Right, well, this could be a test of memory! It’s coming up to a month since the last post and a lot has been going on in the cottage in that time.
Also, I have mislaid our camera – hopefully it’ll turn up, but it does mean any photos are from my quite poor quality phone camera for now, of which there aren’t many. It’s the usual trick of not taking photos because I’m too busy getting on!
The last time I posted we had finished the plastering on the Sunday and were waiting a couple of days for the plaster to dry out. On the Monday I last posted we travelled to Newcastle to see the Unthanks perform at the The Tyne Theatre. It was a fantastic performance and venue. Brilliant. We both enjoyed it and loved being back in the toon and seeing a little bit of family! It truly was a fleeting visit as we left on Tuesday morning to get back to work having kipped at the long bank B&B. We had a Will in tow with us too on his way back for uni exams in Liverpool.
Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday evenings were spent lime washing the walls and ceiling transforming the room from brown to whit-ish. The white we had chosen for the walls was ‘portland’ – which we used in the rest of the house. However, as we were going for the all white country cottage look in the bedroom we realised the slightly grey/green off white of the Portland would be quite obvious next to white furniture and flooring, so decided to re lime wash the walls with pure white lime wash. This turned out to be a good decision and it looks good!
The Friday was set aside for installing the radiator. Although I had put the day aside, I had secretly hoped I would be done by lunch. Turned out to take all day. Bah. The installation of the radiator on the wall was surprisingly easy and lulled me into a false sense of optimism.
The radiator is chuffing heavy, and knowing how tricky it is to get a good fixing onto our walls we decided to fix panels of ply wood to the walls using window anchors before putting the top layer of plaster on the walls. This allowed us to use coach bolts into the plywood to fix the radiator brackets, and it worked a treat. Brill.
The old radiator was on the wall to the right as you walk into the room. To maximise useable space for furniture and storage we worked out the best position would be a vertical radiator next to the door. So the plumbing needed to be run around to the new radiator. This was relatively easy, although I needed to modify the step to run the pipes though. There is a lot going on in that step. All electricity cables, network cables, data cables, gas and flow and return pipes run through it!
So all went quite well until I filled the radiator and found the valves were weeping. So the radiator had to be drained, valve taken off, put PTFE tape back on, re tightened valve, and fill up. Then it still leaked. SO did it again, and again. The problem was I couldn’t find my valve allen key so had to improvise using a file to tighten the valve! Clearly I could get it tight enough. I then found my allen key, stuck on a load of ptfe and gave it a good seeing to – being careful not to split the female thread. That got it. It was very frustrating – good job I allowed the whole day.
Tilt your head to view correctly :)
I think on the Saturday we were at a wedding, then Sunday was easter day. We didn’t get much done on wither of those days, although a couple of hours were spent on the Sunday afternoon getting stuff ready for plastering the outside on the Monday.
Monday came and we got a good start on plastering the outside of the house. We had decided to go with the eco mortar finish as it was easier to finish, quicker and easier to mix and not much more expensive. It had also worked well on the other side of the house last year.
The first mix was done by 8am and I got plastering. Hannah did the mixing and general labourer work and helped with the sponge finish in the places she could reach. I think it was about 7pm when we finished and got packed away. A long hard day but well worth it. It is greatly improved (although I would like it to be better ;p) and we got it done in a day. Brilliant.
The Tuesday I was back at work, but decided to take Wednesday and Thursday as holiday and make the most of the long weekend her Majesty had gifted us.
The Wednesday and Thursday was spent finishing lime wash in the bedroom, stripping plaster from the window reveal, cleaning stone work and emptying the room. I did several tip trips too. Oh, and under coated the wood and constructed the boxing around the edge of the room having finished installing network and coaxial cable.
Friday was put aside for laying the floor. This was quite un enjoyable. I got it done in a day which was good, but not really know what I was doing I didn’t know if I had completely messed it up or not. It got to the end of the day and the boards just needed screwing down. Saturday morning I fixed skirting boards before going to a birthday party near barnard castle for the afternoon. In our usual way of doing multiple things at once we went via Dewsbury Wilkinsons as it turns out this was the only place locally who stocked the ‘international snow storm’’ floor paint we wanted for the floor boards. The magazines Hannah had done her research reading only recommended this paint, so we tracked it down.
Now I quite liked the floorboards with the natural colour, but Hannah was very keen to have them white and they do look good white, but I still quite like the wood look too.
I must learn how to rotate these photos
On the was back from the party we called at B&Q to get some finishing strips to cover the expansion gaps at the edges of the room, and promptly bought the wrong ones. Doh, so after church on the Sunday I returned them and got the correct (much cheaper) ones.
This has been a bit of theme over the last few weeks – returning items. We have saved quite a bit of money returning unused items to Womersleys, B&Q and Wickes. It has definitely paid off keeping receipts safe this time around!
