Week 8 was ‘more of the same’ as we continued the work to finish off our build. I say finishing off – it will take another 5 weeks!

The internal walls and floors are now all complete, except for a small area by the en-suite shower as Victoria Plumb sent us an incorrect mixer valve. The plastering continued with two rooms completed, this helped us as we needed to move all our lounge furniture upstairs ready for underfloor heating to be installed next week.

The roof was tiled, with a great team that took a couple of days to do it. Our tiles are slate-effect composite, so a plastic polymer type using recycled materials that are light but very strong and durable. They have to be pinned down on each edge as they’re so light! They look amazing though. That’s the main roof now tiled, the rear roof and front porch will be retiled too so everything matches.

As I mentioned, we’re having underfloor heating installed downstairs, primarily as this is now an open-plan room with no walls for radiators. This requires a flat floor and we noticed that our living room floor sloped into a corner, so the guys put down a self-leveling latex screed which dried really quickly and provided a very good base for the heating and laminate floor) to go onto.

The final work this week saw our boiler being moved from what is now under the stairs to what will be our utility/shower room. We had a few snags, including a gas leak caused by an old ‘anaconda’ hose (the flexible hose attached to the gas meter), but that was all sorted by the emergency gas support who came to the house within an hour.

Lots coming up next week, windows and underfloor heating being installed, more plumbing and some final fix electrics. I am a week away from getting my kitchen back properly! It can’t wait – since the protective walls came down, I can see the space we’ve created and it looks amazing.

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