Kitchen Improvements

We blogged a while ago about our Kitchen and the Bodged Electrics, which left the room in a bit of a sorry state. So, whilst we were sorting the study out over Easter, Kate's Dad came down to help us finish off the Kitchen.

Tiling and generally tidying up behind the fridge:
When we moved in to the house we found that there was a large patch of plaster missing on the wall behind the fridge. There were also several large holes and channels where wires had been chased through the walls in the past. There wasn't any skirting on the back wall, and the skirting on the right hand wall was only half painted. Furthermore, this bit of wall also housed two cooker switches, one of which had the spur running from it for the cupboard light and sockets in the lounge. Our electrician had sorted out these issues leaving us with just one safe (and legal) switch, but it left us with some broken tiles that needed replacing.

Unfortunately, we didn't get round to taking a "before picture" of this bit when we first moved in, so we pick up the tale after some painting, filling and plastering had taken place.

Before and After: Re-tiling, painting and adding Skirting Board

During: Thanks Daddy!

Re-tiling:
Another electrical issue we had was a socket overhanging the gas hob. This had to be moved out of the way and a blanking plate installed in its place. Again, this left us with quite a few broken or missing tiles, so Kate's Dad sorted that out too...

Before and After: Socket on the left replaced one where the blanking plate now lives

And closer up....good as new!

Putting up some blinds:
We are a bit over looked at the back of our house (and the front actually - the joy of a terraced house in the city), so we wanted some blinds in the Kitchen to add a bit of privacy and obviously to shade us from the sun when necessary! We picked up some reasonably priced Ikea Venetian blinds which we're mighty pleased with.

During

Before and After: Window 1

Before and After: Window 2

General Before/After:
This room is slowly changing so its easy to forget how different it is from when we first looked around...

Before: Estate Agent's Photo

After: It has already changed again since taking this - we've added a wine rack and unpacked our coffee machine!

Going Forward:
There are a few remaining fiddly jobs in the Kitchen (such as properly attaching some skirting behind the radiator which is currently just resting against the wall). Also, a few final tweaks will make it fully fit for purpose, such as adding these in the two corner cupboards to maximise our storage:

Le Mans Corner Storage Solution

But that is a little way off yet. For now, on with Bedroom 2! 

Bedroom 2 - The update...

The plasterer has been!  Here's the timelapse (again!) for the plastering being done.  It cuts out early as I managed to mess up charging the camera, but hopefully you should get the gist!

It has thrown up a few surprises, such as realising that the ceiling is not properly fixed in place.  It appears that whoever plasterboarded the ceiling just nailed the boards to the existing ceiling, rather than to the joists themselves.  The consequence if this is that, if you climb a ladder, you can push the ceiling upwards by about an inch!  The plan is to screw it properly to the joists and then hopefully, at some point in the future, finish it off with coving.


The other surprise was the amount of woodchip wallpaper that I found hiding underneath the paint yesterday.  That was another couple of hours of my life that I'll never get back!  Large swathes of it was (very helpfully covered in Polyfilla, meaning that we weren't quite sure how far we had to strip the paper back.  It was a bit of trial and error!

If anyone in the area would like a brilliant plasterer, ours comes very highly recommended:

Palace Plastering

Bedroom 2 - The quick version!

So.  We had the next BIG push on the house this weekend!  Bedroom 2.  Hopefully, this should allow us to stop living in the lounge quite so much! 

Here is the (very quick) video version of what we did.  We've spent the last two days stripping two lathe and plaster walls (which were, unfortunately, beyond repair) in preparation of the plasterer who is coming on Tuesday morning.  It was either that or wait until June to get the room done.

For those who have never stripped a lathe and plaster wall, believe EVERYTHING that anyone else says about how messy it is.

We'll update you all again once we've had another development.

At long last...

...the office is done!

Not that we need an office, but it's always nice to have somewhere to stick the computer and everything else like that!

It took about a week to do, during which time, we had hoped to complete both the office and bedroom two.  More to come on that later though!

For those who enjoy the geeky side of things, here's a little timelapse video showing the office from (almost) start to finish.  There's a bit of a gap in the decorating phase due to camera issues, but other than that, it's a fairly comprehensive catch up in about 30 seconds!

So on to bedroom two.

