First-time house renovation

typeractive

Awful news there!!! As previously suggested I think you could get away with it a mixture as long as it's not joining. If you decide to rent etc, I think the aim is to get it rentable as soon as possible. With the greatest of respect I'd be surprised if people noticed on a viewing - and I certainly don't think it would put them off if the location, price and general use of space is great (which I think will be! ). They may of course become niggled by it in the future, though that's not the priority.

The very best of luck!

spirit

hi all,

glad to see (most) of you are cracking on ok. aliasojo, good luck with OHs job and or relocating.

I'm on the move again (fingers crossed). going only about half a mile away but the new house is on about 1/3 acre I reckon. It's a quieter location too away from the main road. I'm going to get a few chickens - for eggs not the table and grow my own fruit and veg again.

it's a late 1960s house and it has a blocked up fireplace at the moment. I'd like to have a fire in there and don't know whether to go to the expense of having a small woodburner or multifuel stove put in or the cheaper option of an open fire? I don't know if you have to have the chimney lined for an open fire like you do with a stove?

I only really want it for the occasional fire on weekends mostly. anyone had fires or grates done recently? any ideas on costs?

stolt

evening everyone, not done anything major with the house.

We are due to have the hedges removed at the front of the house next week, we have some unknown hedge but its not been looked after by the previous owners, its quite twiggy and winter it has big gaps in it and doesn't give us any privacy. Ive manage to source some pot grown hedges from holland, and found a guy to remove the existing 8ft high hedges an they have to be about 4ft thick for £135.00 including roots etc. which i thought was really good.


Been watering the garden quite a bit, some of you will probably remember i only did the garden this time last year and i think its done really well in a year, the bamboo drink lots but they grow about a foot a night (not joking) the beds are filling in really nicely, to the point when i will probably have to stop buying plants/seeds from thompson and morgan!! esepcially the bargain seed bundle from them!!
Even the silver birch trees are doing well.

took the bushes out under the bay window this morning, really wan to get the driveway doe this year and in there place i want box hedging, it will be the same on the other bay window aswell.

Put a new hose reel thing on the side of the house, as i was unhappy with the winding the other back and forth and it kept kinking and it was doing my head in. Wanted a auto wind one but 40m was £140!!!!

Put a new extractor fan in the downstairs toilet this afternoon, move it forward so it wont be boxed in when the downstairs boxing goes in. real pain in the!!! to move it about 300mm and nearly didnt do it because i just couldnt get the ducting pulled through.



The blackbird we had nesting with the one chick, the chick has flown the nest! The blue-tits have 5 little chicks and both and been flitting around the garden with caterpillars for them. We are doing our own little springwatch!!

We have a robin take up residence aswell, while the female was off the nest i took a peak, and she has 5 eggs, so look forward to her having her chicks in the garden.

andrew-b

Stolt, Your garden is looking good and pretty well established already. Is the irrigation still up and running?

Well i've been busy the last few days and overdone things so now i'm knackered as i didn't really get enough sleep to recover what with night time feeding!

We bought a metal archway with gate from Netto for £33 on wednesday (offer was supposed to be from thursday but already had it) as i thought we could use it to make a feature out of the entrance to the vegetable plot. If you remember i'd already put up a basic mesh fence for the cost of a packet of staples using wooden stakes and mesh i'd already got... but of course to fit the arch and gate in it was in totally the wrong place so i had to remove.

So wednesday afternoon i constructed the arch and gate..of course it wasn't that straightforward as some of the holes were drilled in slightly wrong places. Bit disappointed that it's a light green rather than dark green on the box so now i'm going to paint it black instead. Thursday i moved it into the right place and trimmed off a corner of the lawn for it. Decided then to ditch using the mesh (it was damaged in places from removing it from the posts) and put in trellis instead..but of course i couldn't find trellis of the right size at reasonable cost so decided to build my own.

Friday i spent a while in the morning planning how much timber i needed with minimum wastage then sent wife out to buy 24 length of 32x19mm 1.8m long treated timber (just over £15 from wickes) and a pack of nails (£3.50 ish). So spent Friday afternoon cutting up timber and constructed 2 out of 3 of the trellis' ..both about 2ft wide by 4ft tall. Saturday i made up the last trellis - about 5ft wide by 4ft tall, whacked in the wooden stakes for posts with sledgehammer and then screwed the trellis to the posts and fixed to the shed. Fixing to the shed wasn't that straightforward as the trellis was at an angle to it. And here's the result ..still needs to be painted (probably the same as shed i think): (click for bigger)













So now i can order my veggie plants as bit late to start from seed.

stolt

andrew-b wrote: »

Stolt, Your garden is looking good and pretty well established already. Is the irrigation still up and running?

