First-time house renovation

jimbugalee

Hi all,

Just been reading through the week's updates from everyone. We actually made some noticable progress this weekend!

Boiler installed and working well We now have heating upstairs and hot water downstair in the kitchen. who hooooo. Took 2 guys 7 hours to install it Zzzzzz

After that (for my birthday present!) we said no more tools in the kitchen and had a big tidy up everywhere. It makes a massive difference. This week we are hoping to have the floorboards down so I can start to decorate our room.

Windows look ace! really pleased with them

we have 2 weekends left and on the 3rd we move in. It's quite apparent now that the house is nowhere near ready. We haven't even started on the bathroom eeeeek. If I can decorate our bedroom then that will be finished in time so that's one room down. We may have to opt for plan b and do some temporary plumbing in the downstairs disused bathroom until our main one is ready.

I think that's all for now but just about to update my blog with piccies so I'll put it all on there.

Everyone seems to be coming along so well!! Nice to meet you new bungalow person (sorry I have to flick back to check ur name and will loose post oops). If anyone needs a good supplier for natural stone tiles I think I have enough samples to tile an entire bathroom!! I've definitely sussed out who the best/cheapest suppliers are for those.

Gemma

jimbugalee

Blog updated http://seatonroad.blogspot.com/

latecomer

New windows look great and the boiler pipework is very neat despite there being rather a lot of it

jimbugalee

I know - you'd think we were powering a gas station!!! Once the kitchen is done it'll all be hidden behind a cupboard. That Magnaclean sticks out but it does it job ... picked up loads of metal so far.

latecomer

I just phoned to chase up our bathroom radiator to be told its sitting in the warehouse although she couldn't/wouldn't tell me how long its been there. Would have been nice if they had phoned to say its arrived as I've just spent half the weekend under the floors and hence it would have been a great time to get it fitted.

TomsMom

kimmi wrote: »

Hi
can I join you all? Have been reading this thread on and off for a couple of months,. but haven't posted before for fear of our purchase falling through!

Kimmi

:wave: Hi Kimmi, and welcome. Always nice to see a new face and it will keep the thread going when all of us old timers have finished our renovations. BUT, really - another bungalow! Us house owners are severely outnumbered here, I'm getting a bit of a complex :rotfl: . Definitely search around for your insurance to get the best deal, we found it quite expensive for unoccupied insurance.

latecomer
I'd have a very good think about getting them put up if you are not sure. You've spent so much time and money on the house why put up some tiles that you are not 100% happy with? I'm sure your son will be able to help at a later date once you have found something you really love

Too late now latecomer. He's already started. I hear what you're saying but it's not possible to get out and look again. We already have to go 60 miles to find a tile place and with OH spending more time in hospital than at home we had to make a decision. They are nice though, 10cm square, these ones from Topps, Burano White, (hope that takes you to the tile rather than Topps' home page) they're not really white as the name suggests but you can see from the picture they have some colour running through and the "white" is nearer cream. The coloured bit goes well with the colour of the kitchen units. As I had 10cm sq in the last house I suppose I wanted a change, but they do seem to have become a bit of a classic as everywhere always sells them. If we'd have gone trendy and then they went out of fashion I'd probably be upset as I can't see the kitchen getting a facelift until I'm a very old lady :rotfl: .

I just phoned to chase up our bathroom radiator to be told its sitting in the warehouse although she couldn't/wouldn't tell me how long its been there. Would have been nice if they had phoned to say its arrived as I've just spent half the weekend under the floors and hence it would have been a great time to get it fitted.

