Tags

, , , ,

The last few weeks have been kinda full of joyous news.  Like this little gem!

Council says yes!!

Pretty awesome news to finally get everything signed off.  We’d been worried that the Rodeca cladding wasn’t going to get through, but it looks like the manufacturer was able to convince the council that it wasn’t likely to leak, spontaneously combust, litter, or prove to be a bad influence on at risk youth.

Luckily we didn’t  have to prove the same for the future inhabitants of the cinema.

Other things that made us do the happy happy dance?  (Pugsley’s is better than either Midge’s or mine.  Girl got moves!)  We’ve got walls going up, instead of down!

Not sure if we have to leave Midge in it for support….

Midge also appears to be holding this wall up. We may need some more nails somewhere.

It’s joyous in one way to see this, but in another it’s made me realise how tight our timeline is, and how much we’ve still got to organise.  From here, we need to have an electrical and lighting plan drawn up, have all our tiles, bathroom fitting and fixtures picked out, order windows, find more builders, get scaffolding, and even <gulp> start thinking about carpets and paint colours and furniture oh my.   (Oh, and did I mention that there is a BABY coming?  I may not have, because with the toddler, the job, and the cinema, I’ve tended to forget it occasionally myself.  I gave myself a terrible fright in the mirror this morning when I saw the bump.)

We had back to back on-site meetings with the builder, electrician, plumber, heating guru, and tilers this week (which felt a little like speed dating – “Lovely to meet you – how do you feel about the placement of the radiators?  And how many children do you want to have?  <ding> Oh, sorry, time’s up – next!”).

We found out from the supplier on Friday that the feature tiles we had selected for the bathrooms need to be ordered from Italy or Spain or the Outer Hebrides or somewhere, and oops, we had just missed the most recent container so there would be a 10-12 week lead time.   I guess we could change our minds on the tile choices – but oh my, it was such a lovely feeling to know that we had actually made a decision on something.  Plus, I really really loved the tiles we’d picked….

ensuite bathroom tile

Family bathroom and kitchen splashback tile

So we’ll either move in before the place is tiled, or move in a few months later than planned – which I believe is what counts as a first world problem.   And anyway, I’m pretty sure you have to have some kind of delay in your schedule before Kevin McCloud will even consider you for an episode of Grand Designs, so we’ve just ticked off another box there.

We’ve also reached a decision on The Heating (which deserves capitalisation to show respect.  Or fear.  And you better not take Its Name in vain, lest The Heating smite thee).

Leap has proved to be the one of only two companies to not seem intimidated or overwhelmed by the project, to answer our questions like they actually knew what they were talking about, and to give us an option that looked like we would be able to afford our power bill without selling a vital organ every few months.  (And the other company was based in the UK, and we would have had to import the entire system).   Sold.  So it’s radiators heated by a heat pump water heater and solar panels for us.  A bit pricey as an initial outlay, but if the figures are to be believed, we should be running our hot water heating and radiators for a third of the price of a gas system, and less than half the price of electrical.  Yay.  Even my rudimentary financial understanding can figure that one out – less is good.

Little bar on graph means more money for shoes….I mean…..university education…