First-time house renovation

jimbugalee

Wow JT - how exciting, your first night in the house! I refused to sleep in ours until move in date, my boyfriend used to spend the night here all the time.

Sorry I can't advise on kitchen prices as we're nowhere near getting ours done yet. I did, like you, look a a gorgeous RangeMaster cooker mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Hope it fits into our kitchen!! I may have some advice on granite though. The place we bought our tiles from I am sure does granite worktops (hmm maybe only marble - check on website). Kudos Flooring. There's a guy who works there called Kalvin who's a bit of a lad but quite helpful. As with all these places they have an eBay website so I tend to look there and get the price and get him to match it over the phone.

Must go and update my blog now as floor and 2 walls almost finished in the bathroom now. It looks ace!! So pleased I spent the extra money on the tiles.

jamtart6

thanks very much jim! looking forward to seeing your pics!

I refused to move in until move in date, but as that has now been put back at least 3 months with the extension nightmare, we needed to cheer ourselves up! the painting and the camping certainly worked! painted the box room "pale gold" which sometimes looks cream and sometimes looks yellowy. wanted it to look like an old piece of parchment for an olde worlde look and it looks brilliant even if i do say so myself.

we're nowhere near getting our kitchen done either but need to know rough prices and designs as mr jt has a mate who does kitchens and we needed some plans to give him an idea of what we want. possibly looking at interior doors this week too, for upstairs at least as now one room is painted, we need to keep it as dust free as possible!

jimbugalee

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

That gold sounds nice JT .... it's sometimes difficult not just to paint everything cream!! Our bedroom has cream walls and I wish I'd chosen a different colour but maybe next time round

We need to get some interior doors and handles for the upstairs doors once bathroom is done. Luckily our friend is a carpenter so think we'll get him to help hang them. We have horrible heavy fire doors with chains on atm and we've got something different for a doorstop in each room grrrrrr

jamtart6

i am terrified of colour so insisted on paint testers first but am really glad we went for it. got the bedroom paint too: magnolia (aka cream haha!)

ooh the tiling is lovely!! and everyything is coming together so nicely!!!

jimbugalee

While I am here ... did someone say they bought 'Oslo' bathroom furniture from B&Q? If so, do you have a pic of it in your bathroom. I'm tempted but now not sure if it's too dark.

Next do quite a nice range of bathroom furniture also.

aliasojo

Another quick q please peeps? For those who have tiled bath panels....what was the frame made from and what did you tile on to?

We're still not living at home at the minute and dont have internet access where we are so I can only log in for a very short while each day. Hope you're all getting on with things and they're all coming together nicely for you. Will have some amount of catch up reading to do when I finally get home again.

suisidevw

Top updates, the tiling looks great!

Yer, the chimney breast is actually a mushroom colour wallpaper that was there when we moved in. We will strip it but it's fine for hte time being! I suppose we can always repaint the fire surround as and when we change the colour of the room! Sweep now coming a week tomorrow and going to test the chimney! Fingers crossed it's good to go!

TomsMom

jamtart6 wrote: »

spent the first night ever in our home....only 9 months after we bought it! camp beds and a very cold night but great fun!

How exciting is that! I can imagine how that felt for you. Well done on getting that room done.

Not sure if £1700 for fitting is expensive or not. Our builders fitted most of our kitchen as part of their gift of a week's free labour, and our son finished it off when he did other work for us and we got mates rates from him. I don't know how much he charges as a kitchen fit is usually part of a job including tiling as well. If he charges day rate it is £120 per day so that's a rough guide. We've never actually paid to have a kitchen fitted, OH has always fitted them in previous houses.

Shame you've got to compromise on your rangemaster cooker, can you not lose a cupboard or rearrange something to get it in? With regards to your worktop, etc. If I were you, especially as you said you'll be in this house for a very long time, I would try not to compromise. You wont be 100% happy and you will say "if only I'd had ...... ".

To be honest, I never even wanted a granite worktop, happy to stick with laminate which I've always had and never had a problem with. I knew to steer clear of gloss laminate as I've seen what happens to it. We had a granite-effect laminate (think it was called crystal granite black or something like that) and it looks nothing like granite really. It has a very slight texture and the fact that it's very dark does mean that if you are a neat freak you do need to keep wiping it as it shows every mark. It also got a scratch on it very quickly - our son noticed that - and I've no idea where it came from. Also, we couldn't get our first choice of worktop fitter (son doesn't do that, his mate does) and the chap who did do it didn't do the best job, that is rather disappointing and of course I know every bit that is not perfect :rolleyes: . Invisible joints on a laminate worktop look lovely (well, basically you can't see them) but they really must be done well.

