Friday, 11 April 2008
Monday, 7 April 2008
New Carpets!
Our carpet fitters have put down the underlay. They'll be finished tomorrow :-) It looks so much more homely even with just the underlay.
We also have our temporary kitchen too. We've got a sink unit with a bit of storage and a small work top. They've also delivered our washing machine and fridge freezer - so we won't be sluming it too badly :-)
Yesterday I put in another full day of loft boarding. I've done 3/4 of it. I felt like I'd done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson this morning.
The new garden shed arrived today. Does anybody know a handy man who can erect it? I'm not going to have time in the next week that's for sure!
Better get back to the packing... :-(
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Sunday, 30 March 2008
13 days to go!
The electricians starting doing the "Final Fix" on Friday. I'm hoping they will be finished by Monday evening as I want to start getting the loft boarded out.
On Saturday I put up some smoke alarms and Fran cleaned. We then starting tidying up the garden by moving all of the building rubbish we have accumulated over the last few months.
On Sunday we spent a couple of hours clearing the back garden ready for a new garden shed.
Only 13 days to go!
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Floor being sanded
The floor in the conservatory, hall and kitchen were sanded today. Can't wait to see what it will look like once the stain is on! :-) The scaffolding came down today too and Adrian our carpenter put the final coat onto the built-in cupboards.
Monday, 24 March 2008
Cleaning
On Sunday we spent the day cleaning up ready for the floor to be sanded on Tuesday. We also made the most of the last few days of having scaffolding up and cleaned up outside too.
Today was a little more relaxed... this morning we went to B&Q to pick up some varnish for the loft ladder and a hose (so that I could clean the top of the conservatory roof). Fran cleaned and varnished the loft ladder whilst I nearly killed myself by slipping on the wet scaffolding in an attempt to clean the roof!
The picture is of the main lounge, showing the built-in cupboards and new fire place. 17 days to go...
Saturday, 22 March 2008
Knackered!
We've spent the last 2 days decorating. We are both knackered!
Fran painted the kitchen on Friday, whilst Dawn painted the woodwork. I cleaned the conservatory roof which was filthy and covered in paint.
Today Fran painted the main bedroom and I sanded and painted the cloakroom. I got the short straw! I HATE sanding, but then so does everybody else!
This week the fitted cupboards were installed into the back and middle bedrooms. They look amazing :-)
We've been trying the get the ground floor totally finahed before the flooring company come in to sand and varnish the floors.
Back to it again tomorrow... next Easter I plan to actually enjoy it!
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Kitchen Nightmares...
Sunday, 16 March 2008
The Coving is finished :-)
Mark our expert cover has finished the coving today :-) He did a fantasic job. Apologies to his daughter for borrowing her daddy for the last week. Hopefully she'll be able to sleep properly next week after being tucked in by dad!
Fran and I have been painting the back bedroom and conservatory area. This afternoon we are taking a well earned rest. Fran has already passed out on the sofa! We were going to go shopping but she's too knackered. Shame...
Saturday, 15 March 2008
Finished Bathroom!
Loads of progress this week :-) We've now got the built-in cupboards fitted in the lounge. The French doors have been fitted. The main bathroom is virtually done. I've been putting up coving every night this week. Absolutely knackered!
The 2nd lounge has been painted and the middle bedroom is almost done too :-)
Today we've had 4 people painting the hallway! Many thanks to Amanda, Rach & Johhny for their help!
Richard (Fran's Dad) has been brilliant too. The doors he has painted look great and he's also been sorting out our floor boards in prepartion for the carpets.
Dawn our decorator has been her usual excellent self!
There has been so much progress this week I may put up some more photo's tomorrow.
As always there are plenty more photo's on our Flickr account here.
Our friends at "Kitchen Needs" have helped us out again with yet another great referral... thanks to their friend Mark we now have coving! Cheers Mark! Mark and I have been burning the midnight oil this week and have got most of the coving done. To be fair I'm just the labourer despite Mark calling me the, "King Cover!" It should all be finished tomorrow.
Sunday, 9 March 2008
A working loo
The bathrooms are nearly fitted and we have a working toilet! The French doors are finally being fitted tomorrow and Tuesday.
We've nearly finished all the prep work. It'll be nice once all the sanding is done and we can start thinking about putting on a top coat of paint.
We've spent most of the weekend sanding and preping. Fran's Dad came along to give us a hand too which was great.
If anyone fancies doing some painting let me know!
