First-time house renovation

jamtart6

Looks brilliant suiside!! I can't wait for ours to look like this!! almost finsihed tiling now

our roof is doing brilliantly too, they hope to finish by friday then window then knocking through YAY!!!!!!! omg never thought we'd get this far!!!

the boys are fitting a work bench in the shed tomorrow which will be handy!

managed to scavenge some posh worktops for our utility room from one of the relatives I love "free"


seeing a man about a wedding cake tonight

jimbugalee

grrr I'm having a stress today as someone has taken over our gas supply without our permission. It's all to do with the company who owned the property before us but it means we're not actually paying for our gas at the moment!

It's proving difficult to get back ...

littlerose12345

I love when tiling is complete!! My dad is tiling our utility splashback at the moment, looks amazing and it's not even grouted yet!!!

Jamtart, I love your wedding updates! Do you post in the MSE wedding bit?

lisal0u

suiside - Wow what a difference! It looks fab. We went for matching grout too and it does look lovely!

Jim - Thanks! I hate being in debt but I am feeling a bit more positive about it. Its going to take a while but I can and will pay it off. Im pleased its debt that has accumulated because of the house and not just stupid spending! At least Ive got something to show for it!

Been looking at the DFW boards and they are great! There isnt enough hours in the day to keep and eye on 2 boards ha ha ha!

Cant remember if I told you but I managed to blag some free material from Montgomerys to make blinds with. I wanted to have curtains made for the bay window in that bird and red flower design but when I went to see them about it it had been discontinued :-( Probably a good thing as it was expensive.

The lady in the shop was so lovely and said I could have the store sample which is easily big enough to make a kitchen window blind. I also wanted to make a matching one in the pantry but there wasnt quite enough. I thought I'd be cheeky and ring round a few more stores to see if they still had their samples of the material and one did :-) They even put it in the post for me and it didnt cost me a penny. Just bought the blind kits off ebay for £4 each so when they arrive I'll be making blinds :-)

Has anyone else done this before? Any tips?

Lisa

jamtart6

good luck jim

sometiems i post there Rose but not often. my real, big dilemma is the photographer. I can't find one I like for the right price i also want some arty ones done (like trash the dress style but without trashing!) so might get a normal fella in for the day and an arty one to do some shots on another day. had a hair trial yesterday but not sure what to do. i prefer my hair down rather than up!

lisal0u you hit the nail on the head there (bom tish!) - at least you havent frittered the money away, you know where it has gone. its probably one of the more sensible times to get into debt! well done for the blinds that is brilliant! my mum makes them all the time, when you've glued, she secures with pegs to make sure it stays secure.


my roofer has just asked me to check the position of the velux, they look fine. he wants to get it all done this week but its started snowing/sleeting here so everyone keep their fingers crossed please!!

he also said the fascia board he had bought are slightly different to the ones on the main house. the ones on the main house have a bit of a curve and these don't i can sort of see the difference, but do you think it'll be a big deal when they are up?

it is baltic here!!! brrrrrrrr

suisidevw

I can't imagine it being obvious or looking stupid when it's up!

I'm so excited about getting home, flipping busy at work but my brains all over the bathroom!

pawpurrs

ukmaggie45

Hi Folks, sorry not posted for so long.

We're still running the central heating at new house 24/7 and also running hired dehumidifier (we need to make another payment, just had phone call from the hire company) and our own little dehumidifier. It might be getting close to time to lose the hired one, but it's snowing again here today, so might hang on to it for another week. Will see what OH thinks when he gets home this evening. Wednesday - the new Friday. (he only works Mon-Wed now)

Garden is slowly coming on, lots of interesting shoots coming up. OH is having fun with his right angled fork getting out the brambles, and he loves his new Azada too. If you've got a garden or allotment do check out Get Digging. Took OH a bit to work it out, but now he thinks they're great. On the website some of the links suggest making the handle shorter. I suspect this will be better for everyday use, but getting up several years of brambles and their roots OH is finding the length it arrives at is good as it gives more leverage.

OH has stripped out a lot of the carpets - mostly in the garage just now, but one large and very heavy one is in bedroom 1 still. I think best way to deal with it will be to cut it in pieces so we can put in car and take to tip. I don't want to hire skips for stuff like this as we're paying out so much for dehumidifier and keeping central heating on all the time to try and dry place out. Not too much hassle to take a Stanley knife to carpet and split it?

He's also taken up some of the skirting boards, and we've begun to strip wallpaper - at least the stuff I can just scrape off with my fingernails! :rotfl:

Strewth, just looked out window and it's snowing hard now and sticking too! That was sudden!

We need to get floor tiles tested for asbestos before we take them up, and we do have concrete sulfate attack, so need to take up all the concrete floors and get relaid. Maybe the garage and morning room will be OK as they were additions to original house, so maybe won't have the black ash stuff used in their foundations. We still need to get carpet out of the morning room. It's actually going mouldy in places, so it will have to be done when I'm not there.

