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Ready
It was a couple of late nights finishing things off before our visitor.
One of the jobs I had it in my head I wanted to finish off was finishing the skirting and architrave in the landing. Completely non-essential but I just wanted to get it done. After more filling and sanding I was able to get a first coat on. It’s nice to see the landing looking more like a liveable space.
Next we focused on the bedroom, sanding and painting the new plaster, and getting most of the skirting and architrave on. Sadly there wasn’t time to fit, sand and paint the woodwork. Finally we tried to empty most of the DIY leftovers from the room, pieces of plasterboard, a spare door and other miscellaneous objects. This has filled up the office, but in time these bits will be used or sold. Some boxes had to remain, as for now there’s nowhere else to put them.
Excitingly the window company, who are making our wooden windows, came to check the measurements for the six windows, the double glass doors, and to measure the stairs for a replacement set. The windows should arrive the end of April, hopefully meaning we can take advantage of the bank holiday weekend to get them in.
While we won’t order the stairs till we’ve finished plastering, we needed a temporary banister to help my nan up and down the stairs. Chris salvaged an old rafter to sand down and install, which also gives us an idea what the stairs will look like with a banister. Sadly the expert said the new stairs won’t be much wider than the old ones, which seems a waste, but building control doesn’t have much room for bespoke designs.
We found a ‘new’ sofa for the lounge, with someone local throwing one out for free. It’s a nice sofa, but needs a clean. However the fabric is a silk mix and professional cleaners won’t touch it, saying it needs dry cleaning, yet the label says don’t dry clean. We’re at a loss as to how to clean it, and even the manufacturers said they didn’t know when we contacted them. We might just need to trial a few things.
Chris also got a mirror at auction. It’s very nice, but in need of some repairs. He wanted it to bring more light into our dark lounge.
Finally, I shifted the last of the soil alongside the drive. With this gone we’ve had a kind offer of a mini-digger from one of our neighbours, so we can flatten out the drive and the garden where the spoil’s been spread.
With our visitor having come and gone without breaking her neck on our building site of a house, we’ve now got two weeks till the next visitors arrive. I’m hoping that gives us time to get the last few bedroom pieces finished, though the nice weather is starting to draw me more out into the garden.
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Edgy
With this being the last weekend before my nan comes to stay with us, we were pushing on trying to get things ready for her visit.
The main priority was to get the spare room finished. One fiddly job was putting up the wooden boards to cover the gaps in the ceiling. Once up they needed fill, sanding, and a final coat of paint.
The fourth wall was now ready to be plastered, so Chris got to work putting on a couple of coats. This will hopefully be dry enough to sand and paint before our visitor arrives.
On the landing we spent some time getting the arcitrave and skirting, before filling the gaps. Like the plaster, this now needs time to dry before sanding and painting.
While I worked on the landing, Chris started on the skirting in the bedroom, however the skirting can’t be attached to the new plaster just yet.
To add a little privacy to the spare room Chris cut down and hung one of our spare doors.
On the landing, and downstairs in the kitchen, we plugged some awkward gaps with expanding foam before cutting it back and using filler to smooth over the surface.
There’s still a few jobs left to do before my nan can have a comfortable stay, but with a few evenings left to get on with things we should make our deadline.
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Hedge laying
With a weekend away planned, I tried to get a few small jobs done in the evenings.
I filled, sanded and painted the third wall in the spare bedroom.
On the landing I filled, sanded, and painted the gappy ceiling boards.
I painted the landing with our newly chosen pale yellow. It fits in nicely with the white stonewall, but brightens quite a dark landing space.
Our stable door for our kitchen entrance arrived, so I primed all the various bits and pieces.
And finally I put on the last few bits of board and insulation on the fourth wall in the bedroom. Having added board tape and painting it with PVA, it’s now ready to plaster.
While Chris headed to watch the rugby with his friends, I headed to my parents with a few crafting bits I wanted to get done. The first was a curtain that we’d brought second-hand. While listed as a pair of curtains, when it arrived it was one huge curtain instead. Rather than return it I ask my mum to help guide me through cutting it down to size and creating a pair. Once home I was able to put up our new curtain pole and hang them in place.
My other job was to repair the £20 tiffany-style lampshade I’d bought. Mum, already an experienced stain glasser, showed me how to fix the gap. First, we removed the broken glass, and the lead around the opening. Next we had to cut some new pieces of glass to size and shape.
