Six Shed Sheilas

So eventually my parents got to see our house a few weeks ago, having been in Australia when we bought it, and then busy with moving cities, christmas etc. I think they were interested and excited by the place and our plans - however - what impressed them most (Dad especially) were the number of 'sheds' we have!? This is partly due to envy - they have no sheds currently (renting like us) and partly cause we do have a lot of sheds:
Shed 1
Shed 2
Sheds 2, 3 & 4 (3 is back right)
Shed 4
Shed 5
And shed 6

For those of you that are interested - we are not going to keep all the sheds. The shed schedule of works is: shed 1 to go and become a seating area but to be recycled to a cold frame in the garden, and a woodstore in the swimming pool; shed 6 to move to swimming pool (possibly a replacement rather than the original) for tools; shed 2 to remain with change of use to bicycle shed (smoking and snogging after discussion with the management); shed 3 also applying for change of use to become wine cellar / utility room; shed 4 to go in order to enable sunbathing (naked optional); shed 5 has jumped the gun and already successfully changed use to a woodshed. Clear?!

Destruction

As a counterpoint to the delay, and shock of not realising about the VAT there has been the opportunity to work out our frustrations on destruction. As you may remember from a previous post Emily's superhero alter ego is Destructo! Her ability to make holes in any piece of plasterboard at speed has continued during our removal of the majority of the plasterboard / fibreboard in the house, and I have been ably assisting!

The only downside of efficient destruction, is the rather inefficient and depressing job of moving all the rubble to the skip(s) - our first attempt down the rather ridiculous stairs was halted by the arrival of A&H who suggested chucking it out the window - much more satisfying and probably more efficient...

The destruction has revealed: glazed bricks and an archway in what will be our bedroom;
a hidden window in what will be the spare room;
and the garage roof inside the house in the upstairs living area.

We have also filled 2 large skips, done one trip to the tip, and have a few more to go before the builders start!

Delay

It's been a long time (again) but that's because there's been rather a hiatus in progress here.

We've been meeting with Gil (architect) and Tom (builder estimator) to plan the details of the project, and had got to almost a decision on what we were going to do. It was costing more (almost half as much again) than we had originally hoped, but we'd decided to go for it. Then we had a horrible realisation - all the costs we had been discussing were exclusive of VAT! After we started breathing again, we explained that that was way, way too much for us. (VAT here is 17.5%, so a not-insignificant increase).

This has actually resulted in an exciting reworking of some aspects of the build, so overall a good thing, but further delay. Ah, if only we had the intelligence we were born with!

It has given us longer to do our prep stuff (which reduces costs v slightly, but every little helps. More than that, I think it increases our sense of ownership of the project). So we've been tearing off fibreboard and plasterboard from every vertical surface, taking out wardrobes and other strange fitted items, and removing the battens from the downstairs rooms. We've had a bit of help - a couple of hours from Amy and Han that broke the back of the upstairs plasterboard; GT kept us going and lugged vast quantities of wood out of what will be our bedroom (even more impressive - she'll be 90 soon!)

And now it seems the builders will start on March 15th! The expected length of the project is 20 weeks, but we have watched Grand Designs...