It's Christmas Time!!!!!!!!!

Our living room may be a building site, we may have no central heating, we may have no door on the bedroom, or pantry or kitchen, we may even have no curtains in the bedroom, but we do have a christmas tree.

brilliant.

Bedroom Update 4 or 5, i don't remember

Hallo.

Saturday went pretty much to plan. I fitted the radiator and filled it and had no leaks - not a single one :) whoop. It wasn't an easy job due to the nature of our walls. Ended up using 5 inch window anchors to fix the brackets to the walls. Does the job!

Still no central heating, but we've got warm jumpers.

Also got the beam stripped which was good.

Sunday afternoon was spent finishing cleaning the window sill, which Hannah did the most of, cleaning the floor up of rubble and muck and cleaning the big stones in the wall. We did this is the wrong order as cleaning the stones made a load of dust which stained the walls. bummer.

Monday evening was spent repainting the brown wall after Hannah had gone to pick up some more paint during the day. She had also bought a new duvet and duvet cover. For the past 5 weeks we have not had a duvet but been sleeping in sleeping bags due to Osi the mouse (named after Osama bin laden - hides in holes and we can't find him) making a return while we were living at the Gleich Manor and crapping and peeing all over our old duvet. Lovely. It was only a cheap thin one so we thought we'd treat ourselves to a new one for the new room.

Anyway, so i repainted the lime wash and touch up some bits on the ceiling also. The rest of the evening was spent clearing the room o tools and rubish, and clearing the landing of furniture so the fitters could get the carpet upstairs.

Busy evening, but got it all done.

Tuesday the carpet was fitted and I came home early to move bedrooms. I spent the afternoon/evening taking beds and futons apart and putting them back together. Hannah helped also and we made a good start - spending our first night in our new room.

The photos look poor and don't do the room justice, but it is great to be in. A really nice space. Stuff still needs sorting and tidying, and bits need finishing - like a door and curtains (who needs privacy?!). But overall it's a big step up for us.

The spare room is now being turned into what it was before Amy moved in - an office/spare room/chill out area. It will have the desk and sideboard in, xbox and TV, futon and shelves etc. A bit of everything. It will be great to have somewhere to sit and relax other than the kitchen!

Will, hannah's youngest brother is staying for the weekend, so we have a rush to get that room sorted by friday but should be cool.

I think that is all.

Feels like good progress the last 6 weeks. It took 4 weeks to do the bedroom from start to finish, so quite a quick turnaround which is nice. So suddenly we have a nice bathroom, new kitchen, and new bedroom and a spare room, where as 6 weeks ago we had a temporary bedroom full of kitchen and mouse crap, a shell of a bedroom full of old sofas and carpets and an empty kitchen with no units or sinks etc.

Our standard of living has definitely improved, and it will be nice to offer a bedroom to anyone who might ever want to stay!

What's next - well i need to finish the bedroom off with a door and curtains, and there is a long snagging list for the kitchen. We are going to avoid major work over winter to save the pennies, and maybe start plastering in march. So the winter will be spent recouperating, plugging away at snag list and doing a bit of prep work for the living room/stairs/landing project.

Right, lunch time over.

cheerio.

stupid

stupid chuffing brown paint drying all streaky giving me extra work to do. poop.

going to have to go to womersleys on monday, buy some more brown as we haven't enough and give it another coat on monday night before carpet in on tuesday.

More expense and time. Means we're going to have to get everything cleared up over weekend so as to not kick up dust on to the wet paint on monday night.

Annoyed.

At church this morning for meeting till 1 ish i think, then home to do radiator and hopefully some clean up.

sleepy.

Bedroom Update 3

Not got much time but just a quick update.

The bedroom is painted pretty much - just a second coat on the brown to be done tonight.

Carpet is being laid on Tuesday, so we have a few days to get the place cleared up and finished off. We have an upstairs ring main now which is nice! no more extension leads running around the house!

