Our Future Homes Makeover. When is Too Old?

In other news we got the gas and electricity (12v) on the motorhome sorted, I make it sound like small beer but it's a massive change and from here on in we can use the motorhome  again (when of course we finish the damp works at home). As I’ve said elsewhere it’s frustrating; I could never be accused of being patient at the best of times even less so when the motor home is now ready to go. The gas works were actually more complicated and extensive than we anticipated, and after some haggling and procrastinating we decided to have all of the old pipe stripped and replaced, and a new manifold installed, as well as the bulkhead regulator that we had already purchased.

We also bit the bullet while the unit was in having the gas done and had the mains connected charger fitted. This allows the leisure battery to charge while the motorhome is on mains hook up. To explain: Motorhomes have a relay from the alternator to the leisure battery, so once the vehicles battery is charged the leisure battery gets charged as you are in motion, it’s a neat and simple solution, that allows something as simple as the fridge to chill down while you are on-route. The new charger augments this facility by allowing the 12volt systems to fully charge while you still get the use of your mains systems on a mains hook up at a campsite. Our motorhome is so old it didn’t come with the charger in the original build, so we were going to install one at some point this year. However with the delays from the damp works at home, it just ended up as another “to do” with an ever shrinking timeline. Fitting the charger is relatively simple, and both my brother and his best mate are Mechanical and Electrical Engineers (sparks with spanners... though in fairness to both they aren’t on the tools anymore, in fact my brother now flies private jets for rich people who don’t like mixing with the hoi polloi). So we did have an option on buying the charger and accoutrements and then doing the work ourselves... but... as the gas fitter was going to be in exactly the same space as the electrical work, it seemed pointless waiting, and of course the “to do” list shrinks by one item and what we lose in cash for labour we gain back in time elsewhere for ourselves and simple things like: Route Planning, which I scribbled about a post or so ago.

If nothing else we have learned a little more about compromise and managing our own expectations. And unpopular as it may be... it is fair to say our only friend during this period has been the miserable weather everyone else has been complaining about. The rain has kept us indoors, out of the garden, and with no distracting sunny days beckoning us to the outdoors. The short respites from the rains have fortunately fallen in slack periods at home allowing us to just keep on top of the garden, with a few motorhome cosmetic jobs of our own sorted out, just on top of the day to day stuff of work and home. And referring up a line or two; staying away from sunny days out by default means that we haven’t pushed our physical limits even further than they have already been pushed. We aren’t builders; using a hammer and bolster relentlessly for four hours isn’t our trade, nor is mixing two and a bit tonnes of sand and cement (even with a mixer). We are both now the mature side of forty five. And we are possibly the only people (except farmers and water company executives) that are happy about the progress of summer weather 2012 so far... I don’t think I’ve been so physically and mentally worn out ever... and yet knowing myself, if I found clear skies to play under I would invariably push myself and Amanda to get out and do stuff.

Last year I on this very day 20^th June I had my Lumbar L5/S1 vertebrae fused, I spent three months in recovery, and I guess the whole of the rest of last year and the first few months of this year getting back in shape. During this period I was lucky enough to be put on a pilot Physio program at UCLH and over the course of ten weeks I found and was encouraged to push my boundaries and get back to the sort of fitness that meant that in 2004 I could coast a London Bikathon, swim five days a week, and run fifteen miles in that same week (I couldn’t even imagine doing it now, I don’t think I’m that needy anymore either)... But the point is during the physio course “pace” was emphasised “pace”, not overdoing it, being mindful of your condition. I’m rubbish at pace I just don’t have the right kind of off button... and Amanda is very much the same at heart. If there had been sun this last two months the situation would be:

1.      Two dead middle aged people who took on too much... but did die trying

or

2.      A damp house and travel plans put off for a year or whenever J

What we have instead is... two considerably poorer middle aged people, but with enough gumption remaining to get to the finish line even if we only get the wooden spoon.

Flaming June

So here we are 3^rd of June 2012, the big Jubilee weekend. It’s a shame about the weather for her Maj down on the Thames, you’d think the Giant Intergalactic Spider would have parted the clouds today so she could bask in sunshine, but hey ho Britain is famous for rainy days, so from a philosophical point of view... it’s perfect Queens River Pageant weather.

