My alterations, starting with the garden.

[damanpunk]

I moved into this 1970s house last year and have just started on the alterations. Once the joinery work is done the next phase is an attached 1.5 car wide garage and roughcasting the whole building as the dry dash is a mess.

So, starting with the garden...

It was a complete mess, every corner of it had something growing, hedges, bushes, trees, dead turf, you name it it was growing there.

I got quoted £5k to cut down to stumps, level out with new topsoil and turf. I decided to do it myself because of this and dug out all old turf and took out the stumps using a mattock to hammer through the roots. My total spend was £1k including 2 van hires, pretty good I thought considering almost £500 of that was the 'alledge' edging, weed control membrane and crushed marble border stones.

Here's when I started
 

 
Ready to go to the tip
 

 
Next I had 13 Tonne topsoil delivered and spread. The house is on a hill so the garden is sloping in both directions so it was levelled out to the best of my ability.
 

 
Here was how it looked while I was laying the turf.
 

And here's it just under two weeks after, approaching it's first cut.

 

[kingandy2nd]

Looks great.

 

[damanpunk]

Another small thing I did was replace the porch light, you can probably see why...

old one

New EcoLED replacement, which is very bright. The quality of this item is fantastic.




The next things to be done are as follows...

New guttering, facia boards and cladding.

The guttering I've chosen is galv steel Lindab, 125mm with 75mm downpipes. I'm doing this now as the replacement facia boards will need to be notched for the gutter rafter brackets.

I've decided to replace the cladding and soffits with Western red cedar like pictured. Unfortunately I'm waiting for 15 damaged boards to be replaced at the moment. It's going to be protected using osmo uv oil to keep it's natural look. Hardwood facias will be fitted and are being painted anthracite gray to match the new front door.

While the joiner is doing all this my new front door will be fitted. It's a Hormann TPS700.

If anyone is looking for a new front door take a serious look at these. The quality is unreal.

After this things will go a bit quiet until my garage build starts which will probably be in Spring. I did the plans myself here's an example of one of the planning drawings

 

[SittingBull]

It's looking great, looking forward to following this project!

 

[cabinman]

Brilliant job on the turf / levelling out - considering the sloping!

Look forward to further updates

 

[damanpunk]

Thanks all, glad you like it! The garden was a 'mare and took up a lot of my time but it was so worth it. Think the joiner is starting in a week or two on the facias, cladding, door etc.

Just bought the facia primer, undercoat and satin top coat (RAL colour matched to the door), £180 for the 3 tins in 2.5 litre. Gulp!!

 

[piratebaz]

Wow what a transformation. You should be proud of that. Done a cracking job

 

[cabinman]

Should have got an extra red alloy for the wheelbarrow

 

[damanpunk]

Haha, they are lightweight track/summer wheels. Check the tyres on them too

 

[damanpunk]

Well this project is moving a lot slower thanks to a certain cedar wood supplier. The first delivery had 15 damaged boards out of 53. The replacements which I had to pay for before they would ship have arrived with 8 damaged boards, not cosmetic but full on cracks along their length. Pretty disheartened with it

I did fit my lindab gutter at the weekend, just need to sort out the downpipe at the weekend.

Old brackets, some kind of weird home made hybrid bracket!

Rafter brackets up, you can see how much of a mess the facias are. I'll need to revisit the tiles as all the felt is a mess and it's not feeding into the gutter.

 

[highleigh]

What are you doing about a letter box? your old one seems to have one.

I a currently looking for a new modern front door. This does look good, are they competitively priced?

 

[damanpunk]

They don't advise cutting a letter box into this door so I'm going to fit an external standalone box. Price was £1400 ish for a custom sized door.

 

[highleigh]

That's quite a reasonable price for such a door. Do put pictures up when you have it fitted.

I thought that might be the case with the letter box. I agree with not having a box in the door but have concerns about putting up an external one, not least I have to convince the lady of the house.

 

[SittingBull]

That's quite a reasonable price for such a door. Do put pictures up when you have it fitted.

I thought that might be the case with the letter box. I agree with not having a box in the door but have concerns about putting up an external one, not least I have to convince the lady of the house.

You can get ones going through a wall into an internal box? I would be worried with having an external box whether or not the postman would give up on putting small parcels through the box e.g. bluray from amazon as the flap on external ones is smaller for security reasons.

 

[damanpunk]

Finally got round to breaking out the old gutter downpipe (concreted in) and fitting the Lindab one.

Joiner starts in two weeks re-doing the cladding, facias etc. Roofer will be in the week after either re-pointing or fitting dry verge

Garden's had its second cut now and coming along well