We're pretty happy with how it is looking, although I'm at the stage of being happy with anything as long as it was finished!

Not long now...

here are some pics taken last night and this morning. Spot the trusty laptop banging out some top tunes from Maximo Park if I remember correctly.

Big stones in the wall.

Taken the morning after - the brown has dried a little lighter. Mmmmm chocolate.

Work in progressNearly there.

'Character'
Beam - still needs further stripping of old wall paper

Bedroom update 2

Hello.

It's been a funny week of work on the house. When i think about it it has been productive but it doesn't feel it somhow.

Last weekend we had little willy ward (hannah's brother) stay with us from friday until Monday morning - which was fun.

Last friday night i was doing sound for an event in brighouse and then on saturday night and sunday morning at church. so it was a busy weekend.

On Saturday i got up at 8 and was plastering by 9 which was good. I got the long stone wall done by lunch time ish which was great. I was very pleased and it also marked the final barrel mix of the year - which was timely as it was freezing outside and sunday brought the first frost of the year.

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing ceiling prep ready for plastering - so stripping of wall paper and patching the ceiling with plasterboard.

Sunday we went to wickes after church and picked up some multi surface thistle gypsum plaster to skim the bedroom ceiling on the Monday. I did a touch more ceiling prep on sunday afternoon before lunch and then we went food shopping and we had a nice chilled evening reading books and chatting to Will. Very good.

Monday I left work early - about 2ish i think and was plastering by 3pm. Good. It started off well, but Gypsum is a nightmare to work with. it goes off soooooo quickly which makes it difficult to rework. I finished the ceiling at 9pm and I'll be honest with you... I think Cheryl Cole is great, I still get excited about Christmas, and the bedroom ceiling is crap. Really Crap. I don't know if it can even be called 'rustic'.

I'm pretty dissapointed as it was very very very very hard work and and tried hard to make it good, but alas i'm not skilled on large areas of gypsum plastering! I know that if we had the money to do it with lime i could have got it looking perfectish - but with lime it would have cost about £100 in materials, where as the gypsum cost just over £15.

Also, I'm not sure if i prepped the ceiling well enough - parts i thought were solid became lose when plastering over it. So for now I have fingers crossed and have left it as it is hoping it will last until we move out - but this is probably the worst job i've done on the house!

On tuesday we went to B&Q and bought some off white paint for the ceiling. It was on special offer which was good!

I was going to put a 'mist' coat on the ceiling on wednesday but the plaster wasn't yet dried.

I don't remember thursday at all - which is odd. Very strange.

Friday I put a mist coat on the whole ceiling - this is where you at 30% water to the paint and wash it on the new plaster. It's how the pro's do it apparently. As the plaster soaks it up very quickly you can apply a second coat of paint after an hour - so I did that last night also.

Saturday i had a lie in and got up jsut before 9 i think. I was expecting to do another coat on the ceiling but looking at it this mornign it had covered really well so i didn't bother. Good quality paint kind of pays off.

Yesterday we had gone to Womersleys to get lime wash for the walls. The 'cream' we bought though was a vibrant yellow when we opened it which caused some panick. However, they had given us some white and we had some white around the house to pale it up! So we spent a while this morning mixing it to a desired shade which we eventually did.

We got painting at 12 pm and had the 3 walls done by 13:30 so that was good. Second coat goes on tomorrow.

On friday afternoon we also bought a carpet! well nearly. We went to a cheap place we had been recommended and had a poke about. We found one we liked but it is already reserved. However, the chap said there might be an off cut of it which would fit our room. We need to get in touch on Monday and see - I hope there is because it's nice!

After the lime washing of the walls today we went and bought some light fittings and light shades for the bedroom and a new radiator and new valves etc. If i had been more careful with the plastering then perhaps I wouldn't need to replace these - but at least it'll all look nice and shiny. 8 mm microbore is very expensive though!!!!

So, the plan.

