Day 33 - Emergency Gutter Painting, and The Builders Leave

The only real change to the existing rooms to fit in the new staircase is the move of the bathroom door. It's had to be moved about 8 inches across to give enough width to get upstairs. Due to the way that the bathroom was originally laid out, this only affects a mini "corridor", and doesn't actually change the bathroom size at all.
The move of the door has had a couple of knock on effects, and this has resulted in the sink being moved about 4 inches towards the window, and the radiator being relocated to the wall adjacent to the WC. Bizarrely, the room now feels slightly bigger than it did before it was made smaller...

Unfortunately, the other knock effect of all of this work is that about 20 tiles have had to be removed and replaced - some have been salvaged, and some have been replaced with spares that we kept when the bathroom was done originally.

The last few bits of putting the bathroom back together happened today. The skirting boards refitted, the new bath panel put on (the old acrylic one had discoloured really badly, so we've replaced it with a much nicer MDF based one) and the floor re-boarded ready for new flooring.

Then, at about 11am, the scaffolders turned up to take the scaffolding away. With one more coat of black gloss to put on the guttering, I had to drag myself off my sick bed and lie 20 feet up on scaffolding instead. I got it all painted, and the scaffolders took away the front section of the scaffold.

So that's it. The builders have all left. The house is ours again. To be honest, it feels a bit empty, and I'll miss that early morning knock on the front door with people wanting to start work.

We (and all the neighbours) were really impressed with the work ethic of every one of the builders - they just got on and got it done. The real work started on Day 5 of this blog, and finished on Day 33. That's 29 days of work to get us from a standard 3 bedroom semi (3 beds, 1 bath) to a 4 bedroom semi with a separate office (4 beds, 1 bath, 1 shower). The original estimate was 6-8 weeks. They brought it in under 6 weeks in the end. Thank you Rosewood.

An hour or so after the last builder left, I got an email saying that the roofer needed to come back and paint the flat roof with UV paint, but that he'd be there first thing tomorrow and it would be done before the rest of the scaffold came down. Sure enough, like everything else on the build, he turned up and got it done.