First-time house renovation

ukmaggie45

Oh Lisa, so sorry to hear your news. What a perfectly awful thing to happen. Hope that you can sort things out so you can take over the house. Do let us know how things go, and vent all you want - I'm sure it helps.

Andy, your bed sounds fantastic. We'll be in the market for a new bed when we finally move (though god only knows when that will be with the asbestos in the floor to compound our problems). Still need to put out masking tape on bedroom floor to get an idea of if we can stick to king size or have to have a double. Look forward to seeing your photos. I like the idea of having a high base too, as I'm getting so stiff when I get out of bed it's difficult. So thanks for that idea. :T

Finally got a photo of the woodpecker over the weekend, have half a feeling there may be a pair of them, will have to be a bit more observant!

Asbestos company is going to quote for removal, we're waiting for that to arrive. Not sure if our builder would do it, but we feel we're close enough now to have a chat with him about things.

Can't remember if I mentioned that OH rang the planners, but they no longer do preliminary meetings to discuss ideas - it's just give us the money and put yer application in. We still need to find an architect as neither of us can come up with what we want to do, and haven't a clue as to what is actually possible.

Had a horrible nightmare the other night of OH driving with me in passenger seat and all the other drivers being very aggressive, then there was a huge long steam engine crashed, rearing up into the air, except when we got up to it it was on a long trailer on way to station. The lorry/loader turned left, and swung out to take the tight corner, squeezing us right, causing OH to catch the wing of the car coming towards us... He just drove on, and I was screaming at him to go back to make sure other driver was OK and then I woke up sweating! I read this as I'm feeling my life is out of control, with someone else in the driving seat! :eek: Certainly begin to feel we'll never get things sorted!

Better go now as need to get me head together before heading off for Counselling session!

TomsMom

lisal0u Big hugs to you, I am so sorry to read about your break up. If you think you can live in the house without the memories haunting you then I'd try and keep it.

jamtart6 Exciting stuff, must be pictures on the horizon!

andrew-b I was only thinking about you today, wondering where/how you were. Glad you're OK but sorry to hear about your wife's Nan, I hope she remains as comfortable as possible. It can't be easy for any of you. I'm glad you're happy with your new bed after all your research.

ukmaggie45 I hope the asbestos removal isn't too expensive, and that you find yourself an architect soon.

Now that we've sorted out what we're doing about wardrobes, we've turned our attention to blinds. The sun is very strong on the back of the house, from mid morning until sun down. We need to sort something out before the weak winter sun turns stronger. We need blinds for the 3 Velux windows in the sun room/kitchen and I want to match them to new blinds in the sun room. The old ones are pink pleated blinds. They actually work well and we might go for pleated again. Have looked at Perfect Fit blinds but on the small top windows there'd be very little window left once the surround encasing the blind was fixed so would probably look rather silly. Of course most blind companies think we live in the middle of nowhere and wont come out but waiting for a brochure from somewhere in Aberystwyth and the man will come out but can't drive at the moment as he's just had a knee replacement. We might try and get to his showroom soon now that TD is able to go out more.

andrew-b

Maggie, if the floor tiles with asbestos in are thermoplastic floor tiles they may be best left alone (though if you're having new floors anyway then obviously they have to come up!) Having asbestos in them isn't a problem in itself. It's when the asbestos particles get airbourne from cutting it/breaking up/sanding etc and you inhale them that you need to worry about. Unlike say an asbestos soffit board, asbestos is a relatively minor ingredient of thermoplastic floor tiles.

We have these brown thermoplastic floor tiles all over our bungalow floors in every room. The combination of thermoplastic floor tiles and black bituminous adhesive that holds them down is the only form of damp proof membrane in our 1950s floors (date relevant as it was about the time when they started installing plastic membranes in floors). So if you remove them you could then unwittingly cause damp floor problems. In our kitchen we put the new ceramic floor tiles directly on top as they were all well fixed down (fairly controversial topic as to whether they should be removed before tiling or not i found..though 3 years later we've had no problems using BAL SPF adhesive). If there are individual loose tiles...heat up the adhesive with a blow torch and stick them down again.

When it came to the bathroom when i lifted the old bathroom carpet the tiles were loose and only half the floor had them on anyway. I simply put a face mask and disposable gloves on, opened the windows, closed the door, sprayed the floor with water to minimise airbourne particles and put a paint scraper or shovel under the remaining ones with the aim of removing whole (dampen down with water as go), bagged up carefully (don't throw them as want to avoid breaking as much as possible - though they are brittle so invariably some will break) in double/triple bin liner and disposed of appropriately at the council refuse tip. Washed the floor well after (don't sweep!) and had a shower to wash anything off me and put what was wearing in the wash. Whilst these tiles do/may contain asbestos the risk is pretty low. Still i expect i'm more likely to die of other things than a fraction of a milligram of asbestos that might have escaped in my bathroom so i'm not overly concerned!

If you spent everyday cutting up asbestos and lined a power station with it then you start to worry...which is what many people did not that long ago!

