Ashlar Property Lastest News

Does anyone know a reliable sun dance?..

2008-09-13T18:35:00.002+01:00

You’ll notice a significant lack of photos over the last few blog entries. This is me being a bit obsessive – I’m now at the point where I want everything to look perfect before getting my ‘after’ photos done. A bit sad I grant you but you have to remember that this project has been my life for a while now : )

Inside I am glossing the woodwork and getting the builder’s to finish off the little bits. When the weather allows the team are outside adding the surfaces to the various terraces of the garden. I’ve got decking going down to the side of the house, areas of lawn and tarmac on the driveway area. Swansea’s had so much rain that our schedule has been severely disrupted – we’re about a month behind. The builders have even bought themselves a gazebo to work under in an effort to beat the weather. Meanwhile, I’ve had the old green felt tile cladding removed from the dormer and have replaced the lead work and guttering as well as replaced the flat roof and installed some dark wood effect cladding. It’s really smartened the house up and should ensure that potential buyers don’t find anything that they will need to do upon moving in.

So, whilst my days have been spent priming and undercoating the woodwork, my evenings are spent pasting gorgeous wallpaper to large blank canvases – more cheap artwork!

On a less positive note we sadly had to cull one of our hens this month after she got very poorly. Flora was queen of the hens so the others are now busy fighting to establish a new leader. Luckily I’ve got a spare little square of worktop left over so this week I’ll be using my filing tools to create a little grave sign for her. I guess this is the reality of living the good life.

Snow Blindness In July...

2008-07-28T09:56:00.001+01:00

Are you sitting down….. The kitchen’s in, both bathrooms plumbed, the electrics are complete – and I have central heating! I’m really pleased with everything so far, the bathrooms look great and the kitchen really works well – though the builders thought my ‘fairy lights’ in the kitchen plinths were hilarious. I keep trying to explain that details like this sell houses but they’re only comment was something along the lines of ‘at least if I drop my sandwich on the floor, I can turn on these fairy lights and find it’. Luckily things are more or less finished inside from the builder’s perspective, with the team now working outside (and away from me) trying to organise the crazy slopes into a useable garden. This all means that the front door is almost impossible to get to for everyone who isn’t a mountain goat – we should have steps in place soon though – sorry postman!

Just painting, flooring and furnishing left to do inside. I’ve also organised a local firm to change the front door unit, fix a couple of windows and change the green cladding on the outside of the house. All being well I should have the house on the market by the beginning of September.

This month I’ve discovered that my enthusiasm for painting does have limits. Each wall and ceiling has needed filling, rubbing down and then 3 coats of white emulsion before I can begin to think about colours. I’m about two thirds of the way through the house now and am getting through about 15 litres of white paint a week.

People keep asking me if I am worried about the recent change in the housing market. Yes and no. Yes, because anyone looking to sell a house in the immediate future (as I am in Swansea) will no doubt find that they will have to wait longer and accept a lower offer for a sale. However, I’m also using this opportunity to create what I hope will be a healthy, diverse business by continuing with the rental properties which provide the ‘bread and butter’ money for the business, obtaining planning permissions to improve another property, and also by expanding my skills to give me an additional income and lower my renovation costs. I am doing a tiling course in September and hope to also get on to a plastering course by the end of the year.

Only time can tell whether I’ve picked a really bad time to turn this into a full-time business, or whether conditions like this will give the company firm foundations. I’m going to do my best to make sure it’s the latter!

Me & My Glamorous Assistants

2008-06-13T16:52:00.004+01:00

Hi Everyone,

The end is in sight! The kitchen goes in next week and both bathrooms are tiled. We’re onto second fix electrics and the gas is now hooked up. I’ve been spending most of my time painting – there’s a lot of it. The entire downstairs of the house has been replastered so I’m doing things properly and added a mist coat (slightly watered down emulsion), lightly sanding the walls and then adding a 2nd coat. Once this has been done throughout I’ll add coloured paint to the walls and tackle the woodwork. Much worse is upstairs where I couldn’t justify any replastering in the bedrooms – I spent all day yesterday scrapping off paint lumps that turned out to be blu tack and cellotape under several coats of garish pink paint, and filling countless pin holes. I’m in the kid’s room which much have been covered in posters at some point. It’s pretty demoralising because you can spend hours doing this before you’re anywhere near ready to actually paint anything.

