First-time house renovation

latecomer

@ andrew - hope the puppy gets better soon. We would love one but it wouldn't be fair at the moment. Although we did get asked to take a young boxer recently which was extremely hard to refuse.

My folks are coming over tonight (they are up for Christmas) so they will be the first to see the new look floors. Also hoping to get my dad to help mould and fix up the curtain poles round the bay window in the front room but we'll need to see how much time they have.

BB1984

latecomer wrote: »

@BB - what did you use to draw your floor plans? (I've just noticed them on the blog for the first time )

Forgot to answer this one earlier - I used a great bit of (free) software called Google SketchUp. You can download it - just google "sketchup"(!)

I use it quite a lot at work when I need to draw up details, when I want it to be a bit smarter than a hand sketch, but still simple and quick to do. (I'm a structural engineer BTW).

BB

latecomer

Thanks for that. I did have a play with Sketchup when we were buying the house as I was trying to create a model of it. Might need to give it another look as I want to do some floor plans.

Shimmyhill

Well we have missed the target of having the girls room done for christmas, a bit of plaster (where the magical fireplace was) refused to go off in time Bit of a shame and it means we are still in a mess, however have now dumped lots of stuff into the garage and other bedrooms so at least we have a clear kitchen, living room and a useable dining room for dinner on christmas day !

How are you finding Bungalow living BB1984 ? we are liking it so far, only real issue is lack of storage spaces (last house had a bupboard under the stairs and another at the top of the stairs) for things like the hover etc !!

I am done doing DIY until after christmas now so will just forget about it all for a few days, hope everyone here has a good christmas !!

Ohh little tip i keep meaning to post - if you are buying anything from B&Q make sure get the free vouchers - spend £50 and get a fiver free, spend £100 and get £15 free - already have £20 in vouchers for projects in 2009 !!

TomsMom

BB1984 wrote: »

We've done our feature wallpaper in our lounge alcoves now, which look good but I haven't had a chance to take any photos yet - been very busy getting not much done...!

BB

OI BB............... PICCIES, PICCIES, PICCIES.......... NOW.......... NO EXCUSES..........YOUR PUBLIC NEEDS THEM :rotfl:

helping_hubby

BB1984 - I've only just seen your blog after ages. For some reason it doesn't work at home - just keeps going to the wordpress homepage. Anyway I've added the RSS feed now.

I'm loving the colours (walls). You are much braver than us. I love the blue alcoves. For some reason I had an illuminous blue colour in my head! It's nice though, I like it.

I'm not a cat person But cute cat

Andrew, I'm more of a dog person, and yours is so cute.

Shimmy I managed to get a £5 voucher. Don't forget about them though as they expire end of January.

TomsMom, hope your OH is OK. Painting that one wall took it out of me after just a cold, so I can't really imagine what your OH feels like. I hope I can get to do some furnishing shopping too. I'm itching to get to ikea, but we don't have any money so it'll just be an ideas visit if we do go.

BB1984

Ok Ok!! Gosh you people are impatient!

I have updated the blog with recent photos, you may be glad to hear (or maybe it's just Toms Mom!)

https://www.thehouseofdoom.wordpress.com for anyone who's interested.

BB

TomsMom

Oh Beth, it's all soooooooo lovely.

Now we can see more of the kitchen the blue alcoves are even more impressive. Lord of the Manor has his own back door and oh! what a poser :rotfl:

Bathroom very smart and I love the feature wallpaper in the lounge.I'm sure you've given us all the courage to try something bold.

Well done to you and David for getting so much done, and for getting much of it ready for Christmas. I'm so excited for you. Enjoy your first Christmas in your new home, it will give you lots of memories for the future. Cherish them.

BB1984

Happy New Year house-renovators! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you have a very happy and successful 2009. And that we all get lots of housey stuff done!

Thanks Toms Mom for the lovely complements - we are very pleased with everything so far.

Well, obviously we've been very busy the past week or so, what with the usual festivities, so have done relatively little on the house despite having some time off work. However, whilst David was working on Mon, Tue, Wed this week, I completely decorated the 2nd bedroom! Undercoated and topcoated the walls, which are now a lovely powder blue - a vast improvement on the bright orange that it was previously... And prepped and glossed all the woodwork. Oh and painted the ceiling of course. We've kept one wall unpainted (apart from undercoat) as we're planning to wallpaper this one. The room is quite dark as it only has a small window, which faces directly onto next door's side wall, so the wallpaper will be light - we're thinking of this one as the silver will (hopefully) reflect some light and brighten the room a bit:
http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav/nav.jsp?action=detail&fh_secondid=9856525&fh_view_size=6&fh_start_index=12&fh_eds=%3f&fh_location=%2f%2fcatal!!!1%2fen_GB%2fcategories%3C{10099}%2fcategories%3C{10100}%2fcategories%3C{10102}%2fspecificationsProductType%3dwallcoverings%2f_common_price_range%3d10-20&fh_refview=lister&ts=1230835315041&isSearch=false

Can't remember if i mentioned this before but we were given some free carpet which we have put down in the hall - it's not our preferred choice but it's just a temporary measure and keeps the draughts down!

We've also taken 2 van-loads of stuff to the tip - so the pile of general !!!! is pretty much gone now, and the chopped-down tree pile is gradually decreasing. Still about 2 tonnes of rubble to clear, but hey ho.

We put a couple of pictures up on the walls too, one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen, so slowly but surely the house is becoming more homely. It's the little things that make the difference!

Anybody get any house-related Christmas pressies? We got some John Lewis vouchers, a lovely kettle(!), and some blue accessories to match our kitchen
Looking forward to spending the vouchers - we've got a lot of furniture to buy so very useful. (As a vaguely related aside - I'm having issues with furniture. In theory, I'm completely cool with getting 2nd hand furniture - we've been offered a lot of free stuff by family, then there's freecycle, ebay etc. I've always expected to buy most things 2nd hand as we've not got loads of money to spend now we've spent so much on the house itself! But the problem is, we really want to buy lovely new furniture to go in our lovely new rooms! Our sofa was given to us by my dad, and it's fine - really comfy, not even that old. But the colour isn't quite right and I really really want a brown leather sofa to match the colour scheme etc - so it all looks new and "finished"... I know I probably sound like a spoilt brat and I honestly know that we are so lucky to have what we have - and there's no way we'll be getting into debt just to buy fancy furniture....I just fancied having a little tantrum! Done! )

Anyway, have rambled on for a while now so I'll sign off. Will update the blog tomorrow with photos of the bedroom.

How are you all getting on - done much over the hols?

BB

BB1984

ps - how do you do those neat little links that mean the whole blimmin address isn't displayed...?!

BB