Loft going up, downstairs wall coming down!

So its been nearly a month since I've last updated my blog. I have been really busy with having to buy all the stuff to in the place which means hours most evenings choosing bits.  Planning permission has been granted for the downstairs extension exactly the way I wanted it! Huge relief.

The upstairs has been coming along nicely and french doors and side panels have gone in. I went with aluminium instead of PVC, the aluminium frame was slimmer and the hingers are smaller rather than the big bulky ones I saw on PVC ones. It's a lot nicer on the eyes and I am pleased with the result

There has been a change of plan- the walk in wardrobe is now just a small storage space accessible from the bathroom. Unfortunately we just didn't have enough roof height to use it comfortably. 

The good news is the bedroom and and the bathroom are of a very good size. The below image shows you the bathroom on the left , the door to the bathroom would be direct in front so would be a L shape. 

We have started the downstairs extension. The foundations are being dug. We are using pad foundations along the rear and side.

Being in London there ground has a lot of clay and we're having to down 1.9 meters. The photo above is only 1 meter down so there's a fair bit to go.

I have decided to go with private building control for the downstairs and am using the the council for the upstairs. The reason being is purely to save time. I want to move in by the end of July, planning permission was granted on the 4th of May and I wanted to get started almost straight away. If I had gone with the council I would have had to wait potentially 6-8 weeks for them to approve the building control drawings where as Private building control was a lot quicker.


Finally the downstairs walls have been removed. The walls that previously divided the bathroom and kitchen from the lounge have all been removed as well as the airing cupboard and dividing wall for the small porch. The new space created will be the half of the lounge (minus the toilet in the pic)

The sliding door , door on the right and wall are still yet to be removed as it will be all open plan.

Putting the roof back on!

Finally some of the structure is going back on and we can see some real progress.  The below pic is the rear dormer but it gives you an idea of how big the master bedroom will be.  The opening in the middle is for the french doors and side panels. It's 2400mm by 1975mm. There will be a Juliet balcony in front of the doors.

This is a view from the front of the property. There will be a large flat roof in the middle. A 1200mm by 600mm fixed roof dome window will be placed here . This will hopefully brighten up the front of the lounge as well as the stairwell.

Annoyingly my council's building control insist on triple glazed windows for the flat roof windows which bumped the cost up.

Slight change of plans. I have decided to put two Velux windows in the bathroom and not put one at all in the walk in wardrobe. As the walk in wardrobe will only get minutes worth of use a day I didn't see the point of having natural light. Also it would turn the small room into a sauna in the summer as it would be so hot. I sourced Duratec roof windows -which are made by Velux but rebranded as Duratec. They're an older style made by Velux but come in at around 35% of the cost of a Velux equivelent. So a lot cheaper

Duratec Window   They come with a 10 year warranty which is an added bonus.

This roof should be tiled and weather tight by Friday or Monday at the latest.

Boys Toys- ceiling speakers

Finally some fun stuff-I am bored of looking for light switches , windows , bathroom taps. Some of the toys I want - Audio gear.

As explained earlier the whole house will be decked out with multi room audio. All the rooms will have ceiling speakers.

I got in touch with Simon at Bartlett's Hi-Fi in London. I explained what  my requirements and budget were and Simon came up with the below package.

For the Lounge

I will be having a 5.1 home cinema set up which will have 3 Monitor Audio CT-265IDC for the Front Left, Centre and Right. Ceiling speakers aren't ideal for a 5.1 set up as it's hard to separate the left, right, centre , rear speakers from one another as they're firing downwards. The good thing with these speakers is that the tweeter is directional and you can point it to where you're sitting which helps address the problem of being able to focus the sound. They are 3 ways speakers so should be able to handle most frequencies with ease.

The 2 rear speakers will be Monitor Audio CT265-FX. These speakers have dipole tweeters to help with the rear surround.

To handle the bass I am going to go for a R370HD subwoofer. It comes in various colours to match most interiors. I am waiting till the interior is done before I commit to this. It will most likely be white or oak.

The kitchen diner, will have 4 speakers, the bedrooms will have 2 and the Study will also have 2. These will all be Monitor Audio CT165. There are perfectly good for background music and do not need to be as focused as the 5.1 speakers however they still have a directional tweeter.

The bathrooms will have one speaker unit in the ceiling but the speaker will handle both the left and right audio. These will be Monitor Audio CT165-T2.

Outdoor Audio

I will have  a pair of speakers outside. I am going for a pair of white all weather  Monitor Audio CL50s for this.

Overall I am very pleased with range of speakers that Monitor Audio provide which is why I have gone with them. The speakers are very pleasing to the eye , as well as the ear and have a good range that suits most budgets. 

A big thank you to Simon at Bartlett's Hifi. He was extremely patient through the selection process and worked very hard to get all the speakers within my budget. 

Wiring infrastructure - audio, video and networking

I plan to have multi room audio and video in each room. I do not want Sky boxes on show so plan to store all the audio and video gear for the whole house in the cupboard under the stairs. I need to run speaker cables /video and data cables from here to each room in the house. 