Much of the rest of my time on site is spent ribbing my builder who dropped into the conversation last week that he was in the ‘entertainment industry’. Turns out that he’s a club singer – and there was me thinking that he was just one of those saddos that tries too hard when singing along with the radio. He’s actually really good – but don’t tell him that! What with him and the plumber who’s wife sings on cruise ships and is mates with Gloria Gaynor (she’s always down the pub in Mumbles) – it’s a very showbiz crew.

I’m back in a van next week transporting my pre-assembled kitchen units over to Swansea. I’ve just bought some fantastic solid oak worktops which will be arriving on Tuesday – I can’t wait to see all the elements of the kitchen together.

In other news my little sister is expecting baby number 3 now (she’s had so many, we number them now rather than bother with names) and she and partner Lloyd are engaged to be married next Summer. If I can get all her kids trained up with paint brushes I might be on to something.

Jamie is also taking the plunge at the moment and has several canvases on display in the Propaganda bar in Fleet, Hampshire. Go to his website www.fatcatphotography.co.uk for a peek at his work and try and get down to the bar if it’s in your neck of the woods.

I’ll be the one eating Yorkies and reading the Sun…..

Hey Bloggers!

2008-05-03T11:00:00.002+01:00

To say that we have something of a sound clash on site in Swansea is putting it mildly – both sides are fortunately very tolerant of each other’s tastes. It does make for an amusing listen as you move from the upstairs (where I am painting), to the downstairs (where the team are plastering) though.

Progress is relatively good at the house though this project is not without it’s hold ups and frustrations. My builder is balancing two jobs at the moment and has been poorly which has led to the schedule slipping slightly. I also turned up yesterday to find that both sets of French doors open inwards? Generally though, work is moving along and I’ve been painting ceilings for a few days now. Hopefully by the next blog update I’ll have both bathrooms tiled and fitted and the kitchen going in.

One other thing that has caught me by surprise is how difficult developing with an environmental conscious is turning out to be. Whilst I only wanted to incorporate some key features and build my experience with ‘green’ products from there, even this is turning out to be tricky. I wanted to use environmentally friendly paints until I started researching prices. Even white emulsion works out at around £5 more per litre – that’s a huge difference when you consider the amounts needed to complete the whole house. Instead I’ve opted for loads of loft insulation and some reflective panels that fit behind the radiators and reflect heat back into the room. It goes without saying that I’m also incorporating double-glazing, cavity wall insulation and low-voltage lighting through out. If anyone had any ideas for other environmentally friendly additions that don’t break the bank please let me know.

The other big news from me is the addition of baby Millie to our family, we picked her up last week. She’s a 10-week-old English springer spaniel – I’ve attached a photo below. No nasty comments about my roots showing please! In another money saving bid Jamie is regularly cutting my hair for me, I just need to get him on a hair colouring course next

A big thanks to everyone for your positive feedback on the new-look website and it also seems that the prayers for good weather have helped no end so thanks to everyone who took part in that too. Perhaps we can all pray for an upturn in the property market this month?

If anyone needs me I’ll be at Plumb Centre…..

Hi Everybody

2008-04-08T17:00:00.000+01:00

First thing’s first – what do we think of the new website? My Brother’s been itching to update it since he first created the original site. I didn’t give him long to get it up and running back in October last year and as you can see, he’s learnt a great deal about web design in the past 6 months. Do let me know what you think, any suggestions would be most welcome.

Things are still going well in Swansea, we’re around half way now from the builder’s perspective and they only have the new french doors to fit, some plastering, the second fix electrics, and the fitting of the bathrooms before they can move on with the exterior. This sounds like a lot but they should be finished inside within the next 6 weeks and half of the team will be starting on with the ground works within the next fortnight – exciting times. We must all pray for some good weather.

