LOG: Our new home 6 months in

On 20 July 2023 Spinne and I have been in our new address in ?? for exactly six months, after living in Cheshire for 30 years. It’s not been as smooth a move as we had hoped. Here’s how it’s going:

?…Pre-Moving in.

7 November 2022, Spinne & I had a viewing @ 23 Currievale Drive, EH14 5RN, made an offer, had our offer accepted. We were delighted & danced with excitement. Hunting for a home in Edinburgh, when you live in Macclesfield, is tiring. This home was a ‘ready to move in’ 3-bedroom house with more space than we currently had, detached, with a huge double-garage in the garden, waiting to be turned into a drumming studio. The location was great & the local community brilliant. It was ￡200K cheaper than some of the other houses we had looked at. The previous night, in Gordon’s kitchen, inspired by reading about Solomon & his palace, in the Old Testament, I’d prayed for God to lead us to the right house.

The flood

1. <>18 Dec 2022, house empty with current owners, Tom & Lisa having moved to the Orkneys; very cold weather: a pipe in the roof-space burst. Flooding destroyed floors & ceilings and paintwork everywhere except kitchen & bathroom. Lisa (on the phone) terrified we’ll back out of the purchase, but … no, we still want the house. Tom & Lisa engaged Kingston Renovations. Moving-in date is still 20 Jan; Spinne & I were invited to choose upstairs floor-covering (we went for mottled grey carpet) & paint colours. Spinne chose:?????????Master bedroom: earthy green, we really like it.

???????Spare bedroom: yellow

????????Office (upstairs 3rd room): scary orange, probably the least successful choice.

???????Hall, stairs, landing: very pale grey now called rhino-breath: rather good.

???????Living room & dining room: two shades of blue with the feature wall in “Picasso Blue” which people really like.

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Moving In

20 Jan Spinne & I, with the unflagging & unbelievably helpful & generous Paulo & Janinio Truswell, arrived. @ lunchtime. We found Ricky, in the open front doorway. He was the Kingston renovations project manager, he looked tired. His men were still @ work. He said he’d been working on our house - long hours & 7-day weeks for quite a while. We & the Trusses went to Edinburgh to get the keys off the solicitor & when we came back Ricky & his team had gone. Our furniture wasn’t due to arrive till the following day. We let ourselves in & had a quick look. There was the Virgin Media hub, delivered on our move-in date as promised. We locked up again & went to the Marriott Hotel, Heriot-Watt.

21 & 22 Jan: massive Paulo-&-Janinio-powered whirlwind. I can’t believe how much energy, skill, knowledge & brute determination this couple were willing to expend on our behalf. To say Spinne & I are grateful & owe them our admiration is putting it mildly. Roughly what happened is:

?????Virgin Media: had delivered the hub but not the promised TV box. I phoned Virgin, Janinio got the hub working.

?????We had keys for the front door & back door. But there’s also a conservatory with a locked door to the outside & another locked door to the rest of the house; there’s the garage, & plenty of windows with locks. There ensued a lot of trying of keys in locks, & searching cupboards & drawers for more keys until Janinio, opening a kitchen cupboard, received an avalanche of keys on her head.

?????There was a key-safe screwed to the base of the log-store. It was where Ricky of Kingston Renovations and his team held the house keys - they didn’t tell us its code. Spinne carefully kept the safe open, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to reset the code or unscrew it from the log store.

?????Along one side of the kitchen were a cooker, dish-washer, washing-machine; packed in with no space between them. The washing machine wouldn’t turn on. Paulo levered it out from its place, with difficulty. What we saw was bad: there was the stop-tap - completely inaccessible with the white-goods in place. There was a chow main of electric sockets & electric cabling, all tangled up on the floor, with plumbing running above them. Paulo decided to remove the dishwasher which was standing on some off-cuts of timber. When he winkled the timber away the dishwasher remained, seemingly floating 25mm above the floor. It turned out to be suspended from screws that had been punched upwards through its lid into the underside of the work top. Paulo manhandled the dishwasher, suspected dead, to the garage. Tumble dryer and freezer in the garage also probably dead.