For ourselves this weekend so far has been hard work. A friend of ours popped round with a Kango to help us break up the screed floor in the dinning room. It took about three hours to “gun up” and will take a fair few trips to dispose of, but it’s done. There’s good news as well with regards to the state of the DPC (damp-proof course), it hasn’t been breached and is set at the correct level on the external wall underneath what’s known as the Bell Render stop. The entire damp issue is due to a lack of diligence on the original builders part, when the original DPM was laid. This means that with good conscience we can PVA and seal the walls once they’ve dried out a little more, then use Synthaprufe; http://www.epms-supplies.co.uk/admin/products/documents/Ruberoid/Data/IKOpro%20Synthaprufe%20LAC.pdf to provide a final seal and lap joint across the subfloor, then as noted earlier lay in the new DMP, insulation and 60mm of new hard screed; followed eventually with the installation of a new 7kw radiator, a complete plaster skim to all the walls and final redecoration.

I can’t overstate how this light at the end of the tunnel moment changes things. It’s exactly the same sense of relief finding the DPC intact and in the right place, as the day I tracked back the damp in the Moho and found the extent and the cause of the leak. Everything that follows is either just graft, or cosmetics (cost is obviously in there but but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, so c’est la vie).

I can’t say I’m happy about all the extra work and distractions of the last few months; three going on four before we get back to on track and deal with all the travel niggles such as: how do you get from mainland Europe across to Cyprus in September and early October with a motorhome? The answer it seems at first glance appears to be, drive down and across Western Europe through the Balkan countries, into Turkey and then catch a boat from Turkey to Northern Cyprus, and then drive the two and a bit hours from and through Northern (Turkish) Cyprus into Southern (Greek) Cyprus to Paphos on the South Western tip, and there overwinter with Amanda’s sister before, turning round and reversing the process the following spring. “Simples” as the Russian??? Meerkat Aleksandr Orlov would say... one has to wonder how a little Herpestidae like the Meerkat managed to get all the way from the southern tip of Africa to the heart of Moscow, and then become a television celebrity in Britain with his own range of cuddly toys and book available on Amazon; proving if nothing else, that anything is achievable... maybe I need a change of medication. Anyway, crossing the Balkan countries in October could be problematic, not because they were at war just a decade or so ago and the UK, UN and USA intervened with the usual Tomahawk missile based diplomacy (Jokes aside it was the right thing to do).

No the reason going through the Balkan countries at that time of year is an aggravation, is that the weather can be inclement at times, October is Albania’s wettest month with temperature lows of 5 degrees as an example and there can be border crossing issues (often to do with corrupt border guards and random fees). This is why you have to plan your routes and your times well in advance.

Without going into too much depth, the options are take your time and see some sights, or do a five to six day mad rush. Other alternatives include finding a boat service from Southern Italy that goes direct to Limmasol in Southern Cyprus or some other tramp steamer adventure; it’s all very much up in the air. And I bet now you’re asking: why not bypass the Balkans and Turkey and just go from mainland Greece? And the answer is, there isn’t a direct single route ferry from mainland Greece to Cyprus. And Island hoping across may not be an option because of the size of the vehicle we are travelling with. And this brings us full circle, there is a tonne of research to get done, and for three months all we’ve really done is mend and prepare our motorhome (which is still ongoing), and then mend our house and sell it, and these things coupled with workaday life, have left very little time or space to do the essential research.

Today: today is a corner day; we just turned one. No doubt there will be more, but for the first time in a good few weeks, the mind can turn to the cerebral matters applicable to the long game.

Three Cheers for the Queen.

Little Steps Big Jobs

This last fortnight has seen a total stop on anything travel related, be that in the immediate future (Jubilee week) or our extended travel plans. All in favour of dealing with the damp works at home. As reported earlier we found a patch of mould in a corner. And upon further investigation I found that damp is extensive. So extensive in fact that the only cure is to excavate the entire floor screed layer and replace it. I estimate 4 to 5 cubic yards of material or about 4 to 5 tonnes. We then have to tank the lower part of the walls, replace the subfloor DPM (Damp Proof Membrane), install sub-floor insulation, re-lay the screed over the insulation (thankfully considerably less that we took out with the addition of insulation), re-plaster and finally redecorate. To say the least a lot of upheaval, expense and back breaking work. And when I say its expensive, that’s expensive with me doing the bulk of the unskilled work. The first quote we got from a professional was for £3300, which is toe curling when you’ve just spent double that refurbishing the motorhome, and particularly galling when you price the materials quoted by the firm for yourself and see that most of the cost is brute force and ignorance labour and mark up… and the firm quoting expects you to get rid of the rubble, or pay extra for them to do it.

It is very easy to be disappointed, it’s very easy to be frustrated and angry, and in fairness these emotions are the usual first response. However with a week or two’s reflection, digging and discovery the mind accommodates the initial stress, faces up to the problem and rationalizes it. Ergo, you would have to fix the damp at home whether you were moving or not, in exactly the same way as we had to fix the motorhome if we were to live in it and continue our adventure. And there is the point: there is a goal beyond all these setbacks, and as long as you don’t lose sight of it, everything else is just part of the story.

