Pre-demolition photos

A selection of photos showing the rooms once our stuff was packed away. This was the original ensuite which became my overflow wardrobe. Check out the teensy shower space. Even if you could get the water to run at more than a dribble, you'd have to be child sized to fit in here anyway.

I won't miss the floral motif on this basin. Or this basin.

Gah the roman blinds again! The laminate floor!

A badly constructed 'fitted'wardrobe which was next to useless in terms of hanging clothes due to the short rail inside.

The stippled ceiling with strange cracks.... And the rest of the snaps show the kids room.

Before pics: The bathroom & ensuite

Kind friends have said that this bathroom isn't so bad. I guess at first glance it's no worse than many rental properties with it's 1980s bland aesthetic. But having lived with it for the last six years I know all it's shortcomings. And I'm now cured of a desire to ever have white tiles again.

A tiled in cistern. Genius idea. Not.

Ye olde stippled ceiling. And an unpredictable light that blew transformers due to a design fault.

I have no idea why real estate agents tell people that an extra bathroom will add £10k or whatever onto the asking price. We certainly didn't pay over the odds for this house because it had an ensuite. As it happened, the shower had about as much water pressure as a weak watering can so swiftly became a hanging rack for my clothes. The only true benefit was having a sink a few paces from my bed for when I needed to expel too many martinis.

Before pics: Top floor

As you can see, we're basically slobs. Due to a lack of clothes storage and six years of accumulated crap; our bedroom is a dumping ground instead of a nice place to hang out. I'm posting these as a reminder to myself as to how NOT to live.

Here's my pet peeve: A stippled ceiling. It will be so nice to not have to look at this ever again.

The roman blinds were leftover from the last owners. No idea why we didn't pull them down earlier. They are hideous.

Before pics: kids bedroom

End of an era...

I leave my job at Wallpaper* in two days time. There's a massive restructure going on and I applied for voluntary redundancy. My motivation for applying was primarily down to two things: firstly, the payoff. Secondly - six years in digital for one company is a long time, and I'd been thinking about when to make that leap into something invigorating and scary (as change is often scary). The timing couldn't have been better.

And it means that in a week or so, we'll have the funds to finally finish the house! There have been entire houses built from scratch in a fraction of the time it's taken to renovate this one [refer: Grand Designs]

The good news is, the builders gave me the quote today and it's only a bit over what I'd budgeted. My original plan of having the summer off might be curtailed if the cost of the renovation creeps up buy hey, I'll be a much happier human being having a proper wardrobe, a floor that doesn't creak and a bathroom that isn't embarrassing to show guests.

Even better news is they can start next week - not quite sure if that's feasible given that we'd have to empty the top floor of all our stuff - including the furniture - but if they can then I'll be able to tick one massive thing off my to do list when people ask me 'What's next?' - my answer has been pretty standard:  Have the summer off, finish the house and then find something exciting in digital - to that end, if you need my skills - I'm available for freelance, contract or permanent roles - my LinkedIn profile is here:
 http://uk.linkedin.com/in/kaymcmahon and if you work in marketing for a brand and you'd like to come to a workshop on Designing Disruption (in east London) I'm one of the speakers, details here: http://www.iabuk.net/events/library/designing-disruption

And I guess this means with building work imminent, at least this blog will get updated more regularly!

Wobbly fence

Spring is a month late this year, so this shot taken a few days ago looks like the middle of winter when normally those bare trees would be full of green buds. The reason for this post is that next door has decided to landscape their garden by removing most of the foliage and decking the entire space. It means the wonky fence that you can see will be replaced with something more solid - and taller. There were plans to put in a gate so that the kids can easily pop over, but this has been shelved in favour of a lower fence closer to the houses that the kids can climb (as they do now).