Paulo also:

?????Fixed an elegant iron gate giving access to a pathway down the left side of the house. It required a base into which the hinge could be seated. Paulo made and fitted one. Fixed a pair of equally elegant gates to the right of the house which needed some kind of dip into which a central pin could get purchase.

?????Removed some coax that ran inside the walls from the living room to the master bedroom to serve a now absent telly.?

?????Made a shelf in the cupboard on the landing: ideal for storing towels.

?????Tightened a tension wire to the top of the fence along part of the south edge of the garden, affecting a repair to about half the fence. It belongs to the local high school, our neighbours to the south.?

?????At one point I opened the kitchen door (it opened inwards) and knocked Spinne into the fridge. After a quick consultation Paulo took the kitchen door off; we put it in the conservatory.?

?????Paul and Janine made the wi-fi accessible through the house.

?????Spinne and Janinio worked hard on the central heating. It had a timer but none of us understood it. It had days of the week, times and temperatures, but what it did with them was hard to fathom. Also, making it do anything with them was frustrating, as there was an “OK” button which needed to be pressed all the time for everything, but which was gummed up with kitchen fat. It would either not register or get stuck on auto-repeat. The weather, and the house, were very cold.

??????Just before leaving on Sunday Paulo shut the key-safe. Oops. It’s still locked & probably now a permanent feature of the log store as we cannot even un-screw it: a souvenir of these hectic few days.

Snags

The boiler indicated a slow water leak from somewhere.

The house was damp. It smelt damp; Cardboard boxes left in the cupboard under the stairs and documents left in the office cupboard went soft.

The understairs cupboard walls quickly grew mould.?Everything had to be taken out and walls sprayed with mould killer and repainted.

Part of the landing floor wasn’t flat.

The sinks in the w.c. and bathroom didn’t drain very well.

The boiler timer was out of control and some of the radiator valves seemed not to work.

The kitchen tap was wobbly because it was screwed very firmly onto some very cheap metal work. It tended to wander off-centre and spray water everywhere.

The security lights’ cabling was drilled all the way through to the inside - office, bedroom - where it terminated in a plug plugged straight into a wall socket.. In any case the security lights didn’t work.

There was spurious cabling hanging down behind the sink in the w.c. which seemed to control a light which made the cold water light up blue. We subsequently found something similar in the bathroom, though it didn’t work. Jacuzzi bath didn’t work either.

There were no curtain rails.

The banister, balustrade and stringer were not painted.

Some of the windows would not lock; two of the panes had gone cloudy with condensation.

The fence on the south border, which belongs to the local high school, was still broken in places.?

The washing line (umbrella-style) was broken.

There were electric sockets in the cupboard under the stairs, and lights set into the stringer, which didn’t work. There were also isolation switches in one or two places whose function we could not determine.

Under-cupboard and floor level lights in kitchen and stringer lights on stairs didn’t work.

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How Can Ricci Do Cooking??

In Macclesfield our cooker included a grill & electric hob. Being an old thing it had 6 knobs on the front, which I could turn in order to make the rings or the grill come on, go off, go up, go down. In our new house, & potentially any time we replace a hob, it’ll be an induction hob. This is a smooth glass plate with touch sensitive controls: literally impossible for a blind person to use. We went looking for air friers, but they too have touch sensitive controls. 28 Jan we found a double-air-frier in Lakeland (quite expensive) that has a knob on the top. It was sealed into its packaging in the store, so I couldn’t test the concept, but it seemed likely that I could control its heat using this nob. When it was delivered though, it turned out to have a touch-sensitive on-off control as well as the knob: so !**! blind people can’t use it after all. We took it back … on the bus. Boy was it heavy. Luckily, on 30 Jan we found a single-air-frier in B&Q for less than a third of the price, which very obviously could be operated by a blind person.?

And what about the induction hob? Some googling led to the suggestion that SMEG make a two-ring induction hob with “retro styling i.e. knobs. We ordered one, which is now installed in our kitchen & isn’t quite big enough but does @ least enable me, Ricci, to fry things.