Tomorrow we do second coat of lime wash
Monday - third coat of lime wash and fitting lights and beam cleaning
Tuesday - fourth coat of lime wash and window sill cleaning
Wednesday - primer coat on brown wall ( more about that later)
Thursday - Brow coat number 1 and socket fixing
Friday - Brow coat number 2 and finishing bits off
Saturday - radiator fitting and snag list
Sunday - Contingency
Monday - carpets are fitted (fingers crossed) and we move bedrooms in the evening.

We'll see how all that goes.

I'll take some pictures soon too!

Bedroom Update

With the kitchen working, we took the decision to boss the bedroom before Christmas to restore a higher level of normality.

The thinking is that once the bedroom is done we will be able to make the spare room into a bit of a living room I.e. somewhere nice to sit and socialise/watch DVDs/Listen to music etc which is something we have missed. It also makes the bedroom space a little less chaotic hopefully!!

Doing the bedroom will leave us with only the living room, landing and stairs in a bad state - which we can live with for a bit while we save the pennies!

I took last week off work to get a good start on the bedroom (a tactic I've found to work well when starting a new room). I spent Monday clearing crap out of the room, doing a couple of tip runs with carpets and old furniture. We found a few pounds in the armchairs which was good. I think we bought a hotdog and ice cream at Ikea with it!

By the end of the Monday the room was ready to start plastering.

Tuesday was spent throwing on the first coat with Hannah. Not much fun that layer it has to be said. It doesn't feel any better for doing it, it looks a mess and is quite hard work. But we got it done before 5pm, which was when I had to go to work for a few hours to set some gear up for an open day the following day.

Wednesday was a funny day doing bits and bobs - doing a bit of shopping buying plasterboard, going to Womersleys to stock up on plaster etc. During the afternoon I took down the bedroom stud wall and rebuilt it to move the door to the centre of the room, essentially splitting the room in to 2 halves. 1 half for the bed, 1 half for wardrobe, drawers etc. This took longer than anticipated but got it done and got one piece of plasterboard up before I had to go to a meeting at church.

Thursday came and it was time for the second coat of plaster - haired NHL 3.5 lime plaster. It was a tough, long day. I started at 8am and finished at 9pm ish. The water sprayer I was using to wet the walls down gave up in the afternoon so had to head to the shop for that which was a pain. However, Jon, Liz and Ben Ward turned up during the afternoon and chipped in with mixing, clearing up, wetting walls down etc etc. All valuable help.

Ben W left on Friday morning to get back to Gateshead but Jon and Liz stayed on until Saturday. On Friday Hannah and Liz fitted the doors in the kitchen while Jon and I fit a door frame (surprisingly tricky on an angled wall) and plaster boarded the stud wall. Jon also made a good tidy job of an access hatch to access the trap under the bath and the shower fixings. Very good.

Saturday was a kind of frustrating day and I couldn't work out why really. Jon took some stuff to the tip in the morning while I started to the put the prependuit on the wall in the bedroom. To try and make it go as far as possible I mixed it a bit runny, but probably too runny which made it hard to work with. Got the whole lot done in 1 and a bit bags though, so that was pretty good.

While I was messing about with that Jon came back and plaster boarded the landing for the rest of the day. The wall at the top of the stairs has been un boarded since we did the bathroom back in May 2007, so it's quite a novelty coming up the stairs not to see pipes and wastes etc.

In the afternoon I went back out for supplies of plasterboard, blades and screws and Jon finished off the landing. Great stuff.

While we were doing that, Hannah and Liz were busy in the kitchen fixing worktops to units which takes longer than one might think but they did an excellent job. nicely fitted and secure. all good.

The evening we ate, chatted and waved farewell to Liz and Jon. Thank you for all your help.

Sunday was a day of rest.