We intend to sell this house, and use the equity in part to fund our travel. So the pragmatic way of looking at it is: Speculate to accumulate. We had intended to sell then move into a flat near Leigh on Sea for the rest of the year so we could enjoy the summer, close to one of our favourite local day out spots, and over winter in an area with a windy and wild beach. With the extra expense we have now incurred, we’ve changed tack. Instead of putting ourselves up against a hard target and ramping up the stress, we’ve changed our plans and timescales.

We will spend extra money doing the renovation works at home and make some marketable home improvements and hope that they in turn pay dividends when we come to sell. It’s like everything involved in this enterprise; a bit of a gamble, but I refer you to the blogs name, “It’s later than you think”. If you can’t gamble now before you are too old, then when can you?

Here’s the equation that put us on this path 5x22=110, and here’s how it breaks down. On average you get five weeks annual leave per annum, I have twenty two years left to work, that’s a literal one hundred and ten weeks (but some firms only offer four weeks leave for several years so that number can be a lot less). If you look at those numbers, my remaining life time annual leave entitlement is two years. Now try to imagine using all that leave just for travelling and fitting in all that you want to see without repetition, wasted miles and picking up previous threads. Quite simply you aren’t going to do it, and you’re going to have to contend with changing circumstances and the rigours of age as the twenty odd years progress. And lets not forget, that there is not a year goes by when outrageous fortune steals those hard earned days of annual leave from you… a good example being next week, we planned a week in Southwold Suffolk, testing out the re-fit, exploring somewhere new, and being far from the madding crowd. Instead we’re going to be carting five tonnes of rubble in bags to our local dump, and dealing with the other tasks listed above in preparation for an autumn house sale. When you look at it like that, sticking two fingers up to the rat race, taking your money and running for two years is clearly the most sensible, dare I say logical conclusion.

It Never Rains it Pours.

Pinch Punch First day of the month, so the saying goes. I could have Googled its origins, and maybe later if I pique my own interest then I will... but right now I’m suffering from can’t be arsed. Can’t be arsed to do much of anything today. I’m on a weeks annual leave; throughout which I was intending to decorate the kitchen diner at the rear of the house. I found a couple of mildew spots on the wallpaper above the skirting boards and the room generally looked a bit tired, and because there are two different wallpaper finishes in the area it doesn’t feel like a fully integrated space. With this in mind the plan is to join the two areas with a common finish, lighten up the room and make it look more family friendly with new wall finishes and a new laminate floor (the existing one tends to a red coloured timber effect and is too dark).

The problem with decorating is that you can’t always be sure of what you will find. I started peeling wallpaper and immediately realised that the mildew that was visible was only a tiny proportion of what was there. I’d assumed condensation at the coldest and most exposed part of the house, what with the extension being open on four sides (if you include the roof.... which you should). Within fifteen minutes I realised that the mildew ran around the entire circumference of the room under the paper, which did seem odd, though given the amount of rain in April I kinda convinced myself that it was nothing to worry about... as you do. As I was stripping off the paper anyway I saw no issues. However I did have a slight sinking feeling that all was not well, when I found an area of mildew that is fully inside the central heated part of the room, and decided that I needed to bite the bullet and dig a little deeper. There is no point doing a bodged job if you’re selling, especially with something like damp, because depending on how rapid it is, your bodge or cosmetic cover up could be exposed by a surveyor with the resultant loss of sale, or compromised in a couple of weeks and then you won’t sell anyway.

I found a spot on the skirting boards that looked easy to fit a chisel behind and gently pried it away from the wall. At this point I had a proper surprise; all the skirtings are MFD (medium Density Fibreboard), and were stuck on the walls with “NO Nails” (which is entirely fine and a very good finish with no drilling). I slid my hand down behind the skirting and found the wall behind the skirting was damp and sticky, so I went to another area and tried there with the same result.

To get the skirting off I had to remove the existing laminate flooring, and as I was ditching it anyway it was effectively re-ordering the program of works. Much to my dismay, under the laminate I found the ceramic tiled finish from the kitchens dinners previous incarnation. Between the tiles and the laminate and been placed sheets of damp proof underlay, waterproof underside/wicking fabric surface. So on balance almost the right materials to protect one surface from the other and from the walls. However the fabric had been laid the full width of the room, thus allowing any condensation on the cold tile surface to travel to the edges of the room via the wicking layer where the fabric makes contact with the plaster of the walls. This allows the damp into the plaster, which allows for the growth of mould blah blah blah.