The lovely Polish builders are doing that job so we've briefed them on doing some more jobs for us while they're here. The first thing was to measure up a new front door, as they'd be the ones fitting it. I'm so happy that we've found a place that manufacturers composite doors to a high spec for way less than Anglian Home Doors - it has the rather SEO friendly name of http://www.bespoke-composite-doors.co.uk/ and the door we've found (which does allow a letterbox slot!) comes in at £700. The installation should be around £350. The second thing was to quote for finishing the rest of the building work - ie the top floor of the house. Will update in due course!

Vodafone sucks

Ok so this blog is a journal of events around possibly the world's slowest renovation, but hey, it's also a place for me to vent. And as I've been updating recent posts with the torture that is dealing with Vodafone I thought I'd better update with the very good news that I now have a working HTC One S phone.

This is unfortunately not the phone I was originally issued with (refer earlier post on an unsuccessful SIM removal for the full story). And it was far from easy to sort: after the 'repair' the phone was sent without a back and Vodafone couldn't source a replacement. After a couple of weeks they told me to find my own and send proof of purchase so they could credit my account. It took me all of 1 minute to find the part online and order it. It arrived a few days later. I took it into Vodafone in Westfield (where unsurprisingly the store manager recognised me) and I got my nano-SIM fitted about 15 minutes after arriving.

At this point, I should have been happy to finally have a phone that worked after five long weeks but no, I'm a sucker for punishment and asked that they 'red box' the contents of my old HTC onto the new one. I thought that apps, contacts, messages and photos would be transferred in about 30 minutes.

Long story short: they don't move apps... (wish they'd told me that before starting the red box treatment) and four hours and fifteen minutes later (with numerous visits to Vodafone to see how they were getting on....) the chap handed me a phone with 2,200 contacts. No wonder it was taking so long: these people are clearly idiots.

I had to pay for the carpark (grrr) and take my two fractious children home where I did a factory reset on the phone.

It took me FIFTEEN MINUTES to sync my contacts book with Google. And was very easy once logged into the Play store to re-download all the apps I'd had before under the useful tab heading 'My Apps'. This is why Android is such a great platform - it's easy to transfer between phones. This whole ordeal has strained my relationship with Vodafone. I don't think I'd respect myself if I stuck with them when my contract's up for renewal. Any recommendations for alternative companies are welcome!

Cushioning the impact

Maybe it's advancing age, or maybe it's because our sofa is getting on, but I've found the need for cushions has outweighed my previous need for minimalism.  One tucked behind makes an evening spent glued to back-to-back episodes of Breaking Bad fly by.

So I thought it was a good idea to buy new ones to replace the sad flat boring black ones that came with the sofa. I found these three beauties which appealed to my kitsch sensibility, yeah I thought it had long been suppressed too. The best bit? £4 EACH from Primark! Rob nearly had a coronary muttering  'Why are we buying home furnishings from Primark?' Sure, like he'd have been thrilled if I'd bought three cushions for £40 each from a reputable department store. 

Anyway, cushions aren't a lifetime commitment. By the time these need replacing I'll have upgraded my need for kitsch, though maybe not my need for a total bargain...

Leaky loo

The top floor bathroom knows I hate it. I'm just letting it hang on until we get the funds together to rip it out and start again. It's not doing itself any favours by developing a leaking cistern. Rob noticed the floor around the loo was wet and after a couple of days of strategically placed kitchen roll to soak up the moisture, he called up our ever reliable Polish builders.

The only way they could look at the cistern was to smash open the tiles which had boxed it in. (On what planet does someone think that's a good idea? Who on earth would imagine they'd never want to access their cistern at some point?). Sure enough, the inspection revealed corrosion and after repeated trips to the plumbing supply shop around the corner, we had a new cistern fitted, the tiles temporarily stuck back, and the toilet resealed.

Everything in our house that goes wrong (the leaky ceiling, the blocked sinks, the temperamental dishwasher...) all seem to be related to water. Is there an exorcism for such matters?


