First-time house renovation

suisidevw

Looks great Redlady, nice one! Do you live there now?/

redlady_1

I do indeed. I lived there from day one so to say it has been a little stressful is somewhat of an understatement!! The before pictures were the day I moved in so dont be shocked if you can see snow in the house. I have also had to downsize. I have some photos of the day I had a look around the place so will try and post those. I had the wood burner put in and the fireplace opened up which is why there is a picture of that.

It is very much an ongoing project at the moment! :-)

suisidevw

Well well done, it looks great and great potential

spirit

Love the woodburner redlady, my next place will have one of those if it kills me!

suisidevw

Agree, I have an open fire now which is great and was very cheap as fitted all myself but would love a nice big stove. My parents have always had a huge one in an inglenook - stunning!

redlady_1

Well, I knew I wanted one and there is no gas to the house. So this was my opportunity. I had the fireplace opened up and the burner put in and apart from some electric heaters upstairs, it is my only form of heating. Having seen me through one of the worst winters for sometime I can confirm it does what it says on the tin! :rotfl:

I dont have a TV and its a good job as I just spent all winter staring at the fire. Its a riot in my place! :rotfl:

Once all the major works have been done then I can settle down into making it a home. At the moment I am enjoying the fact that my loo is now upstairs!

typeractive

Hi all,

As a bit of a follower of this thread I did mention I'd share my blog.

So here you go - clicky

Anyone is welcome for a bit of a peek. I'm backdating posts as I started late. I've done quite a lot of work since these posts, but I'm slowly updating as and when I can.

Cheers

rlfan82

typeractive wrote: »

Hi all,

As a bit of a follower of this thread I did mention I'd share my blog.

So here you go - clicky

Anyone is welcome for a bit of a peek. I'm backdating posts as I started late. I've done quite a lot of work since these posts, but I'm slowly updating as and when I can.

Cheers

Exactly the same here, my blog available here: http://changethehouse.wordpress.com/

Good luck all, its just starting to ge the better of me

spirit

typeractive wrote: »

Hi all,

As a bit of a follower of this thread I did mention I'd share my blog.

So here you go - clicky

Anyone is welcome for a bit of a peek. I'm backdating posts as I started late. I've done quite a lot of work since these posts, but I'm slowly updating as and when I can.

Cheers

welcome to the forum typeractive, look forward to your ongoing project.

I must say I don't agree with whoever told you that it's less energy efficient to knock down your wall. You would have had a rad in each room anyway so you're not heating more rooms that you would otherwise have done. I've had my wall between the kitchen and dining room taken down so downstairs is open apart from the inner front door to the hallway which has a door to the sitting/dining room and a door to the kitchen.

latecomer

Hi folks

Little update from us. Still no baby - just been on holiday for a week. we were meant to be going away but instead spent the week working on the house. Basically lots of painting getting done. Also varnishing all the new oak doors and skirting which needs another coat but looks fantastic already.

Joiners started installing the kitchen last week and most of the units are done. We weren't really ready for that so had to get appliances picked and bought asap. Spent a few hours going round the locals but either the prices weren't great or they didn't have them available so we ended up buying online from various places to make sure they got here in time.

Also found out that granite has gone up a lot in price in the last 7 months with people quoting about £700-800 more than they were in January so in the end we decided to go with a laminate. Picked a Duropal one and found we could get it from the company we got the kitchen from and phoned to see if they could add worktops to the delivery of the replacement units. Told it was no problem and they were immediately available so put in the order, they then phoned to say they were not in stock and it would probably be the end of the week before they could get them out so we cancelled. Our joiner phoned his supplier and they would deliver on wednesday so went with them. 5 mins later kitchen company phones back to say they are in stock for delivery on monday so would we like to give payment details again!!!!

Still no sign of plumber or roofer in the last 2 weeks. think they are going to try and get a new plumber in to get things moving. Electrician was there last week and did most of the work that was outstanding. They should be coming back early this week so hopefully will wire in the new oven. There is a problem with the lights in the hall which is a mix of newand old wiring but hopefully it shouldn't be beyond them to fix it without ripping things apart too much.

the one interesting thing I did was to take 2 of the original damaged doors and make a single one out of them. Cut a long story short - I spent 1.5 days with FIL taking apart the 2 doors (one using dowels and the other mortice and tennons) and trying to modify them to fit back together. End result is that as of about 10pm last night we have a pretty good door in original Douglas Fir to match all the others. I was slightly disappointed with where they joined as there was a small gap but when the joiner (who gave me instructions on how to proceed) saw it this morning he was impressed and didn't think it could have been much better. And he thinks once its all sanded and varnished it wont be noticable.

Last night we moved around the small bedroom to swap the position of the bed and computer as it suits the layout better. Slight issue in that I've no idea how I'm going to run a network cable to where it now is as its on the other side of the wall from the showeroom but I'm hoping I might be able to bring the cable into the cupboard and then pass it into the stud wall. Needs further investigation!

We also got a carpet fitted in the bedroom on friday which is fantastic. Moving the oak wardrobes was a bit of a pain but some muscle from BIL and some carpet underneath to slide it on and it was done fairly quickly. Very glad we didn't need to try and lift them.

Got up this morning and MIL asked whether I'd seen the leak from the water main. Looked outside and saw water coming up in the street from where they'd made the new mains connection so phoned up the water company to report it and someone should be out today. How they've managed to make such a mess of connecting a new pipe is beyond me. This will now be the 4th attempt and of course they'll need to dig it all back up this time.