We had hoped to Polyfilla and paint the room during the same week.  However, when we've looked at it, the walls are in a truly appalling state.  So we're currently getting quotes to see how much it would cost to get the walls skimmed, so that they can have a nice finish.  And whilst we were at it, we've got quote to do the hallway too.  Which means (potentially) pulling down some old lath and plaster.  So you can see how this has all snowballed this week!

Oh well, decisions can wait for now!  We've got a nice, relaxing weekend planned and I'm going to try and stop thinking about the house for just two days!  We'll let you know how we get on...

The Kettle Is Dead...Long Live The Kettle

I didn't realise how annoying such a small thing could be!  There's nothing quite like suddenly finding yourself unable to make your first coffee of the morning.  Evidently, this leads to me stomping around the house until I get my fix.

So off we go on another shopping trip.  Just what we need, more money to be spent!

Oh well.  Look at our shiny new kettle!

Catch up...Part 2 - The Bedrooms

I realised that, in all the updating, we failed to mention bedrooms! Let's start with a success story!

We figured that we should tackle the master bedroom fairly early on so that we could at least have somewhere comfy to sleep. We didn't like the existing colour scheme, it was too dark, so thought we'd try and lighten it a bit. We also wanted to tidy the walls up a bit as they were looking a bit haggered!

We settled on a colour scheme and thought we'd try our hand at wallpapering too. Don't be under any illusions, we went for the cheating option and found some 'Paste the Wall' stuff that we liked!

Firstly, we thought we'd attack the walls with some Polyfilla to fill a few holes. Or so we thought. This was the end result of the hole-filling expedition...maybe we should have just replastered!

Painting was next on the list, which went fairly smoothly (pun intended!). Which left just the wallpapering.

We approached this with some trepidation, neither of us having any experience. I'd like to think we didn't do a bad job though!

Having decorated, we then hit a small stumbling block. My brother came to visit the house whilst in town. He walked in the door, took one look at the carpet and announced 'You've got carpet moths!' Carpet-whats? Apparently quite common, this was why large portions of our carpets were threadbare. Great! Another unwanted expense.

The next 3 weeks (ish) were spent sleeping on the floor, with the mattress wrapped in a large plastic sheet, just to make sure we didn't attract any unwanted guests!  We made an appointment with Carpetright for them to come and replace all of the carpet in the hallway, stairs and landing as well as all 3 bedrooms.  We managed to go for the cheapest carpet they offer and still end up spending a fair chunk of money.  We did find out, however, that we had bought a synthetic carpet and that, therefore, we shouldn't have any problems with the moths in the future.  Bonus!

With the carpet fitted, we were finally able to finish off the bedroom, construct the bed and properly move in to that room.  We had a minor issue with the water coming through the front wall of the bedroom not long after moving in there, but this seems to have been a one-off, having had far heavier rain since and not had a repeat show.

So that's the master bedroom!

The other two bedrooms are a different story.

Bedroom two has, inadvertently, become a dumping ground for all sorts of bits which don't currently have a home elsewhere.  Bedroom three had some fantastic woodchip wallpaper, which appeared to have been partially and halfheartedly removed by some previous occupiers.  We wanted this taken off completely before decorating, so attacked nervously, crossing our fingers and hoping that it didn't pull any plaster off. A day or so later, the wall was stripped.  We needn't have worried, it was plasterboard!

So the plan from here on in?  We've got a week off together soon, so are planning to hit both of the remaining bedrooms, aiming to complete the decorating in that time.  Only then can we finally furnish bedroom three (the study) and make bedroom two the spare bedroom, ready to receive guests at last.

We'll let you know how we get on and we promise to include some more photos to show our progress :)

Taps - The conclusion?

So apparently the taps weren't quite done!

Olives.  Not avocados, as I have repeatedly called them today!

These tricky little blighters turned out to be the problem!  Despite stating confidently, last night, that the job was finished, it turned out that they were still leaking every so slightly.

So today, after getting a couple of hours sleep following my night shift, I decided to attack the problem and get it sorted, hopefully once and for all.  Stripping the pipes down again was a lot easier today having had the experience from yesterday.  I managed to cut the offending olives off fairly easily and replace them.  Add some new nuts to the compression joint and I hoped we were ready to go.

Fingers crossed.  Turn the water back on again.....Success!  No leaking anymore.  Another 20 minutes saw me fit the new plug-plunger thingy (edit: apparently called Pop-Up Waste) and we now have a functioning sink once more.

Do I dare attack the bath tomorrow and attempt to change those taps too?  I'm not sure...