Renovating & Building an Extension

Two of my previous homes have needed massive renovation. One needed a big extension simultaneously. My husband & I lived in both whilst the work was going on, which wasn't easy. But at least we were there every day to oversee the work & answer questions. Both houses were detached, both were in rural locations. So we didn't have to be too concerned about the impact on neighbours. Neither project went smoothly, but we were able to divide the work between us & share the ups & downs. Just as well as we were both working during the first one.

My current house is a completely different situation. It is a semi in an urban street. So there are neighbours all around who must be impacted by the builders. There are the vehicles & workmen. There is the noise & dust. Obviously the work only goes on during prescribed hours, but even so I can understand that it is disturbing.

So far my lovely builders have had to remove all the lime plaster on the interior of the 3 outside walls in order to insulate them. There is no cavity. Many interior walls & ceilings were still lath & plaster, so they also have to be stripped out & replaced. Some floorboards were rotten. The whole of the ground floor needs to be stripped out & insulated, then some rooms need the level raising so it is the same throughout. The wiring & gas pipework was all visible on the walls, so all has to be replaced. The water comes through lead pipes, which need replacing. Interior walls have to come down & new ones need to be built. It's noisy, dusty, filthy work. But the builders remain cheerful despite it all. Most of my neighbours are understanding & tolerant & I'm really grateful.

 

I'm finding it all quite hard now. It feels like a full time job. It's a combination of fire fighting problems, constantly chasing for fittings etc, trying to second guess which choices need to be made & getting quotes, driving back & forth to the site. I never know what each day will bring.

I seem to be transferring money out more regularly than ever before - It's a one way river. This is not a good time to be doing this. The building trade is suffering from a combination of the aftermath of Brexit & Covid. Both have made prices spiral out of control because of increased costs & shortage of materials. Lead times have increased because of delivery problems. Scheduling the work has become more dependent on outside circumstances than ever before.

This house could be a dream fulfilled for me. It could be "future proofed" for how ever many more years I have. I'm lucky to be able to buy a house with so much potential & be able to keep the best of it whilst bringing it into the 21st century. 

It is taking it's toll though. It certainly isn't easy. Think "Grand Designs" on a smaller scale. I need to keep the "vision" in mind on the really difficult days. 

I do just hope that it will be worth it all. 

Party Wall Problems

I had never heard of a Party Wall Surveyor. It is actually a fluke that I appointed one. I assumed that providing I had proper plans drawn up by my architect & had a competent & experienced builder things would go reasonably smoothly. After all, the plans for my Permitted Development would be submitted to the City Council & we obviously have to comply with Building Regulations. The work would be independently inspected.

I thought it was important to inform my neighbour what I was going to do early on, before work started. I realised that this amount of work would be disruptive. Not least because of the noise. But in the end, having a renovated, well maintained house next door is surely preferable to one that has had little or no maintenance for years. No one wants to live next to an overgrown garden & scruffy house.

Now I know more than I want to about Party Walls & the process involved. 

https://www.fmb.org.uk/find-a-builder/ultimate-guides-to-home-renovation/party-wall-agreements-what-you-need-to-know.html

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/523010/Party_Wall_etc__Act_1996_-_Explanatory_Booklet.pdf

 

A Party Wall Surveyor (PWS) has to "serve" the neighbour with papers & plans outlining what is proposed. The neighbour can then do two things, accept or "dissent" the proposal. If the neighbour dissents they can then choose to have the original PWS represent the interests of both houses. Not both owners. The PWS should act in the best interests of the entire property not the people involved. Or the neighbour can appoint their own PWS. Many do, because they don''t understand the impartiality of the original PWS, or that they are then inflicting a substantial cost on the owner who is doing the work. In law, for whatever reason, the developing owner should pay the neighbours PWS costs.

This then moves the whole situation into an adversarial position & makes normal good neighbourliness difficult. 

Sometimes this happens because the neighbour is understandably anxious about what may happen to their house. However their rights are protected in law. A PWS acting for the owner will inspect & record the state of the neighbour's house before work begins. Then if there is any damage caused by the building work the owner will obviously have to pay.

Some neighbours see this as an opportunity to exploit the fact that the work is being done to put conditions on their acceptance of the work. Some of these are reasonable, some are not. Neighbours can be unreasonably pedantic. All the while the work is being delayed, plans have to be amended & costs to the owner increase.

The whole Party Wall situation is a minefield. Even PWS's think the legislation is poor. People don't like change & upheval, both can feel threatening. People nowadays are focussed on their rights. The days of accepting someones word, being generous & helpful, can seem very distant. Sadly, what might have been really friendly, neighbourly relations can become very strained. 

