Wallpaper is your friend

Given the frankly wretched state of the walls we decided that the only way forward was to wallpaper using a textured paper that could then be painted. Given that neither of us had done this before we set to work with a not insubstantial amount of trepidation but soon gained confidence...

...a little too much confidence.

It turns out that wet wallpaper is easy to tear. And yes, that was the first piece I put up, yes I did swear and yes, Sonia had already told me that that was likely to happen if I wasn't careful. She is pulling her best "I told you so" face in that picture, having stopped laughing at me. So, in revenge, this is Sonia on our lunch break.

Is that a good sandwich baby?

After this though everything went pretty smoothly and by the following afternoon, the wallpaper was done!

The Dining Room

Living in a building site was starting to grate, so Sid spent some time making the dining room a nicer place to spend time. First coving, Sid got to use his mitre saw to cut the angles and had a frustrating afternoon in the garden trying to cut the coving... at one point our garden looked like a place where bad coving goes to die... badly cut angles in a pile. Sid is nothing if not persistent and succeeded, doing a good job!

 Next, painting. We had Dulux paint mixed , 'Russian Velvet 2'. At this juncture we discovered two things. A, Dulux Vinyl Silk takes 3 coats to cover sunshine/grubby yellow and, B. I cannot paint. Which is a little embarrassing considering that my dad was a painter and decorator and that I had huffily informed Sid... 'of course I know how to paint properly....' He worked on one side and I the other (for a very short time) until he discovered my lack of skills, I had Russian Velvet all over me and all over the brush.... and not so much on the wall.

Look at the concentration...

They say romance is dead.... it does look like a bum though.!

Ta Daaa!! 

Pippa!

Slightly off topic, but on the 8th of November Pippa Talbot arrived! Adorable! I fell in love instantly. So we took a weekend off the house and went to meet our beautiful new niece.

Precious 

Uncle Sid.

My first Hoodie!!

Work in progress... we WILL be in by Christmas!

Ok, so the bedroom, in my opinion, the longest and most work intensive job so far (for me anyway). Although we have discovered that I am not so good at painting, leave me alone with a Black and Decker paint stripper (£5 car boot sale!) various scrapers and Magic FM and I have the patience to strip walls. There were at least 2 layers of wallpaper and various layers of pain on top of them, it was a labour of love! 

Ele came to help for a few hours! Thanks Ele!

My contribution to Movember

The Ceiling

Who wallpapers a ceiling!! Well, once the wallpaper was gone, we realised why. The ceiling is lath and plaster and was made (in the 1920's) with horse hair... mmmmm nice! We had to knock out some of the more damaged sagging parts and fill them as you can see in the pictures. 

Our bedroom, the building site!

 Begone black wall!

The external wall was bitchumened, so we battoned and put up plasterboard. 

Much better

The bikes won't build their own shed....

... because they're two-tired (sorry).

With the arrival of the last of the crap stuff from Weymouth it has become painfully apparent that some innovative storage solutions have to be dreamt up. Work is ongoing to organise the workshop (more on that in another post) but moving the bikes outside has become a priority before the winter demands more work be done indoors.

So we picked up a damaged fence panel from Wickes (£5) and got some roofing felt from a Freecycler and Bob's your auntie's live-in lover. If ypu're wondering why it's dark it's because we were out doing this between 7 and 9 on a Tuesday and the clocks went back on the weekend. Some girls would be in enjoying a cup of hot cocoa on a night like this but not my Sonia. Well done baby, you're living the dream.

Repairing the bathroom ceiling

We used Polycell smoothover on the bathroom ceiling to fill in all the holes. It goes on a bit like plaster but needs sanding down to remove tram lines. It's not a bad finish but does create a *lot* of dust.

At least I'm not the one cleaning up.

The garage roof

As we inherited a leaky roof on the garage/shed/workshop/man cave some remedial work had to be done.

Sealing the flat roof with a liquid rubber paint (two coats) was the easy part. Replacing the timber flashing all the way round was more problematic. Pulling all the tacks out of the felt without ripping it was a pain but Sonia's superior patience (well, superior to mine at least) proved invaluable. Once that was done, it was simply a matter of nailing up some new boards and painting with exterior gloss. It has vastly improved the view from our kitchen window but has unfortunately made the wall look a bit shabby.

BTW, how cute does she look in her coordinating work gear!

Oops!! Butterfingers.

Sonia singing to "Highway to Hell".

The fence Post (get it?)

One of our first priorities in the garden has been to replace the fence that borders the west side of the garden. The one that we inherited was only waist high and was beginning to fall down. Well, after a couple of false starts and more than its fair share of complications the new fence is finally painted and up. Our neighbours have been great, lending us tools and their assistance in putting up a six foot barrier between our gardens.

In order to prevent it looking too monolithic we painted it the same colour as the gate on the other side of the garden. Overall, we're very pleased with the result. Hopefully the neighbours agree.

Not too many pictures to this post as I managed to delete some off the camera by mistake. Suffice it to say it was a pain and it took much longer than it should have done.

Finally!

She's done this before

The bathroom floor

So, with the Garden now approaching a state which can be at least described as "tidy" and with the end of Summer fast approaching it is time to turn our attention to a couple of the highest priority jobs in the house. Starting with the bathroom floor. It has, up until now been bare floorboards over a brand new plaster ceiling in the dining room (!). It has to be covered.

So the first job is to lay a sheet of MDF over the floor boards to even them out a bit. This will prevent the floorboards eventually showing through the vinyl flooring.

Where the toilet goes. Very funny Sonia.

A message to future generations. We was indeed here.

Gemma is a messy showerer at the best of times. No, this isn't a fish eye lens, BTW.

So, though I thought the MDF and gaffer tape looked great Sonia insisted on a vinyl floor covering. I guess  that it also means that we can ditch the elaborate system of moving towels around the floor to prevent the plaster on the ceiling underneath falling off. Shame. Ebay was definitely our friend here. Buying the vinyl online rather than from a shop saved us well over £100.

First though, before starting any job around the house one must consult "the good book". By which I mean the B&Q manual of DIY. http://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Can-Step---Step-Improvement/dp/0500515514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315320229&sr=8-1

Lo she comes with floor descending,
For once on floorboards pee did rain,