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Log by Date

Jan and Feb

26 Jan Virgin Media delivered a TV box.?

29 Jan my cousin Gordon came round & stayed for tea. While he was here he removed the unwanted rusty microwave (more dodgy wiring connected it to a socket on the other side of the kitchen), put up some new lampshades we’d bought, restored the washing line we thought was trashed. He spent a long time with the boiler controller, but he couldn’t fathom it either.

Despite Gordon’s magnificent help we were still feeling very fragile: cold, not sleeping well. Nothing works! - which was not true of course but it felt that way. On Sunday evening (29 Jan) we turned the telly on to watch Vera. The TV wouldn’t work. Spinne stood in the living room, remote in hand, and cried. Who knew we were so emotionally dependent on television?

30 Jan: Spinne & I went shopping in B & Q: a doorbell, coat hooks, a threshold for between the hall & kitchen, two de-humidifiers, an air fryer, a mini-step ladder, an out-door extension cable with which we hoped to be able to re-charge the car, surge-protecting 6-gangs, picture-hooks, WD40. Then we drove to Livingston & bought curtain rails from Wilco.?

1 Feb Virgin Media made a second visit with a this-time working) TV box.

2 Feb: Valient engineer fixed leak in boiler. I had asked them if we could get a replacement boiler controller - no. Local handyman Paul fitted curtain rails, coat-hooks, partially levelled up the landing floor, fitted a doorbell, removed an unwanted TV stand wired into the bedroom wall, stuck the previous, inadequate coat-hooks up in the kitchen as tea-towel hooks. Sadly (he also accidentally stood on the network cable & was unaware that he’d disconnected it from the Virgin Media access point. Another call to Virgin Media. That very evening Virgin Media turned up again & restored our internet connection: embarrassingly it was just a matter of shoving the network cable back into the Virgin Media access point. Embarrassed, but frankly still too frazzled to care.

6 Feb: furniture and curtain fabric shopping – realised the no.44 bus goes right past a shop called Fabric Revolution. Spinne (Spinne’s a genius by the way) made curtains over the next couple of weeks for living room, and 2 bedrooms. House much more homely now and easier to sleep

10 Feb: local electrician Charles installed sockets in kitchen above the level of the counter; replaced living room wall lights; fixed security lights.

Spinne finally cracked it and, using a teaspoon and some directions from Google, set the central heating to come on and go off when we want it to, at the temperature we want. Well done! This, in conjunction with having a working telly, made a big difference.

13 Feb: Paul the handyman again: re-hung kitchen door so that it opens the opposite way from before; built self-assembly furniture: main bookcase in spare bedroom, cd shelves, LPs cabinet.

Other self-assembly furniture: office chair, small cabinet in dining room & standing lamp in conservatory: we assembled ourselves. Large dining table + 2 chairs, stool-chair for bedroom, two small round coffee tables + glass coffee table: bought already assembled. Height-adjustable desk: Paul assembled it for us (thank goodness). Sofa-bed for spare bedroom: donated by Gordon, my cousin, & manhandled into place by Josh & Jared: cousin-sons.. Thank you to everyone who contributed.

March

27Feb - 4Mar: It’s been the week of the tradesman (they have all been men). Murray then Darrel about the kitchen; a different Darrel than Kenny, about painting & James about plumbing. We bought a record deck, a charge-point, some bark, a plinth-heater, taps & a kitchen sink.

Spinne upgraded from iPhone 6 & Windows 7 to iPhone 11 & Windows 11.

Between January and April we filled up, then emptied the conservatory twice (maybe three times). Once with cardboard boxes (Spinne gave away most of these to someone she found on Facebook, who was moving house), later with large pieces of furniture awaiting assembly or deployment. Trips to the tip featured: iron fire-pit; tin dust-bin; numerous defunct solar-powered garden lights; two half-pallets; dead microwave; plastic toadstool designed to accommodate plastic gnome; strings of defunct light bulbs harvested from among the flowers.?

