First-time house renovation

helping_hubby

Only just saw your message but I couldn't help anyway. Did you get one in the end?

We're absolutely knackered after last week. We spent each night painting bedroom 2, in the hope to start painting the living room. But we were fed up by Sunday!

OH has finished off some smaller jobs like clearing the guttering, boarding under the stairs, boxing in some pipes in bedroom 3.

I want a bit of a break now before I lose my patience and probably end up throwing the tin of paint at the wall. So we're going to leave the living room a couple of weeks and maybe drag the parents down to help.

TomsMom

helping_hubby wrote: »

Only just saw your message but I couldn't help anyway. Did you get one in the end?

Have found a few suppliers but struggling to get the price down to where we would like it! If hubby is well enough after his chemo (he's in hospital at the moment), we are hoping to go out on Thursday to a big bathroom place and haggle!

I want a bit of a break now before I lose my patience and probably end up throwing the tin of paint at the wall. So we're going to leave the living room a couple of weeks and maybe drag the parents down to help.

Yeah, don't push yourself if you're not in the mood. If you do it under protest it wont be the best job so having a break is the best thing.

Struggling to get onto your blog at the moment, for some reason it's locked up on me. I'll get there eventually :rotfl:

BB1984

I feel your pain, Helping Hubby! I am so fed up with the whole thing now, it's driving me mad. The tiling was a nightmare, and in fact we still haven't done the floor. I can't be bothered anymore, but we have to push on as we have to move in next weekend, as the cat is coming! My mum likened it to having a baby - there's no going back, you just have to carry on working at it until you get the result!

My blog has decided to pack up at the moment as well, so the formatting has gone all weird and it won't let me upload photos.

Still, at least I managed to paint our bedroom, so we have one room at least that is (relatively) clean, presentable and habitable. No carpet though. Once we've moved in and sorted things out a bit more, we are definately taking at least one day of a weekend off!

BB

latecomer

BB1984 wrote: »

latecomer - sounds like you had a very busy week! Well done on getting so much done. I'm impressed with your plumbing skills - I must admit that I'm scared of plumbing so I leave that to the experts! We need to take your lead and tidy our garden up too - have been dumping stuff out the back and our neighbours must be fed up with looking at a rubbish tip....

BB

Just about recovered from it now! The way I view plumbing is that its only water and the worst that can happen is you get wet. Of course you could end up with no heating or hot water and a knackered boiler but its pretty unlikely......

Got a plasterer coming tomorrow to plaster the new alcove and around the fireplace in our front room and also the 2 patches in another room where the plaster was removed.

We spent most of sunday going round the fireplace stores in Edinburgh and still cant find a fireplace we like as much as the expensive one we found a while back. Typical really. That said the OH did manage to persuade them to offer a discount on the fireplace so its just the fire and fitting thats overpriced now....... we can get the fire £200 cheaper elsewhere.

I've got another weeks holiday to take but I'm going to try and take it once we've managed to sort out the fireplace. So all that needs to be done before Christmas is:

finish stripping skirting boards and architrave
sand floors and seal
get fire fitted
paint walls and ceiling
tidy up around bay window
get some curtains up as a temporary measure
refit skirting boards
move all the furniture in
get christmas tree and decorate

Simple! :rotfl:

Haven't managed to get up into the loft to check out whether it looks any drier since the roof was fixed but need to go up tonight anyway so will have a good look around. The roofer didn't do quite as much work as he had originally quoted for as he said some of it didn't need doing but I've got to get the chimney tested again to find out whether he's right or not.

You have to take a break from it BB1984 or it will wear you down. And doing lots of DIY while you are not concentrating or tired will lead to accidents. I'm sure the cat it wont mind the bathroom floor not being tiled.

I'm tying to motivate myself to do some work in the evenings but its not really working. Once the plasterer has been I'm going to try and work 2 nights each week for a few hours to keep the progress going. Must take some more photos tonight before the plasterer comes.

helping_hubby

BB1984 wrote: »

I feel your pain, Helping Hubby! I am so fed up with the whole thing now, it's driving me mad. The tiling was a nightmare, and in fact we still haven't done the floor. I can't be bothered anymore, but we have to push on as we have to move in next weekend, as the cat is coming! My mum likened it to having a baby - there's no going back, you just have to carry on working at it until you get the result!

My blog has decided to pack up at the moment as well, so the formatting has gone all weird and it won't let me upload photos.

Still, at least I managed to paint our bedroom, so we have one room at least that is (relatively) clean, presentable and habitable. No carpet though. Once we've moved in and sorted things out a bit more, we are definately taking at least one day of a weekend off!

