First-time house renovation

stolt

typeractive wrote: »

Good stuff stolt & maggie. (Maggie each time I look at your gas fire I keep thinking it's a tank with some lizards or such inside! lol)

Just made a post on my blog, which may be of use to some people when picking double glazing - ya never know? There's a lengthy write up, but if you can't be bothered with that there's some pics of my new windows and doors

http://house31.wordpress.com/

Cheers
:beer:

windows look good, like the garage door aswell, i have a wooden side door and two white upvc up and over doors that i could do with changing, theres nothing wrong with them but dont really fit it with it all now. i like the upvc garage door you have had.

typeractive

arroli wrote: »

Typeractive, enjoyed reading your post on blog...we too are having serious worries in choosing windows and doors for our renovation project, so know exactly where you are! Ours is an old stone cottage, currently has Everest aluminium windows, and finding something sympathetic with age and style of cottage, yet practical and reasonably priced is so difficult..
My biggest problem is the 2 huge picture windows at front of house..i would ideally like something that looks "cottagey" but because of size it will need 3 mock sash windows together...lots of upvc in line of view...or alternative is 70s style casement windows, which we dont really want...I feel as if I too am plaguing the local window company!!:)

Thank you! It's nice to see it's of a little bit of use to others here and there It's quite a tricky subject when it comes to selecting upvc windows etc. Though stick at it with your research - it really is worth it. Many people will just think 'windows are windows', and perhaps I will never really know the difference between two values of plastic...but...if so many people with experience rate one product over another then it's most likely worth it. Also you do right with contacting the supplier to answer your every detail. There are soooo many differing options out there, if you don't ask you'll never know.

A decent company will always go the extra mile to ensure their client is cared for and happy. I will recommend this company to all my friends etc - I already have to 2 colleagues! So my advice is keep plaguing. It sounds like a nice place that you have

typeractive

stolt wrote: »

windows look good, like the garage door aswell, i have a wooden side door and two white upvc up and over doors that i could do with changing, theres nothing wrong with them but dont really fit it with it all now. i like the upvc garage door you have had.

Cheers Stolt . My development is somewhat very humble in comparison to yours' and others efforts being a little terrace (well actually it's quite big I'm realising when paying for my plasterer! lol). The back of the house looks like a teenagers face with the amount of patchwork the bricks have had etc - sot it's not exactly pretty. It needs the soil stack and wastes changing or painting to black, and then the sills and headers painting. I'm thinking of going for something like a charcoal grey.

As for the garage door - it is a nice little effort. I like it. Purposely didn't want a window in there, and I like the texture of the vertical strips. I think the style is called vertical ship lap? IIRC? I think this is also available horizontally.

Thanks!:j

stolt

typeractive wrote: »

Cheers Stolt . My development is somewhat very humble in comparison to yours' and others efforts being a little terrace (well actually it's quite big I'm realising when paying for my plasterer! lol). The back of the house looks like a teenagers face with the amount of patchwork the bricks have had etc - sot it's not exactly pretty. It needs the soil stack and wastes changing or painting to black, and then the sills and headers painting. I'm thinking of going for something like a charcoal grey.

As for the garage door - it is a nice little effort. I like it. Purposely didn't want a window in there, and I like the texture of the vertical strips. I think the style is called vertical ship lap? IIRC? I think this is also available horizontally.

Thanks!:j

yeah plastering can be expensive although its one of those trades i like getting in, looks amazing after they have finished. (as long as you find a good one) garage door is similar in look to our new front door. And grey is a good choice its what we had for our frotn door and i want garage doors to match and maybe gates!!

ukmaggie45

typeractive wrote: »

(Maggie each time I look at your gas fire I keep thinking it's a tank with some lizards or such inside! lol)

:rotfl: Actually an aquarium would look quite good there, but prob not sufficiently hot for those chilly winter days!

Not really got much news on the house front. Builder forwarded the final plan for the glass balustrades to us, OH got in touch yesterday and asked him to go ahead with letting Staircase Man know so he can order glass and metalwork. So guess it'll be at least a month before it goes in.

Might go over to measure up the living room for curtains this afternoon (or might not as am still knackered after too much gardening over the long weekend!) or failing that tomorrow. Think it's fairly urgent to get curtains up over the bifold doors as you can see straight in to the whole living room from there and once we've hoovered the new carpets (weather been too good to waste hoovering since they were laid ) we'll probably start taking some of the smaller stuff over. May put the old curtains back up at the front just for now.

