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.

The bannister rail

Replacing the bannister spindles (balusters, technically; who knew?) which had been inexplicably removed by previous occupant or occupants unknown proved more difficult than it should have done. It seems that they removed the old balusters and filled in the rebate that they sat in somehow. This meant that I had to work out a way of fixing new ones securely.

I didn't want to rebate out the stringer (I think that's what it's called) as I didn't know what was in there in terms of screws/nails etc and brackets would have been expensive. In the end I settled for a large dowel drilled and glued through the top of the rail and two or three big nails driven through the bottom of each baluster into the string, all topped off with wood filler. I broke two drill bits during the process and the balusters at the top required a slightly different approach but all in all it worked pretty well. It also came in nice and cheap at ~£15 for the timber from the timber merchants not B&Q where the same material would have been 4 or 5 times the price. Covers for timber from now on.

The non-standard spacing of only 7cm (instead of the regulation 10) between balusters would help to reinforce the joinery in the unlikely event of someone falling through it too. I would like to claim that this was done on purpose but it was, in fact a miscalculation. I cut a 9.5cm spacer block to ensure that they were all uniform and then bevelled it, effectively reducing it to 6.8-ish. I realised this around the third baluster so it was too late to change it. I estimate that it meant I had to fit 4 or 5 extra spindles but that's not a big problem.

Obligatory "behind bars" shot

These two shots illustrate a couple of more unusual dowel placements
at  the top of the staircase.

Sonia begins cleaning up all the glue and filler.

And a coat of primer before gloss.

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.

Womb for a little one?

Spud at 8 weeks 

So, some of you may know, there is going to be an addition to the Davies family. We are very excited to share with the world that we are having a baby! We are 14 weeks pregnant and so far all is going well, no morning sickness, no real cravings... apart from maybe peanut butter and sandwich pickle.... together on a spoon, but that might just be down to me thinking I am 'allowed' peanut butter!

So, we had a scan at 8 weeks and first saw our Spud, you will understand if you take a look at the picture! 12 week scan was on Tuesday 10th and all is well, everything measuring normal and looking great.... less like a spud! 'very advanced for its age' has been said many times... mainly by Sid.

Spud at 13 weeks 2 days 

So.... the house plans have been expedited somewhat due to a baby arriving in July... (due the 15th) I stripped the wallpaper on the wall in the spare bedroom/study/NURSERY yesterday and Sid is painting the walls as I type.

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!

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!