In the meantime I’ve been amusing myself by constructing the kitchen units ready for the builder to install for me. Building the units has knocked a couple of hundred pounds off the fitting cost - although there were points during my flat-pack marathon where I would have happily paid the £250 extra and had them do the lot! It’s all finished now though, 7 base cabinets, 7 wall units and a complicated drawer unit – and may I say that it’s all looks pretty good – or ‘tidy’ as my builders would say. All surfaces are level and the soft- close drawers work and everything! I’ve taken the route of basic carcasses to keep costs down, but then gone for separately bought handles, soft-close hinges, a fantastic 1 ½ bowl designer sink with a pull out spray kitchen tap and a gorgeous oak worktop. Hopefully the overall effect will suggest a very expensive kitchen. I’m also adding both under cabinet lights and plinth lights – you should have seen the look I got from the builders when I mentioned them. I’m sure they are fully expecting me to install an enormous disco ball next.

Another money-saving exercise for me is the artwork that I’m currently doing in the evening – although ‘art’work is probably a little strong. Whilst watching the fabulous Gok Wan and ‘How to look good naked’ last night I managed to produce two textured canvases using artex plaster (ironic really when I consider how much I’m spending on removing artexed ceilings in the house), have painted them, and sprayed them with a gloss. So far so good, I’ll let you know the verdict once I’ve finished them all. I’m sure I’ll be taking commissions any day now.

I’ll leave you with photos of a rather more successful development that was completed in just a few hours and already has 6 new occupants….

‘Hen house’ as we like to call it possibly counts as my first successful new-build, let’s hope that’s it’s the first of many!

Hey Bloggers!

2008-03-16T11:54:00.003Z

Are you sitting down?…. work has started! Graham Jones and his crew of builders, commenced action as promised on March the 3rd. I drove down to the house on the 5th and had a bit a shock to find that walls had gone and new shower rooms were up in their place. All this makes my progress over the past few months look frankly pathetic. The boys had gone at the house guns blazing and the new upstairs layout was already in place after just 3 days. We had a skip on the parking spot and the team had set up the all-important tea-making area and found the radio – I’m now a regular listener to ‘Red Dragon FM’. I’ve included some basic layout plans so that you can get an idea for the work taking place. I’m adding a shower room to the upstairs. Downstairs we’re knocking down walls to create a more open plan feel, changing the layout and adding French doors. In addition to this the house needs a complete re-wire, totally new heating system and boiler, new flat roof and extensive ground works.

Original Layout	New Layout

My time is now spent travelling down to Swansea 2 or 3 times during the week to check on progress. I’ve found that it is incredibly important to be on site little and often rather than get in the way. If I’m ever unable to get down there I always ring one of the boys – when prompted they’ve almost always got questions that they wouldn’t ask me if I didn’t bother to make contact. Within a month or so, they should have the upstairs plastered out and I can then work full time on site. Whilst they finish off downstairs and then move onto the ground works.

In the meantime I’ve been busying myself by doing some serious shopping - unsurprisingly this has been one of the more enjoyable sides of developing a house : ) I’m really loving the challenge of purchasing everything I need from waterproof plaster boarding to the kitchen tap at the lowest possible price for the best possible product. I even surprised the builder with the bargains I’ve got – who would have thought I’d turn out to be such a good shopper eh? : )

Lessons learnt this month include;

Just because you’ve paid big bucks, doesn’t mean you’ve got the best product.

Don’t assume that because you’ve warned B&Q that you live down a narrow road, they won’t send a 21 tonne lorry! I had to drive down to the village and have all the kitchen cabinets loaded into 2 hatchbacks, then drive home and unload the lot ourselves.

Don’t underestimate the motivating powers of doughnuts on builders : )

Hello All!

2008-02-18T14:50:00.000Z

Well this month has been mostly spent going backwards and forwards to the Civic Amenity Site (or the tip!) just round the corner from the project in Swansea. Thank God it’s only ½ a mile away because many of the journeys have been made with Mum squidged in the back seat under a ton of timber or with me struggling to get to the gear stick. I think that I was a bit naïve when I first completed on the house. As you will have seen in the before photos in the ‘Gallery’ section, the place was left relatively clear but I did inherit several freestanding wardrobes as well as an enormous built in unit in the bedrooms and a large dining room unit downstairs. These items alone have probably taken a couple of days to dismantle and account for about 7 trips to the aforementioned tip. However, I also then discovered a loft full of stuff and a shed brimming with damp, rotten bits and pieces. Although there were some unexpected gems in the loft such as two old-school rotary dial telephones (currently on sale via ebay – my seller ID is jonessa01!), and an amazing vinyl collection featuring the Grease soundtrack, Jason Donovan and Chesney Hawkes, I still feel somewhat stitched up with an entire family’s rubbish to dispose of.

