First-time house renovation

stolt

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

Urrm that's another thing that we still have to choose... So far we've been asked to choose shower tray and decide where we want the electric stuff to go. Just not had time this week! (mostly because I've been so shattered I've been sleeping for a few hours in the afternoons) Hopefully the weekend will be a bit less frantic.

I think our builder uses someone in Bradford. Or was it Bolton? I think we'd better check with him next week! Though he'll go with anyone we decide I'd prefer to go for somewhere he's dealt with before.

I think DoozerGirl does a lot of house renovations with bifolds, might be worth your while checking out some of her posts?

yep i know exactly where you coming from, excitin but very stressful aswell even when its just having to make a decision on things! ive had a good luck around and although i'd like maybe a 7 opening bi fold door i dont think we are going to go so big for the dinning room an probably just have a three door opening, just had a quick google and prices are about 2k installed which doesnt seem to bad.

arroli

Good news! We exchanged contracts and money yesterday, and will pick up keys to the Cottage on Monday morning! I'm so excited, I cant wait!
I have started making telephone calls and lists...and have overalls and cleaning materials with rubber gloves at the ready...

The Cottage is in a very poor state, its not been lived in for a number of years...luckily its not furnished apart from old carpets and curtains that need to be thrown out ((first job on list!)...second job is to get a plumber into the loft to repair the leaking/burst water pipes, mains water has been turned off as water streams through the hall ceiling. We tried to get vendor to repair this, but he says we re-negotiated price after survey, so we know what condition we were buying it in!

Ive attached some first pics, Ive also started a blog which will be on-going for several years I think!! (sorry pics are so big...any ideas how to downsize on photobucket?)

ukmaggie45

arroli wrote: »

Good news! We exchanged contracts and money yesterday, and will pick up keys to the Cottage on Monday morning! I'm so excited, I cant wait!

Congratulations arroli! :j :beer: :T :cool2:

Will you be living in the cottage while the work goes on? Though from what you say a tent in the garden might be more comfortable to start with! Do you have a garden at the back as well as your front garden?

The ridge of your roof looks a bit interesting!

So after the plumber has been in and you've half killed yourself cleaning the place out what's next on your list?

Very glad to hear you are starting a blog. I haven't quite decided whether to start a new one, or put our renovation diary on my current one. Need to get going on it soon, as things are moving so fast now! Just not got the time and energy at the mo.

Yesterday I had the dentist, and have to have a load of work done, which will come to around £700. :eek: Could pay for our new bath with that! Then we went to the bathroom place, but don't understand the various options around shower trays (ground floor will be concrete, and prob poured sometime next week) so we're meeting there with our builder next Thursday. We may go the wet room route.

Then it was on to a local kitchen designer, where we've completely done an about turn on what we were thinking of getting! Initially we were going to go for a light oak look, plain flat doors, and a darkish granite work top. Maybe Greenwich Oak from Howdens or something similar.

But we've seen a graphite coloured vinyl wrapped door that we really love. I can only find one pic of it on the web here. (BTW this isn't the kitchen fitters we visited, just one of the ones that show the kitchen units we're thinking of) I'm not so sure about if for the over the counter cupboards, but they do one in white too, you can see it on the above link, so might go for those. We won't need any tall cupboards, as stuff like the ironing board and vacuum cleaner can go in the utility room when we get around to sorting it out.

And then we think maybe Kashmir Gold granite for the worktops... Depends a bit on pricing of course!

OH had been to check out the place before we went on holiday, and then again for another chat on Thursday, he likes the people, and now I've met them so do I. The chap we talked to had loads of ideas, and listened to both of us, and brought out lots of sample doors to give us ideas. We're taking a few days to collect our thoughts, and will be going back next Thursday or Friday probably to firm up our ideas so he can do an estimate.

I'm finally beginning to get excited about the kitchen now, after feeling couldn't care less for ages.

We drove back past the house, but didn't stop, I think there were 4 of them chucking bricks into a skip. Today we're having a bit of a break from it all, though OH did go into town to check out another kitchen place.

Started looking at appliances on the Which website, think we'll go for a John Lewis induction hob, and an Electrolux built in oven the Electrolux - Intuition EOB53000X which is stainless steel. Both Which best buys.