Having lived with the bare concrete bathroom floor for some time now there doesn't appear to be a damp problem - possibly because our house is built on chalk so water drains away quicker than on say clay. My Dad tested the floor with a protimeter and it's within an acceptable range and only marginally higher than you'd expect. Still he reckons it's ok as is. If it does become a problem we intend to paint the floor with synthaprufe - cheaper than digging out the entire floor - though having dug up half of it anyway we may as well have done!

andrew-b

TomsMom, might be worth looking into blinds that are physically part of the sealed double glazing units between the panes of glass. I was looking into something similar a while ago for our kitchen door/window. They don't come cheap. Might be worth getting a quote from a local double glazing company? In the end we had aluminium venetian blinds from Ikea (cheap and do the job but a pain to clean if you don't have a bath to soak them in!).

TomsMom

andrew-b wrote: »

TomsMom, might be worth looking into blinds that are physically part of the sealed double glazing units between the panes of glass. I was looking into something similar a while ago for our kitchen door/window. They don't come cheap. Might be worth getting a quote from a local double glazing company? In the end we had aluminium venetian blinds from Ikea (cheap and do the job but a pain to clean if you don't have a bath to soak them in!).

Funny you should say that Andy. After we moved in we quickly realised that there were problems with the DG windows the previous owner put in. With hindsight, not unexpected considering he was possibly the UK's worst DIYer, it was something we should have thought of but didn't. We knew the window in the downstairs WC was put in slanted, the builders pointed this out to us and made as good a job as possible of trying to make it look less so when they sorted that room out.

We then found out that both of the bathroom windows were slanted, also that most of the upstairs opening windows were a terrible fit. In Bed 2 you could see daylight around the opening window. We had the local chappie in and he did as good a doctoring job as he could. In Bed 1 the wind whistles in the side of the opening window when blowing in the right direction. So all in all the windows are mainly carp but we didn't find out until all the work had been done and we'd moved in. If we had known about this we would have had gone the whole hog and had replacement windows at the time the building works were going on. We are definitely NOT prepared to put up with any more mess now that everywhere has either been plastered and painted, wallpapered or tiled. It's something we'll consider when the time comes to redecorate, hopefully not for a few years though!

The pleated blinds currently in the sun room are, we think, by Sandersons and have little clips on the beading top and bottom. We need something that will cover the holes left when the clips are removed. One firm had the perfect solution but only come as far as Colwyn Bay, they wont come down to us. TD has discussed it with the chap from Aberystwyth and hopefully he'll have something to suit. I don't mind roller blinds in the bedrooms but might struggle with the width, especially in Bed 2. If that's not possible I might consider the Perfect Fit for upstairs and the loft, just not the sun room which has these small top windows.

andrew-b

Not sure you followed but I mean as in leave the frame and retro fit the sealed glass unit housed in the frame for one with small slatted venetian blind enclosed inside it - no need to replace the entire frame so no mess. Though long term if your going to have to have the windows replaced at some point it might be better to make do with something else until then. I seem to recall that whether it's possible to reto-fit depends on the thickness of the current sealed unit so it might not be an option anyway.

Even so like-for-like uPVC replacement windows aren't necessarily that messy as they just "cloak" around in uPVC trim ..which is what they did with our new front door (though they used the wrong sealant so it's now cracked all down the length of the join!).

Anyway here's a piccie of the bed (clicky)


Duvet cover and top pillowcases: Dunelm Mill Circles
Dorma "touch of down" microfibre "all-seasons" duvet (pocketed) - just the autumn duvet has been sufficient so far.
Dorma "touch of down" top pillows (kept latex Dunlopillo's beneath)
Dorma magnolia fitted sheet, bottom pillowcases and seperate valance which is a perfect colour match to duvet cover.
All from Dunelm - linen times two of everything!
Bed itself is just over 2 feet high with the higher divan base (4 drawers).


One thing we did mess up on was i thought the "valance" covered mattress and draped down over the divan ...when we made up the new bed we discovered it was actually just to cover the divan base..so then we had to remove mattress to fit it to the divan base! Fortunately we had a double sheet that was just about big enough so made do for the first night until we could get the fitted sheets instead.

The window you see and one to right too that you can just about see the edge of are the arched topped one's i've been wanting to block up (currently got yukky yellow fraying roller blinds on that the previous owner left)

TomsMom

andrew-b wrote: »

Not sure you followed but I mean as in leave the frame and retro fit the sealed glass unit housed in the frame for one with small slatted venetian blind enclosed inside it - no need to replace the entire frame so no mess. Though long term if your going to have to have the windows replaced at some point it might be better to make do with something else until then. I seem to recall that whether it's possible to reto-fit depends on the thickness of the current sealed unit so it might not be an option anyway.

I did understand Andy, my garbled reply probably led you to believe otherwise . TBH the quality of the of the stuff that's already there probably isn't worth the expense of replacing the glass part. We think the previous owner must have had bought oddments of windows/doors at cheapy prices then built his extensions to fit! There were four UPVC doors with letterboxes which included one from the kitchen into the sun room and one from the sun room into the store room. We got rid of one when the wall between kitchen and sun room was knocked down to make the big L-shape. The opaque glass in the two doors in the sun room is different from that in the door from sun room to store room, and the bathroom has two different patterns also. He didn't seal round them very well either, we've had a bit of damp that has been caused by inadequate sealing round the door frame in the sun room. He was one crazy, crazy man!

