Tina hosts this weeks Lens-Artist Challenge and asks us to post images taken using a phone camera. Her original challenge post can be found here – Lens-Artists Challenge #391 – Phone Photography
I rarely use my phone camera other than to record notes or something else I need to remember. However I do use the camera to record work I do, or work we have done on our house, as we’ve totally renovated it in the fifteen years we’ve been living here.
This was a month or so into the build but it illustrates what we were trying to do.
In 2017 we decided to extend our mortgage and build an extension at the rear of our house. The plan was to build a new back wall between the end of ours, and our neighbours garage, and then knock down the original rear wall. This would open up our kitchen/dining area and give us a much nicer, larger living space. The only brief I gave my architect was that I wanted a wall of glass on the back of the house to take advantage of the lovely view we have over the Gordano Valley.
We chose our builder based on good advice. He quoted us £33,000 for the project which involved everything except a new kitchen. We wanted to re-use our existing kitchen units which were still newish. Work began in early March 2017, with a completion date, three months later. Here’s the story of the build in pics, which overall went very well and was recorded on my iphone 6.
Day 1. This was the foundation dig but an unexpected, misplaced rain soak away,under what’s left of our old deck, was collapsing into the trench. It had to be filled with concrete to make it stable. we were £1,500 worse off on the first day. Luckily that was the only real surprise that cost us money.A huge steel beam was used to support the upper floor of the house once the original wall was knocked down and another steel, in the foreground, was there to support the new roof and rear doors.The doors go in and the roof is ready for tiling. These doors slide individually and pivot open to give a large opening that’s great in the summer. The doors look ok but have been a nightmare and the company we used were dreadful. They’ve never worked properly and we’re having new bifold doors installed next month to replace them.The doors open and the old house wall was removed once the extension was watertight. You can’t imagine the amount of dust that old brick wall generated. We were cleaning for months after. The old house cladding was removed as we had decided to replace the original plastic with wood effect concrete boarding.The original kitchen layout, soon to be transformed. The local authority building regs man had insisted that the builders pack the new area with insulation, to compensate for heat loss through the glass doors.Going into the Easter break, the builders left before the weekend and told me they needed the new plasterwork painted for early the following week as the electrics would be going in. Builders do that! Trouble was we had tickets for a Kiss concert and hotel stay in Birmingham that weekend. We had to abandon those plans and get painting. It was probably better for my ears. They rang for a few days after the last Kiss concert I attended. I made do with dabbing some paint on my face and playing Kiss Alive whilst I was painting.Another weekend surprise from the builders. ‘We need your flooring down by next week’ I was told as they went off for the weekend. Luckily the guy I used for our flooring was really helpful and stayed late on a Friday night to get the new wood floor down. The pipe sticking up from the floor is for the sink in the soon to be created kitchen island. The pretty much finished kitchen. The builders had a carpenter/kitchen fitter who worked wonders with our existing units to created the island. We added a few new units as the cabinets and doors were still available at B&Q.
The extension has totally changed how we live in our house. We spend 90% of our time in the the new room. I’m sat at the island typing this. It’s also a great place to use for entertaining when the family come to visit. It cost us about £42,000 in the end. We spent a bit more on the doors (doh) and extra building costs like the concrete and cladding. We spent money on a few more units for the kitchen and the American style fridge/freezer.
We could have retired instead of taking on the extra mortgage in 2017 but neither of us have any regrets about working on to fund the build. We’re still tweaking the kitchen design but there’s nothing fundamental I would change, or things we might have done better. Because we lived with what we had for so long, we had time to really think about what we wanted from the new room. However, was it worth missing Kiss to get it finished – debatable!
The finished job.
Thank you to Tina for hosting this weeks challenge. I’ve taken this slightly away from being a photography blog but I’m so glad I did use my phone to record the build and create these memories.
Steve Hyde 