Vodafone HTC S update

Five days after submitting my HTC S for 'repair' I hadn't heard from Vodafone so tweeted about it. Which got their social media support team involved. Whether it was a co-incidence or not, the phone showed up at the Vodafone shop the very next day. I left work a little early to collect it, thinking it would be a good idea to get the Micro SIM installed and migrate the contents of my current HTC phone over.

This would have been a good plan had the phone arrived in one piece. Actually, it wasn't the phone I'd sent away at all. This one was a newer, less battered version in a nice shade of silver, so I guess all that poking really did screw it up (take note SIM-removal amateurs!). Anyway, they'd sent it without the back.

Apparently I should have been given the back in the first place. My back was a different colour but whatever, they hadn't given it to me. They've ordered me a replacement so I'm waiting for that to show up, so I can then take the phone to a Vodafone store and get a Micro SIM fitted... let's see if this happens any time soon...

They're baaaaackkk!

I just had an unusually healthy weekend of very little booze (not counting Friday night), lots of sleep and two art exhibitions. I should be feeling well-rested and sedate, but after wasting my evening heading to Vodafone in Stratford to be told that they couldn't sort out the problem I saw them about yesterday, I feel exasperated and exhausted.

Long story short: I need to use an HTC One S for work. My regular SIM from my current HTC phone won't fit it. I rang Vodafone and ordered a Micro SIM. They sent me a Nano. Which I dropped into the SIM slot. Of course it promptly disappeared as a Nano is smaller than a Micro. I rang Vodafone customer care who said to try a pin. A pin wedged the SIM in further. They couldn't send me a Micro SIM as their 'systems were down.' They told me to go to a store. Only there are no Vodafone stores open in central London on a weekend (I KNOW!).

After a Tweet exchange with Vodafone I discovered that there was a store open in Westfield Stratford on a Sunday - so I put the kids in the car and went there. To be told that the tech guy doesn't work Sundays. So I made an appointment for tonight. I hastily gobbled dinner and drove back to Westfield. But the tech guy couldn't get the SIM out - he doesn't have 'HTC tools'. He took it out the back for a fiddle but said 'the prongs are holding the SIM in there.' He was clueless about what to do next as the phone didn't come from Vodafone, but said I have to talk to Customer Care. I lay the blame firmly with Vodafone: if they'd sent the SIM I'd ordered in the first place, this wouldn't be an issue. (Also - when I ordered the Micro I was super clear that it was for an HTC One S as the person assumed I had an iPhone 5 which is the only phone that actually uses a nano - obviously they don't listen!)

I'll phone customer care tomorrow and let you know what they suggest.
In other news: there is a slow, intermittent leak from the glass roof extension. Rob is going to email Sunfold Systems (again). I was hoping that the leaks we saw after the last visit were an anomaly, and it was pretty dry for the last few months, but the frame is slowly filling up with liquid (it hasn't rained here for over a week) as the drops started today. Happy happy joy joy.

PS: Vodafone update

I rang Vodafone's Customer Care this morning and ran through the story so far, and was then put on hold... and then cut off. So I rang back. Got another chap, ran through the story so far, again. And was then put on hold. His advice after double checking with someone was to take the phone to a Vodafone store for them to post back to get repaired by people who have the tools. SERIOUSLY. I was actually in a Vodafone store last night (and the day before that...) - why couldn't they have thought of that at the time?!

So on the way to work I stopped by a Vodafone store and had to run through the story so far THREE TIMES TO THREE IN-STORE BLOKES. I reiterated the bit about Customer Care saying it has to be sent away for repair but two of the blokes chose to ignore me, took the back off and started to get out a paper clip! I nearly lost the plot at this point. Fortunately a paper clip wouldn't fit into the SIM card space. Nevertheless, one of the blokes took the phone out the back (away from my prying eyes no doubt to shove something smaller than a paper clip in, just in case...) I have no idea why these people choose to ignore the request to just send the thing off for repair, maybe they think they're being helpful, personally, I find it disrespectful - as if I'm so stupid I can't possibly know what I'm talking about.
Anyway - the phone is now in transit. Will let you know what happens next!