First-time house renovation

latecomer

andrew-b wrote: »

Also removed the tiles on the outside edge of the shower cubicle plus a bit more tile adhesive scraping. Foolishly i wasn't wearing gloves and slashed a finger and then a thumb on broken tile ...you'd have thought i'd have learnt the first time!

Ouch. Been there, done it. I managed to catch mu thumb with a broken bit of tile and gave myself a very deep gash which was painful for about 3 months. highly recommend using cloth gloves for any future work

KT1985

Everyone has been so busy!

We have also had a good week, painting, receiving deliveries, stripping wallpaper, and our new doors and windows are being fitted as I type.

We have had our house for 7 1/2 weeks now, and are feeling really pleased with how it is going. Next week our en-suite is being prepared for fitting, and the family bathroom is being stripped of tiles.

I should, in theory, get to line a couple of the rooms ready for painting next week.

Spicey

Has anyone looked at the new planning portal? Looking at it we would not require planning permission for proposed extention 5mx3m, wrote to council to ask if this was the case, apparently they cant advise us unless we pay them £75. Does anyone know, if you go straight to building regs, would they tell you if you should have got pp first. Builders we have spoken to have differing opinions, some didnt know the rules changed in october. One builder said we wouldnt be allowed flat roof due to council not liking them, while another said no problem at all, he just done several.

Think we should just have a conservatory instead! We completing in 3 weeks time, so need to start organising, as we cant move in till we at least have a bathroom, yes its that bad.

Andy south west then.

planning_officer

If it's a detached property you can extend up to 4m in depth at the rear (single storey) or 3m (two storey), or if it's a semi or terraced house, then you can extend up to 3m (single storey) at the rear as permitted development, i.e. not requiring a planning application. There are other criteria too, regarding distances to boundaries, highways and height.

Some Councils will only tell you whether your proposal is permitted development if you apply for a Lawful Development Certificate, which costs £75, as you have found out. Technically, this is the proper way of doing it - as the new permitted development legislation is open to a certain amount of interpretation in places, and if you just got an informal letter off the Council saying it didn't require permission it would have no legal standing and would only be an officer's opinion. The same 'rules' apply to conservatories too, so that wouldn't necessarily make it any easier! And, no - building control will not advise on planning permission, as they are different departments entirely.

MadMonkey

Hi - Would like to join you all ?

We moved into our house at the end of November and have a massive amount to do !!

After an initial flurry of activity where we got the three kids bedrooms decorated in three weeks we have stalled somewhat !!

We are currently decorating the hall, stairs and landing which is a BIG job as there is a gallery landing and we are painting all the dark wood on the spindles / banisters with cream gloss.

We also have 13 doors and frames to paint as well as 2 radiators, 2 windows - one of which you need to be spiderman to get to !!

There are about 20 millions spindles which have needed two coats of undercoat and then glossing !!

Tonight I discovered a roller for glossing and managed to gloss 4 doors in 40 minutes :T

Although the house is structurally sound the inside basically needs gutting - 3 new bathrooms, new windows, full landscape e.t.c.

The house is only 20 years old so wiring is all ok - the house has just been neglected and needs a lot of love !

Luckily hubby has worked in the building trade for 20 years so he can either do the work himself or knows a man who can !! The only thing we need to pay out for is plastering and gas work.

New boiler being fitted this week:T

TomsMom

MadMonkey wrote: »

Hi - Would like to join you all ?

And why not? Welcome MadMonkey, we are a friendly bunch who share ideas, trials and tribulations.

Good to see you have stairs (although you may have too many :rotfl: ), there's a few bungalows on here and us house owners are in the minority!

There will be no glossing in our house, we are waxing the woodwork as we like "natural". We've had paint over the years and OH needs a gentle nudge (cough, cough!) where gloss paint is concerned and I don't like to see chipped paint so waxing works best in our house!

Although the house is structurally sound the inside basically needs gutting - 3 new bathrooms, new windows, full landscape e.t.c.

Sounds like ours, very dated with lots of abysmal and sometimes dangerous DIY - you can see it here on my blog if you're interested. It's quite long now and that link takes you to the latest page, to read from the beginning you have to go to the bottom of the page and click "older posts" and keep doing that until you get to the beginning.

A few of us have got blogs and we like to encourage all who join us to do the same, not that we're nosey of course (er........well maybe a couple of us are ) but it's nice to see what progress everyone is making and look at all the lovely choices they've made.

Luckily hubby has worked in the building trade for 20 years so he can either do the work himself or knows a man who can !!

Very useful. We've had to have builders in for a dangerous loft conversion rebuild and other jobs we decided to have done led to them finding more problems which needed rectifying and more money needed to be spent.

Looking forward to hearing all about your progress.

latecomer

Welcome MadMonkey. sounds like you've got a lot of work to do but then having a OH in the trade will make a huge difference.

latecomer

We inspected our new skirting boards last night and its not good news. While the profile isn't bad at all, thats the only good thing that can be said for them. Nearly all boards have splits in them and some have other damage such as scratches or bits broken off. And to add to that, they haven't been cut in the same direction so some boards are across the grain and others are with the grain and given that Douglas Fir has a very pronounced grain it makes them look like completely different woods and would look rediculous if you put them in the same room. would be fine if we were glossing them but if we were doing that we would have bought bog standard pine at a fraction of the cost (20%). :mad:

I dont think this is in any way acceptable but would appreciate the views of others.

I'm building myself up to phoning the timber supplier to see what they have to say about it while trying to keep myself calm enough to make the call.

TomsMom

latecomer wrote: »

We inspected our new skirting boards last night and its not good news. While the profile isn't bad at all, thats the only good thing that can be said for them. Nearly all boards have splits in them and some have other damage such as scratches or bits broken off. And to add to that, they haven't been cut in the same direction so some boards are across the grain and others are with the grain and given that Douglas Fir has a very pronounced grain it makes them look like completely different woods and would look rediculous if you put them in the same room. would be fine if we were glossing them but if we were doing that we would have bought bog standard pine at a fraction of the cost (20%). :mad:

I dont think this is in any way acceptable but would appreciate the views of others.

I'm building myself up to phoning the timber supplier to see what they have to say about it while trying to keep myself calm enough to make the call.

Oh latecomer, how really disappointing for you. For me, this would most certainly be unacceptable. When you're paying that sort of price, and they are to have a natural finish, then of course they have to look right and match. I don't know what it looks like, do you have a link?

Is the timber supplier someone local, is it stored outside? I know our local Travis Perkins store all their banisters, newel posts, etc. outside in all weathers and when we were there at the weekend it was soaked from the rain which surely can't do it any good .

I would be looking for replacements, you can't spoil your house for something like this that is not of your doing.

andrew-b

Welcome Madmonkey!

Sounds disappointing Latecomer..i'd phone them up and ask them to take it back and either replace with wood of "merchandisable quality" or refund...probably would be fine for painting but not what you wanted it for. I think ideally you need to be able to pick and choose each piece yourself - i'm very picky about that sort of thing and usually inspect every piece of wood i buy for warping, splitting etc.

All our woodwork is going to be white satinwood - mainly because otherwise it means replacing all the architraves and skirtings rather than renovating existing ones. I hear what your saying about chips TomsMom - i'm always telling OH to be careful of my paintwork - really annoying when all your efforts get spoilt by a few chips and is a pain to make good.

For those intending to paint new skirtings and architraves...pre-primed MDF one's are simpler to deal with without the knots, splits and warping of pine and by the time you've painted them you'd never know they were MDF.

Andy