Monday I plastered the 2 end walls in the bedroom with the top coat. This was quicker than I thought it would be and I got a finish I'm pretty happy with too. Another step up from the kitchen finish. I only planned to do one wall on Monday, but it went so well I thought I'd do the 2, but this made it a late night. Finished working at 11pm then had tea. Man I was hungry.

Tuesday I plastered the stud wall with the top coat of lime putty. again, this went well and looks good (I think!).

Wednesday I tidied the room of a lot of crap and moved stuff around to allow access to the long stone wall which will be done on Saturday. I also started repairing the ceiling ready for plastering next week.

Thursday (last night) I didn't do much really. I was late from work and had to go straight out after tea to a bonfire party. Which was good.

and Friday is today. I'm busy tonight so the next action will be tomorrow when I do top coat on the stone wall. Should be fun. Maybe.

Job for saturday - Top Coat.

Cheerio.

Lots to see, Lots to do, Lots to write, Lots to read

(Sorry for typos - written very quickly!)

So it has been quite some time!

And finally I grab a bit of time to try and remember what we have been doing for the last 3(!!!) months. I have been busy and not found the time to write, but I also didn’t want to advertise to the local rogues the fact that the house was empty for 7 weeks!

Well anyway, in a land far far away…

We had a week away with the church at the end of July which was nice enough break before the madness began.

It was Hannah’s birthday on Sunday 26th July and her ‘rents came down for a good old nosh up at a restaurant we had never tried before- can’t remember the name now but it’s Nepalese. I had an icecream in a cup shaped as a cow. It’s a winner.

Demolition Week

Some pictures of before we started just for reminders (doesn't actually look that bad does it?!)

Landing
Living Room
main Bedroom
Stairs

The following 5 days brought no death but absolute destruction to our house as we stripped all the plaster from the walls in the main bedroom, stairs and landing and living room. It was horrible horrible horrible work. Didn’t enjoy it much at all, but so grateful for pops Ward spending a week with me – I don’t know how I would have done it on my own. Super labourer. From memory we spent 4 days taking the house apart. The stone surround in the living room took a surprisingly long time to take apart – I think that was one day in total, and we had a significant delay when I managed to go straight through a live lead gas pipe buried in the living room wall. An error had occurred.

"bummer" said Ben, as the house filled with gas.

So that brought a stop to proceedings while we turned off the gas and rang around for a plumber who still worked with lead. Found some in Lancashire who were a little like Cannon and Ball, or maybe more Ball and Ball – a pair of jokers but did a good job. They came out, ‘surveyed’ and decided they would take a feed off the copper pipe that feeds the boiler with gas. There was some monkey work involved with drilling holes through walls and taking ceilings down so we sent them packing and Pops Ward and I set about doing the prep work. They came back a couple of days later and connected it all up. In the mean time we had no gas – so no hot water and no hobs. So out came the camping stoves for tea, and a trip to the Kerns house around the corner for a quick shower. Mmm Clean.

£300 quid later and we were all fixed up again. Frustrating to pay that money as I could have done the work myself but hey hoo. These things have to be done. The rest of the week was spent tidying up, taking rubble to the tip and getting ready for the next stage. Hannah arrived back with Liz and 200 cup cakes they had baked for a wedding on the Friday and the Wards parted with us. That left me and Hannah in a cave of a house!

bedroom

bedroom
bedroom featuring hidden door way into neighbours house and fireplace. Cool

Door way upclose

Lintel for hidden doorway upclose


Dead big fireplace in the living room.


Up the stairs - another hidden door way.

The always 'fun' clearing up process - there was plenty of that going on.

Sparky

The next stage was to replace all the wiring in the house. This took about 7 days (well, 2 Saturdays and few evenings). I spent a lot of time up in the roof doing the upstairs ring main and lighting circuits which was a bit grim and very hot. Not much to say about electrics really. It’s all done and wasn’t too bad. Something that still needs to be done is install a new consumer unit. Currently all the circuits that are live in the house are running off sockets wired in series into the old fuse board. It’s all a little funky at the moment – but it’s safe and works – just doesn’t meet any kind of standards! Hopefully we will get the consumer unit in soon!

