First-time house renovation

jamtart6

thanks tomsmom! we cant have real tiles due to chipboard floors! they just crack! so its carpet vs laminate. got to be honest...carpet is cheaper!!!

TomsMom

jamtart6 wrote: »

thanks tomsmom! we cant have real tiles due to chipboard floors! they just crack! so its carpet vs laminate. got to be honest...carpet is cheaper!!!

Chipboard floors - we were talking about tiling our new chipboard floor in the en-suite today. The chipboard is 19mm thick and totally solid and unmoveable on the new joists. I wasn't really thinking of floor tiles but we can have enough for the en-suite FOC so I'm tempted. I knew it was sometimes iffy to tile floorboards - and that they needed ply on top - but now you've got me wondering .

Carpet - nice and cosy underfoot then you get a drunken male/careless male child/doddery old man who misses the pan - get my drift . My mom's partner (no longer with us) got the nickname Sid Splash because of that very problem!

jamtart6

TomsMom wrote: »

Chipboard floors - we were talking about tiling our new chipboard floor in the en-suite today. The chipboard is 19mm thick and totally solid and unmoveable on the new joists. I wasn't really thinking of floor tiles but we can have enough for the en-suite FOC so I'm tempted. I knew it was sometimes iffy to tile floorboards - and that they needed ply on top - but now you've got me wondering .

Carpet - nice and cosy underfoot then you get a drunken male/careless male child/doddery old man who misses the pan - get my drift . My mom's partner (no longer with us) got the nickname Sid Splash because of that very problem!

This is why we went for laminate! Our neighbours in my original house tiled their chipboard bathroom floor and they cracked, the neighbours across the road tiled their chipboard floor and it cracked so I'm not taking any chances :eek:

Agree about carpet! Lovely and cosy when no men are involved!! :rotfl::eek:

andrew-b

jamtart6 wrote: »

Agree about carpet! Lovely and cosy when no men are involved!! :rotfl::eek:

Oi! I'm that confident in my aim we're planning on having carpet in our bathroom! (p.s we have a Bissell carpet cleaner! - perhaps change the first letter of the brand name? ). Main reasoning though is if i fall over it's a softer landing. I'm intending to get proper bathroom carpet (rubber backed ?) with decent underlay in the bathroom - not sure if standard underlay is ok though. The carpet we took out (i wedged it into the wheelie bin to dispose of!) didn't have any underlay under it.

As for chipboard floors...my old room and my sister's old room at my parents house both have chipboard floors that were nailed down and they've always creaked at the joins as well as sagged a bit! Nothing like a creaky floor to wake the whole house up when you want to go for a walk down the corridor in the night! My Dad has been threatening for years to make us clear out our remaining junk so he can relay them - goodness knows where i'd put it all though!

Andy

KT1985

Well, we have light and power! The CH installer finished on Friday (nice shiny new worcester-bosch greenstart 42 cdi) and the electricians are nearly there- will finish today.
This weekend we have:

Had the outhouse/new office ceiling plastered ready for the spotlights today,
Cleaned up some of the brickdust
Cleaned the grimness from under the kitchen units (thanks hubs!)
Bought lots of shiny new things
Ordered our new gel fire

Think thats basically it. Today our order from Victoria Plumb should arrive- nice new shower cabin, steel bath and some other bits and bobs like toilets, basins and a shower screen. I am going to fill in the fireplace and tile-there is already a tiled fireplace which I really love (grey tiles light and dark-almost blue) ready for the gel fire to fit in front.

Just to join in the debate, we are tiling in the bathroom. There were tiles n the bathroom previously, and non of them had cracked, and that was straight on top of the floorboards. We are planning on putting down a layer of ply as the boards have now been up, and then I will tile with flexible grout/adhesive.

jamtart- who is doing your sockets and fuse board/consumer unit? It all depends with regards to cost- what is the age of the property, and does it need rewiring? We weren't sure whether ours did, but we got a couple of sparkys in, and they pointed out that most of the wiring was original (as was the consumer unit) and that it was in a poor state. We then got quotes for rewiring, 2 weeks later it is nearly done and it has been worth every penny(Thanks BB for reassurig me of this fact 3 weeks ago!) as we know that it is all safe and new.
Also, our boiler is great- I have never seen anything like it. Hot water flow is great, heating is great... nothing to complain about at all. It isn't too big hung on the wall... hope this helps.

helping_hubby

It's SNOWING!!!!!!!!!!

So who made it to work today?! I did! There's only 2 of us in. It's nuts out there. Even the main road (like a motorway) was snowed under and I had to do 10mph all the way. Sometimes I was the only one in sight on the road. Spooky.

That aside, we did LOADS this weekend.

Me and mum: painted 1st coat of calico, painted the cupboards.

Me and OH: painted 2nd coat of calico, and painted cupboards more and did a tiny bit of wallpapering (never again).