Once ready, each piece of glass was coated around its edge in a copper foil. The pieces were then soldered into place. It’s not a flawless repair, but enough that the lampshade can retain its purpose, and hopefully soon be hung up in our kitchen/diner.
On our return from our rest, a big job greeted us. We’d wanted to lay the hedge this year, and ideally this needed to be done before the plants went into leaf. With some leaf buds already starting to open we decided it was now or never.
It took two days to lay the hedge, the first of which was freezing cold, snow falling down around us. Hedge laying involves cutting through the majority of the base of the tree and laying it down across its neighbours, using steaks at intervals to keep everything in place. This encourages the hedge to grow nice and thick, extending the life of the hedge trees and making a better home for birds and other wildlife.
The second day was lovely and sunny, much easier to work in. We had a bit of a challenge laying across where the ground had sunk from the sinkhole, but overall the laying went well.
Around a third of the hedge is made up of lilac, which isn’t a plant I’ve ever heard anyone laying, so it might not do as well as the rest. All we can do is wait and see.
The only section remaining to lay is along the side of the parking space, however the plants are so thin and weedy here we’ll coppice them instead (cut them down to the ground, encouraging new growth), and plant new saplings around them. It will then be five or more years before that section can be laid.
It was a tough job, and both of us are aching at the end of it, but well worth the hassle. The hedge won’t need to be relaid for a good decade or more, and in the meantime it should become stronger and healthier.
I’m excited for more jobs in the garden, already the tulip leaves are coming up in groups, and even the winter aconites are starting to appear. It’ll be nice to have a little more colour surrounding us when the summer comes.
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A Big Pile of… Soil
With a couple of other obligations this weekend, we didn’t get an awful lot done, but little jobs are better than no jobs.
One little job I decided to do was plug up the last of the gaps in the landing ceiling. The gaps were letting in cold air from the attic, so first I had to push in some insulation and then tape up the plastic lining. A few coats of paint and the new boards will fit right in.
After plastering the landing, we realised we’d used the wrong type of plaster on one small section, that still had a layer of plaster on it. This had left a poor finish, so Chris used filler to smooth out the worst parts. I then sanded the filler and the plaster, before applying a watery coat of paint. I had planned to paint the landing white, the same as the stairs, but seeing the space now I feel it needs colour to pull together the various corners. I’ve got to decide what colour
Our big job of the weekend was continuing to move the huge pile of soil beside the drive. Frustratingly, the photos makes it look like we achieved nothing, when in fact we moved two-thirds of the pile. I realised too late taking the photos from the other direction would have shown our progress much better.
We found a line of big slate stones buried upright in a line, which probably once marked the edge of a wall. Chris spent a lot of time and energy digging them out. At some point we can repurpose them as garden steps.
In the spare bedroom things have descended into chaos once more as I moved everything around to paint two of the walls. The two remaining walls still need plastering, one complete plastering, the other just a bit of smoothing out, but it’s nice to see what the room will soon look like.
Outside spring is on its way, with daffodils having joined the snowdrops on the side of the road. I’m looking forward to working on the garden, but there’s still a lot to do inside before we can really dig into the garden.
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Nesting
After I had dutifully written and posted my blog last weekend, Chris decided he hadn’t managed to get enough done afterall. Heading back upstairs after dinner he spent the evening creating sawdust as he cut and fitted the desk.
As we were only going to have one day free over the next weekend, and we needed to get the second bedroom ready for guests, I spent a fair few evenings working on getting the room in better shape.
I spent the first evening rearranging the remaining items in the room to free up space to put up the new bed.
The next stage was finishing off installing the coving. There were some horrible angles in this room, and despite it being the last room I had to do, the experience clearly didn’t pay off as I think I did the worst job out of the four.
Coving up, I filled the gaps with filler, sanded it back, and added caulke where needed. Finally, the ceiling got another coat of paint and the coving it’s first coat.
With the bed in place we managed the source a spare mattress from Chris’s family.
On a roll with the painting, I set to work painting the white wall in the kitchen. A less dramatic transformation than putting colour on the wall, but still nice to have more of a finished look.
With the spare room slowly coming together, we decided to concentrate on an area we’ve largely ignored up till now. The landing is an annoyingly complex space to plaster, with lots of little nooks and crannies to tackle.
While Chris worked on the ventilation system in the attic, I got on with prepping the walls for plastering. I always forget how long the prep work takes, though it doesn’t seem like it should eat up so much time. I cut off the excess insulation foam, taped the joins, and then coated the walls with PVA.
