First-time house renovation

suisidevw

Brilliant, thanks for help guys, Jim, will have a look in a sec. Just uploaded my weekends progress with the fireplace, see below, sorry, still don't have a blog, and final pic is how it will look come the weekend! Will paint hte surround Crowns 'aged white' this weekend

TomsMom

Oh wow! That looks fantastic Suiside, well done :T.

Careful Andy, you don't want to be laid up for Christmas. Hope your knee sorts itself out soon. Much safer in the garden for the time being, although I have to say I'm glad we don't have a lawn and trees dropping their leaves everywhere, I'm happy with the little bit I've got! I'm sure some of the spring bulbs are coming through already - don't really know if they're weeds or not but I'm sure some of it is where I planted bulbs so I'll leave well alone for now.

jimbugalee

cool pics suicide!! Can't believe how similar it is to ours.



Just checked my blog and realised I haven't put any fireplace pictures up! a job for tomorrow I think.

suisidevw

Thanks TM and Jim!

Looks very similar to yours! Looking forward to seeing pics on the blog tomorrow, post up here when you've updated! It's a fun project to take on and a good money saver, patience seems to be the key!

suisidevw

ps, this is what it was like before

ukmaggie45

suisidevw wrote: »

ps, this is what it was like before

And you got rid of that beeeooootiful carpet? :eek:

Did you find the parquet floor underneath it? Lucky you!

We've had documents about insurance arrive this morning, lots of small print to read!

The house will be empty (apart from a sideboard vendor is leaving and some garden tools in garage), at least we are expecting it to be empty. So we'll probably go for the council tax saving if we can. OH had email back from council yesterday, they said we contact them on completion, and told us who to get in touch with.

We met with my IFA yesterday and I signed forms to sell some bonds. Then we went and delivered cheque for Large Amount Of Money to our sol. Then I was exhausted so we came back and lit a roaring fire (though not candles as in the photo as we haven't done our IKEA trip for Jubla candles yet) and collapsed in a heap and when the fire burned down came to bed and had an early night. Fell asleep half way through Life (strewth, was there ever such a misnomer for a documentary? It seems to be mostly about animals eating each other! :eek: ), so am glad it's repeated at the weekend.

Saw a number of highly coloured penguins in town! But forgot to take my camera, so couldn't do photos of them or of the view from brokers. Idiot! Oh well, doubtless will have to be there again when work starts on the house to sign more forms, so will definitely try harder to remember it then.

Maggie

PS can see snow on the distant hills in Wales, TM have you had snow?

suisidevw

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

And you got rid of that beeeooootiful carpet? :eek:

Did you find the parquet floor underneath it? Lucky you!

PS can see snow on the distant hills in Wales, TM have you had snow?

Sounds like it's gogogogo! Nothing in S Wales however saw Brockways pics on BBC Wales last night with snow over the Brecons! Yours sounds like your making moves Maggie, lovely. Is there much work on the property to be done?

Yes, found the parquet floor underneath but looked like below so a pal and I spent 2 full days on the complete downstairs. Pine in reception rooms and oak in hallway! On our viewings of the house we did pull back some of the carpet to check out!

Sorry about the size of pics guys, won't enlarge from FlickR in future!

TomsMom

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

PS can see snow on the distant hills in Wales, TM have you had snow?

DD came down on Saturday and said the hills had a covering and were very pretty. We went to see TD and all the hills on the way were snow covered, they looked lovely. We could see snow on Cader from here. Unfortunately by Sunday all snow gone.

Today very cold, d-i-l is Lollipop Lady in village of Bontddu about 7 miles away, it was -3C there this morning. Very cold here but I'm not venturing out, I'll take her word for it. There is some snow on some of the hills today but not as much as Saturday.

We never did get around to sorting out a room thermostat and I think I will have to turn the boiler temp up a bit. It was set at 50F, moved it up to 55F but think I'll turn it up to 60F, some parts of the house are a bit cold. Mind you I don't think any of the TRVs are set at more than 3 (out of 5). Time to do some experimenting I think!

ukmaggie45

suisidevw wrote: »

Yes, found the parquet floor underneath but looked like below so a pal and I spent 2 full days on the complete downstairs. Pine in reception rooms and oak in hallway! On our viewings of the house we did pull back some of the carpet to check out!

Wow, I'm really envious! It looks wonderful after you sanded it. Is your fireplace going in this week? That'll be so exciting.

House needs Everything doing. Possibly including ripping up the concrete floors. :eek: Then there's double glazing at the back, rebuild morning room, combi boiler, new central heating system (looks as if some of pipework has leaked), new electrics, loft insulation, roof vents, you name it and it probably needs doing! :eek: But the location is stupendous, and there's frogs and toads in the garden (and squirrels which I'm not so keen on :rolleyes: ) and also they get a pied woodpecker too, or have done in the past when there was someone there to feed the birds. :j

Not sure if you saw my photos, but here's the view from the small front bedroom. And this is the garden from the back door.

We'd really like to extend the garage sideways a bit as I suspect it's too narrow to fit my car in.... But I'm not sure if there's enough space for the Planners. And then it would be nice to build over the garage to make an upstairs sitting room with a fabulous view. Maybe have it joined into the smallest bedroom to make an L-Shaped room, there's so much to think about I'm totally confused!

And I'm fancying as much glass as possible across the whole of the back downstairs as there's such a lovely garden - well we hope we can bring it back to being a beautiful garden again, it's going to take some time! Don't know if any of you have caught The Home Show on Channel 4, the architect on that uses bifold doors most of the time, and something like that in the back sitting room could be nice.

Ah, dreams! :rolleyes:

Maggie

jimbugalee

wow Maggie, the views look fab!! The garden is lovely I am quite jealous Someone on here has those big bi-fold doors. It think there are pics further up this post.

We've got the window people arriving tomorrow. Shame it's suddenly turned cold ... not sure where I am going to work as they're going to be in most rooms and knocking a big hole in the lounge wall to fit french doors.

I do have a question for you all ...... Our bathroom requires an inspection from the council. We submitted our plans and paid the £200 or whatever it is. We then got allocated an inspector but I can't get hold of him. What do we do if we still can't get hold of him in a few weeks and want to finish the bathroom? I suspect he won't even come to look at it.