The house needed a little bit of (long needed) attention this summer triggered by a leak coming from the top of my bedroom bay window on the first floor. Looking at the roof for the bay, the leak appears to have come from a now worn out felt material used to form said roof. The repair is simple but made a tad complicated by its location – access to the roof as well as working safely on this requires a scaffold. As I now have to fork out some extra moolah for this scaffold, I might as well get the attic front window replaced, and get a decorator to start work on painting my bay windows. Now here comes the problem – coordinating these jobs especially the painting as you can’t really get a decorator to just be available without booking an available time. Especially when I had someone in mind (the chap who painted my dining room and kitchen 4 years ago).

Apart from the leaking bay roof, following the buangruang mini flood last November, one of the jobs that needed doing was repairing the cracked exterior rendering at the side of the property. It has been slowly deteriorating since I bought the place 13 years ago and it was one of the suspected reasons for the flooding (unlikely as I think a rise of the water table was the likeliest culprit). Reason or not, this needed sorting:

A few things were happening at this time. While waiting for the scaffold to arrive, my builder told me that some of my gutters needed replacing. Interestingly, the gutter is made of treated wood and the trough is painted with bitumen. This will last for probably 15 years, better than metal which corrodes. Another thing was that I had been waiting for the hedge to be trimmed by my regular gardener. Thanks to the rain, it was a few good weeks that the hedge was attended to. During this time, the paving stones you see in the above photo were repointed. Just look at the overall result:

One of the things that I needed the gardener to do was trim the rosemary hedge by my front door. It’s gone wild, a far cry from the sapling that ayah planted 12 years ago. However, as the scaffold people were going to come around the property sharpish, my builder did the rosemary in anticipation of their arrival. He did a pretty good job actually!

The scaffolding was finally up and due to my builder having had to have another pair of helping hands, the bay roof could only be done on two Saturdays a week apart. Actually it could’ve been done on that one Saturday but the shop supplying the rubber roofing material was shut due to illness. Anyhoo, the window won’t be ready until mid-August-ish (sounds like now) so the scaffolding is still around the house.

As for the painting job, luckily for me, the decorator said yes to the project – so, having the scaffolding around the house for this period of time will not be wasted. It’s not cheap but needed doing especially when the decorator did comment that my windows and doors (especially the front door as rain water now can get through a linear crack in the wood which obviously need treating and subsequently a few good coats of paint) needed some attention four years ago. Better late than never!

I am looking forward to the final result of all this work. As they say with property, you spend money to increase its value[1]!

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[1]Just had the property valued last month, and suffice to say it’s good news.