The Hall/Stairs and Landing

Firstly, let's remind ourselves of what we were up against.

The lovely light fitting we've been living with. Complete
with the *concrete* they'd used to fill  the channel.

The non-working doorbell

A good shot of the carpet and wall

The hall has been a labour of love (read: pain the ass). But, this most neglected of spaces (so neglected in fact, that it was difficult to find many "before" photos) will be the first thing that people see when they walk in the door. The new looks staircase has helped to create a certain "wow-factor" as you walk through the door but it is let down by the rest.

Preparation wasn't too difficult as the previous owners had kindly stripped most of the wallpaper before we got there. Though, curiously had left the ceiling papered. I guess it is a bit of a reach and seems to follow the pattern of "that looks more difficult, so we'll leave it for some other poor sod" which we've seen all over the house.

The first idea was to just paint it but after a quick test patch we (I) decided against that approach. The finish it left was simply too uneven for such a large area. Re-plastering would have involved quite an outlay as the old plaster was pretty crumbly and may have needed replacing so, as a (much) cheaper alternative we decided on lining paper.

This proved to be more difficult than we'd hoped. The plaster was so dry and crumbly that getting the paper to stick to it was a real pain. The seams peeled up a lot and peeled up even more after the paper was painted. The trick is to paint the wall with a coat or two of wallpaper paste and let it dry first. Then put the paper up. The seams were still popping up but not nearly as bad.

Pasting the wall after I realised this was the way to do it.

No, this seam isn't popping up. It's a trick of the light. What's that under my hand?
A bucket. Oh, you mean the other hand, huh?

New light fitting highlighting the seams. D'oh!

So, then we filled and little bits and stuck down the seams. Then painted with a cream colour and stuck down the seams. Then finally touched up any seams that had been stuck down and then stuck them back down again. There's still a couple to do but I'm sick of them for now.

Some finishing touches. Firstly, some coving in the hall and some moulding to go up the stairs and then a handrail as the top of the stairs is a bit of a deathtrap for unsteady inlaws and increasingly waddly wives.

It looks better now it's painted. I promise.

And then she waddled away. Waddle waddle.

Then, some carpet. Once again, our tame carpet fitter came round in his spare time.

Removal of the non-functioning burglar alarm is on my list. As is painting under the stairs.

And to finish off, paint the no-longer-matching front door a nice, contemporary cocoa bean brown.

Finishing the Spare room/Study/Nursery

Now we've moved into the master bedroom I have been able to do the spare room. A record-setting 8 day job including all painted surfaces, re-fitting and priming some skirting board, wallpapering one wall and three (!) coats of paint on the others to get rid of the awful blue colour and filling all the cracks and re-painting the ceiling.

No in progress photos of this one. I was too busy decorating.

Work area. Already a mess.

I knew the wallpaper would go nicely. I'm glad I kept my own counsel on that one.

You can just see a small bump on this picture. Sorry baby, I know you hate it. You look pleased with my handiwork though.

Finishing the bedroom

Well, despite our good intentions a series of minor obstacles and one major one prevented getting into the bedroom by Christmas. Ah well, the best laid plans and all that.


Ideally, we would have liked to finish all the painting by the time the carpet went in but when your carpet fitter is doing it as a favour and for a very reasonable price you get it done when he can. We're very pleased with the result though.

Thankfully, Charlie was on hand to help us mask it all off before we painted. And what a good and thorough job he did. Cheers mate!

The light fitting had to move from the wall to the ceiling which meant running a new cable from the junction box in the loft to a new pendant in the ceiling.

Not too tough a job but I'm no electrician so I was very careful to research exactly what I was doing. I also made Sonia turn the fuse on with a broom handle but as you can see, it worked.

With the light moved I could paper the feature wall. We managed to find the exact wallpaper I wanted in Wilkinsons at less than half price! I should probably have used lining paper under the wallpaper but it still looks pretty good anyway.

You may wonder why the window surround has not been painted. Well, while Charlie was sanding the wood down above the window, he noticed that the wall was wet. We brushed it off: "It's just cold/condensation." we said; "It will be fine." we said and went to the pub.

It wasn't. A few days later, the paint was still not dry, the wallpaper had bubbled up, the damp meter was reading "red" all over and we were fearing the worst. On top of that, the loft was dripping with condensation and I was fearing for all the books that we have stored up there. I covered them up with a tarp but knew it could only be a temporary solution.

To make matters worse, that night we discovered damp in the spare bedroom; the one we were sleeping in. The radiator had not been working since we moved in. We had figured that we sort it when we'd moved into the main bedroom and we had the space to move around but with the encroachment of fungus on the skirting we knew it had to be fixed asap. Thankfully, a couple of hours, a google search or two and a few sharp taps with a hammer (and a lot of swearing) freed up the valve. The radiator sprang into life instantly and within seconds we had heat. And there was much rejoicing.

However the whole drippy, dank, depressing episode had brought us to our lowest ebb so far.

The next day, an inspection outside turned up a likely culprit. The gutters surrounding the front of the house were overflowing with unwanted flora and we'd had some heavy rain. This meant an awful lot of water had been running down the walls. We enlisted Simon to come and have a look. Luckily, he'd been doing some window cleaning so he and Derek were able to pop round and clear the gutters out. They also found a missing tile or two so pulled the waterproof membrane over to cover the hole. Thankfully, this pretty much solved the problem and we were able to finish the painting.

This delay cost us a couple of days and our dream of sleeping in the bedroom before Christmas as, despite the holes being plugged, the wall was still sodden and we couldn't put curtains up. However, Simon and Derek's intervention meant that we were able to face the Christmas holiday without worrying about the damp too much. Thanks guys!

We returned from our Christmas and New Year break to find the damp all but gone. On the weekend following our return Gary, Anna and Jaimi came up to fix the missing roof tiles and help us put up the curtains properly. We finally managed to spend a night in our new bedroom on the 6th January. Not too bad considering the delays. The bedroom is now finished except for new furniture and we can move on to the next area of the house. Two rooms down!