Big damp patch in back living room - prob partly down to the overflow that was leaking all the time while the house was empty. But also it looks as if the boundary wall between us and other half of the semi is bridging DPC. We will have to speak to next door about that. But most of the stuff we need to do will come under party wall act stuff I think too.

It's all horrid complicated, but we don't regret at all - we knew there was a lot of work to do.

Loads of birds in the garden, we go and fill the feeders even when we can't spend time there. It's costing an arm and a leg :eek: they are greedy little so and sos, but give us both so much pleasure watching them we both feel it's worth it. I hope once the winter is over we won't be constantly making £50+ orders for bird food!!! :rotfl:

Urm, got lots more to tell prob, but need to get downstairs to make sure the fire is Ok since didn't make it up yet today after OH did a preliminary top up this morning.

Hugs to you all, and TM I hope TD continues to do well - do give us an update. To all of you, I think of you all constantly even when I don't post. Stolt, it's a while since you posted - hope things are going better for you now. And Latecomer, what a chapter of horrors, sigh, but I'm sure you'll get there in the end.

Love to you all from snowy Liverpool :j

Edit: Aldi is doing bird food and feeders and stuff tomorrow! We'll be topping up and also buying for the caravan. If we can get up in time!

suisidevw

booty40uk wrote: »

Hi Sam

Looks ok and not a bad price. Heres another one though but doesnt look quite as nice IMO

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Aqualux-4-Part-Folding-Bath-Screen-Chrome-Finish_W0QQitemZ200408022681QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Baths_Screens?hash=item2ea93fbe99

This is the one that is in the pics posted by me today. He's selling for £80 or 'make an offer'. I got it for £57 delivered!

TomsMom

Suiside Your bathroom's looking great. I love the tiles and the shower is gorgeous too. It will look amazing when the tiles have been grouted.

Lisa I love the fact that you got the curtain material as a freebie :T, you'll have to show us a piccy of the blinds when you've done them. This site has instructions on how to make different sorts of blinds. Sorry I can't offer any advice about debt but good luck in sorting it out.

Pawpurrs Thanks for the pic of the kitchen units, looking good!

Maggie Nice to see a post from you. Sounds like a lot of work coming your way but you love the house and garden so it will be worth it in the end. Definitely take a Stanley knife to the carpets, thats what happened at our house then they ended up in the builder's skip or their van when they went back home at the weekends.

TD progressing slowly. He had a bone marrow test and bone sample taken today, hopefully the results wont take too long and will tell whether the bone marrow is regenerating as healthy. He knows the graft (stem cell translant) has taken, his platelets and white blood cells are slowly improving (which is a good sign), red blood cells still unstable and he had another transfusion yesterday but that is normal at this stage. He had a CT scan last week which showed that there are no abnormal or cancerous growths in his lymph nodes at the moment :T. He had a Chimera test which shows that his blood is 100% stem cell donor (no TD blood left). This is good as it means that his own blood is not fighting the new blood so less chance of Host versus Graft disease. His blood group has changed, which he knew was a distinct possibility. He's still awaiting results of ECG as they wanted to check to see if the large number of cycles of chemo had damaged his heart. His nerve endings in feet have been damaged and cause him some pain when walking but they're hoping this might repair itself in time.

He has unfortunately developed a hernia sometime over the last few days. His consultant says that because he has lost so much weight and his muscles are weak then something as silly as coughing or sneezing will have caused it. He can't have it repaired at the moment, it will have to wait until he is stronger.

His hair is coming on nicely now, looks like a very very short haircut and has come through dark grey rather than fair with some grey in as it was before.

He was to go to Bristol next week for his follow up appointment, they've been arguing over transport and accommodation for weeks. They agreed he could have the flat overnight so that was good as that meant that he didn't have to spend 9 hours in a car going there and back in a day. Now he's been told that no-one will pay for his return. He has hospital transport and our HA is willing to pay for the journey down and accommodation but wont fund the return journey as it means a second driver/car and they want Bristol to pay, but Bristol refuses. We're not talking taxis here, they're volunteer drivers so it's whatever rate per mile I suppose the volunteer drivers get. So his appointment has been cancelled again. His consultant agrees it's too much to do the journey there and back in a day but because of the stalemate over this funding he has said he will see how TD is at the end of the month so obviously thinking he might be able to cope with the two journeys in one day in about 3-4 weeks time. I think we should go to the Trust and put it to them but TD doesn't like to make waves. This cancelling Bristol appointments is holding back his recovery to some extent according to his consultant, as Bristol would probably have reduced his Cyclosporin (anti-rejection drug) further by now and this would lessen the side effects. It is being reduced gradually by the hospital here but probably not as quickly as Bristol would do it if they could see him.

Overall the hospital is pleased with his progress and so are we, just keeping our fingers crossed that the whole process will have been worth it.