BB

I've just caught up on your blog and I am very impressed with the tiling. However reading what a nightmare it is, maybe I'm quietly pleased that I've decided to pay for a tiler

Your bathroom looks huge from those photos. What are the measurements?

Carpet? What's that? We haven't had carpet or any type of flooring except floorboards since we moved in (June). I plan to get laminate in the living area in March (should have saved up enough by then) and Carpets for upstairs will probably be a year from now! Oh well. I feel for our neighbours - I'm sure they must hear us walking about on the bare floorboards and stairs.

Don't forget to take some piccies of the cat...

BB1984

Thanks helping_hubby! For the compliment on the tiling and the moral support...!

The bathroom is indeed quite big - it's about 2.6m x 2.2m, I think. It was really small, but we knocked down a wall and stole part of the hallway (there are before and after to-scale plans on my blog). So now we've got a lovely spacious bathroom, which I'm really happy with as it was the main bad feature of the house, originally. I love big bathrooms!

I know, I know, I need a break. I promise I will take a day off soon, but I can't until we've moved in - which is next weekend. Once we're in, I'll chill out a bit as we'll be able to do bits and pieces all through the week, rather than madly cramming as much as possible into the weekends!

I feel a bit better not having carpet now I know I'm not the only one...I wouldn't mind as the boards were quite lovely, but now they're covered in paint splatters and bits of plaster, etc. Ah well, hopefully they'll scrub up ok and will do for the time being. Carpet is soooo expensive, isn't it?!

Yes I will of course post a pic of lovely Chester when he arrives

My step-dad was at my house yesterday and has nearly finished fitting the kitchen - woo hoo! Can't wait to go round there tomorrow and check it out. Apparently the oven's in, all the base units, the worktops and the doors. All that's left is the gas hob and the sink/taps - but hopefully the plumber will come round tomorrow and sort those out. Then we'll have a fully functioning kitchen - amazing!

Pics will be on blog sunday night (if i'm not too knackered!)

BB

BB1984

Tom's Mom - I love that bath - it's gorgeous! That would have looked fab in our bathroom, but a bit outside the old budget...so we've just got a bog-standard rectangular bath, although it's steel, not acrylic.

The mirror's really nice too, i like the de-misting feature. Just a thought though, if you love that bath, and can't find one cheaper, could you forego the fancy mirror and put the cash towards the bath?

I'll keep an eye out for a similar bath on my travels....

bb

point3

TomsMom,

There's a 1600mm acrylic bath on Ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Space-Saving-Luxury-Shaped-Bath-with-Curved-Panel-White_W0QQitemZ230303311988



Edit: This bath is also sold elsewhere as the Eurocompact Mono Petite Plain, with a 25 year guarantee, at £310:

http://www.diamondbathrooms.com/acatalog/Eurocompact_Baths.html

latecomer

@bb - just caught up with the blog and its looking great. I've never tried tiling but as my MIL is very good at it I dont need to. the OH did some last time under her mum's supervision so we'll be doing all our own. Biggest problem we had was the mosiac tiles we used for the border (3 deep) and they all came off the backing so were in effect had to placed individually, on a wall that wasn't square, which wasn't ideal (to put it mildly).

The rate you are going you'll be finished soon

@TomsMum - also looking good. Looks like a good size bathroom too.

We had our plasterer in yesterday and looks like he's done a good job, will have a closer look tonight once its a bit drier. This means we can get on with the front room preparations and maybe even start on the ceiling and cornice this weekend. We've still got a little bit of the cornice above the fireplace to sand down as I didn't want to do it until the leak in the roof had been fixed.

Need to arrange to get the chimney retested now the work has been done althuogh I'm going to give it a basic try this weekend when I can see whats going on.

TomsMom

BB1984 wrote: »

Tom's Mom - I love that bath - it's gorgeous! That would have looked fab in our bathroom, but a bit outside the old budget...so we've just got a bog-standard rectangular bath, although it's steel, not acrylic.

The mirror's really nice too, i like the de-misting feature. Just a thought though, if you love that bath, and can't find one cheaper, could you forego the fancy mirror and put the cash towards the bath?

I'll keep an eye out for a similar bath on my travels....

bb

I didn't manage to get to the bathroom place today, we had two appointments with kitchen designers and it took soooooooo long. Not to worry, we'll get there eventually.

I can't cancel the mirror now, it was ordered when we went out with the builder last week and I think he picked it up at the beginning of this week. Not to worry though, if I can haggle the price of the bath down a bit more it will be OK.