Utility room

Great news: We have a builder! His name is Wieszek (pronounced Viashek) and he's from Poland (obviously). He was recommended by the architect, who was recommended by the structural engineer, who was recommended by someone I found in the phone book. Whatever. We've seen his work and while it's not perfect, it's quite good; he got great references; his price was reasonable; and most importantly, he can start on Thursday.

Of course, we're nowhere near ready. We still haven't decided on the design for the kitchen or the bath, we haven't selected the flooring, and we still have no idea what we're doing about the plumbing. We have a lot of ground to cover in the next few days.

One thing we have agreed on is to turn the downstairs cloakroom (ie bathroom) into a utility room. Currently, there is a hallway from the front door to the kitchen, but we're are going to close off the kitchen door to hang more cabinets. That meant the hallway was just wasted space, so by removing a couple of walls and putting in a new door, we'll have enough space to put in a washer and dryer, a coat rack, and (possibly) the boiler.

However, that means we're removing two walls which may be supporting the staircase and upstairs hallway. That would be bad. The structural engineer will be back next Saturday.