On the other hand Covid has shown just how neighbours co-operate, share, keep an eye on the vulnerable. Just simply, are good neighbours.

 

 

Kindness - Compassion - Empathy - Altruism

You can discover if you are Kind by doing the Kindness Test developed by Sussex University in collaboration with the BBC. Maybe you think you know yourself, maybe not.

https://universityofsussex.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1RYvaR5UA1czYvs

Or

https://www.testmykindness.org/ 

Or

https://www.kindnessuk.com/

What you possibly don't actually realise is how frequently people are kind to you & you are kind to others. It isn't something we think about enough. Kindness is possibly the most important human trait. Do we take it for granted & over estimate how kind we & others are?

What is kindness? Is it the same as compassion, empathy, altruism. Am I being selfless when I'm kind or do I benefit too? Am I kind enough - often enough? Do I accept kindness & value it. How much real kindness do I receive?

Is some kindness self seeking, superficial? What does it mean to be kind & put others first? Have we really become a self absorbed & selfish society, demanding instant gratification, focussed on our own rights without responsibility?

So many questions. Perhaps this research will give us some answers. At least someone is asking the right questions to find out rather than subjective perceptions or the view trumpeted by the mass media.

Renovating a House - Stripping Out

Things are finally really happening after 3 months of very little actual action. As I've mentioned, waiting isn't my forte. 

I have done quite a bit myself - Had a tree surgeon in to remove a huge Holly tree & Pyracantha blocking the light in the front garden, drastically pruned the front garden to give the hedge & shrubs time to put on new growth, finally found gardeners to do the rampantly overgrown back garden, arranged for a tree man to remove trees in the back garden in September, moved the gas & electric meters to the outside wall, done a plan of the lights & sockets needed, made a lot of decisions about fixtures & fittings...

It's good to have a project at my age. A plan for the future. Something to keep the brain working. A future proofed house that is fit for me if I last another 10 or more years.

It is quite hard not being in control, having to adjust to lead times, the city council Planning delay till the end of September adding a whole month, professionals being on holiday & finishing off other work, problems with my neighbour dissenting to my plans causing extra cost & changes...Par for the course, but exacerbated by Covid & Brexit. Costs are rising daily.

A friend I took round yesterday was simply horrified at the scale of what I'm doing.

Arriving at the house to find H working on her own, stripping out lime plaster & lath & plaster walls, in a house filled with dust was really exciting! I do admire how she calmly gets on with a filthy job. Then two men stripping out a ceiling. It's so interesting seeing the bones of the house. Quite frightening too - it doesn't look particularly stable!

I'm hoping that now work has really started things will move on daily. I should have a meeting with the builder & architect this week to iron out any issues & make sure we all know how things will proceed. I need a good idea of the schedule & a realistic proposed end date.

Although I'm 76 & have chronic health conditions I am not a pushover. I know what I want & the standard of build I expect. I will notice if little things are wrong. I don't tend to loose my temper, stamp my feet, shout & yell. In a way that's unfortunate, because people who do tend to get what they want quicker. I try to treat people the way I want to be treated. I trust the people I'm employing.

I just have to hope that trust results in a home I will love.

British Government - Is it working?

We have a Constitutional Monarchy, but the monarch doesn't make any political decisions. That is the role of the Government (the Executive) & Parliament (the Legislature). The Prime Minister leads the government with the support of the Cabinet and junior ministers. In turn these are supported by the teams of non-political civil servants & a lot of "advisors". Then you have all the MP's - elected Backbenchers & the Opposition. Finally there are the unelected Lords.

You would imagine that with that whole panoply of expertise, plus MI5, (our version of Homeland Security), and, MI6, (our Secret Intelligence Service who are responsible for the collection, analysis, and appropriate dissemination of foreign intelligence), our government would be able to make informed decisions. 

Sadly, increasingly, that doesn't seem to be the case. 

The Conservatives came to power following the General Election in May 2010. Just in case your maths is as bad as mine I worked it out - 11.25 years. That is a long time, over 132 months. There should have been an aquisition of experience & expertise among our elected leaders in that time. 

They inherited the worldwide Banking Crisis of 2008 & enforced austerity in the Recession that followed, they presided over the 2011 War in Libya with the USA, they engineered the 2016 withdrawl from the EU (Brexit), they have blundered through the 2019 Covid 19 Pandemic & finally are now making a complete hash of the withdrawl from Afghanistan.

