the bottom so we could see how far we had to go. I neglected to take a before picture, but got lots of nice ones once he's laid into it with the one pair of secateurs we could muster. It felt a bit weird to be complicit in such a mass hacking of plant life, but needs must. As a random aside, the buddleia is named after a potential relative of mine, so I've always had a bit of a sweet spot for them. Sad times indeed.

Finn helped to put the chopped up bits in our garden waste bag

A temporary reprieve for these lovely blooms

Joe took Finn for a bimble around our new bit of garden

That tiny pale patch on the left is our first view of he bottom of the garden :D

Finn made friends with this friendly snail

In other news, Lloyd got a first in his degree. If you want to have your brain warped by his sci-fi/horror radio play, you can listen to it here.

- Hannah

Finishing Touches

OK, so the title is a bit of a misnomer. The kitchen still isn't finished, but it is getting closer by the day. As we're meant to be doing a major loft re-fit in under two weeks, we're hoping that all the loose ends of kitchen work can be done by then in order to preserve everyone's sanity and access to tea and tasty noms.

We took the broken washing machine from downstairs to the dump, and yesterday the working one from the upstairs kitchen (soon to be our spare room) came downstairs to take it's place. One fridge that came with the house went on Freecycle, and we moved the upstairs fridge down to join the fridge I brought with me. We don't know the rating of the fridge which came with the house, but it was a lot newer than the one we freecycled so hopefully it's more efficient too. Mine is A rated, so despite the two fridges we are hopefully keeping bills down a bit. Eventually we may get a single full-height fridge, but that's a little way down the line at the moment.

A space which has been left for a large floor-to-ceiling pantry cupboard has been temporarily filled with shelving units which people didn't want any more. This is mostly because we have so much to do that building a large cupboard feels a little way off, and the shelves will make a good interim measure.

There are still shelves which need to be built for communal food/spice/tea supplies, but the one storage-building job which has been done is the magnificent pan rack. Everyone wanted to avoid having a Cupboard of Doom (you know the one: 13 saucepans, none of which fit inside each other properly, with all the lids rolling around and all the other kitchen gear balanced on top) and a pan rack seemed a good solution. Cassian is going to ruthlessly sort through our massive amalgamation of cooking equipment to leave us with a gloriously minimalist, yet functional, set of gear, and most of it will be hung up here for easy access. Huzzah!

Pan Rack of Glory next to our temporary pantry shelving

Just to sing it's praises a little more, the pan rack is made partly of various curtain poles from around the house which were no longer fit for purpose, and is height adjustable at the front so we can get it to a level where Flick (the shortest Golem) can reach things but Sven (the tallest Golem) doesn't hit his head all the time.

I think we're all feeling rather pleased, not only that we made something sturdy and practical, but that we're trying to make a shared house that feels beautiful and loved. This feels like a very satisfying contribution towards that goal, and we're all a bit happier because of it. Also, it has shiny bits :)

On a much more practical level, this mini-project was the first one which used our new budget proposing system, which I will write more about in another post. Happily it came in under budget too. Win all round.

- Hannah

All Go.

Well blimey. Good grief. Cripes, etc. What an incredibly busy (nearly) three weeks it has been! I've been wanting to blog about all the things, but been distracted by doing all the things instead.

So what have we been up to?

Mostly we have been stripping out and rebuilding the kitchen. It was all of the manky, and all of the wrong. Through the medium of awesome assistance and truck tonnes of work, we now have a nearly finished kitchen which is far more fit for purpose and twenty times more lovely. Also we all know how the plumbing works, which can only be a good thing.