Looking back I should have gone straight back to the estate agent and demanded that the vendor stick to the original fixtures and fittings list – one to note for next time!

In all, my little hatchback (a van raises suspicion of commercial waste dumping at the tip) has completed 18 fully loaded journeys and I have now completed stripped the house of everything including carpets, copious dark wood cladding and random schoolbooks. Much like Indiana Jones I have journeyed to the farthest corners of the cobweb-covered loft and have also unlocked the secrets of the most rotten shed that I’ve ever seen.

The house looks enormous and echoes as I walk round. It’s waiting for a builder to arrive. Our revised start date was supposed to be February 18th but I’ve just had a conversation that suggested March 3rd would be more realistic. Time will tell whether this will be another lesson to take to project number 2.

Happy New Year!!

2008-01-04T10:38:00.000Z

You must forgive me for the recent lack of blog activity on my part – this month I have been mostly….stripping paint off the staircase. Literally every day in Swansea since early December has been spent sat on the stairs removing in excess of 8 coats of various paints and varnishes – in total I have got through:

- 4 litres of NitroMors (really strong paint stripper – other brands are available)

- 4 scrapers

- 20 sheets of sandpaper

- 5 dust masks

- 3 pairs of rubber gloves

- my marbles

So, as you can imagine – any blog entries written during that time would have been (paint stripper) fume-fuelled ramblings (you would have never noticed the difference : ) ).

Anyway I am pleased to say that after a number of minor chemical burns to my face, the stairs are now ‘done’. I’m currently preparing the house for the arrival of my building team who are due to start in mid-January (early February no doubt). Graham and ‘his boys’ are predicting 6 to 8 weeks to finish the job but again I’m just hoping for Easter!

So far I’ve removed all the wallpaper, sanded down half the interior doors, removed all the wardrobes, curtains and randomly abandoned trinkets. I’ve given the sanded doors a coat of primer and an undercoat and have removed the upstairs carpets. I’m in that horrible position of now having a house that looks worse than when I bought it!

My next exciting tasks are to remove the strange vinyl wallpaper from the chimneybreast in the living room and to chip off the floor to ceiling wall tiles in the family bathroom.

In the middle of all this I’ve also had the unfortunate task of evicting an aggressive tenant and spent much of Boxing Day afternoon fixing a shower. Christmas wasn’t all bad though – I’m now the proud owner of a 6-in1 workbench as well as a number of other DIY essentials, still trying to find the perfect tool belt though….

However, as promised, not much to report. I’ve attached some photos of the stairway ‘transformation’ – pretend to be impressed : )

2007-12-12T10:33:00.000Z

Here’s a quick update from Wales! Things are moving on here. I’ve recently realised that my approach to finding a builder was all wrong. I was using the internet, word of mouth and advertising boards to compile a list of local building firms. I was then calling round and attempting to arrange for them to come out and look round the palace (!) in Swansea. My success rate was incredibly low, almost everyone I called either didn’t come back to me or was booked up well into 2008 – in some cases until October. A scary number also arranged to meet and then didn’t show up! I’ve now found a site that allows me to advertise my job in detail and then sends this advert out to all the registered trades people in my local area – genius! It’s so lovely to actually have builders contacting me and asking if they can quote. I’ve met with a couple of very promising firms this week and hope to book someone to start early in the New Year. I’m hoping to add this website to my links page and am just obtaining the necessary permissions.