There was a small strip at the top of the wall on the stairs that still needed plasterboard adding. I wasn’t tall enough to fill the gaps, so Chris had to get up on the ladder to reach.
Our plan had always been to remove one of the wooden posts beside the stairs in order to widen them. Although we aren’t at the stage of replacing the stairs yet, we decided it was easier to remove the post now so as not to damage the plaster later on.
With the walls prepped we started plastering, with Chris getting the first coat on and me following to smooth it out. Even though it was a small space, all the different walls meant we only got the landing done, with the stairs having to wait for another day.
With a little remaining energy I planted some newly arrive winter aconite bulbs in the garden. These large yellow flowers will hopefully add a bit of spring colour next year. I think I’ve now filled the cleared bit of garden with as much as it can take. I just need to find time to clear another patch so I have somewhere new to plant up!
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Moving on up
Chris has gotten the hang of online auctions and managed to buy a Victorian drop arm sofa for the kitchen. Though we’d already bought a small white sofa, Chris was worried this was still too big for the room, so found something more compact. It will need recovering and restuffing but at a cost of £60 we can afford the reupholstery costs. Idris has already claimed his spot. We didn’t know what a drop arm sofa was, but it means that a mechanism allows the arms to be lowered or raised depending on preference.
I spent a fair few evenings redistributing some of the items in the spare room, which does mean there are now boxes scattered around the house waiting to be unpacked, but it freed up some room to work in the crowded space.
Once the room was a little less busy, I sanded down the plaster and smoothed the rounded window corners, before refilling any holes. Once smoothed and filled I gave the two plaster walls a watery coat of paint. The third wall is one of the only in the house that never had the original plaster removed and the fourth wall is still missing some plasterboard and needs plastering.
Next I filled the gaps between the boards on the ceiling with chaulk, a job that took a great deal of gymnastics as I manuevered around the various obstacles in the room. The flat portion of the ceiling remains to be done but as these boards were never taken down the gaps are less significant and don’t need as much filling.
With the chaulking done for now I started on the coving, not an easy job with all the various angles. I kept going as long as I could before my brain was fried.
In the meantime Chris was busy in the attic creating a platform by installing wooden beams between the two steel purlins. With boards placed on top we were able to clear more out of the spare room, with Christmas decorations, camping equipment and other lesser used items getting safely stored away.
On the Sunday I had to go attend a maternity leaving do, and therefore left Chris in charge of himself, meaning I don’t have any photos of work in progress.
His first job was to install another doorway ready for the spare bedroom door.
In the study, he cut out a template for the desk, to avoid wasting the oak worktop. The table is particularly complex because the two walls slope outwards towards the corner, making marking it out in place tricky.
But his biggest achievement was installing the hob and connecting up the electrics for the oven. Meaning that when I got back he was busy cooking a lasagne for the first time in months.
Despite good progress this weekend it’s going to be a fair few evenings working this week to get things ready for another visit next weekend. Having offered to put up Chris’s friend, his wife and their two kids, we’ve got a lot of tidying to do, as well as a fair bit left to get the guest bedroom ready. Not that it’ll be finished, but at the very least we need to get a bed into it…
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First coat
With a weekend away planned, we tried to get a few jobs done in the evenings in order to keep things moving forward.
My first job was to finish the lime plaster on the stone wall. With the plastering finished the next job will be to fill the cracks and paint.
Having done the previous three coats of paint on the ceiling I passed the fourth coat on to Chris to do, who admitted that it was the worst kind of painting job.
When we’d put in the windows at the back of the house we hadn’t gotten round to filling around them with mortar. Though it does need doing it hadn’t caused a big problem until the recent storms. While most of the windows just let in the wind, one of the kitchen windows started to let significant amounts of water in, leaking through the plasterboard. While it only occurred when the wind and rain was in storm conditions, it could very quickly cause significant problems. So the first dry evening I got out and plugged the gaps. Hopefully that’s the end of it, though there’s still four more unproblematic windows to do.
Having chosen the colour for the kitchen walls I started with the first coat, before Chris fixes the worktop in place and makes things more fiddly. Having painted two walls I think I’ll keep the third wall white in order to keep the room feeling light and open.
Before we disappeared for our weekend away Chris got the last coat of oil on the worktop, to allow it to dry by the time we got back. This will mean he can get in the hob and oven this week, and the sink after that. Having gone from the least finished room, the kitchen suddenly looks like it’s very close to being finished. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s time to pull back, lots more work to do.