:rolleyes: Seems to be the norm these days, the customer does the chasing up. They don't train the staff like they used to :rotfl:

jamtart6 Also any good suggestions for type of tiles/places to buy tiles from for Bathroom? I'm thinking of a specialist tile place rather than B&Q

Definitely check out the specialist tile places JT, there will be far more choice and quite a few will be displayed in proper settings rather than just a few out on display like B & Q, especially in the bigger showrooms. If you find one you like you can always check prices with other suppliers for the best deal. We got our bathroom ones from Wickes though, not a great choice but they just happened to have one we liked. We checked out their website frequently until they were on special offer, got them 30% off then used the code for first time orders from their catalogue CAT09 and it gave us another 15% off I think.

andrew-b

Btw..my back still hurts but it'll be better in a few days i expect if i rest it. Trouble is my spine is curved slightly and because i have to bend from the waist rather than the knees i put extra strain on it. That's also why i've been a bit slow on the tiling as there's so much bending down involved it aches loads the next day. If i'd been regularly doing my exercises the physio gave me to help strengthen my lower back muscles i might not have hurt it in the first place ..so sort of self-inflicted in a roundabout way.

Well, you know what's coming. ANDY - REST! And - er.... not doing your exercises??? .

jimbugalee
Windows look ace! really pleased with them

Agree JB, they look lovely. Re: the ivy. We had this on our last place which was stone built rather than rendered. OH pulled it all off, scraped the little clingy bits off and then put weedkiller all around where the root was. It wasn't possible to get rid of all the clingy bits but they didn't show up much on the stone after a while. Definitely give it a go and when you've removed it repaint, it should look OK.

jimbugalee

Andrew - it didn't feel very quick!! someone did remind me today how far we've come although the house looks a lot worse!

I thought my BF was the techno geek trying to Cat5 our entire house Zzzzzz I won't mention the Cat6! lol I have my office at home so we do need something a little better than relying on wireless signal. All the playstation etc will link into the network too. Already booked Virgin to swap over the supply from flat to house and new v+ boxes etc hehe (btw having an extra box is only £5 a month and the box/installation is free ... bonus!)

Talking house prices etc. There was another property in the street we live which was also owned by the same authority we bought ours from. It was a semi and bathroom upstairs (we don't have either of those luxuries) but just sold when we viewed ours. It came back on the market last week! So tempted to view it but I think we wouldn't just got downhearted about ours. Sold the day it went up for over £10k on ours and it does need as much work and we haven't spent anywhere near that yet. Maybe we'll stick to what we have .....

Just out of interest - are you all looking to make money on your properties? We are hoping to make 25% and above on our house (in 3-5 years time) - bearing in mind a hopeful rise in the property market and the increase in price through the work we are doing. We're not relying on it but it would be nice Another aim (but this will never happen) is if we double our mortage (this is possible as it's equivilent to what I pay in rent now so that's only OH to chip in!) then we pay it off in 7 years instead of 25 .... just outstanding!! Maybe that's a dream rather than reality but something to aim for.

Ramble over

kimmi

Thanks guys for the warm welcome, and links to some brokers. Will give them a try...plus I'll try Barclays aswell who I currently have contents insurance with, you never know they may come up trumps!

Will definitely set up a blog, my parents live 2 hours drive away so they'll want to see what we're getting up to aswell

We're going to try and do most of the work ourselves, bar anything electrical, but as we both work full time, will only have weekends spare.

Also b-in-law is a plumber/heating engineer so will help us out and his son has just finished his 1st year of carpentry so between them will be able to fit the kitchen

Other than the new kitchen/bathroom we're hoping that its just a bit of tlc thats needed, but are bracing ourselves for more work, thankfully the survey didn't come up with anything really bad!!

Keep your fingers crossed for us, hope to be back soon!

Kimmi

TomsMom

kimmi wrote: »

Will definitely set up a blog, my parents live 2 hours drive away so they'll want to see what we're getting up to aswell

Oooh, blog, blog, blog. Yippee, another blog :j.

Don't worry Kimmi, Just me getting excited at having another blog to [STRIKE]have a nose at[/STRIKE] follow

TomsMom

jimbugalee wrote: »

Just out of interest - are you all looking to make money on your properties?

Not us, we're here forever. But then again, we're not young or just starting out on the property ladder.

Once the property market gets back to "normal", hopefully each successive move will take you further up the property ladder and you'll end up with the house of your dreams without all the hard work!