DD2 just called to say she may call in with the Twins after meeting at work to sign off there. :j Not seen them for ages - well, a couple of weeks I suppose but they change so fast! (where's the doting granny smiley? ) They'll be a whole year old next Tuesday! Now where did that year go? :rotfl:

andrew-b

Got a mo to check-in. Baby doing well and now 9lb14oz so health visitor is happy as his precisely following 25percentile growth line. 6 weeks old now and newborn clothes are now too small and gone up a size in nappies! Also had someone from local surestart childrens centre around to register us so going to start going there regularly soon...will be good to get out and socialise a bit i think.

Amazingly we've found time to order a new bookcase from argos.. http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6094694/Trail/searchtext%3EWALNUT+MAINE.htm ...pleasantly surprised as it's pretty good for flat-pack furniture and looks more expensive than it really was. Really heavy as it's 18mm melamine (about 38kg ...courier just left it at the door with me and didn't wait to actually check i could move it - fortunately family were visiting at time to help!). Father-in-law constructed it with me on wednesday evening then i bracketed to the wall at the top yesterday so Oliver got his first taste of the noise of powertools (SDS drill). Put it in a recess to one side of the fireplace where i'd previously put the old MFI desk which i've now moved into the shed as a second workbench. Now just need to pile it up with books etc which are distributed between old green shelves in nursery and lounge (freebies scrimped from relatives).

Want to get a nest of tables to match and might get another smaller bookcase to replace one in nursery. Need a tv cabinet too but considering building my own or modify the existing one and giving it a facelift. Still wanting to get back on with finishing off the hall painting and getting some flooring down in the hall and bathroom.

Front garden is looking good now. I spent a couple of days weeding it a couple of weeks back, then my parents helped me trim the large bush which was getting out of control and planted up bedding plants we'd bought. The bedding plants are now in flower and doing good with my regular watering and drawed in comments from the health visitor. Out the back the lawn is showing signs of drought already. Ceanothus is now in full bloom so a sea of an "electric" blue.

Intending to make an order of plug plants to get a crop of vegetables under way so that's my next garden thing to do i think.

aliasojo

andrew-b wrote: »

Intending to make an order of plug plants to get a crop of vegetables under way so that's my next garden thing to do i think.

Good to hear Oliver is thriving, they grow so fast when they are little. Doesn't seem like 6 weeks already.

Our house has been at a standstill for months now but I have managed to make some headway on the back garden. The original 'nice' plans I had for it have been replaced with 'practical and cheap to do' plans.

I've got quite fond of growing veg though so have various raised beds on the go and the spare bedroom has been turned into 'germinating central' for the last few weeks. Wonderfully addictive, I pop in every morning when I wake up (before I even see the kids) just to see if anything has sprouted yet. :rotfl:

latecomer

I did something on the house yetserday - started weeding in the front garden (aka the mud pit) as I was waiting for the cleaners to turn up as they were late! We've had everything itemised at the house so the cleaning up can now start.

@andy - glad to hear all is well with Oliver - its frightening how fast they change. LLC has been officially crawling for a week and is now pulling himself up on anything he can crawl to.

aliasojo

Well I'm in panic mode now and may have to get this place finished asap. OH's job is on the line and it's a case of redundancy or relocation nearly 200 miles away and out of the Highlands.

I never did get the stairs sorted out so there's still a lot of quite 'big' work to do. Money has become a big issue given the circumstances too and continuing with the oak everywhere is not really do-able in this time scale.

How bad would it be if I went back to bog standard redwood and tried to stain it? I remember lc's stairs and they looked great so would it really be so bad if the rest of the place wasn't oak? I don't yet know what's going to happen, if we need to sell or if we could rent this place out.

Would it really put prospective buyers/renters off if the house had redwood finishing in places? Not sure I have much of a choice tbh.

latecomer

Sorry to hear that. Personally it wouldn't bother me but then I love natural wood. It might be worth considering just glossing all woodwork thats not oak if you are concerned about it not matching - most people expect woodwork to be painted white. Just make sure there is a natural break where the woods join then its becomes almost un-noticable.

We've just abuot got all the quotes we need for the insurance but struggling to get someone to quote for replacing the kitchen floor. would have thought it would be a nice easy job for someone and given its an insurance job they can mark it up plenty. Still not making any progress on the items that were removed which I'm really unhappy about.

onthe up side the house like ours that went on the market recently has sold despite it being on the main road so there is some movement in the market around us. Of course doesn't mean we'll be able to sell ours.....