THE HOUSE
I bought the house thirteen years ago and you would be right to wonder why a single man would buy an ugly, six bedroomed, pebbledash covered, freezing cold Victorian house with a large garden. There was an element of stupidity, but my justification at the time was that I had received money from a divorce settlement and after living abroad for ten years, I had returned to the UK to work for BP Oil & Gas. Rather than renting an apartment, I looked for a house near the BP office as an investment and also in case I was lucky enough to remarry. Unfortunately I hated working in the UK so quickly transferred back to Azerbaijan and latterly travelled the world as a shipping company Technical Manager. I married a wonderful lady from Baku and have a seven year old son so in May 2023 I decided that my wandering days were over and I needed to spend time with my family. This is our house and my mission is to turn it into a beautiful, well insulated, comfortable, energy independent home. Oh yes and do it all on my own!
For the last eleven months I have been working as a Technical Consultant to close out the design and drawings for a new build vessel and this has resulted in me starting but not completing fairly major interior and exterior projects. The result is that the house is almost impossible to heat, uncomfortable and a total mess. I will now devote my time to completing the work I have started. Due to my lack of budget and innate stubbornness I have completed all the work to date on my own apart from assistance in lifting two solar panels onto the new bathroom roof but more of that later. Examples of my uncompleted work are shown below. Rather than writing long lists of the house defects and work to complete, I will produce a video so that you can have an idea of the scale of the task for just one person to complete
THE PROJECT