The rest of the work in Swansea (the stuff that’s down to me) is all going well. The lovely thing about this job so far is that every week I’m learning new skills…..and using bigger power tools : ) Over the past 2 weeks I’ve been getting to grips with wallpaper stripping which I can recommend to anyone who lists ‘bingo wings’ as one of their body issues. I’ve also entered the brave new world of sanding - another fantastic gadget, but as tempting as it was, I held back for popping a photo of me in the goggles and the dust mask on the blog – the lighting was all wrong : )

Many of you will be pleased to hear that I’m now a proud fan of lunchtime television and my work days are carefully structured to allow a lunch break at 1.40 for ‘Doctors’ – I’d recommend it for anyone planning a sick day soon. Luckily it’s on BBC1, which is the only channel that I can pick up in Swansea as, after lugging an old TV and my trusty free view box to the house, I discovered that the previous occupant favoured NTL and therefore has no aerial at all. Consequently, I’ve been forced to go back to the eighties and plug a booster aerial in - I’ve found that if I balance it on it’s side in the living room window I can get a grainy picture which sometimes loses sound for BBC1. Fantastic.

At the moment my time is divided between Swansea, my Mum and Dad’s new place near Abergavenny, and Jamie’s in Fleet at weekends (how cosmopolitan). I try to spend one day a week at Mum and Dad’s catching up on emails and researching exciting things like macerators (if you’re not sure what they are, don’t bother looking them up – just be grateful). However, these admin days have recently been interrupted every couple of hours by the problem illustrated in the photo below…

My new role as part-time shepherdess was unexpected but was actually fun for the first few hours. However, after politely shooing the renegade sheep out of Mum and Dad’s garden (predominantly, the vegetable patch) 3 or 4 times – they wised up to my inexperience. Up until that point just a small, hard-core group of sheep explorers had been sneaking through the fence but gradually word spread of the inept guardian of the vegetables and they started bundling though the dodgy fencing in packs and facing me down when I started shooing. Anyway – I was near breaking point when Mum came home and between us we wedged an old wheelbarrow in the gap – crisis adverted.

Remember to check out this blog regularly for more breaking news and life and death struggles!

2007-10-08T09:05:00.001+01:00

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my very first blog and to check on my progress. Whilst many of you seem to think that becoming a full-time property developer will entail numerous television appearances and hours set aside to count vast piles of money; I intend to set the record straight with this diary.

I left my job of 9 years with BMW UK a month ago now and thought that it was about time that I updated you on my adventures. As many of my friends will know, I’m not a complete property virgin. In the past Dad and me have bought a couple of houses to let out and even renovated a fallen down thatched cottage which I lived in for a while (see the Gallery pages for photos!). Well, as any Landlord knows letting property can be a blissfully quiet business for anything up to 18 months before all hell inevitably breaks loose and you are forced to put in some hours. I’ve got 4 separate young professionals in one house and 2 of them decided to leave within a month of each other (they were on student placements – I didn’t scare them away…), I had to get my house in Wokingham let (some income at last!), and another of my tenants has warned that he’s about to hand in his notice as he is in the process of buying his own place. Drama drama drama – just what I needed as I completed the purchase of my first full-time renovation project in Swansea. Needless to say for the past 3 weeks I have been advertising rooms, picking random strangers up from the train station in order to show them round, cleaning my house from top to bottom, and answering a constantly ringing mobile phone. In between times I have been attempting to move all my belongings to one place, meet builders at my recently purchased Swansea house, and get this website up and running!

It’s not been all bad; I’ve recently been lucky enough to enjoy 700 miles in 5 days in this! A slight change from the steady stream of brand new BMW’s that I’ve enjoyed in the past. The beast and I actually got on pretty well despite it having no working radio, no working internal lights, and a clutch designed for Bigfoot : ) I gave the Enterprise staff a good laugh when I enquired as to how to adjust the wing mirrors and they had to point out the window winder.

Anyway, I’m making progress and have rented out the 2 remaining rooms and got the tenant for my old house successfully settled in. I can now start to focus on my ugly ducking house in Swansea (see the Gallery pages for proof!). So far the major issue has been getting builders to return my calls and even if I manage to speak with someone and drag them round the house, I have yet to find anyone that can start this year. They gloss over this issue completely on TV. Hilariously, many builders have also been put off by the amount of work required to the outside of the property – apparently it gets a bit cold and wet in Swansea over the Winter months and they’d rather take nice cosy jobs until the Spring. There was me thinking that Welsh builders were a hardy bunch : )

So, you leave me this week waiting for a building quote from the one firm I’ve found that could start this year and trying to persuade more builder’s to take a look round and quote me for the work. If anyone needs me I’ll be traipsing round MFI and B&Q getting Kitchen quotes.