First-time house renovation

GSDog

I've spent the last week filling, sanding, cleaning, scrubbing, sealing and painting the walls in the house. I'm absolutely exhausted. I think I've started about 8:30am and finished at 10pm for the last couple of days. It's worth it though because the house is starting to look like it's nearing completion despite the fact that it still needs a lot of wiring done and an entire central heating system installed.

I found some Crown white matt emulsion in a sale at B&Q and bought 20L of the stuff. When I put it on the walls next to where I'd painted with Dulux white matt I realised that it was no where near as good. With the Crown paint I can still quite clearly see the horrible old green paint underneath, whereas the Dulux completely covered it in just one coat. I reckon I'll need to 2 or 3 coats on each wall with this Crown stuff. :mad: I won't be buying that again.

I've now ordered all the stuff for the bathroom except the toilet and tiles which I'm still deciding on. I'm not sure whether to tile all the walls or go just half way with a border then paint. :think:

Bibbitybob

Morning all! Not checked in here for a while but have put a few updates on my blog. I made a list last week of some small jobs that needed doing...you know the annoying, fiddly bits that don't actually make big differences but you constantly notice when they're not done?! I've banned myself from starting the bedroom decorating until the majority of the downstairs rooms are finished now.

OH ended up knocking the downstairs hall walls back to brick and re-plastering so it's been messy for the last few weeks. We've finally got those painted & papered now, so the only thing to do there is paint the doors and lay the floor, then I need to strip and line the rest of the hall (been putting that off...big job!!).

We've been without hot water for two weeks now whilst OH removed the old tank fed system and fitted a new combi boiler. I think he's only got one more radiator to fit and some pipework to replace then we're good to go. Got the gas man coming Wednesday morning to connect it all up and commission it for us...I can't wait! We've got this beautiful shower that I've not been able to use since last year!!! One day it will all be finished....surely?!

tpt

As someone who has done it twice...

Make sure you keep one room livable - dont gut it no matter how old fashioned it is. put a sofa and a telly in it and make it homely. when you want a night off, you have a retreat.

On to buying, open an account with a good local builders merchant and stick to them whilst pushing them on price, unless you find things a lot cheaper on the internet.

And last, dont do everything yourself. do most of it but know your limits and box clever. for instance i can do everything (just about) but i take ages when plastering or wallpapering, so i dont do it i pay for it.

guide wise look at diynot.com - its forums are great, ask questions all day long.

oh and when you want to buy tiles, see my profile (hint hint)

stolt

evening all managed to get the hedge out and the new one in!!! burnt my head bad in the sun and the back of my neck, still got a bit of clearing to do other than that its all done.

give it a couple of years and it will be nice and bushy.

some before and after shots....

GSDog

Wow, what a difference. Well done.

What is the new hedge?

stolt

GSDog wrote: »

Wow, what a difference. Well done.

What is the new hedge?

thanks, its a english laurel, we have it on the other side of the driveway, and the planners and alot of other houses have laurel so it ties all the street in now, looks beautiful and lush when its bushed out a bit.

now for a nice cold cider and gonna to watch the grand prix as i never got a chance to sit down on sunday!! nobody spoil it and tell me who won (although i can guess) been keeping away from the nes etc

ukmaggie45

stolt wrote: »

thanks, its a english laurel,

LOL we just got rid of the variegated laurel that we had behind the front wall at the house! Planted two climbing roses instead, and a load of garlic! Apparently garlic planted by roses increases their perfume.

Just a word of warning - laurel is extremely poisonous. :eek: When the leaves are crushed they produce cyanide. A few weeks ago I was watching one of those countryside programmes on a Sunday morning, and they'd visited Alnwick Poison Garden. They interviewed the lady who planted the garden, and she pointed out that many garden plants are poisonous. Laurel she said is so poisonous that if you dig it up and take it to the recycling centre the fumes off it could kill an adult if the car windows were all closed! :eek: :eek: :eek: This was just after OH had dug up and taken the laurel hedge to the tip - thank goodness it was in the really hot weather, so all car windows were open. Or OH would have ended up :A. :eek:

stolt

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

LOL we just got rid of the variegated laurel that we had behind the front wall at the house! Planted two climbing roses instead, and a load of garlic! Apparently garlic planted by roses increases their perfume.