It's looking good

Spicey

Snowed in today so thought Id catch up on this thread. We have had the quotes in to put Gas supply in, very reasonable I think at less than £400, but we asked for a quote to move the electric meter to the front, the guy turned up and said that we are on a loop with next door and as that is a fire hazard for next door they would remove it at the same time as doing the meter. The cable runs up our land then cuts to neigbour then back to us. He said we wouldnt be paying for the extra work. Well the quote came :eek: It was nearly £600 and they want us to dig a trench, buy a meter box, some duct as well as paying someone else to move the actual meter and then off course the electrician to rewire. All told it would take 3 differant people, and all the £600 was to pay for them to bring the cable to our boundry. We asked what would happen about the loop if we said no (the neighbours b-t-w did not have to pay anything) and we were told they would just leave it, even after they told the old lady next door it was a fire hazard for her. We worked out it would cost us over £1000 so decided not to go ahead, it been there 80 years.
If gas can do all the work for less than £400 felt like electric were making us pay for nextdoors work too and her cable would still run up our land.

TomsMom

andrew-b wrote: »

Oi! I'm that confident in my aim we're planning on having carpet in our bathroom!

I see your mother taught you well . For some reason my son sits down for all toilet functions (no, I didn't tell him he had to ) and my d-i-l is so grateful. There's one grandson who also sits and one who stands and it's the latter who misses.

(p.s we have a Bissell carpet cleaner! - perhaps change the first letter of the brand name? ).

:rotfl:

Bit off topic really isn't it, but a good laugh for a snowy morning.

Main reasoning though is if i fall over it's a softer landing. I'm intending to get proper bathroom carpet (rubber backed ?) with decent underlay in the bathroom - not sure if standard underlay is ok though.

Good idea Andy, so you're excused. I would imagine that if you're using the rubber backed bathroom carpet then any underlay would be fine but best to ask the experts in the shop.

As for chipboard floors...my old room and my sister's old room at my parents house both have chipboard floors that were nailed down and they've always creaked at the joins as well as sagged a bit!

Ah! We'll have to check if they're nailed or screwed.

lisal0u

andrew-b wrote: »

Lost track of where i got to on this thread and just spent an age catching up! lol
Good to see the progress being made. Beth that had better have been MSE on your laptop screen - nice carpet ..a souf' londoner like me escaped to the seaside - just not quite as far!! TomsMom....nice view from the house and wow it's coming along quick now! Jamtart you can get heated mirror demister pads from screwfix now (unfortunately not suited to the big round mirror i've bought). LisaLou ...let there be light - is that your doggie (what breed is he/she)? I'm sure there were other comments i had that i've now forgotten ...so sorry for those i missed out!

I've become a bit of a screwfix junkie recently after a £130 order that actually only cost me £90 (£20 voucher my Dad gave me, 10% off and 6% quidco!)..half of which was tools i needed.

My bathroom has come to a standstill yet again (not that it ever came out of standstill!) for lack of materials and suitable tools (waiting to borrow a mitre saw so i can do my architraves). Still need to get some plastering quotes fairly soon as thats likely to be the next thing to hold things up.

I've been planning what to do with the bedroom as i'm fed up of feeling cold at night from the side windows behind the bed. The plan (slightly refined from the original that i posted about in another thread) is to remove the side windows fill in with blocks and insulation in between...plaster inside, render outside - doing it all ourselves (my Dad with me helping).

We hadn't been intending to decorate the bedroom for a year or two (not sure budget will stretch) so i'm thinking as a stop gap of stripping the blown vinyl paper off that side wall, lining it and painting to make it into a feature wall. The bed then remains on the new windowless feature wall.

Currently we have a radiator under the bedroom bay window and another on the wall opposite the side windows. The second part of the plan now is to remove both and replace with one new suitably sized radiator on the wall adjacent to the bathroom which means i can pick up on my new pipework to the bathroom towel the other side of the wall. That then leaves us space in the bay window area for a dressing table for OH and space along the other side wall where the radiator was to relocate a wardrobe.

Anyways for now it just means i have to make sure my bathroom pipework take into account the new pipework for the bedroom radiator. The blocking up of windows will be done in the summer i think (just have to remember not to blink in case i miss that day!).

Andy

Hi everyone,

You have all been very busy this weekend and done some great work! Beth the carpets look fab, I can't wait to get to the furnishing stage! Jamtart have you got any piccys of your windows?

Andy thats my Dad's dog and she's a Weimaraner, she's lovely but totally mental and even though she thinks she's helping with the diy she really doesn't! I nearly hammered her nose the other day cos she is so nosey!

This weekend we got lights upstairs, the livingroom boarded and plastered and some more plaster knocked of the walls. We almost finished painting the front bedroom and had a good tidy up with a few trips to the tip (updated my blog with a few piccys: http://stuartandlisashouse.blogspot.com/)

Hope you are all enjoying building snowmen and making snow angels! x

andrew-b

lisal0u wrote: »

Andy thats my Dad's dog and she's a Weimaraner, she's lovely but totally mental and even though she thinks she's helping with the diy she really doesn't! I nearly hammered her nose the other day cos she is so nosey!

Our whippet is just as mental and would pinch the hammer before i had a chance to whack his nose! His also a keen tea drinker much to my annoyance this morning! Now i'm way off topic...though pup is responsible for alot of my lack of progress!!