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Top-down
After trying out a number of different colours for the study we settled on the only colour Chris has so far given a strong opinion on. He struggles to visualise what a colour might look like across a whole room, so getting an opinion from him is usually an exercise in futility. But for once, he did like a particular tester colour. It’s not my favourite, but given that I’ve chosen all other colours so far, it’s only fair he occasionally gets the deciding vote.
I gave the walls their first coat of blue, and all the skirting and architrave several coats of matt white.
The ceiling was perhaps the most complex of all the rooms, with three meeting joints needing covering in wood, and coving at all kinds of angles. To keep costs down Chris suggested using gravel boards to cover the gaps, simply cutting off the corners.
Finally, I filled all the gaps and edges with caulke and gave the ceiling and coving a few coats of paint. All that remains to be done is the bits of coving adding by the windows, but we’ll leave this till the windows are replaced. We also need to buy a carpet. We’ve seen a few second-hand or end-of-roll options, so plenty of choice.
Chris’s big job for the weekend was to get the worktops installed. The major concern for me was lifting them into place. The two very large men that delivered the worktops moaned bitterly that they shouldn’t have to lift something so heavy, and then stated there was absolutely no way I would be able to lift them.
The two pieces of 3m by 1m, 4cm thick oak, weighing around 85kg, were heavy enough to make me pause. After one failed attempt to lift and flip the first worktop, we managed to lift it first on the dining table and then onto the island.
Chris then went to work cutting the edges to shape and cutting out holes for the hob and extractor. He then rounded the edges using a router. A smaller bit of wood has been cut out to create an end panel.
We’d treated the undersides with tung oil already, but once in place and cut to size Chris treated the top. Next we moved the second worktop in place, Chris cutting out the back and a hole for the sink, before rounding the edges and treating.
There’s still a little more work to do attaching a smaller bit of worktop to cover the last cupboard, but I’m relieved the heavy lifting is done. And they already look very fancy with all of Chris’s hardwork cutting them to fit.
So the house is once again in a state of chaos, meaning a temporary kitchen has been set up in the lounge. Still, omelettes and broken eggs and all that.
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Study time
We both felt a little underwhelmed this week, in terms of how much we got done. I think this is in part because we got through so much in our time off that a weekend’s work seems poor by comparison, in part because we’re still pretty tired out, and finally because we didn’t really get to tick anything off our to do list. Half-completed jobs are your typical half-glass empty/full situation. On a good day we’re pleased to have gotten half the work done, on a bad day we’re irate that we didn’t finish it.
One good thing this week was that Chris managed to get a bed and bedside tables at an auction got £100. It needs a little attention, but as it’s a good quality solid oak bed it’s definitely worth the time. Unfortunately there’s currently no where to put it but the lounge, so we’ll be tripping over it till the spare room is ready.
The plaster in the study now dry we sanded it down and put on the first watery coat of paint. Chris then did a great job getting all the skirting and architrave onto the wobbly walls. He’d seen a new technique where you cut little slits out of the back of the skirting so it can be bent around corners, and this seems to have worked well.
As I didn’t want to get in Chris’s way in the study I decided to finish off the cupboard in the bedroom, something that took a frustrating amount of time. I added the architrave, painted the frame and the doors, caulked the edges, fill the wall inside the cupboard and painted that. So much work for a tiny cupboard.
Now we need to get some boards to build the shelves inside. Although it feels a little pointless when there are so many big jobs to do, the extra storage will help empty out a few more packing boxes, freeing up space in the spare room.
As the next job we’d been hoping to get the study ceiling done, however we realised we didn’t have the right wood to cover the gaps in the wood, or enough coving. Once those things are in place the room will just need painting. Some paint samples arrived, with some options for the study, kitchen and spare room. Painting colour on the walls is always a joyful moment.
Finally moving on from the cupboard, I started putting the final layer of lime plaster on the edges of the kitchen wall. A slow processes I was still fairly convinced I might get it done in one sitting… when I ran out of lime. Another half done job.
One job that was particularly exciting to get done was the installation of the dishwasher, which Chris got on with after the skirting. There’s nothing more magically than stacking all your dirty cutlery in a box and having it reappear clean. As someone who has been hand washing since July I’m looking forward to the test run.
Finally, I fetched the various pots and saucers we had outside. A few had succumbed to the ice but most are still fine. They need a good scrub before matching them up with our various houseplants.
