The building work for our house extension and renovation started on 1st March, so we’re exactly a month into it. The work so far has mostly been outside, demolishing the garage and building the shell of the side extension. The inside wasn’t affected during March apart from us clearing all our non-essential stuff from the house in preparation for the builders starting works inside.
I have been sharing it all on my Instagram Stories (most of which are saved onto my Reno story highlights if you would like to catch up), but I thought it would be good to do a little recap here of what has been happening in the past month.
DIG, DIG, DIGGING
Having a digger on site for digging the footings was cause for much excitement with my kids!
NEW WATER MAINS PIPE
We also lay a new mains water pipe as our house is still on the original lead pipe. This meant we had to do the messy work of digging up our drive.
LOCATION FOR DRAINAGE PIPES
After just one week into the build, new drainage pipes had to be put into place and I had to give my builder exact measurements for where these needed to go. There would be no moving them once they were concreted in. My plans for the extension have veered a bit from the architect’s drawings, so it was a really big help that I already had a pretty good idea of the room dimensions I wanted in the extension, and exactly which loo and basin I would be getting, so that I could determine their precise locations in the WC to suit my requirements. Despite knowing what I wanted, I still found it nerve-racking to have to be so sure just one week into the build before I could even really see the space! This is a perfect example of ‘designing backwards’ when you are renovation – figuring out what you want out of the space before it is built. Now I need to start planning the rest of the rooms pronto!
POURING CONCRETE
Watching concrete pour straight from the mixer truck is strangely satisfying and many of you enjoyed watching both the concrete pours for my extension as much as I did!
GROUND FLOOR EXTENSION LAYOUT
Our ground floor extension shell is now built and it is so great to be able to see the new space added to our house. This extension will give us:
- a boot room (shown as cloaks in the floorplan below) which will keep the hallway clear of the clutter of coats, bags and shoes, hooray!
- a WC
- a utility room – finally, the kitchen will no longer be cluttered with washing or dirty wellies
LIGHTS, CAMERA…
On the last working day of March, I had some lovely people over to shoot my old kitchen, a few days before it was being demolished. Why??? I can’t say much more just yet, but stay tuned and all will be revealed! 😉
NEXT STAGEÂ – INTERNAL WALLS COME DOWN!
Before the first floor extension shell can be built, the next stage is to knock down the supporting wall between the kitchen and dining+play area. This work started today… now it gets really messy!
Keep an eye on my Instagram Stories for all the action!
