Nice people thread part 8 - worth the wait

fc123

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Yes, most of it before we moved there in Dec 2011.

New floors throughout, every inch of the floors needed replacing. We went for oak floorboards in the bedrooms, living room and studies, and slate in the downstairs hall, bathrooms and kitchen.

New kitchen (the old one was cheap as chips in about 1990, and revolting) which is really nice.

Partition walls upstairs, which divided one massive upstairs room into a semi-open plan living room / kitchen, and two tiny studies.

New plastering on the upstairs ceilings, and most of the downstairs ones.

New bath, shower, loos and sinks.

Everywhere needed painting and so forth, obviously, too.

But we knew all that when we bought it, and we could only afford it in the first place because people in central London don't, apparently, want to have to anything to their new pads apart from move in with their spare pants and toothbrush.

I have heard that too.....yours sounds lovely plus you have the advantage of being able to snook off to Kent at W/E so can get out of London when you feel like it. Perfect set up

I am finding our work not fun at all and I thought I would but it's just going on and on and has cost double due to all the problems that cropped up and delays with snow etc. We started in November..it's ridiculous.

It's only half the job as well....the back will start in the summer.

I have no kitchen

The Margate house will have zero budget for a year and needs everything doing but I have chosen it's sofa..a white ghost chesterfield which will be the design starting point for the lounge decor.

neverdespairgirl

fc123 wrote: »

I have heard that too.....yours sounds lovely plus you have the advantage of being able to snook off to Kent at W/E so can get out of London when you feel like it. Perfect set up

I am finding our work not fun at all and I thought I would but it's just going on and on and has cost double due to all the problems that cropped up and delays with snow etc. We started in November..it's ridiculous.

It's only half the job as well....the back will start in the summer.

I have no kitchen

Just take a deep breath and remember how lovely it will be once it's all done?

The thing that nearly sunk my patience was curtains. Our building is a lovely converted factory, with massive, massive windows. Which is great, in a way.

Then we found out that no-one makes ready-made curtains in those sizes, and that the cost of getting them made would pay off Cyprus' overdraft.

So I decided to make them myself.

I did Isaac's bedroom first, he has mid-blue cotton with stars randomly positioned across them - he scattered them, when the curtains were done, and I added them.

Then I did the living room ones, purple-blue silk (a total bargain, it was £6 a metre from a Bethnal Green remnants warehouse). It needed an awful lot of material, though - the pair of curtains are, now they are drawn in at the top, 14ft wide and 11.5 ft long.

I've also done the spare room curtains, which are dark blue cotton - one pair for the windows, and one long one for the door to the "garden" (AKA, the world's smallest patio). I had to do these quickly, because after my parents sold their house in London, my mother stayed with us the night before and two nights after her sessions of chemotherapy.

Our bedroom still has a torn duvet cover elegantly tied on to the curtain poles. I need to choose and buy some material for our room, now that my nightmare 3 month trial's over.

fc123 wrote: »

The Margate house will have zero budget for a year and needs everything doing but I have chosen it's sofa..a white ghost chesterfield which will be the design starting point for the lounge decor.

You are a very brave woman. I'd never be comfortable anywhere near a white sofa, I just know I'd wreck it.

What do you have in mind in the end for the rest of the place?

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

I never shower muslims.

:rotfl:
Wonderful post

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

... we found out that no-one makes ready-made curtains in those sizes, and that the cost of getting them made would pay off Cyprus' overdraft.

So I decided to make them myself.

Respect. Making curtains at all is quite beyond me, but curtains that size are amazing. Well done you.

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

You are a very brave woman. I'd never be comfortable anywhere near a white sofa, I just know I'd wreck it.

So would I.

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

What do you have in mind in the end for the rest of the place?

Yes, please do tell.

My lovely builder neighbour has been helping me again. Do you remember my amazing friend who came to stay when I was moving house to help with the move? She's here again this week, and tomorrow we are going to put up shelves in the family room. When I told my builder neighbour that I wouldn't be needing him to do those shelves after all, he told me he could get the boards and brackets much more cheaply at trade prices than my friend and I would be able to get them retail, so he came round last weekend and measured up, and delivered the stuff earlier this week. So tomorrow she'll be issuing instructions and drilling things, and I'll be holding the spirit level and passing the screws. We're also going to try to bodge a repair on the bin under the kitchen sink, which has recently stopped swinging out when the cupboard is opened, and also stopped opening its own lid. She really is an awesome friend.

The toys and games and things are mostly going to go in a series of uniformly sized cardboard boxes that I got for free from school. They come with 5 reams of A4 photocopier paper in, and we get through loads of them, which then go off for recycling, so nobody minds if I nick them. DD is going to paint them in various colours of paint left over from when we decorated the bedrooms when we moved in, so they don't all say "Multicopy - the reliable paper" all over them. We should have quite a lot of colours for her to use. First of all there there are the colours we used to decorate the bedrooms and the tester pots for the colours we decided not to use. Given that DS's room is bright spearmint green and DD's room has all four walls completely different colours, that gives us several quite bright colours to start with. Then there are also several pots left behind by the previous owners, many of which were used on rooms that have since been repainted, either by them or by us. So she should be able to create a cheerful variety, and if we decide we need a few more we can just get some tester pots. So it will have hardly cost anything, and I won't mind replacing the boxes if the kids grow out of wanting lots of bright colours of boxes as they get a bit older. Likewise, even though they're not the most robust of things to put toys in, if any get a bit dilapidated, I can just bring home some more from school and we can paint those as replacements.

michaels

White sofa...ha, ha, ha

Generali

michaels wrote: »

White sofa...ha, ha, ha

You may laugh but I've got a white sofa. It's great apart from the stains of course.

Spirit_2

Generali wrote: »

You may laugh but I've got a white sofa. It's great apart from the stains of course.

We have two damask covered cream sofas. In the sitting room off the kitchen.

Throws are my freind.

PasturesNew

LydiaJ wrote: »

The toys and games and things are mostly going to go in a series of uniformly sized cardboard boxes that I got for free from school. They come with 5 reams of A4 photocopier paper in, and we get through loads of them, which then go off for recycling, so nobody minds if I nick them.

If you've got a local photocopying shop, it's worthwhile going in there and seeing if they've got/will save the identical type of boxes (with lids) for A3 paper. I had some of those years ago and they're a brilliant size.

And/or an architect's office as they're bound to photocopy plans onto A3 for people I bet.

PasturesNew

michaels wrote: »

White sofa...ha, ha, ha

Post of the week.

silvercar

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'm sure she's a bloke in a dress

Had a major stroke, nearly died, quite a lot of reconstruction work...

..and smokes 40 a day.

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

Had a major stroke, nearly died, quite a lot of reconstruction work.

Never knew that.