15 Mar: charge-point installed. This involved a high-speed walk back from our ‘friends’ house (remember we were very short of local friends at this time). The electrician was due at 12. Friends invited us round for coffee, so of course we went, but made our excuses and set off home again @ 11:40 for the 20min walk back to our house. Immediately our mobile rang; the company told us their electrician was waiting outside our house and would leave if we didn’t show up in the next 10 mins. We remonstrated, and walked very fast. When we got home, out of breath, the engineer himself was chilled; but in fact he’d been waiting there over an hour. He said the company was always doing that - sending him to jobs @ the wrong times.?(picture of charge point)

Both of us had Covid-19.

Spinne made elasticated cloth heads for the drums, & cloth dampers for the cymbals in my drum kit. So I rebuilt the kit & started practicing.

In late March our down-pipe began leaking, from one of its joins, two thirds of the way up. We called a plumber. He looked at our house and asked if we’d changed the locks when we moved in. When we told him no, he pulled a key out of his pocket and used it to open our back door. It turns out he was the emergency plumber that was called out in December when the house flooded. On that occasion he couldn’t get in. He called a locksmith … and meanwhile turned off the water in the street. On this occasion he took the downpipe off the side of the house, emptied it of what must have been years’ worth of rotting twigs and leaves, and pumped out the drains.

Apr &May

1 Apr Gavin, electrician visit 2): wired security lights to the back of sockets rather than straight through wall & into wall socket: office; fixed hall light, security lights (left of house, garage); fixed unattached sockets back to wall; removed unwanted electronics that make the cold water coming out of the w.c. tap appear blue! removed redundant wiring in kitchen.

3 Apr a kitchen company delivered 3m of kitchen worktop. 3m is very long! It didn’t fit in our conservatory & was almost too heavy to move.

4 Apr: Murray & his team in kitchen: replaced the worktop; installed the induction hob, sink & taps we’d been keeping in the conservatory; moved the washing-machine to where the sink had been; installed two new cupboards under the sink. All this meant: (A) I could do the washing-up without cramming myself into a corner and spraying water all over the kitchen and (B) I could once again fry an egg. Plinth heater could only be turned on using a touch sensitive Bluetooth remote (ridiculous over-engineering; useless for blind people). It was returned to Screwfix.

I cleaned out two of the wheelie-bins. Garden waste: was three quarters full of decomposing matter which I put on the top part of the garden as mulch. It stank. Paper-and-plastic: the bottom of this bin was full of sticky liquid, and large pieces of cardboard which had got trapped in it.?

17 Apr the dining table & 2 chairs arrived.

18 Apr Grants Gardens removed concrete ‘stepping stones’ & sand-pit, & decking, & laid a new lawn. They also cut a narrow front path to give pedestrian access round the car, & surfaced it with gravel they found under the decking: a great job.

18 Apr Plumbing take 1. West Energy visit 1: replaced two thermostatic radiator valves & two sink waste traps; also fixed the flush on the upstairs toilet which failed this very morning. James didn’t even turn up till about half past two. Unsurprisingly he ran out of time for removing the header tank.

26 Apr Raymond, a blacksmith visited. He wanted to see the place where we’d like a “Beulah” sign. “Beulah” has been the name of our home since circa 1991 when we were newly married and living in Warrington. @ that time Spinne and I were having a lot of trouble with poor health, things going wrong @ work - seemingly everything all @ once in our young married life. I was reading Isaiah and heard God speak (not quite audibly) to the effect that the next chapter: Isaiah 62: was very much for me. Amongst other things in Isaiah 62 is the promise from God: “You will be called Hephzibah [means ‘my delight is in her’] and your land will be called Beulah [means ‘married]”. Needless to say everything started picking up rapidly from that point, including a move to Macclesfield. Our home, ever since, has been called Beulah.