So you’re thinking, excellent damp source found problem solved. Unfortunately not; I also found a crack in the old tiled surface near the French windows onto the garden, and an oddly raised tile that had always left a tiny dump in the floor near the doors, that we had assumed  was either a nail or tiny off cut of underlay or laminate that had gotten stuck under the floor and the installers just couldn’t see the point in undoing it all and taking it out; assumption truly is the mother of all fuckups. Should you be tempted in future to assume stuff, feel free to have yourself whipped naked through the streets of Aberdeen for your stupidity. The bump I discovered was the size of one of the ceramic floor tiles, it was raised from the rest of the floor by maybe 3mm, it had a crack through the grout side to side. The crack in the grout followed the tiles out to the wall edges (and that sinking feeling was back for round two). The other significant point of order was; what had raised this one tile?. So with no effort whatsoever I lifted the tile from what appeared to be a mound of crystalline cement (cement that damp allows the salts to leach out and form crystals or Secondary Efflorescence I was taught many years ago in Industrial studies... at this point the use of phrases such as "Oh Bollocks", "shit shit shit, fuck shit", "fuck" and "fuckit", become entirely acceptable).

So my initial thought that the laminate floor was suffering from the effects of condensation through a poorly laid vapour barrier between it and the tiles, and subsequent transmission of condensate water through this medium to the plastered walls appears to be only one aspect of why the rear extension appears to have damp around pretty much 360 degrees. It’s looking like it’s got very little to do with the method of water transmission from the source of the fault (though one should actually be happy to have found mould/mildew this early) which now appears to be a cracked floor slab, that may or may not have a damaged DPM (Damproof Membrane) same eight inches below, which in turn is wicking water from foundation level, into the cement of the floor, and then via the laminates membrane to the wall, and this brings us full circle.

I can’t decorate until the damp is sorted. I can’t ascertain whether the damp source is a cracked slab through just bad luck, or whether we have a bigger issue with subsidence, and so I have had to call in the insurers to assess the damage and tell us how to proceed.

Does it affect the plan to go travelling? In the long run no. It’s either an aggravation and expense for us and a delay in putting the place up for sale, or its an aggravation for us and an expense for the insurance company, before the place is put up for sale. I’m trying hard to think of the worst case scenario, and how it would blow us out of the water? But I can’t find anything that is going to stop us, only things that are going to delay us or make us move our schedule around, and as long as all the steps necessary are complete before March 2013, then I think you’ll find that Thunderbirds are still go.

Trials and Tribulations (but at least it's happened early).

We plan in a year or so to take our 21 year old motorhome on the road for a couple of years and just live in it and tour. On Sunday I noticed a blown corner in the bathroom. Upon further investigation I found a nasty little leak, that's allowed the ingress of water between the external aluminium skin and the internal wallboards which are made of hard Polystyrene foam, covered with quarter inch ply, finished with decorative vinyl wallcovering.

I have also found a cross member totally rotted out, so much so that I can pick it out with just my finger. It’s a bugger to say the least.

Third party repairs look like they could empty the coffers quicker than a one eyed prime minister. Therefore in addition to the ongoing preparations for the trip, I now have to factor in me stripping out the internal space in the motorhome and repairing it, if it’s within my ability to do so (it’s not a lack of skill or confidence, it’s a question of legality and certification) after all, if it fell to bits on a motorway would you be criminally responsible for dodgy or non-standard fixes? ... let’s hope that never comes to pass and I am as good as I think I am.

On Tuesday 14^th of February we went to the Motorhome Caravan and Camping Show http://www.motorhomecaravanandcamping.co.uk/ to look at alternative options if all else fails and our old shed on wheels needs to join the choir invisible. We were going anyway as we wanted to replace the oven and fridge (and maybe the shower ironically). Frankly there’s only one candidate as a replacement.

One of these, http://www.vantagemotorhomes.co.uk/sol-info.php, but at £44k minimum, it’s a big ask. If I was to be entirely blunt about the MHC&C show, it was an enormous letdown, full of ostentatious, cramped (despite large external dimensions) luxury motorhomes that in my opinion are suitable for retired, wealthy individuals who want to spend their days in their motorhome on pristine lawned campsites where mud and children are banned... not in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sheep being battered by hail and rain (no escaping days like that).

 The Vantage units on the URL above, on the other hand combine all the benefits of a solid metal box panel van streamlined at source, combined with a built in the UK by the companies owner interior that is at same time comfortable enough and practical. If they have a disadvantage, it’s the lack of storage space internally, but there are aftermarket options to deal with that issue.

So I guess for a while at least this blog will have small updates on the state of repairs and refurbishment of our existing Moho, and I’ll throw in some pictures as well. As the post title says Trials and Tribulations. There is nothing like a challenge, except a challenge that gets challenged. In a word “Bollocks”.