Seeing The Light At The End Of The Tunnel In Framlingham

We're back in Scotland after another five hundred mile drive from Framlingham and the end of our eleven days on the road. It's been a good break; we've seen friends, we've enjoyed a few days in a good pub and we've caught up with progress on the renovation of the house. As you can see from the above photo, the ugly brown UPVC windows and door have now gone and been replaced with these contemporary light grey timber windows and door by Timber Windows of Fornham. The window colour clashes with the cladding colour but steps are in hand for the exterior to be repainted in March.

The new steel girders above the Solarlux Bifolding doors have been covered with a layer of cladding in readiness for painting and the aluminium finish for the corner pillar is now on order.

  

The decorators have made a start with painting and even with just undercoat the landing is so much brighter than it was. Those Velux Sun Tunnels give fantastic natural light; we're so glad that we had them fitted.

All of the sanitary ware in the family bathroom is now installed and functioning. We still need the splash back tiling.

The en suite shower room is coming on nicely and is starting to look very classy. We had a setback with this when the shower screen that I ordered proved to be too small but Boundary Bathrooms have agreed to take it back with a 25% restocking charge which is reasonable as we've had it for two months (it is still in its packing though). We bought almost  all our sanitary ware and other bathroom stuff from Boundary Bathrooms and we're extremely pleased with their service (and prices).

Now that the kitchen/diner has been plastered and the floor has had a coat of screed where the walls were removed it's starting to look more like a room.

The chimney breast in the lounge has been completed and the wood burning stove should be in in a few days. The oak mantel looks really good.

The shower over the bath is now in place. 

We've ordered fitted wardrobes, dining furniture and all of the wallpaper. The wooden flooring goes in next week and then we've just got the lighting, other wiring and decorating to complete and we'll be ready for the kitchen fitters to arrive on 10th December.

The landscape gardener presented his plans on Monday and they are really exciting. Chris the designer reckons that the work could begin as early as January so we will be ready to plant in March.

On a negative note, our super duper new garden office turned out to be terribly finished and it started to leak. This is a bit scary considering the amount that we've spent on it but I'm not going to name and shame the suppliers yet as they seem to be bending over backwards to get it right and have authorised a very respectable expert in wooden buildings to remove the structure and build us a new one. As long as it is complete before Christmas we won't make too much fuss. If it isn't ready by Xmas, watch this space.

Framlingham Progress

We're down south in Rochester today visiting son Paul and family. We came down after a hectic two days of meetings in Framlingham  to catch up with progress and to meet various people to discuss the next steps of the project. All went well and everything is on target for the kitchen fitters to start on 10 December and for us to move our furniture in during week commencing 17 December although we won't be able to move in until mid January.

On Wednesday we met the interior designer and a bedroom fitter to run through the design for the dressing room. Then we saw a man about a burglar alarm and surround sound system and on Thursday the interior designer was back again with the kitchen fitters to run through their template of the kitchen. After that it was the landscape designer for a preliminary meeting and finally the Timber Windows manager to run through a couple of snags with the windows. Throw in an eight hour drive with a five a.m. start and another two hour drive to Rochester and it was a pretty hectic forty eight hours. 

Here's the progress to date.

Our bedroom now has radiator, skirting board and wooden windows.

Our en-suite shower room tiling is well under way.

The Solarlux bi-folding doors are now in place giving the lounge the bright and open feel that we aimed for.

The Solarlux french doors are in place too and the kitchen template gave us an idea of how the finished room will look.

We can now see from the kitchen right through the lounge and into the garden.

The outside of the lounge needs to be rendered and the pillar has to be clad. 

We've got a bath in the family bathroom now

All our wiring is now going to terminate under the stairs. We've hard wired broadband into all the rooms so there are rather a lot of wires.

The garden studio is finished.

Marion has clear ideas of what she wants and spent time telling the garden designer what she would like.

The water cylinder in the airing cupboard is now in place.

It's not quite total open plan living but we have opened the ground floor space into a much brighter layout.

We're off back to Framlingham tomorrow to leave a few bits that Paul stored for us. After that it's off to Ely to see the bedroom fitter and then the long slog back to St Andrews for a quiet week.