I must admit to wondering if I should have looked into granite. OH would have had a fit at the price, but it might have been better. On the other hand, granite would probably look good for many many years, would we want to keep the original granite worktop if we changed the kitchen units in the future?????

So, if it means waiting a bit longer for your wardrobes so be it, consider very carefully before you compromise. Go with what will make you happy.

how is tomsdad doing tomsmom?

TomsDad has been stuck in hospital in an isolation room for the last fortnight. He went in for his stem cell harvest, his blood tests were very poor and he had to have 3 units straight away, then he was told his white blood cell count was zero so it took a week for that to come up to anywhere near normal. He's since had 5 more units of blood and some platelets. He also caught an infection which took them about 10 days to identify, a high res CT scan eventually discovered some patches on his lungs which are fungal infection (caught in hospital) so besides having IV antibiotics he's now having IV anti-fungal drugs. He's totally pee'd off as the door has to be kept shut and he only sees someone when they bring in his meal or come for more blood or the cleaner comes in. He can't even go out to get his own cup of tea, and they quite often forget to bring him one when they've asked him if he'd like one!

They had to forget the stem cell harvest, they can't harvest infected cells as they wouldn't be able to put infected cells back if they need them if the donor transplant fails. He asked what would happen if they don't get the number of cells originally planned and he was told that the transplant may go ahead with what they already have. Oh, and he asked if it was the fact that they hadn't got enough cells originally that meant his transplant was cancelled last month and the doctor said that she believed this was the case rather than "no bed available". Confirms what I thought all along!

You might be able to imagine what my thoughts on all this have been over the last week or so! If thay can go ahead with the transplant with just the original number of cells harvested, why on earth did they cancel the transplant. And why did they lie to him about the reason for the cancellation.

Just had a phone call to say that he's on his last bag of IV anti-fungal drug and they can put him on tablets instead, which means he can come home as there's nothing else keeping him in at the moment. He's got to wait for transport which means he'll be home probably near tea time.


jimbugalee Great update, love the pictures. The tiling looks fantastic and Steve's room looks good. Love the little lights at the base of the unit!

Have you got to keep proper fire doors? When ours were done we had the choice of fire doors or smoke alarms in each room wired into the mains. Because we were having a rewire we opted for the smoke alarms.


aliasojo We had a tiled bath panel in our last house, as does our son now. As far as I remember, the frame was made from 2 x 2 timber (or very similar) with an MDF panel fixed to it and then tiling was done on the MDF.

jimbugalee

TomsMom wrote: »

Have you got to keep proper fire doors? When ours were done we had the choice of fire doors or smoke alarms in each room wired into the mains. Because we were having a rewire we opted for the smoke alarms

No, we def don't need to keep them (thank god!). We have mains smoke alarms also which is good. I think they were there as it was ex housing association house so probably regulatory.

You reminded me we need to find an electrician to sign off our bathroom electrics hmmmmm

Good news that TD will be home later .... hope he is feeling a bit better xxx

andrew-b

Good to hear TD will be back home again..sounds like his had a bit of a rough time.

JT, get your own choice of tradesmen to fit. It's changed a bit at wickes since i used them but i would never repeat that mistake ever again...and not just for the money i would have saved by going elsewhere.

Frantically trying to get everything together for the wedding now as less than two weeks to go and still haven't sorted out a music playlist for the wedding reception (busy ripping CDs to create a giant music collection on the laptop. Doing the music myself..laptop + set of speakers from maplin

Just when i really didn't need it, i tripped up last Thursday in the spare room (so much junk there was nowhere to go to escape injury) and ended up in middle of a box of diy gear (adhesives, sealants, polyfilla etc!) . Badly sprained my ankle and hurt my knee on the same leg. I expect they heard the pain the other end of the street! So i've been stuck in the house with my feet up most of the time since. £15 of ankle and knee supports was something we really couldn't afford right now - though i'm sure i'll have need for them again as on average i twist my ankles at least twice a year now! Anyway the ankle is much better and swelling gone down but still quite bruised..knee which wasnt as bad and hasn't got as much attention now hurts more than the ankle. Still at least i'm hobbling rather than sat in a wheelchair with leg in plaster!

Andy