Some time in Apr Gavin made his 2nd (our 3rd) electrician visit. He removed the lights that may @ some point have illuminated peoples’ ankles as they went up the stairs, and the dead sockets in the cupboard under the stairs. This paved the way for Kenny the painter to paint the bannisters, balustrades, door frames, stringer, (skirting-board on stairs) which he did 1-3 May. Gavin the electrician though, also discovered that the RCD had been disconnected, the fuse board was faulty, the gas plumbing had not been earthed & the consumer unit tails were out of date. He’s coming back on 27 May to fix those. (In fact it’s 27th today as I write this: our 34th wedding anniversary; I can hear Gavin working in the cupboard under the stairs while I wait for Spinne to come back from the bakery with some sandwiches for lunch. How romantic).

Unfortunately, after Gavin left we discovered that the oven no longer worked.

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11 May Plumbing take 2. West Energy made their second visit, just to remove the redundant header tank in the loft. This time James didn’t turn up til five pm. He was unable to get the header tank down through the loft space because - he realised - the loft access was rubbish. Someone, having replaced the plasterboard ceiling, had cut a rectangular hole in it, given it a wooden frame, attached a hatch and pull-down ladder and called it the loft access. But it was not fixed to any joists, so, in the process of going up & down James & his mate had cracked the ceiling. James provided the number for Silvano, a joiner.

16 May Silvano reinforced the loft access by installing a solid timber frame attached to the joists, with the loft access set into the frame. He also replaced the damaged plasterboard panel in the ceiling. Later in the month someone from West Energy removed the header tank.

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June & July:?

Council removed: dead freezer; dead dishwasher; dead tumble-drier).

New cooker.?

Spinne worked on the garden

Callum, another handyman, fixed up a curtain rail in the office, re-plastered under electric sockets that had been worked on, fixed the log-store so that it’ll be rain-proof, fixed internal doors that were not closing quite right, fixed a lock on the WC door, replaced bathroom sealant, re-plastered & re-painted the landing ceiling after the repair to the loft hatch.

Neil from DRC windows: replaced two pains that had gone opaque, fixed or fitted a number of window locks.

And that’s It!! The snags with 23 Currievale Drive are now all fixed.

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What’s Next?

We have two big ideas for this house. One is to go 0-carbon: fit a heat pump and solar panels for domestic energy; the other is to convert the garage into (A) a utility room for the washing-machine + (B) a big sound-proofed music studio.

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Domestic Energy

We’ve engaged Greener Energy to provide the heat pump, solar panels and an accompanying battery. They’ve carried out a light survey and invoiced us for the equipment. That was at the end of March. At the same time we engaged Home Energy Scotland who have a fantastic funding mechanism. So, the change is on its way. One detail is cavity wall insulation: we cannot get funding for the solar panels, battery and heat pump until we’ve proven we have CWI. If we’re getting CWI installed we first need to prove we haven’t got it!

EPCs: Does this house have CWI? We won’t take “yes” for an answer:

Sep 2022, as part of compiling a home report in order to put the house on the market Tom and Lisa got an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). With regard to cavity wall insulation (CWI) it said: “partial (assumed)”. Roughly translated that’s “I don’t know”. There is no evidence of CWI having been applied after the house was built (i.e. no stopped-up puncture marks in the outside wall). It’s pointless fitting solar panels and a heat pump and then sending your domestic warmth out through uninsulated walls. So, Greener Energy sent Tony, to do a survey. Tony said that, having been built in 1978 this house could have, but may not have had CWI when it was built. He also said that none of the neighbours’ houses seemed to have had CWI retro-fitted (tell-tale puncture marks) so, probably, it did have CWI. Despite this Spinne and I were unconvinced. We found a company - Savings Direct - who install CWI. They also visited. Their way of finding out whether or not we had CWI was by drilling a hole and having a look. No, we do not have CWI. Result! Now we’ve added cavity wall insulation to our application with Home Energy Scotland.

Cavity Wall Insulation was installed 7 July.?

Solar panels and battery were installed 13 July.

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Drumming Studio

We’ve engaged ABC as our architectural technologists. They are excellent, and we now have some beautiful detailed designs for a very thoroughly sound-proofed studio and adjacent utility room on the spot currently occupied by our garage. The site plan and location plan have been completed and an application for planning permission is with the Council. (As of the end of June).

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