Things we did as part of the kitchen work:
- replaced the taps, waste fitting and plumbing on the sink, but reused the sink as it was fine after Lloyd cleaned it up amazingly.
- put in a new worktop on the sink side, and swapped the rotten cupboards for ones from the upstairs kitchen.
- added plumbing for a dishwasher/washing machine to be added in the future if we decide we need one.
- added a run of cupboards on the opposite side of the kitchen where there were previously none. These cupboards were all reused ones from the upstairs kitchen.
- Used offcuts of worktop from around the house to add worktop on top of the new cupboards.
- took out a small hallway which led into the kitchen to make more space.
- removed a leaking radiator, which will be replaced with one on a different wall.
- cleaned everything a multitude of times.

Things we have left to do include finishing a hanging pan rack, building shelves for extra cookware and bulk food items and building shelves to act as communal food, spice and tea storage. When it's finished, it's going to be epic, and we're all feeling rather proud that we stripped and re-fitted the kitchen in the first two weeks of living here.

We have also finally finished moving everything from everyone's prior abodes, and have dealt with a variety of ad hoc DIY jobs. Amongst this there have been visitors, meetings, budgeting gymnastics and various small people learning to use screwdrivers. They do make things more complicated, but the cuteness is unbelievable.

Here we go again with a massive pic spam :)

Oh my!

Stripping out all the rotten cupboards and broken plumbing

Making sure the new plumbing was super-sealed

Sven working on the plastering where we took out a small hallway

Getting the sink in to the new worktop

Water!

Improvised cooking before the second worktop went on

Reused worktop and cupboards on the left and new worktop on the right

  We're spending the next week or two unpacking a bit more, finishing the kitchen (lots of making good to do around the ex-hallway) and planning the enormous loft insulation job which awaits us in July. No rest for the awesome, eh?

- Hannah

Little Boxes

Oh my, eight people have a lot of stuff. We've been moving boxes and furniture pretty constantly since Wednesday, and there is still tonnes to go. My recent decluttering efforts seem to mean nothing as I still appear to have ALL OF THE STUFF, and I suspect some of the other Golems have ALL OF THE STUFF too. Good thing we bought a big ol' house, eh?

There has been a stoic perseverance in the face of unexpected obstacles, amongst which have been having only cold water upstairs and only hot water downstairs, realising our kitchen worktop was squidgable (ew!), and having to scrub a collection of bogeys off of a bedroom wall (I kid you not). We are all knackered, and some of us are ill. Some of us are tiny confused toddlers who are excited and unsettled by it all at the same time. It's been a long few days.

Amongst this we've been having a regular evening meeting to sort out the minutiae of our new domestic set up. Tonight we discussed the washing up, shoes, various rotas, and the complexities of leftovers. And somehow we still haven't got all shouty with each other. Consensus woo!

I thought I'd be here giving you an exciting update about all of the things we've been doing, but in all honesty, there has been too much going on for my brain to formalise it into a post. I'm going to go the pic spam route again, instead, and I hope you'll forgive me/be really relieved that I'm soon to stop waffling ;)

- Hannah

Still trying to sort through all the keys

Moving my garden to the new house

It's OK to remove windows to insert furniture when you (sort of) own the place ;)

Behold our joist ends, for they are not rotten!

Finn's DIY skills are coming along nicely

Enjoying a co-op dinner in our dining roomy bit

Key Day

Today we got our house.

Too much happened to tell you about. I am too tired, and I have to get up too early to move yet more stuff. The gist is this.

We have a house. It's huge. It's skanky in places. It's lovely in places. It has an unfeasible amount of keys. It has an unfeasible amount of doors. It has high ceilings and low ceilings. And it has all the stairs.

We would like to thank all at Radical Routes, our wonderful loanstock lenders, and everyone who has been so supportive of us and interested in our crazy project for the last two-and-a-bit years. That means you.

I'm to tired to say more, so have some pictures.

- Hannah

Off to collect the keys. Woop!

ALL OF THE KEYS

Once we got the keys, it took 10 minutes to find the right one!

The view from our spare room/upstairs sitting room

Future garden of awesome

Golems in a MASSIVE ROOM

We have all the stairs - four flights to be precise

Finn took this one :)

Cass showcases a different use for some of our many keys