Your bed linen is lovely. I like Dunelm. Is your mattress a deep one, and does a normal fitted sheet fit? Ours is approx 10" deep but the mattress is a couple of cm wider and longer than a normal double so I need a very generous double fitted sheet or a skimpy king size one! Your wallpaper is virtually the same as some we had in the last house. I'm not big on pattern if it's to be painted over so a nice subtle lined one fitted the bill and looked really good.

andrew-b

TomsMom, mattress is 8" deep on a 16" high divan (incl. 2" castors). The dorma fitted sheets only just reach the bottom of the mattress - not really enough to tuck in. The valance just about hides the divan completely. Pretty sure if you look in Dunelm they do an extra deep fitted sheet for thicker mattresses like yours.

The "bark" effect blown vinyl is coming off if i have my way..not a big fan of descript patterns either and I much prefer a nice smooth finish! I suspect from other walls in the house it could be hiding a multitude of sins behind. Don't really have the budget to have walls skimmed at the moment. In the lounge again there is blown vinyl but it's a stippled effect and more tolerable IMHO. My current thinking is to strip the paper off just that wall behind the bed to begin with ...remove the 2 arched windows and sills and fill in with blockwork (inner and outer walls with insulation sandwiched in between), render/paint outside and patch up plaster inside then line and paint to make into a feature wall (or maybe a floral/leafy type of wallpaper). Waiting for summer to do it though.

If that wall isn't too bad i may remove the rest and line and paint too. We've done things the wrong way round really as originally the plan was to decorate first, buy furniture/bed second...but the old falling apart furniture and bed dictated otherwise.

OH's Dad and Grandad have had a chat and agreed to have Nan moved to a local hospice where they think she will be more comfortable as they specialise in dealing with cancer patients and others with progressive conditions - dedicated nurse in own room..more comfortable beds and that sort of thing plus more support for the families . I just hope they have room for her ASAP. The hospital no longer have her with medicines on drip as it's seen as prolonging her life (there's a DNR in place too) and she's having difficulties taking anything orally..reading between the lines i'm assuming just giving her pain relief. I get the feeling she might not make it through the week. I haven't seen her myself since our wedding and thinking maybe i'd rather keep it that way...OH saw her last week but i think to see her again might be too much for her to take in. All very sad.

On a happier note, Dad coming up to fit the bathroom door on Sunday. OH has the week after on holiday when i hope to get the bathroom done and dusted ..then it just needs some carpet and it's done..only taken 2 years!!

suisidevw

Hi all, sorry, been mega busy again!

Tomsmum - absolutely BRILLIANT news about TD, wow!
Lisa - really sorry to hear that, that must be such a blow. Genuinely hope it all works out for you!

Jamtart - how's the plumbing going etc?

Maggie - are you living with friends or you have a couple of houses?! It sounds as though you've just bought almost a shell and are now finding out things that are wrong with it etc or did you know all about the damp/asbestos etc before?

Andrew - thought about you recently too wondering where you were! Glad alls coming along well with the bathroom. You're having carpet in there?!

latecomer

Hi folks :wave:

Very busy here too although mainly with work rather than the house.

@TM - great news about TD

@lisa - really sorry to hear that. I really dont understand how people can change their minds just like that???

@maggie - sorry to hear about you having asbestos too. We've still not decided what to do with ours. Need to discuss it with teh architect.

@JT - glad someone is making good progress!


Ours is slowly but surely grinding to a halt. OH has had enough and I'm not far behind. Quality is still poor and pretty much everything is now a problem. Last week there was very little progress.

One of the internal window cills was fitted on monday and was both sloping downwards and bowed upwards in the middle. I just glanced at it and could see it was wrong. I took a few seconds to explain to the builder what the problem was and he started to say he would have a look. I then proceeded to prove to him how bad it was using a bit of thread to show how badly bowed it was, simple but effective.

Had problems with the oak for the skirtings, facings and door standards upstairs too. We refused to pay up front for the material as they should be able to manage the cost for under 24 hours. builder said he couldn't so I ended up working from home yesterday morning until the delivery turned up. Of course it turned up at about 2 mins to 12:00 and just after they started unloading it, it all got loaded back up as it was all the wrong lengths.

Last night happened to see the area around the Velux over the stairs and noticed that the ceiling curves up to meet the edges of the frame around the Velux. Yet another example of the quality of the work. OH spoke to him this morning and said we need a site meeting next week to discuss how things are going to progress with the downstairs, if at all. They either need to get a move on or leave as at the current rate they will be here until Christmas.

Its not all bad though - we have a good reason for needing the building work to progress - we've going to need to create a nursery by late August :j
And of course we would quite like to enjoy the summer and relax prior to the arrival of new family member. Also I dont want OH being permanently stressed about the builders and their lack of progress.