We're still thinking about fridges, but are leaning towards a free standing rather than integrated. Freezer will go in the utility room when we can afford it. We've got a Liebherr at the caravan, might go for another one of their fridge/freezers, we'll see.

Tomorrow we'll be going back to the house to try and work out where we want power sockets and lights. And also to try and catch up a bit on the garden - got loads of toms need harvesting, and spuds too. The weeds have gone mad with all the rain so intend to chuck some old carpet over the ground to try and suppress them as we get the toms etc up. We have plenty of old carpet!!! :rotfl:

arroli

Will you be living in the cottage while the work goes on? Though from what you say a tent in the garden might be more comfortable to start with! Do you have a garden at the back as well as your front garden?

The ridge of your roof looks a bit interesting!

So after the plumber has been in and you've half killed yourself cleaning the place out what's next on your list?

No, thankfully we wont be living in the cottage until at earliest spring next year, by which time, messiest of the jobs will be done.
No garden at the back, just a small yard either side of the bathroom extension, and a single garage which we're toying with idea of demolishing to make more space.

Main job planned for after plumber's visit is the new roof on main cottage, and a hipped roof on bathroom to replace flat roof that has totally given way! Were also adding some velux wndows for extra light.

I wish i was at kitchen planning stage...i keep looking for ideas, but hubby keeps telling me "thats years away yet!" One of his ideas is to have a wet room, so would be interested in your plans for one.;)

ukmaggie45

arroli wrote: »

I wish i was at kitchen planning stage...i keep looking for ideas, but hubby keeps telling me "thats years away yet!" One of his ideas is to have a wet room, so would be interested in your plans for one.;)

It might be years away yet, but it takes so long to think about and do that it's definitely a good plan to think about it well in advance! After all, you can always change your mind as we have just done!

I don't know a great deal about wet rooms, other than they are reputedly expensive! Hard to do on first floor I believe as the waterproofing has to be perfect. We are having to replace the whole of the concrete on the ground floor of the house - that's the whole house, not just the extension that will go up where the demolition is going on. :eek:

Anyway, since the concrete hasn't been poured yet it may be easier to do a wet room so I have level access to the shower in the ground floor extension. We'll have a better idea when we've been to the bathroom place with our builder next week. He's never done a wet room before, so if we go for it it'll be fun for him too! I'll report back when we know more.

Glad to hear you won't be staying in the cottage yet! I'm really glad we're still in our home while the work is going on at the house. While it'll be nice to be close to the garden, I'm not looking forward to leaving our home and the wonderful skies and sunsets we see in the evenings. And won't be able to see Snowdon from my bed in the new place either!

But hopefully it'll be easier to clean and to maintain. Our home is a 1905 terraced house, and I'm finding the stairs more and more difficult to cope with. Plus the last few years we haven't done any of the maintenance it needs because there's been so much else going on in our lives there just hasn't been time. When we move out we'll probably tackle at least some of that before putting it on the market, we'll see.

stolt

glad see everyone getting on with it, spent most of the time yesterday trying to put some breakfast bar lights up and arguing with my missus about height and spacing etc. got to finish them off today but really want to watch formula one at 12.30 so i'm going to try to do that today. Went out for fora wedding celebration party last night, missus hardly drinks and last night she had a few more wines than shes use to so I dont see that shes going to want to do anything. oh and we got a sofa delivered yesterday, didnt even get a chance to unwrap it, so will get some pics up tonight when ive done... hopefully will put all the garden furniture away today as i doubt the wood will look too well next year if it spends the winter outside.

aliasojo

stolt wrote: »

.....we got a sofa delivered yesterday, didnt even get a chance to unwrap it.....

If it's any consolation I have a brand new shower screen still in it's box and not even inspected yet. It got delivered around 5 weeks ago now so I'm pretty stuffed if there's anything wrong with it.

andrew-b

Maggie, i'd go the standard shower tray route. You could do something similar to us with a low-profile (45mm tall) tray with the waste buried under the floor ..you end up with virtually no step ..just the lip around the tray to step over...but you need to decide before the concrete goes in so the waste pipe can be in place..or at least bury a conduit of some sort to thread the waste pipe through later. Wet rooms have to be very watertight..i'd want someone experienced doing it else your leaving yourself open to problems. Might be worth considering if you want underfloor heating before concrete floors go in too ...at least in the shower room and maybe kitchen?

