First-time house renovation

Shimmyhill

With the carpets we have bought one from a carpet place and then paid a fitter separately to fit it - was £40 for our living room. He used to work for John Lewis fitting carpets but retired, we know he is very good and have used him before.

The carpet we are getting today is a better one and we may just pay the shop to fit it - £35 on top of price, for some odd reason my dad seems to think it will be better incase there is a problem with the carpet (lord only knows why) i will prolly get our chap to do it as he did a brilliant job with a cheap carpet.

We have also brought all our carpet from last place, one of them is a very good wool carpet so we will again have that fitted. Other is not so good and temporary so we will fit that ourselves.

Carpet fitting is easy to do badly and hard to do well, you need about 40-50 quids worth of tools if you want to properly stretch fit it onto gripper so for the odd room it will maybe not pay to do it yourself. Having seen some 'pro' work where the carpet is not stretched properly i would say it is pretty hard to do a good job and maybe not worth it if the carpet is a keeper.

Cheers for the comment on the kitchen, we are really pleased with it and it was a bargain - it should look good once it is tiled and we get the plinths in etc

Will check your blog now !

Shimmyhill

TomsMom wrote: »

I can still only see the first picture, not the kitchen and pantry

How weird, have you tried a force refresh on the page (think it is shift+f5 on windows)

helping_hubby

Hello everyone. I'm feeling a bit sick munching my way through a box of After Eights but somehow I just can't stop eating them!

I stuck to my guns and have done no DIY. But I have worked through Christmas apart from Christmas day, boxing day and new years day. So haven't had time anyway.

Hubby just put the bathroom door back on, but managed to somehow cut the bottom off in the shape of an arch! Thankfully that door is temporary until we can afford new ones.

We took advantage of 15% day at B&Q last weekend and bought the wallpaper for the landing and the skirting board for the living room. So that's pretty much Januarys spare DIY money gone.

Andrew, sorry to hear about your dog. I really don't think there's anything to worry about with regards to getting the claim back. We are with Petplan and have been paid up all 3 times for our rabbits. And somehow our vet even managed to put through a claim to merge 2 different occassions together so we didn't have to pay twice on the excess. The only down side is you may be stuck with having to renew with the same insurance company (to get round the existing illness problem...incase it crops up again in the future) and therefore not having to choice to shop around for cheaper insurance.

BB - nice improvement on the room Is that why the doors are that way (ladies privacy)?! Ours are the 'wrong' way, but we can't change them because then the light switches would be behind the door.

Shimmy, I can't remember if I've already said your kitchen and pantry look fab I like the wood shelves in the pantry and what a great space to have.

BB1984

helping_hubby wrote: »

BB - nice improvement on the room Is that why the doors are that way (ladies privacy)?! Ours are the 'wrong' way, but we can't change them because then the light switches would be behind the door.

That's what I was told....! Kinda makes sense, but in our rooms the doors just seemed so wrong! Luckily we were having the whole house rewired anyway so it was no problem to change the light switches over to the other side of the doors.

As the view isn't very exciting can you frost the window or maybe get a plain white voile curtain to hide the view?

Both good ideas that I hadn't thought of...but the only thing is I would worry about blocking out some light - and that room needs all the light it can get! One idea I did have was to get a nice big shrub in a pot, and put it against that brick wall, so at least the view would be greenery! :rolleyes: Also perhaps if I put a big mirror above the headboard of the bed (i.e. on the wall that is to be wallpapered) it would bounce some natural light into the room....I'm obsessed with mirrors and natural light! My OH keeps saying that our house is gonna be like one of those funhouses at the fair where you can't tell what's mirror and what's not...! :rotfl:

Whilst I was at work (ugh) today, OH bought some fixings to put a mirror up in the hallway. We weren't really sure what to use so I hope they'll be ok! It's quite a big heavy mirror, and the wall there is the new stud we built...the fixings are specific plasterboard hollow-wall fixings so they should be fine...I think....!

BB

Shimmyhill

OMG !

We have carpets in two more rooms, brand new one in the girls room and one from last house re-fitted into the dining room. For the first time since we moved in we can finally take clothes out of boxes and hang in wardrobes - can you feel the excitement !!!!!

The bedroom is almost done now, just needs a new ceiling - i shall upload a pic of the DIY artex that was done, it is truly amazing ! We have really high ceilings so i imagine it will be boarded again and then a nice flat ceiling with coving shall complete the room - ohh and the door does not fit anymore as i guess we have put better carpet and underlay in !!!! Ohh well we had planned to change the doors as a few are damaged, something else on the things to do list

Shimmyhill

helping_hubby wrote: »

Shimmy, I can't remember if I've already said your kitchen and pantry look fab I like the wood shelves in the pantry and what a great space to have.

Thanks we are pleased with it, must get a few more bits before this current Wickes sale ends !

BB1984

Painted our bedroom today...3 walls off-white (slightly strange colour called "Milk white", and 1 wall BRIGHT red.....! Chose it on a bit of a whim, but looks great, we think!
Means we're sleeping on the floor in the lounge for the time being, which is kinda fun but I'm sure we'll be glad to have our room back soon!
Had a bit of a problem with the bathroom floor tiles - one of them in the doorway has cracked
Because it's slate, the piece that has cracked has delaminated and is basically b*ggered....I've packed under the tile with fresh adhesive and hopefully it'll be ok..........argh!
The other little job I've been doing today is to rub down the bathroom windowsill and fill in some very large holes....oh and re-do the silicon sealant around the bedroom and kitchen windows.

Dreading having to go back to work tomorrow - it'll be the first 5-day week i've done in months, as I was taking every friday off to do the house! Hopefully progress won't slow down too much...

BB

TomsMom

I do like your red wall BB, it's stunning. Looks like you've made a great job of the paintwork too. I like off-white colours too, I find brilliant white too stark. In our present house we have Timeless (very pale cream) on the ceiling in the hall to go with some cream wallpaper and it goes really well.

Sorry to hear about your slate tile, hope it turns out OK.

Shimmyhill

Shimmyhill wrote: »

Thanks we are pleased with it, must get a few more bits before this current Wickes sale ends !

Famous last words, i only went in for plinth and ended up buying loads of wall cupboards as the kitchen is being discontinued !

Not sure if we want wall cupboards, the wife is not keen as she loves the space and light you get from not having them !! Ohh well i can take them back ok until the disappear from the computer (then the computer will say no to a refund )

Ohh and of course, they didn't have the plinth in !!

latecomer

happy new year folks :beer:

We didn't do a huge amount over the festive holiday but did manage to put up a cornice in the small bedroom which just needs finishing touches before priming and painting. We (...ok I) decided we couldn't afford to lose the storage from our little cupboard above the door so ended up rebuilding it from scratch in mdf which of course turned into a mammoth job due to nothing being straight or square (for a change!). After 2 days we got something that resembles what was there originally and doesn't look bad now I've filled round it. Needs painted but I want to get the cornice finished first. spent yesterday filling the thousands of holes and scrapes in the walls so its now pretty much ready for sanding.

We also took the radiator off to give it a rub down and paint and its now back on the wall although I didn't get time to plumb it in so thats my first job for tonight.