Saturday evening I put a couple of hours in filling behind the skirting boards with coarse lime mortar, then painting the skirting boards with undercoat.
Sunday afternoon I thought I would finish screwing floorboards down and then fit the finishing strips. A simple job. Until you put the last screw through a pipe! What a pain the proverbial. It took the rest of Sunday to get the floorboards up and drain the system, then about 6 further hours on Monday to replace a section of the 22mm central heating pipe. Morale was low over those 2 days for sure. We were both very tired having been working flat out for weeks and it’s always demoralising to undo work you have just done. It was a tense few days as Will will testify to. Hannah had thrown a wedding day party on the Friday which will had come over to Huddersfield for then decided to stay for the weekend. I don’t think he realised what he was letting himself in for.
Funnily Sunday marked 4 years to the date that we got the keys to the house, and a day short of 2 years since we stripped the plaster from the outside walls, marking the start of the major work in the house.
Anyway, once the pipe was repaired and tested (twice as one of the joints failed on the first system refill – my fault – I didn’t get an even heat around the joint due to the awkward positioning.) hannah, will and I emptied the room, sanded the floor and put the first coat of paint on. Grand – we were getting back on track.
Tuesday Will left, and I put the top coat of paint on the floor in the evening.
Wednesday I think Hannah did the top coat of paint around the door frame and boxing.
Thursday afternoon our electrician chum came around to do second fix in the room, installing lights, sockets and switches. Again, something I could have done but apparently it’s worth being legal on these things. It’s all ok until the house burns don and the insurance company starts to ask questions! Thursday night Hannah picked me up from work and we went to Ikea to buy the shelves for the room and a couple of other bits like a rug (the cheapest going, naturally, which was also the one we liked, which was good!) and bedding. Thursday night we set the futon up and turned the lights on. That was a good feeling!
Friday Ben Ward arrived for the weekend and was the first person to kip in the spare room marking it’s sort of completion! When I got in from work I tried some cillit bang on the windows. Ever since we had plastered the outside of the house 2 years ago we really struggled to get them sparkling clean, and there were some very bad stains that we couldn’t shift following the latest plastering. I realised that it was probably just lime scale and a limescale remover would probably do the trick. So we gave the windows a going over with the cillit bang and man it did the trick! They’ve not been that clean since they were put in over 2 years ago. Fantastic, particularly as we thought we had screwed them forever!
Friday night we went to a friends house for a BBQ and had a cracking time sitting out in the warm evening, playing cricket in the garden and drinking beer. What a feeling to hang out with friends and relax again! Missed that for a fair few weeks!
Saturday was the first day we didn’t have to crack on with DIY for quite some time. What a novelty. We had a steady day, dropping ben off at the station for him to go to Liverpool at 8ish, then we had a breakfast sandwich and a coffee from a well know high street fast food supplier and set about putting up flat pack furniture, sanding the desk and sorting out all the junk that had been cluttering up the house. Not the most relaxing day, but a satisfyingly productive one!
Can’t remember Saturday night.
Sunday was church in the morning, lunch with Ben and a cup of tea, then a meeting at church in the afternoon, then the evening we had a takeaway to belated celebrate Ben’s birthday, played on xbox and kinect and got a loooooong game of Carcassonne in too.
Monday we were enormously blessed to have a meal dropped off at our house from a friend at church out of the blue. Lasagne, wine, garlic bread and salad and lemon cheesecake. Absolutely brilliantly fantastic. Perfect timing. We thoroughly enjoyed it and put our feet up.
So that’s all up to date.
Oh yeah, somewhere in all that Hannah and I lime washed the outside of the house a few times and we took down the hessian curtains. I think that was Tuesday and Wednesday last week.
The spare room is pretty much finished. Lots of sorting out to do and little things like finishing strips and window frames need doing, but it is as good as done. Awesome. It feels good.
So there we have it. All rooms have been completely gutted since 2007 and made good from scratch. Windows have been replaced and the outside has been rendered. 4 years – that’s 1 year ahead of time. Who’s that saying it’s taken us a long time?!!!!
Of course, I don’t think it will every really be finished. The outside windows need repainting, as does guttering and downpipes. The bathroom needs repairing following our leak before Christmas. Then there are things like staining the doors and painting the windows in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. So there is still plenty to do. WE would also like to do something with the garden and the bit of space we have at the front of the house. This requires saving the pennies though, as the bedroom has been far more expensive than hoped! Now this is the kind of stuff I imagine is more typical to do when someone buys a house, so we’ve got ourselves to point zero in that sense J
First thing up is to repaint the windows and tidy the external paint work generally, then after that we’ll see how we get on. We’ll keep you posted.
Until next time…
