Waterloo Farm: a self-sufficient blog

I would like to start this post by saying how much I look out for my trades people! Whenever you stopped yesterday it was freezing in the house, so today I decided to light the fire in the snug! It worked a treat, and there is loads of wood that is coming out of the house as walls are being removed etc. It created a real cosy room to sit and eat lunch and keep the cold at bay.

However, with more walls coming down today, there was not a lot of sitting down, whatever Tammy might think

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Mark and Dale, who are Elite Building and Renovation Services Norfolk, would never forgive me if I mentioned Dan and not them! So to support them as well here is plug for them. They have both been total bricks this week and really worked their boots off. There has been some real hard and rugged work in removing tons of walls so far, and they have been really professional in ensuring that the structure and integrity of The Farm is secure before they have done anything. I thought taking down walls was just a matter of sheer brute force, but I have seen this week that it is actually much more to it than that.

They are a great team and I have real confidence in their advice and their work. I just hope they start to put something back up soon!

I don’t have their contact details as they are at The Farm, but will add them tomorrow, but as a place holder, you can contact them on:

Dale Howe:

Mark Winder:

Again, if you do want them to come and look at any possible work, do mention our name.

PS - Mark is on the left and Dale is on the right

We are always keen to support and promote local trades, so here is a little plug (excuse the pun!) for Dan, our Electrician, or should I say Sparky!

Dan is local, only based in Hethersett, and he is proving to be a real brick, though I guess if he is an Electrician I guess I should really say fuse?

So far Dan has made the house safe while the building works continue using the temporary consumer unit and RCD (means no one gets nuked if we accidentally cut through something that is live!) in the picture left. He has also been cutting out lots of the hanging wires where the walls have been knocked down. Floor boards have also been lifted and slowly the old manky wiring is being ripped out ready for the new stuff to go back in where we want it.

Dan has really added value to our electrical works and pointed out some items that we had not thought about, would have become an issue or a missed opportunity, so we are really pleased he has mentioned them.

You can contact Dan on:

• Tel: 01603 810 288
• Mob: 07739  988 205

If you do contact him, mention us as a reference point and I am sure he will try to help you out where he can.

I managed to make it to The Farm briefly today to have a look at what’s been going on and also because I needed to help Nige make some decisions. When I arrived the ‘work force’ were sitting in front of an open fire in the snug eating fish and chips LOL, but I soon cracked the whip and got them back to work! The house is looking extremely scary now! It’s amazing how quickly you forget what it looked like before though - it’s as though the walls have never been there. The biggest change, which was not on the original plans, is that we are now going to have a full galleried landing upstairs which I’m actually really pleased about! We had intended to leave some of the wall in place but actually it was bowing so badly we felt it was safer to just knock it down, so now it’s gone! I ventured up the ladder to the upstairs and the ensuite wall has also been ‘chopped’ to form the new landing so there’s now just a huge space where walls used to be! I believe that the wall in the entrance hall may have been coming down this afternoon as the steel was being delivered, and that’s the last major bit of wall to come down! Dale and Mark have warned us that taking down is very fast and that progress will slow considerably after this initial phase, but even so, I’m very impressed with the progress after only 3 days. There is an awful lot of clearing up to do though …

Hey folks, another great day of progress! More walls down (yes there are some left and no, we are not going for open plan living in the whole house ;)) and we are getting closer to seeing what the final design of the house will look like. There is still a long way to go, but we are making far quicker work than I could have ever imagined. In summary stuff we achieved today:

• Pantry wall removed
• Old consumer unit removed and replaced with temporary safe power supply and plugs and sockets started to be removed
• Upstairs gallery opened up
• Cut through en-suite wall
• More mess
• More stuff too much to list…

To tired to do pics right now, but will post some tomorrow.