Novice house renovators - month 9

[parisdisneyfan]

9th Month June to July

Phase 1 which covered the bathrooms, windows, boiler and woodwork is to all intents and purposes finished. The builder and plumber who have been here almost full time over the last 8 weeks have moved on to other jobs for the moment although both will pop back when a couple of delayed items arrive.

All 3 bathrooms are now finished bar the shower plinth in our ensuite. We are so pleased with them all despite having issues with the tiler! Also ended up going over budget quite a bit due to the extra work once we had ripped out the old stuff and the extra tiles we needed. Although the designer had allowed the 10% wastage we needed another 6 boxes of tiles! In all both rooms had 16 m of tiling each when we had only allowed 13 m! Apparently that is the problem with small awkward rooms and big tiles!

The internal doors are all fitted and look great. All the skirtings and architrave have been replaced with new deep Ogee. This entailed dh moving a couple of power points as they were on the old skirting board.
This caused a lot of dust and curses!

The new bannister we are very pleased with. We really can’t believe that the newel posts are mdf with hand-veneered oak, they look solid, just waiting for the newel caps!

Phase 2 the kitchen/garage conversion is now in progress and we are awaiting the plans from the architect, and the quotes from our builder etc for the work. Once we have the plans I will book a further appointment with Howdens for the kitchen design. We have had various discussions with the builder and the architect and our ideas have evolved, both for the space and costs, but we think we have struck the right balance now, just have to see if the architect can make the idea work! SSEB have been out and it will be £500 to move the electricity supply and our supplier will move the meters for free .

Meanwhile, I am deciding on the colour schemes for each room to be ready for the decorator in September. Sadly, we are no longer renovating our wood block floor. We discovered that the wood is not laid on floorboards – it is the floorboards! This means that we can’t lift them to alter the hall rad as they are nailed and glued to the joists. If they were just onto floorboards they would probably be salvageable but not this way. If we had known this we would have left the skirting board replacement and possibly had a wood floor in the hall, however now we will probably just go for Karndean again. Luckily they now do a parquet style floor so may choose that right through hall, kitchen and conservatory.

The veggie and fruit patch is coming on, so much lettuce to use, who knew lettuce soup was a thing! Next year I will know to stagger the planting of seeds! Potatoes have flowered so I think I can harvest them soon, other stuff still growing well, lots of blackberries, raspberries and blueberries to ripen and flowers on the courgettes, cucumber and tomatoes. I keep seeing baby white strawberries but they then disappear! I suspect the rabbits are eating them right off the plants! I used some birthday money to buy some hanging baskets and pots for the front and back, luckily we have had plenty of rain to give them all a good start. We have discovered the hard work that hedges entail, especially when they haven't been pruned for a few years! We have actually accepted defeat and asked for a quote to remove all the garden waste so will see how much that is, worse case is getting another skip!

Dh got the fun cutting using the electric hedge cutters while I had to clear it all up, boy that was a lot of cuttings! We also had the excitement of our electricity board cutting down an ash tree that was entangled in next doors power line, great fun watching him swing the chain saw and himself around and bringing it down although the pics don't really show him doing his Cirque du Soleil audition with a chainsaw

We have a nice pile of ash logs to season for the fire in a couple of years time.

Think that is all for this month. Think August will be quite quiet while we wait for the architects plans and then quotes for the work. Looking forward to the decorator and new carpets, hoping that will finally get rid of the old house smell

Thanks for reading and see you next month!

[4fromsuffolk]

Love your bathrooms. Looking forward to your next update!

[BarryandCaron]

I love reading your updates, thanks for sharing.

[ClaireNJ]

Love your bathrooms tiles Looks FAB 🥰

[Hmr89]

Great update: bathroom is beautiful!

[Momofboys]

Love reading your updates. Bathrooms are fab!

[Mr Tom Morrow]

Coming along beautifully. I do like the tiles and the tiler has done a great job with his lines. Not easy in an older house.

That's a novel method of sorting out the newel posts. Saves having to cut them off and putting a new one on with a newel connector. Looks much neater.

What caps are you having? Chrome/Metal to match the door handles

[parisdisneyfan]

Originally Posted by Mr Tom Morrow

Coming along beautifully. I do like the tiles and the tiler has done a great job with his lines. Not easy in an older house.

That's a novel method of sorting out the newel posts. Saves having to cut them off and putting a new one on with a newel connector. Looks much neater.

What caps are you having? Chrome/Metal to match the door handles

See more...

The tiling is good but he let himself down with not showing up/answering messages and calls plus leaving the glue mess on tiles! Not sure whether we overpaid but it worked out at about £55 a metre for him, so including the tile, adhesive, grout and trim every tile has cost about £20 to be on the wall😳 We still have a couple of fixtures that will require drilling into tile so dh is going to let the builder do it, rather then crack the tile😉

The newel caps are like flat pyramids in oak, not sure what you call it. I think it is work like this that is showing what a perfectionist our carpenter is. It is hard to see in photos but you really can’t see the joins on the corners. Forgot to add that he rebuilt the eaves cupboard doors for us to match the room doors. We were going for oak but decided we would prefer them to blend in with the wall when decorated so went for mdf routed to match. So annoyed I didn’t take a picture of the old ones! We are going for push catches on them so no handles and they are soft close hinges. Quite sad how excited I got about them 😂He had to strip out totally and rebuild the frame and linings! The old ones were just some painted kitchen doors on the outside of the opening with rusty hinges. Who ever fitted them didn’t know the meaning if square or right angle!

Did a bit of destruction this morning and took the last of the old polystyrene coving down in the lounge. Unfortunately it uncovered that whoever put the wall lights in didn’t bother to repair behind the coving! A job for dh before the new stuff goes up!

There were no chunks of plaster that came off with the coving despite what it looks like!

[Mr Tom Morrow]

The carpentry work looks excellent. I suspect he has a bench saw and table set up somewhere inside/outside your house?

A good cross cut and rip saw makes such a difference to the finished article.

I know what you mean about newel caps. Nice. The nicest I ever saw in oak was 3 x 5" high 'pine cones' on a dog leg staircase. Mind you they were massive money.

Thats poly adhesive where the old coving came down, needs to be scraped off. Wont take long.

[parisdisneyfan]

Originally Posted by Mr Tom Morrow

The carpentry work looks excellent. I suspect he has a bench saw and table set up somewhere inside/outside your house?

A good cross cut and rip saw makes such a difference to the finished article.

I know what you mean about newel caps. Nice. The nicest I ever saw in oak was 3 x 5" high 'pine cones' on a dog leg staircase. Mind you they were massive money.

Thats poly adhesive where the old coving came down, needs to be scraped off. Wont take long.

See more...

Yep, either front garden or garage depending on weather!

Decorators are dealing with that, they just told me to take the old stuff off😉