Well i've been busy the last few days and overdone things so now i'm knackered as i didn't really get enough sleep to recover what with night time feeding!

We bought a metal archway with gate from Netto for £33 on wednesday (offer was supposed to be from thursday but already had it) as i thought we could use it to make a feature out of the entrance to the vegetable plot. If you remember i'd already put up a basic mesh fence for the cost of a packet of staples using wooden stakes and mesh i'd already got... but of course to fit the arch and gate in it was in totally the wrong place so i had to remove.

So wednesday afternoon i constructed the arch and gate..of course it wasn't that straightforward as some of the holes were drilled in slightly wrong places. Bit disappointed that it's a light green rather than dark green on the box so now i'm going to paint it black instead. Thursday i moved it into the right place and trimmed off a corner of the lawn for it. Decided then to ditch using the mesh (it was damaged in places from removing it from the posts) and put in trellis instead..but of course i couldn't find trellis of the right size at reasonable cost so decided to build my own.

Friday i spent a while in the morning planning how much timber i needed with minimum wastage then sent wife out to buy 24 length of 32x19mm 1.8m long treated timber (just over £15 from wickes) and a pack of nails (£3.50 ish). So spent Friday afternoon cutting up timber and constructed 2 out of 3 of the trellis' ..both about 2ft wide by 4ft tall. Saturday i made up the last trellis - about 5ft wide by 4ft tall, whacked in the wooden stakes for posts with sledgehammer and then screwed the trellis to the posts and fixed to the shed. Fixing to the shed wasn't that straightforward as the trellis was at an angle to it. And here's the result ..still needs to be painted (probably the same as shed i think): (click for bigger)













So now i can order my veggie plants as bit late to start from seed.

hi andrew, irrigation doing well, in fact i had it on the beds today, not cheap when i'm on the meter so going to be careful this year, although it might be while its doing so well this year as it had a ton of water last year.

could do with some of that trelis myself, i wanted to cut down the grape vine (well trim it but the robin is in the nestbox and i wet over to it didnt realise shes in there and she flew off) so i left it, i think it only takes them a month or so before the chicks are ready to fly so hopefully the vine wont get too rampant while i leave it.

would like to raise veggie beds at some stage , meant to do it this year but as usual no time..


as your handy with a bit of woodwork, i wanted to build one of these for the kids, they have outgrown there playhouse and want to build something in the region of 7ft x 7ft.
Trying to work out the best way of doing it, do you reckon to build panels then clad with marine ply with router groves done the panels to make it look like tongue and grooved wood planks.

andrew-b

stolt wrote: »

as your handy with a bit of woodwork, i wanted to build one of these for the kids, they have outgrown there playhouse and want to build something in the region of 7ft x 7ft.
Trying to work out the best way of doing it, do you reckon to build panels then clad with marine ply with router groves done the panels to make it look like tongue and grooved wood planks.

I saw that thread of yours but didn't get round to commenting. I'd love to try build one myself. I had been thinking of a future project of building a playhouse myself but like the crooked house look! I think wonky playhouse is probably trickier than a non-wonky one to build so you need to plan it well in advance and build it solidly with extra timbers so it doesn't fall down rather than just look like it's going to! I'd do a google sketchup plan first so you get the angles right.

I'd build a framework for floors, walls, roof with the door and window frames built in and then skin it in off-the-shelf tongue and groove cladding. Or to get a square-edged router effect yourself you could double up the ply into two layers (like with my bathroom vanity unit where we stuck 6mm MDF onto 15mm to get a shaker style - though don't use MDF outside). Easier if you have a router which i don't...but want!

I'd use planed timber (PSE) for the frame rather than sawn timber to minimise splinters and sand it well - unless your going to clad it on the inside too. Perspex for windows. Not sure how i'd do the roof to make it look authentic though .
7'x7' is a pretty decent size...my shed is 9'x9'.

stolt

andrew-b wrote: »

I saw that thread of yours but didn't get round to commenting. I'd love to try build one myself. I had been thinking of a future project of building a playhouse myself but like the crooked house look! I think wonky playhouse is probably trickier than a non-wonky one to build so you need to plan it well in advance and build it solidly with extra timbers so it doesn't fall down rather than just look like it's going to! I'd do a google sketchup plan first so you get the angles right.

I'd build a framework for floors, walls, roof with the door and window frames built in and then skin it in off-the-shelf tongue and groove cladding. Or to get a square-edged router effect yourself you could double up the ply into two layers (like with my bathroom vanity unit where we stuck 6mm MDF onto 15mm to get a shaker style - though don't use MDF outside). Easier if you have a router which i don't...but want!