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
New Bath!
I'm having to do the blog at the moment as James is not very well... The new bathrooms are being installed this week :-) Praying that everything will be ready for April 11th... Fx
Sunday, 2 March 2008
New Fire Place
We've now had our new fire place installed in the lounge. The loft hatch has been replastered and Virgin Media have put in the new phone lines and broadband. I had to climb onto the roof to put the cabling in place as the engineer wasn't insured to do it. It was a bit hairy but a lot less scary than than the alternative... telling Fran that we had to run cables through every room in the house! :-)
The kitchen electrics are now finished, so they can go ahead and start installing that in a couple of weeks...
Sunday, 24 February 2008
New Loft Hatch
How can anyone get excited about a new loft hatch... well I am! Sad eh? This week the chimney breast in the kitchen has been raised ready for a new extractor fan. The window in the bathroom has been bricked up and rendered. They have finished rendering the back of the house too.
The downstairs cloak room is ready to be fitted as is the upstairs bathroom.
We now have a target move in date! April 11th. Can't wait :-)
Sunday, 17 February 2008
Back of house being re-rendered
What a difference a day makes! The back of the house is looking much better already. If you want to see more photo's you can either click on one of the pictures in the blog or go here
I've arranged the photo's so that the newest appears first.
Saturday, 16 February 2008
Back of house minus the render!
The render on the back of the house has been mostly hacked off. They did it in a day! They are planning to have re-rendered it by Sunday afternoon.
Most of the re-plastering inside the house has now been done too.
Hopefully the new bathrooms will be fitted next week!
Saturday, 9 February 2008
Stud wall freshly plastered!
We're getting there... the stud wall has now been plastered. This week has been a bit of a nightmare. The builders decided to "borrow" the insulation. Luckily our trusty decorator Dawn spotted it and we got the insulation in there before it was re-plastered. It could have been an absolute nightmare. Can you imagine watching football on Sky Sports only to hear Trinny and Suzanna in the background? It doesn't bear thinking about!
The roofers also decided to "borrow" our chimney pots! Again we spotted it and they are now safely stored in the garden. they are worth at least £50 quid each so it was more than a bit cheeky of the roofers to take them. Oh, and the new drain water pipes they fitted by the roofers were obviously facing the wrong way - you could see it easily by eye. Their excuse... "our spirit level is broken." Maybe they lost the bubble? Good excuse lads...
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Downstairs Cloakroom
The downstairs bathroom is coming on well. The carpenter has fitted the door from an old built-in cupboard from upstairs.
The roof is nearly finished too!
Saturday, 26 January 2008
We have heating!
Our trusty plumber, Clive, installed a new central heating system this week so we can finally start trying to dry the place out.
We're a bit dissapointed that the roofers didn't finish this week, because there has been enough dry weather for them. It turns out that they have another job on the go. I'll be able to keep a closer eye on things this coming week as I've got a week off before I start my new job.
The carpenter has removed the old loft hatch, under stairs cupboard and put some plaster board on the stud partitions in the lounge and main bedroom.
We are praying that my house finally exhchanges on Monday. We can't order the kitchen until it does, which is going to hold our move up for even longer, not to mention that fact of 3 mortgages to pay!
We have a new friend as you you will see from the photo's! One of our neighbours has a lovely black cat which has no quarms about wandering in. Fran has fallen in love with it, despite having always said she's more of a dog person! Maybe I should get her a kitten for valentine's day...? :-)
Saturday, 19 January 2008
Front of House
This week the scaffolding went up and the roofers started fixing our leaky roof :-) The carpenter has also removed the built in cupboard from the main bedroom, fitted new skirting, started the partition wall between the "Gok Wan" room and the "Sky Sports" room! (Fran's and my lounge respectively).
Monday, 14 January 2008
Collapsed Kitchen Ceiling
Fran phoned me at work on Friday to tell me that the kitchen ceiling was falling down! I could actually hear it hitting the floor in the background. Very worrying!
Fortunately our team were on the case pretty quickly and it's now pretty much fixed, aside from the coving which will be tricker to replace as its an original feature.
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Our New House!
We bought our new house in December 2007 after a long and protracted buying process. As you can see from the photo it needs quite a bit of work!
The house had been unoccupied for 3 years and in that time it had sprung a few leaks... The photo you can see is of the conservatory floor which was completely rotten (including the joists in the floor).
The plan is to move in by the end of March...