Going backwards here...i decided to refurbish the existing airing cupboard door but it's been quite problematic. Basically the door was a door cut in two with extra timber added at the join but it looks like they then chopped the bottom off to fit a skirting under (which i've removed) and not bothered to close the gaping hole on the underside so the hardboard panels of the door were free to flap about.

Anyway after lots of hassle just getting the bottom door off resulting in the flush hinges they'd used breaking (top door has butt hinges..bottom was flush hinges) i cut about 1cm off the bottom and rebuilt it in the shed using a piece of "door stop" sized timber. Having rehung it with new butt hinges (so chiselling of door and frame needed) as best as possible the bottom door is about 3-4mm in front of the top door on the opening side but 1-2mm behind on the hinge side..which is about the same as it was originally. Something somewhere is distorted. I doubt most people would notice but it bugged me enough to take it off and rehang and still cant get any better. If i could remove the top door i might be able to fix it but the screws are impossible to budge and i'm likely to do more damage than it's worth fixing it!

So now i've got to refit a timber across the bottom of the door and attach a new piece of skirting to replace the bit i'd already removed. The skirting had been mitred into the architraves which i'd spent ages filling/shaping so now i've got to reinstate! Nevermind!

ukmaggie45

andrew-b wrote: »

Maggie, i'd go the standard shower tray route. You could do something similar to us with a low-profile (45mm tall) tray with the waste buried under the floor ..you end up with virtually no step ..just the lip around the tray to step over...but you need to decide before the concrete goes in so the waste pipe can be in place..or at least bury a conduit of some sort to thread the waste pipe through later. Wet rooms have to be very watertight..i'd want someone experienced doing it else your leaving yourself open to problems. Might be worth considering if you want underfloor heating before concrete floors go in too ...at least in the shower room and maybe kitchen?

We may well do that. Our problem was we were at the bathroom place at lunchtime so their technical bods weren't around. Would have been more sensible to go later in the afternoon, but post dentist I knew I wouldn't get out again if we went home. So we had both the bath and kitchen place to visit. And then I had to have a day in bed to recover from it all - I do find talking to a lot of people in one day horrible knackering.

Off to the house any moment now (just need to finish getting dressed) to try and catch up on the garden. Suspect the lawn will be too wet to even attempt cutting. Not sure how much we'll get done as it's horrible midgey down on the veg patch. Of recent years I seem to get worse reactions to midge bites, so try and steer clear of them as much as poss. Had some real humdinger bites at the caravan this year (itch itch!)

Andy, sorry to hear about all your cupboard hassles. The having to redo the mitreing sounds especially frustrating. Fingers crossed it all goes to plan and is easier than it sounds! :beer:

Hopefully will have more photos later. Looking forward to seeing what's happened since we were there on Thursday evening!

stolt

finished off the breakfast bar lights, and unwrapped the sofa and put the legs on it. looking much more like room now, bar stools need to be ordered and we have some chairs coming for the table in the kitchen, should have been here last week but not sure were they have gone as the tracking information isnt showing anything now!!!!!!!!!
want a nice sized plant (small tree maybe) for the side of the sofa ....

took some pics of the garden today, beds are full although the weather is clder alot seems to be on its last legs, just wondering if i'll have nothing to see for the winter months so might have to look into getting some to add in there for winter interest, the bamboos will still be there.

apples, pears and grapes are doing well, me and my eldest daughter pulled the carrots up and she was amazed when they come out, will definatley grow veggies properly next year. Oh and spring onions but we had them lunchtime and they were really nice...
had some toms too, got about 6 already with another 10 r so on the bushes, nothing like your toms maggie.... next year.

oh and i got the girls some new pets.... look at these little beasties..

included some pics of a a triple window that i want to take out and replace with sliding doors and that will be our new kitchen. Also the back door which i want to replace which is access into our utility room.