I'd use planed timber (PSE) for the frame rather than sawn timber to minimise splinters and sand it well - unless your going to clad it on the inside too. Perspex for windows. Not sure how i'd do the roof to make it look authentic though .
7'x7' is a pretty decent size...my shed is 9'x9'.

cheers, thats pretty much how i saw it too, good to get a second opinion. Going to work out materials so i can see if its viable. As i have three girls the size is big enough for all three and there friends around the corner. Was going to put a solar light inside to with the solar panel on the back of the she, see them in a garden centre and thought it was a really good idea,i could get power to it, but with the kids its a bit of risk.


i could buy a 7X7 double storey dutch barn type playhouse for about £500.00 so its toss up of building something myself from scratch or getting a kit. the kids what the double storey but its a bit of con really as the platform takes up head space below and there isnt much space up above either.

ukmaggie45

stolt wrote: »

i could buy a 7X7 double storey dutch barn type playhouse for about £500.00 so its toss up of building something myself from scratch or getting a kit. the kids what the double storey but its a bit of con really as the platform takes up head space below and there isnt much space up above either.

Gee, that takes me back to when I was small, I used to sit under the dining room table, loved to sit there, and could never understand why the grownups didn't want to as well! :rotfl:

Guess it partly depends on how tall your girls are, and if you want to replace again in another 3/4 years? Perhaps you could interest them in a shed instead?

stolt

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

Gee, that takes me back to when I was small, I used to sit under the dining room table, loved to sit there, and could never understand why the grownups didn't want to as well! :rotfl:

Guess it partly depends on how tall your girls are, and if you want to replace again in another 3/4 years? Perhaps you could interest them in a shed instead?

hi maggie, ours spend hours in there little playhouse at the moment, i keep finding petals missing and leaves from the plants where they are using them to make all sorts of potions
my eldest is 8 but shes pretty tall so ive tried the shed route, (several times, even said i would paint it pink!!!!!!) that dutch barn comes without the second storey so that would make enough room for them, so my three and there a couple of sisters that spend quite a bit of time round ours so 5 of them!!!

TomsMom

As you know there's no really big jobs left for us, the only one outstanding was the sun room floor - first mentioned two years ago and was going to be left until everything else was more or less done.

DS was booked to level the floor for us and some of you may remember the whole of last year came and went with DS pushing our job back time and again and it never got done.

We asked him to book us in again earlier this year and was told April, which came and went, then was told May as he'd had another job come in. I can't understand why, when we offer to pay him the going rate, other people take precedence. I'm sure he wouldn't do it to his other customers.

Long talk with d-i-l confirmed our suspicions that he was picking and choosing his jobs so we told DS we would order the levelling compound and if he couldn't do it in the next fortnight then TomsDad would do it himself.

Cue DS saying to d-i-l "why's he doing it himself when I'm supposed to be doing it" and d-i-l replying "well, how many times has he asked you and how many times have you put him off, you're picking and choosing jobs and he's waited long enough".

Jeez - are you still with me? It's taking a while to tell this tale .

The reason TomsDad never did it in the first place was lack of confidence and, to a certain extent, laziness. Despite me asking someone on here who had already done the same job whether it was easy and the answer the came back was a resounding yes!

So, cue some nagging from TomsMom and insisting the levelling compound being ordered. Bal Rapidbase was duly ordered and delivered. Mixing bucket and drill attachment mixer thingy was borrowed from DS, who now was really interested but not offering to do it!

Sun room cleared one morning last week, TD clearly in the mood to have a go, and this is the result:





He found the Rapidbase very easy to work with, spread very well and dried remarkably quickly. It did what it said on the bag! Rapidbase laid in the morning, a little light sanding of one or two bumps, sealer applied in the afternoon and the carpet tiles started going down by late afternoon.

Lots of cuts and two steps but they're down now. Only problem is the colour - we chose from the sample book and the light grey was a pretty good match with the lighter grey in the kitchen vinyl which it butts up to. Once the whole floor was done they took on a bluey-grey hue whereas the grey in the vinyl now looks a brownish grey .

We still have to get some stair nosing, which TD is trying to sort out today. Then we intend getting a rug to put in the centre, hope we can find one that tones with both the carpet tiles and the vinyl so as to diminish the rather obvious (to us) colour difference.

Here's how it looks now (ignore doggy stuff and temporary mats):





There's a bit of bubbling to some of the paintwork where there's obviously a bit of damp got in so it looks like a paint job in that room some time this year, TD had already mentioned doing the skirtings again as he's got some of the leveller on it and it needs scraping off.