PART 2: GUTTED!
21.11.11
Life & Style
And then Mr Wolf brought down the roof!
It was 2007. My career had kicked up several gears to a level that no-one could ever have predicted. I found myself in ever more fantastical scenarios; playing to 60,000 people in Giants Stadium, New York at Live 8, being invited to San Fransisco by Steve Jobs with 48 hours notice to perform at his iTouch Keynote speech, playing alongside Annie Lennox at the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo the year that Al Gore was awarded. A regular home had become a distant memory.
It seemed fitting then, as Lucky Luke and I circumnavigated the globe, to make efforts with our homelife - the one thing we could do in an attempt to rectify the environmental impact of our travels. Our little two bedroom flat in Harlesden needed a complete renovation. There was very little insulation, a nasty old boiler and heating system and the windows were ancient. Thankfully, as we were touring constantly we had the luxury of not needing to live there and were able to completely gut the place and start from scratch.
Our dear friend Mark Aston had agreed to try his ex-mic brandishing hand at eco-project-management - but not until we had a last blast New Year's Party where everyone graffiti'd the walls with their own resolutions before they were stripped beyond recognition (the walls of course, not the guests!) The meetings with builders had a pretty interesting backdrop as you can imagine...
We decided to do a full loft extension and get rid of the wall between the kitchen and second bedroom to create a bigger space. We also decided to installi 11 PV Solar panels on the roof and committed to using only reclaimed, recycled, local, or at the very least, British materials. Non toxic paint, a carbon positive chip board (that one still flummoxes me,) an eco boiler, A+ efficiency rated white goods, sustainable wooden units, and all vintage furniture. As we were rarely at home, the panels would feed the grid and earn us energy credit while we were away.
Our splurge? A 5ft cinema screen that fit exactly into the living room bay window - perfect for watching An Inconvenient Truth! The power of that sound system could pretty much have brought the whole building down without a single builder involved!
Mark e-mailed us pictures of the flat in progress; it was pretty shocking at first - the roof was completely off, only a skeleton of the flat remained. There were no solid inner walls, and the weather was a constant threat. It was hard to imagine how it would ever be finished.
But by the time we returned from tour four months later, we came home to the most incredible transformation. It was as if someone had fit a beautiful house, tardis-like, inside our old pokey flat! It was so light; beautiful reclaimed wood bannisters, english-made wool carpets, non-toxic paint (which by the way is harder wearing in many cases), and a glittering array of PV panels visible from our huge, new sliding attic window.
New sky lights in the kitchen and stairway roof provided extra light and heat, insulation and double glazing had revolutionised the feel of our home, and we had even had a second-hand piano craned through the big window which we'd never been able to fit in the flat before.
Admittedly, we went for a more expensive job than we could have done due to bespoke sustainable wood units in the bedroom and kitchen, and a bespoke glass-panelled wall. But even so, we were left with a feeling of huge elation that we had chosen to do this with not only as little impact as possible, but also as a project to change an early 20th century property forever; we transformed it from a old flat continually leaking energy, into an efficient, eco-friendly, low impact building and home.
It felt so good. We had been officially bitten by the eco bug.
READ PART 1: FIRST STEPS, CLICK HERE.
KT RUMBLES FOR THE JUNGLE.
In KT's next instalment, read how she and Luke decided to pursue their dream project; to build a solar powered recording studio.