The stripping out of the house included the main bedroom, landing and stairs and living room. That involved us packing all our gear off and moving in to the spare room (‘land of spare oom’ as the White Witch would say). So currently the ktichen was intact although half of the ceiling had been removed to do wiring and gas plumbing.

It was mid August when we finished the electrics and thought that actually as the house is such a dump that we should really go the whole hog and do the kitchen as well, rather than making everything else nice and then making the house filthy again by stripping out the kitchen. This posed us with a problem of ‘wehre are we going to live’ as taking the kitchen out would render our house as being ‘ridiculous to live in’ as I seem to remember Ma Evans correctly pointing out. Thanks for that.

New Home

We considered using the trailer tent and camping out side the house – might have been fun for a week but a far more attractive alternative was to live with our chums Si and Cas Gleich in Longwood. It was a big ask, but they agreed and man were we chuffed. It was great having somewhere clean, dry, warm, comfy and most importantly with sky sports to live while we systematically destroyed the house. So big shout out to the Gleich posse. Much appreciated and we really enjoyed it. Hope it wasn’t too much strain on you?!

Destruction part 2

Now, back with the story. Yes, so mid august (ish) the 3rd day of the 3rd ashes test and me and hannah went at our kitchen with a hammer drill each and stripped it all out and took it all to the tip in one day, and promptly moved out. A good days work for sure.

Plastering

I took the following week off work to get a good start on the kitchen. So the Saturday and Sunday were spent doing electrics in the kitchen, running cables to sockets, putting boxes on the wall, putting conduit over cable etc and getting the place ready for the first coat of lime plaster. I also shifted the plumbing about and frilled a hole through the wall to install a tap outside – which Is now very useful for mixing plaster! Thanks to Phil next door for the long term loan of his tap prior to this. Plastering day came and Cas gliech joined Hannah in chucking plaster about the kitchen. Many hands make light work and lots of mess, but very good to get the job done in one day.

Again, from memory that week with the help of Si Gleich I finished off the pantry stud wall and got it plaster-boarded. – That was good. And at the end of the week I spent a very loooong day putting the second coat of haired lime plaster on the walls of the kitchen. Following the second coat was… the third coat. This was the top coat of NHL 2 lime with leighton buzzard fine sand. I wasn’t (still not) happy with the quality of finish I achieved on the external render (job for 2010 there maybe?!) so I dedicated one evening per wall in the kitchen to be able to properly re work the plaster and smooth off for a better finish. This was very tiring and time consuming job, but I’m reasonably happy with the outcome. It is definitely a step up from the external render in terms of finish.

Ceiling

At this point the ceiling was still non existent in the kitchen, so a Saturday morning was spent plaster boarding that while listening to Jonathan Ross on radio 2. Entertaining, but I by far prefer to work on an evening and listen to Radcliffe and Macone (sp?) from 8-10pm mon-thurs. Quality radio featuring Noddy Holder in a Thursday. How can that not be great? Anyway, I digress.

So the ceiling was up and walls were plastered. To lime plaster on to plasterboard uou have to use stuff called prependuit which allows the lime plaster to bind. Unfortunately this is mega expensive at £35 a bag. It took 3 bags to do the pantry wall and ceiling. Wowzers. Calculating that this method was going to cost about £600 across the rest of the house I thought I might have a bash at Gypsum plastering on a wall by the freezer to see how it goes. It went well. Not pro standard, but nice enough for ceilings in the rest of the house when I get that far. Moving on, so I did a coat of prependuit on the ceiling and pantry walls, followed a few days later by a coat of lime putty. Lime putty is great to work with. Nice to achieve a smooth finish and is very workable.

