decorate the house

The spare room is done, Hall stairs and landing next :-)

Walls painted, floor Sanded, Lodger sorted :-)

Well the back room is platered and I’ve fixed the floorboards. Pulled up the carpet on the landing and stairs and sanded down the paintwork.

Should have sorted the stairs landing and back bedroom by June.

But only because the cat peed on it – so not sure if that counts or if that is cheating.

The decorators finished the main stuff in the bathroom today, and will be coming to seal the edges on Monday.

It’s been an interesting exercise to upgrade a whole house from it’s basic 1960s state. It’s not exactly turned out as we envisaged it, due to limitations with the house and our budget, but it’s a huge improvement on the original. We have also got to know lots of local tradesmen, which will help us if we ever go through this exercise again.

Main priorities going forward are to pay off any o/s debt relating to the project(due to be completed in 4 wks time – we have never borrowed for the renovations, just saved up or gone into overdraft). After that, we’re going to take a few months out to consider the finer details – furniture/soft furnishings/shelving. I expect we’ll start to look at this again in the Autumn.

Very pleased to have a new honey-coloured carpet downstairs rather than grey vinyl. It’s much cosier, but it has also changed the whole design ethos. It’s far too English trad for a modernist pad so we’ll be going with a comfortable/modern look instead.

The kitchen tiles go down on Monday so that will be another room finished – only 3 small ones to go and then onto the fun bit – furniture, textiles and trimmings.

After two setbacks with the flooring, we have finally decided on carpet for the lounge/diner and ceramic tiles for the rest of the rooms that need finishing. All being well, everything will be fitted and paid for by mid-Feb.

I really hope that it all goes to plan this time. It would be great to start spring with a finished shell.

The damp readings below the tiles in our house are sky-high, which means we won’t be able to have the wooden floors unless we pay an extra 4 figure sum for a damp proof membrane.

As we’re already stretching ourselves, we have decided to shelve this plan. One snag, we have already paid for the wood and the guys have ripped off our skirting boards. Unfortunately I suspect that we may find ourselves out of pocket on this little experiment.

We have confirmed a fitting in two weeks’ time. It’s not cheap, and we’re having to postpone the kitchen/bathroom flooring to do this, but it will make a MAJOR difference to the whole house.

We have looked into this seriously again and have a fitter coming to give us a quote (hopefully) this week. This could be quite pricey, but it would be amazing to complete it before Christmas.