Renovation Day 1

 Hah, so this blog still lives.  And Blogger still lives, what a blast from the past.

As I did before, let's use it to document the next phase of renovation and improvement of Walnut Tree House.  This is for a history for me and the family, but y'know, it's public for posterity too.

Anyway, brief scene setting.  Since 2012, we have done very little to update the house, save for me refreshing the kitchen with paint, new worktops and some Covid lockdown energy.  Lack of funds prevented us from doing much more other than note with a sigh the crumbling house with threadbare carpet, peeling wallpaper, and more worryingly banging plumbing and seeping leaks.  Always with the view that when the boat came in we'd be more ambitious.

My late father bequeathed to us sufficient means to allow for a much more substantial overhaul.  It's taken the best part of 4 years to go through three architects, two rounds of planning and the slow reduction of our grand plans for the initial vision (a huge dog log extension, a reading net, a yoga studio) to the current set of plans.  

In truth, despite the high price tag, this isn't really a grand design, just an extensive renovation.  The kitchen is being knocked around and excavated, a new bedroom is going in on the first floor, an ensuite is being added to the other first floor bedroom, the master suite is being extensively renovated, the porch is being knocked down and enlarged to provide a ground floor toilet, new windows everywhere, solar panels, an air source heat pump.  It would be more cost effective, but alas, too expensive to knock the whole thing down and start again.  Instead we'll add our efforts to the extensive set of developments that have characterised the house's architectural history.

So with plans approved and contractor appointed, we've spent the last month slowly, and then hurriedly, packing stuff into boxes and carting it down to Betsy's garage in Barley.  What a lot of heavy books we own.  How little the day to day quality of life is affected by their departure.

This weekend saw the fever pitch of activity.  Two full days of clearing the kitchen, and either packing it or moving it into the utility room to create our mini-kitchen.  Which will serve as the family kitchen for an indeterminate number of months.

The biggest effort was the removal of the Aga.  No one on Facebook marketplace or eBay wanted it, despite many half-hearted enquiries from people who didn't really understand what an Aga is "could I pop around and get it, I've got a van".  Anyway, I took it on myself and dismantled over the course of a day, and managed to offload it onto some friends of friends who'd taken on a new house with a very old Aga, and thought they might upgrade it with ours.  Good luck to them, I'm just glad that 600kg of metal is off our premises.

We're all a bit discombobulated in anticipation. The kids are kinda freaked out by it all, which I suppose is only reasonable given that this is really the only house they've ever known, and we're about to smash it up.  Islay and I are knackered, and if it wasn't for being concerned about the kids, we'd be a little nervous but excited.  As it is, we're just focused on keeping everyone ticking along for now.

So yesterday was the first day.  Two white Transits on the drive by 7.45am, by which point I had left and was reduced to following proceedings over the video cameras.  From my inspection at day's end, it was a fairly light day.  

They moved the massive fridge into our new dining room - what was the media room - and then dismantled the kitchen units.  I'm guessing they poked around and worked out what's what to form their plans.  They nearly tried to remove the expensive Google doorbell with an angle-grinder.  Luckily I saw what they were doing, and a quick call to Islay saw her pop it off with the small blade rather than an industrial tool.

They left the house still connected in that it was still possible to walk from one side of the house to the other through the kitchen, but apparently that will change today, as they put up hoardings inside the house (I think) to allow us to be relatively untroubled by dust when they start hitting things with hammers.

Wish us luck.