Outside spring is giving a glimmer of hope that the winter will come to an end, though in reality we’ve got months to go. The banks are already lined with snowdrops, and patches of daffodil leaves have popped up here or there. It’s a good reminder that perhaps we shouldn’t be too gloomy when progress isn’t what we expect. We will get there afterall… eventually.
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The Big New Year Push
After a big push before Christmas, we were looking forward to a break and a chance to recover before getting back to work in our week and a bit off after the festivities were over. What we forgot, as we do every year, is that you don’t leave Christmas feeling rested, but simply exhausted in a slightly different way.
Still, returning to a particularly horreduous level of dusty chaos, we didn’t have much choice but to get back to work on the concrete floor.
Having finished the initial grind, we now did the second grind, then three polishes before spreading the concrete hardener.
As I don’t have the upper body strength to control the machine, I concentrated on doing the matching grinds and polishes with the hand tool on the edges, as well as brushing and bagging the mountains of dust.
However, once Chris had moved on to the later polishing levels the machine was much easier to control, so we thought I might be able to manage it. Optimistically I took the reins… and ran over the cable. Luckily, Chris was able to rewire it, but that was my last attempt at pushing the grinder.
Post concrete hardener it was back onto polishing the floor, with five further grades of polishing pads. With each pass there was less dust, and a clearer grain in the floor.
Finally finished, we’re very pleased with our concrete floor. The grinder hire company were very kind and didn’t charge us for the repaired cable, so in the end the total cost came to around £400. This is around 10% of the £4,000 we were quoted by a professional company. Of course our finish isn’t as professional as an expert would have achieved, but we like it so that’s all that matters.
Floor finished, we clean up and carried the kitchen back in. While I did the tedious job of emptying all the cupboards, dusting them down and cleaning everything within, Chris got to work leveling the island units.
With the final set up finished we’ve ordered the hob and worktops, which will be exciting to install.
Chris also did the fiddly job of installing the cupboard that goes over the underfloor heating system.
After a long day of kitchen installation, we somehow got up the energy for a midnight walk up a local hill to watch the New Year’s fireworks in the moonlight.
With the island in we moved in the other furniture to make sure everything would fit as we hoped. Idris is looking forward to the day when the kitchen has a permanent sofa.
Kitchen on hold until the worktop is delivered, we move on to the study. The study has long been the tool room as we don’t have a shed. Over time it’s become an unholy mess, making it difficult to find what we need.
As we wanted to move the study on, we spent two days empty and sorting the items. There was plenty of rubbish, then some things we needed to sell, and most of course just needed reorganising. I did a general sort, putting items into boxes for electrical items, plumbing items and so on, and then Chris went through each box to see what we did and didn’t need. It was a slow processes, but well worth doing.
Once sorted, we set up our tools in the much smaller showerroom, which will be the last room to be finished.
One of the boxes we found in the tool room included a number of lights and lampshades we’d bought before we needed them. In order to get rid of the box Chris set to work installing and hanging up the lights and shades.
Another small job that got rid of some bits in the tool room was putting in some more doorways, which Chris got on with while I was sorting through other bits.
With the doorframe for the cupboard completed I cut the doors to size and added the door stops. The challenge lay in the wobbly nature of the chimney, meaning the door had to be cut on a curve.
With the study finally empty, we got to work plastering. To make the work go quicker we hopscotched around the room, with Chris doing the first plaster on the first wall, and me following to smooth it out, then me moving to plaster the second wall, while Chris put the second coat on the first wall, and so on.
On our final day of DIY we had our first volunteer of the year! Our friend Daniel was heading home to the Lake District from Aberystwyth and foolishly offered a hand moving the big pile of soil on the drive. Him and Chris wheelbarrowed loads up to the garden while I collected the larger stones for the sinkhole. A few hours cleared around a third of the pile, making it much more manageable for myself and Chris to continue with on our own.
I also took the opportunity to get a few more bulbs in the ground, planting some dutch irises.
Although not really a DIY job, I was pleased to finally repot our 60+ houseplants. Very neglected and dusty, they will certainly benefit from a little attention. Chris had also brought me two small planting troughs so I could plant a large number of cactuses and succulents in one pot, something that will hopefully stop our plant collection looking like a load of clutter.
So that’s it, a holiday well-spent, though as always we’ll return to work exhausted. It’s felt like a big step forward and a great start to 2024. Finger’s crossed it’s a sign of a good year to come.
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