Surprisingly I have sympathy with people who govern. Individual societies & the world are extremely complex systems. I really don't know how fairly ordinary human beings can assimilate all of the available information & make good decisions for the benefit of the biosphere & humankind. We the electorate probably have unrealistic expectations of them. However, for whatever reason - power, money or altruism, they chose to do it. So they should at least make a reasonably good job of it & behave ethically. 

They don't. They lie, prevaricate & don't answer simple questions. They make it into an art form in the mistaken belief that we don't see through them. They blindly follow the wrong examples - the USA, Corporate Multinationals, Lobbyists with money & power....What they don't do is learn from history &  countries who are better, more successful models. This government are not alone in making colossal mistakes. But they are the only ones who directly affect me on a daily basis. 

The handling of the current Afghanistan situation is appalling. It was forseeable & was predicted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/politics/afghanistan-biden-administration.html

https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/4185/documents/43162/default/

I am literally horrified at the mess we are responsible for creating & perpetuating. These are human lives that are being devastated & shown graphically on our TV screens daily, again. It always seems to be the most defenceless & helpless that suffer the most. 

Are we really expected to believe that none of the politicians, analysts, advisors, MI5, MI6  forsaw this problem? If that is the case, what are they for?

Waiting

I was never good at waiting for things to happen. I always wanted things to be done yesterday. Possibly one of the worst waits was for my daughter to be born. She was late, so nothing has changed there! She also took a very long time to be born, 2 days, & was a very big baby, 11lbs.

Over the years I have learned to be patient. I have learned that rushing into something often doesn't end up with the best results. I've also learned that other opinions frequently result in better outcomes. On the other hand I generally know what I like & want.

Renovating a house, building an extension & resuscitating a completely overgrown & uncared for garden is a challenge to my patience. I have to be reliant on so many other people's expertise & doing their jobs. There are a lot of choices to be made - which bathroom fittings, windows, kitchen, doors, flooring, lighting. Where each socket & switch should go. It's endless. Looking online, looking at samples & catalogues, visits to showrooms, discussions with sales people, who generally are really helpful....

You make a decision on the basis of personal choice & cost. Then you wait. Wait for a quote, wait for something to be manufactured, in stock, delivered, wait for people to do their job. It's really trying. Especially if there are a lot of plates spinning at the same time. 

I am finding that rembering who & what I am waiting for is an issue. Short term memory is in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex - My frontal lobe is old, tired, worn out. So I have to have systems. I have post its, lists, Samsung Notes, a filing system on my computer. It's endless.

At the end of the day I have to just hope that anything I have forgotten will eventually pop into my frontal lobe & I will have a pen & paper to hand to write it down quickly. Or, that whoever I am dealing with will do what they are supposed to.

My frontal lobe lobe is full & retrieval of data is unreliable. So I have to be patient & wait for information to surface.

Streams, Rivers & Oceans

 "A drop in the ocean". Rain droplets fall from the sky, nourish the earth & fill the rivers & ultimately the seas. Each small droplet is important. 

Lack of rain is a huge worldwide problem. At least 1.5 billion people have been directly affected by drought this century, and the economic cost over roughly that time has been estimated at $124bn (£89bn). 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/17/the-next-pandemic-drought-is-a-hidden-global-crisis-un-says

We are in a climate crisis. Weather patterns have changed & become far more volatile. The current, (excuse the pun), concern relates to AMOC - the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - Commonly known as the Gulf Stream. New evidence says that it has been losing stability & may potentially collapse at any time.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210805115420.htm

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/atlantic-ocean-current-tipping-point-b1897600.html 

If this happens the consequences will be severe. 

So each drop of rain & where is falls is important to human existence & the health of the planet. Yet we, knowingly, interfere with the natural patterns. Countries build dams on rivers, regardless of the detrimental effect this has on other countries downstream. Industrialisation has had a huge damaging impact on climate change. https://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=jest.2016.301.316

 

It isn't scaremongering to suggest Water Wars. 

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/08/water-wars-early-warning-tool-uses-climate-data-to-predict-conflict-hotspots  

Acess to water is not universal. Acess to clean water is even less available worldwide. People need water for hydration, washing, cooking... If there is no water for irrigation, crops fail & there is famine. Desperate, disadvantaged people take desperate measures. 

So the next time you admire a  green & fertile landscape, think how fortunate you are. The next time you complain about the rain, think how millions of people watch the sky desperately hoping to see clouds. 

Every drop is important, but now some of us are getting far more drops, for longer, than is normal, with the resulting floods. At the same time desertification is creeping like a dust cloud over many parts of the world. 

We in Europe flush our loos with clean pure water. How bonkers is that!?