Just a word of warning - laurel is extremely poisonous. :eek: When the leaves are crushed they produce cyanide. A few weeks ago I was watching one of those countryside programmes on a Sunday morning, and they'd visited Alnwick Poison Garden. They interviewed the lady who planted the garden, and she pointed out that many garden plants are poisonous. Laurel she said is so poisonous that if you dig it up and take it to the recycling centre the fumes off it could kill an adult if the car windows were all closed! :eek: :eek: :eek: This was just after OH had dug up and taken the laurel hedge to the tip - thank goodness it was in the really hot weather, so all car windows were open. Or OH would have ended up :A. :eek:

funny you say that, i sold a garden table on ebay and this old guy came round and we were talking about the laurels and he said he use to colelct insects/butterflies and he use to crush the leaves in a jar then pop the insect in and it use to gas it to death!!!!:(

but yes i have heard its very poisoness, but worth pointing out to people on here aswell as i dont think its widely known.

Our bathroom guy is starting to tile today, so looking forward to getting home and seeing that.

andrew-b

Hi folks,

Just dropping in for a catch-up. Been a bit busy with my garden too.

Hacked the massive fuschia in the front garden down to a more respectable size. I started by just removing the dead bits but it looked such a sorry state i ended up chopping it down to a small 2 foot tall bush..instead of one over 5feet tall. Also cut down a climatis out front to near ground level.

Out the back i've painted the metal arch/gate to the veggie patch black and treated all my homemade trellis with wood preserver to match the shed. Makes a big difference in the look of it.

On Thursday we got 4 tomato plants and 4 courgette plants from Lidl...though not sure on variety of tomato! Saturday we went to homebase and bought a ton more veggie plants.... a potato plant, 4xsweet potato, brussels sprouts seedlings, lettuce seedlings, spring cabbage seedlings, 2x swiss chard plants, 2 more cherry tomato plants, pea seedlings, parsnip seedlings, sweetcorn seedlings, carrot seedlings, beetroot seedlings. Got round to planting alot of it yesterday but we've bought more than i can actually fit in so i'm going to have to plant the courgettes and sweetcorn elsewhere in the garden. Think we've been a bit over ambitious for our first attempt at homegrown veg TBH!

Got a cheap garden hose from Aldi last week which i'm going to use for the veggie patch and back garden rather than keep dragging the same hose from front to back garden.

Had another expense too as last Friday i fell over in the bedroom...bent my glasses in half which i was carrying to bedroom to clean, broke a lamp and took a gouge out of bedside cabinet. I avoided injury and managed to bend glasses back to shape though the coating was coming off lenses so decided to replace.

Went to Vision express on monday (wasn't going to tesco after the last time less than 2 years ago!) for eye test and picked out glasses and sunglasses. Had a phone call to say they were ready Friday morning. Stupidly i wore the new glasses on Sunday while doing gardening rather than my old glasses, put my hand down on garden rake...classic garden accident...rake flew up and whacked me very hard on head catching glasses in process and almost pushing one lens out..amazingly no damage to the lens though. I on the other hand had a big lump on my forehead and a splitting headache for the rest of the day!

Rest of my time has been taken up with baby. His doing fine..getting bigger all the time and making more noises. Also showing signs of trying to roll over. Also seems to be sleeping longer through the night..last night he didn't wake us until about 5:30am.

ukmaggie45

Hi Andy, remember you need to plant sweetcorn in blocks as they're wind pollinated. Check on a gardening website for minimum numbers as I can't remember. Only excuse is lack of sleep and long weekend with DD1's wedding on Saturday...

It was lovely, at the London Wetland Centre. Good food, super music (DJ is a friend of theirs), lots of catching up with folks we haven't seen for years, DD1 looked radiant in her emerald green dress with purple sash and MASSIVE purple net petticoat! Her OH is a lovely bloke, we think he's great. He's a garlic lover, reason for us planting so much this year!

I took a video of driving up the road to the house on our way home yesterday, but am having some probs getting it on YouTube at the mo. Will post the URL for the vid when it's up. Must take some shorter ones round the garden and also round the house, maybe tomorrow - having a day in bed to recover from all the travel today.

Bibbety, can't wait to see more pics of your house - just been catching up a bit on your blog this morning. Bet you will be glad to have hot water again!

Hotel was great too, nice room, but we're not used to a standard sized bed, I nearly fell out once when OH rolled over, hence lack of sleep! :eek: Free wi-fi but my laptop isn't really playing these days, so only managed to upload the wedding pics with difficulty, and then found I'd uploaded them all twice!

No further progress on the house, but we filled up all the bird feeders yesterday. Hope to get there tomorrow to pot on the rest of the lavender and maybe plant the shallots out - we started them off in seed trays, but ran out of time before the wedding cos the weather was so carp. Loadsa rain on the way home yesterday, I hate motorways in the wet - the spray is really scary the way it cuts down vision.

Sorry, blathering again!