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New House – Week 2 and 3

Well the project is moving along, but I decided to merge the last two weeks into one because, well, not much happened. Unfortunately that has prompted us to take a bit of a drastic step which I’ll go into a little later on. So what happened? Week 2 was all about getting quotes for things. We had people out pricing everything from extensions, moving boilers, windows and internal painting. Some were very reasonable, others kind of extortionate!

One of the jobs, we felt, that had to be completed before we moved into the house was getting all the windows replaced. The front windows(2 large bay windows and a “normal” sized window) were aluminium single glazed windows and at the back(4 “normal” sized windows), they were the original steel single glazed windows from the original build of the house. Although, I was slightly amazed that they survived 60 years, we knew they had to go. So we organized a few people around to give us quotes on all the windows and a set of french doors at the rear. The first people out assured us that they sold the best windows in Ireland. The only company with an A rated window. And boy were they expensive. Priced themselves completely out of the job with a quote for just a hair under a cool 20 grand. Although I reckon we hid our shock well in the end. The person that came out to quote the house, then asked if we had anyone else coming out. We named off the other companies that are calling out and he nonchalantley added that his quote would be around 30-40% more expensive then the others. I’m actually believed that they have the best windows but the premium is just too high. We had a couple more people out and their quotes were much more reasonable, and in the end went with one that was neither the cheapest or the dearest.

Next quotes were for painting. We had two people over and they undercut each other to death. It was actually slightly embarassing to watch. Unfortunatly there are alot of tradesmen out there at the minute with not a whole lot on, and they’re really lowering their prices to try and get work. We were told that during the boom years, it would cost 3750euro to paint the interior of a standard 3bed semi. In the end our quote came to a lot less than that, so happy days.

Electrics have also been a focus on the last two weeks, and I have someone helping me out in realizing my grand scheme. Speaker cable, cat5, and a couple of extra power lines have been put in around the house, which will hopefully allow me to hook the house up with some neat home AV tricks. How that all works out is another thing! Hopefully I’ll write another post about just this, as it’s really the area where I have the most hope for!

Plastering has also moved forward slightly in that all upstairs has been finished. A couple of places had to be patched after the electrics but nothing major and the plasterer was aware that it would be happening.

So last on the agenda this week was what we were going to do with the kitchen. On the table for a while were a couple of suggestions about extending but in these current times I really didn’t want to stretch the budget.  So in the end we went with another idea that we’d had a while back about making the kitchen and dining room open plan, and the kitchen re-arranging that is necessary for that to go ahead. Unfortunately organizing that kind of thing really pushed the girlfriend over the edge, and in the end decided to hire a builder to focus on the rest of the renovation project. In the end its probably a very good thing as with both of us working in busy jobs, we don’t have time to be keeping an eye on carpenters and builders. Plus the contacts that this person brings to the project will always be helpful. So hopefully this doesn’t end up backfiring but hopefully a good bit of work is going to get done in the coming weeks.