I am running a total of 4 cat5e cables and 2 coaxial cables into each room.

To make this easier I bought 200meters of the cable below which has 2 strands of cat5e and coaxial cable in one strand. 

This makes  life a lot easier as instead of having to run 6 cables into each room I now only have to run 2. One strand will come out in each room where there is a TV and another strand directly below the TV . I will run ducting in between the TV and the point below in case I  need to join cables/ run something below.

The reason I am running the cable to the TV point is not just to carry an aerial signal but also most TVs are now smart TVs which have iPlayer, 4OD, etc built into them so need a data connection.  Not only that should I ever want to use a HDMI Matrix to supply video all over the house , use an IR changer or HDMI over cat5 I can upgrade. I am going to use Apple TV2s running Plex to watch movies ,TV series and Netflix. I find wireless networks too unreliable with carrying video which is why I want cat5 cabling throughout.

The bedrooms will have two strands as will the study. The lounge chimney breast will have one strand, as will the wall for the new extension opposite the kitchen should I ever want to place a TV here, finally I will also run a cable to the pillar in the kitchen for the option of a small TV here and in the bathroom.

In total I will be installing 19 speakers in the house, broken down as follows.

Bedrooms and study will be having 2 ceiling speakers.

Ensuite and downstairs bathroom will have a single stereo speaker unit ( single speaker that handles both left and right sound via one unit)

Lounge area 5 speakers for the 5.1 home cinema 

Dining area will have 4 speakers

Outdoor speakers will have 2 speakers.

To wire all this up I bought QED multicore QX16 four core speaker cable. One strand will have 4 cables inside which will wire up two speakers. This makes wiring up a lot easier as instead of having to run two cables into the bedroom, study and bathrooms I only need to run 1. For the dining area 2, ,3 for the lounge and 1 strand for the outdoor speakers.

By using the cables above instead of having to run 8 strands of cable into each room I now only need to run 3.


Finally I plan to run HDMI cables from the cupboard to each TV point for the bedrooms/study and lounge I prefer good old fashioned HDMI for this rather than HDMI over cat5 as the technology right now is very expensive for the good units and the cheaper ones have reliability issues.

Bringing down the roof!

The last thing you need in the middle of a build is a bank holiday weekend to slow things down, thankfully despite the bank holiday we're actually two days heard of schedule. Unfortunately the building work is the boring part and there isn't much to write down that is exciting.  Three RSJs have gone in and the new floor joists have gone in for the loft conversion above. Roof tiles have been removed from the rear wall where the RSJ protrudes , these will not be replaced as a dormer will be going along here which will house the Juliet balcony doors and window panels.

Tiles have also been removed along the side of the bungalow , this is where the gable wall will be built to maximise the space in the loft.

The tiles on the roof are the original concrete ones and 80 years later are not in the best of shape so I have decided to replace all of these now whilst we are removing half the roof rather than reuse. I am awaiting the quote for the tiles but this should come in around £1500.  Damn it that contingency fund is getting eaten into.

Further demolition - Asbestos Garage removal

A week into it and we're on schedule.

Ceilings all removed, kitchen stripped, rear porch removed. The walls that runs along the lounge that separates the lounge from the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen will be removed once the RSJs have been installed. These we're delivered today and should be installed over the next few days.

Unexpected costs. I know everyone says budget an extra 10% at least as a contingency. I was hoping meticulous planning would mean that I could bring this figure down. 1 week into it and I have had to dip into this.

I wasn't aware of the garage being made of asbestos until I got the survey back from the bank - so the cost for removal wasn't in my original budget. I knew that asbestos had to have specialists to remove it. Unfortunately I had no idea how much this could cost.

My garage not only had asbestos walls but the sides were also made of asbestos- great more expensive to remove.
I received quotes varying £1000-£1200 plus VAT from contractors from around London with an average wait of a week. I was recommended Fred from Countrywide Asbestos removal. He came in just over half of what most London contractors were quoting- although he was coming from Staffordshire and managed to do the work 2 days after contacting him.

I emailed Fred some pictures and he was able to quote me based on that and including disposing of the contents inside the garage which was a large work bench and various pieces of wood.

Fred arrived at 8am and 4 hours later no more garage. It gives a much better idea of how much space we will have to play with .

I am worried that the study maybe a little too small so once the main external walls up I may revisit the size of the study and move the wall by 2ft and eat into the kitchen space a little more.

So the demolition begins

So the work began today. Below is the wall that separated the existing master bedroom from the lounge. This was was non-load bearing so the builders knocked it straight down. The new wall will be reinstated but will be positioned two feet in the bedroom. Will make the bedroom a little more narrow  but as we're also taking the wall that divides the second bedroom and master bedroom down there will still be plenty of space for a decent size room.

A view from the lounge into the bedroom.

This is directly facing up into the loft. Luckily the loft has very good height so will make a good sized room.

This wall separates the lounge from the kitchen and the bathroom. This will eventually come down to make a larger lounge.

A panoramic of the downstairs. Apologies for the poor photos they were taken on my iPhone.