House Progress ~ August 2014

Morning Everyone! As it's the beginning of the month, I thought I would spend a little time updating you on the progress we have made at Sprout's House. (If you're new reader, you can visit the Home Tour page to catch up on everything else we have done.)

Exterior

Most of our time over the last couple of months has been focused on the outside of the house. We have knocked down the porch at the front. 

This was one of the easiest tasks that we tackled taking all of about 15 mins. So we have gone from this......

 to this......

The front of the house looks a bit bare now, but we will put something else up instead at some point!

As you can see, we have also demolished the little stone wall that was at front of the house. The heavy snow in January 2013 meant that a lot of the concrete between the stones had blown so a few of the larger ones had started to work their way loose. Every so often we would come outside and find that one had fallen into the road so it had to go. There is still a little bit more to knock down on the right hand side, but we'll tackle that when we dig up the rest of the concrete.

Our biggest achievement so far has been excavating the driveway! 

No mean feat I tell you! We anticipated that we would probably need a couple of skips to take away the concrete and soil, and that we would also fit the porch and front wall in those too. 

In the end, it took 5 skips and three weekends of digger action to reduce the driveway to road level. 

Or watch on YouTube.

Once we had got rid of all the excess soil and concrete, we levelled the remaining earth and then used sleepers to create a wall on three sides. At the moment, the sleepers are performing two jobs - one hopefully it looks a bit nicer(!?) and two they are holding back the earth each side. The driveway is still quite narrow, but once we have got rid of the concrete path we'll be able to expand the driveway on the right side. We have also spread some Type One MOT (crushed stone) over the soil and whacker plated it down so it's nice and compact.

Eventually, we will cover the driveway with gravel, but for now we leaving it as it is as there are still many more skips full of concrete in our future!!

Oh.... and did I mention the asbestos? That was a joyous saga. Check out the outfit!! 

There used to be a garage on the driveway many moons ago and we think that when it was taken down they buried the roof and poured a layer of concrete over it instead of disposing of it.

Did you know that as a householder you can take asbestos to your local tip? Check with your nearest one to find out how it needs to be bagged and tagged!

Interior

There's not a whole lot of action going on inside the house at the moment. Whilst we were away on holiday the mixture of hot weather and storms did not suit our little house and we are battling a lot of damp at the moment. I even found mould all over the front of my lovely dresser!! So Sprout's Daddy ordered a whole load of Kontrol Moisture Traps to place in all the downstairs rooms. 

We have used one before just after we dug out the fireplace and found it really effective at absorbing excess moisture. 

The damp has also played havoc with the food in our kitchen cupboards - soggy oat cakes anyone? I was a bit loath to put anything with chemicals near our food so I have resorted to placing small jars of salt (GU dessert containers are excellent for this!!) in all the kitchen cupboards to try and absorb some of the moisture in the air. I let you know how I get on with this method!!

There are also a couple of new holes in the house. One in the downstairs bathroom ceiling - we want to knock through from the sitting room into the bathroom and small lobby to create a bigger room. 

Sprout's Daddy made a small hole to see which way the joists run and whether it is a load bearing wall. This will also help the structural engineer decide whether we need a 'steel'. 

The second hole is in Sprout's playroom and was definitely unplanned!! 

Once we uncovered the second fireplace, it allowed a lot of trapped moisture out. This appears to have travelled under the stairs and started to become trapped behind the plaster board on this wall. So we removed the plaster board and quite a lot of plaster came away too!! Ah well, this wall will eventually become a doorway anyway.

Apologies for the marathon post - I'll try to write updates more regularly! Anyone else tackling a DIY project or two?

Sprout’s House

  xox

Linking up at ~
Ladybug Blessings, Cornerstone Confessions, Kathe With An E, My Crafty Spot, Denise Designed, Flamingo Toes, Nifty Thrifty Things, The Foley Fam, 

1st Blogiversary

I can hardly believe it, Sprout’s House is a year old today!!  

Who would have thought that when I clicked the publish button for the first time last year that I would go on to write 54 posts!

It has been a year of firsts in the blogging world - first post, first slideshow, first facebook like, first pinterest board and first tweet among other things. 

Here’s a little recap of our first year –

First Post

First Post with Pictures

First Award

First Organisation Project

First House Move

First House Tour

First Snow

First Spring

First Fail…….but I’ve so nearly cracked this one!

First Easter

First Simple DIY project…..and my most popular post to date!

First Sprout's Sensations

First Monday Musing

First BIG purchase

First set of House Plans

First Discovery

A big thank you to everyone who has read, commented and liked my posts over the last 12 months – it has meant a lot!

Sprout’s House

           xox

Sprout's House Floor Plans

Happy Friday Sprout’s House residents – it is so nearly the weekend!!  Apparently, we are due another heat wave – fingers crossed for this weekend!

Soon after we moved in I showed you around Sprout’s New House.  Today, I thought I would give you another tour (well, sort of!), but this time showing you the floor plans.  I found that when I was looking for houses that the pictures were all very well, but I got a much better feel for the house once I had looked at the floor plan.

So, using this rather snazzy website aptly named floorplanner.com I was able to create my own floor plans of Sprout’s House.  The great thing about this website is that it is free (for your first plan at least) and it also has a great bank of other resources that you can use too.  For example, you can see your plan in 2D and 3D, you can also furnish your house and experiment with different layouts.  The other great thing is that you can add media to each room on the plan so you can see a photo of the room too.  Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to transport this feature into my blog….I think I might need to upgrade my membership at floorplanner.com!

So here are the plans…..

The ground floor.........

And the first floor.....(who knows why the size of the floors looks so vastly different - I can assure that in real life the ground and first floor match up pretty well!!)

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll share with you our plans to turn Sprout’s House into our family home.

Sprout’s House

           xox

P.S. If you haven’t yet done so already pop over to the Sprout’s House Facebook page LIKE us and let us know which of our window options you like the best!!  One quote has just come through -gulp!  Note to self - start saving pennies and possibly sell a kidney or two!!

Sprout's Garden

A few readers have requested a look around the Sprout’s House garden, so whilst the weather was warm last weekend I took a few photos. If you’ve missed the house tour you can find it here!

There is a raised patio area and summer house/workshop. This is another top priority on our ‘to do’ list. It is piled high with stuff that needs sorting out. It’s just a matter of waiting for another sunny weekend!!

We had to carry out a bit of maintenance on the lean-to’s guttering as originally it was attached to two water butts. 

However, whenever we had a lot of rainfall these overflowed on to the render and concrete – we are trying to avoid any more damp at all costs!!

The garden is on many different levels so it’s up a little set of steps and on to the grass. Sprout’s last garden had grass many moons ago, but it was the size of a postage stamp and barely worth mowing so we paved over it and gave our lawn mower away! Cue a quick trip to equip ourselves with another one last weekend. (Sprout’s Daddy was quite specific about the one he wanted – it does stripes apparently!!) 

At the top of the garden is another patio area, and a big flower bed. We’ve spent quite a few hours cutting all the plants back and also doing a bit of demolishing! There used to be a couple of ponds and a little waterfall, but with a Sprout we decided to get rid of it – better safe than sorry!

And then a shot of the back of the house……I think the last one you saw was snow covered! You can just see one of the water butts and the marks on the render. On the left, you can still see where we need to extend the drain pipe so it meets the drain at the bottom.

Last but not least the glorious blue sky. This is what makes all those cold, damp days a distant memory…..bliss.

Happy Bank Holiday weekend! I hope the sun is shining wherever you are.

Sprout’s House

           xox