Ma and Pa come to visit/work

By this point we are in the 3rd week of September and ma and pa Evans have come for a week staying at a local B&B on an evening and working on painting the windows during the day. Brilliant! We shared a few meals and laughs and it was very enjoyable to have them here. They did an excellent job also, making the outside of the house look a lot smarter. Thank you very much. Awesome

Door as painted by Ma Evans

Once the ceiling was plastered we had to wait a few days for it to dry before lime washing it white with stuff we had left from the outside. Job done.

Painting

The walls, it was decided were going to be an off white called “Portland” and the wall behind the cooker was going to be green. So we painted them Portland and green. There was a bit of a faff getting the green mixed right, but we’re happy with it now. The walls took about 5 coats to get a decent covering. Hard core.

Floor

So walls are done, next the floor. We found a very nice slate tile we liked for the floor, which surprisingly was the cheapest option also, which was good. So we bought 26 boxes of tiles. I also spent a good while specifying an underfloor heating system. It was tricky as we didn’t want to raise the floor too much, but we found a company in grand Designs magazine who did a slim line under floor mat.

I haggled £200 (!!!!) off the quote and got the lot for £300. Jackpot. As usual, it was a bit awkward to install, as the insulation and the mat raised the level of the floor about 11mm, but the heating wasn’t going under cupboards etc, so Hannah and I spent a couple of evenings sealing chipboard and screwing it to the floor to make up the floor level around the heating mats. It has seem to have worked though. So we stuck the insulation down and prepared the heating matt.

To test it I wired it into the main and it heated it up ok. I was still very nervous about laying the floor though, but bit the bullet and laid all the full tiles on the last Saturday in September.

I spent a further 3 evenings cutting edge pieces and grouting – which was a pain!! The grouting also made a terrible mess all over the floor – so we then spent a further 2 days and an evening scrubbing, washing, rubbing, scraping to get the stuff off. We eventually got there.

While all this was happening in the house Hannah had been pricing up kitchens from here, there, and everywhere! Trying to get a style we liked and a price we liked. We wanted the country cottage look and settled on an Ikea kitchen. It wasn’t a bad price.

So after the floor was finished I installed all the spot lights and wired in the sockets and tested them. I would now like to mention that they all worked first time! Get in there.

Putting in units

So walls, ceiling, floor, lights, sockets all done, must be time for units. Si Gleich, Hannah and I spent an evening building units (I say Hannah, but she disappeared to A&E an hour or so in to the evening swearing she had swallowed a nail. 3 x-rays later and she decided she hadn’t). That was a Friday I think… maybe.

Saturday came round again and Hannah and I spent the day making shelves for the pantry and cutting oak worktops. That was a nervy job as they are very expensive! But we got it done and suddenly we had cupboards and worktops. Fantastic. Must be ready to move back in then.

Old Kitchen Pics

Pantry that I started back in may

Old Kitchen

Old Kitchen

New Kitchen Pics

New slate tile floor with underfloor heating
mmm green.
New pantry. Still needs a door though! All in good time


Lovely dimable spots. mmm cosy.


Ye Olde.

Moving back in

7 weeks after moving out, and 1 week before we anticipated we moved back in to the cottage spending the Sunday afternoon emptying kitchen stuff from the spare room so we could get to the bed! Hannah had to go up north to do some teaching on India so left me to have the first night back on my own.

Unfortunately I was ill. Lots of coughing, weakness and generally under the weather. So I phoned in sick on the Monday. Come the afternoon I was feeling better though so plumbed in the kitchen tap and washing machine and fixed the gas up to the cooker. A truly truly functioning kitchen! Yay. I cooked curry to celebrate.

Amongst all that we still managed to get to see Maximo Park - the greatest band on the planet with Pea and Mel Cassidy, and 2 other people I didn't know. Ruddy Good Fun.

It was 2.5 weeks ago we moved in I think and since then we have slowly been getting the kitchen organised. It isn’t finished yet, there is still a fairly long snag list but we will plod away with that over winter.

For now, our attention has turned to the main bedroom. But more of that soon… real soon… honest.