me

ok, 1st time using what they call a blog (whatever that means), all im really after is a place to put my pics and an history of mistake, sorry progress, when transforming our home. lets start at the beginning i guess, we moved into our home 4 years ago, omg what a tip, the gent who lived there b4 us was there since the house was built in the 60's, he was also blind, so you can guess the state as everything was original. out went the green bathroom, wrotten windows and doors etc etc, we found another 20' of garden behind a wall of brambles and discovered that we could not fill in a pond we found until we had built another safer pond for great crested newts that were living in it, so for the first few years its been fun and games, dont get me wrong we love our home, esp now we have 2 little children of our own and a 3rd on the way. the house is not perfect or finished in any way, but we have made a good start. after 4 years its now livable, a new heating system has been installed and we brought next doors kitchen units so its at least semi decent and a vast improvement from what we had (dont ask). so here we are, 4 years later and ready to finish what we started, so in came a builder to quote and out he went again after we found out how much, £34k, what a rip off. we had the plans approved and building regs (good old colchester borough council, money for nothing and lots of it) and we decided to try lots ourselves and do it bit by bit, so this is what i guess will be a history of our house conversion, a simple job to some but a nightmare to us, a builder im not, give me a excel spreadsheet and im a happy piggy but sand and cement no chance, but needs must, we are out of space, 3 bedrooms and 6 kids so its desperate :) the actual job we need, well 1st an extension at the back of the garage to square of the house and to put 2.5m on the back of the garage, the extend the garage roof over the extension, turn it 90deg and so it runs along the back of the house removing the 50yo flat roof we currently have, demolish lots of internal walls to double the size of the kitchen and finally turn the larger garage into 2 bedrooms, simple, oh god help me :)) so here goes ~