Ruined

Personally, I work better with deadlines. The latest deadline is a visit from my family to help clear some of the front garden. In order to offer some comfort we want to get the lounge finished. It didn’t seem too much of a challenge when we first set it…

I started by filling the holes in the ceiling, leftover from installing the steel straps. We’d been putting off the repairs for ages as we weren’t sure how best to go about replacing the plaster and lath. In the end we decided just to screw plasterboard to the ceiling and plaster over, we may well find that was a mistake.

Chris then grouted between the glass blocks.

Ta da! I finally got the paint the walls. I should probably have waited till the ceiling was done, but I figured it didn’t matter too much as it’s only the first coat.

We’d ummed and ahhed for a long time about whether to strip the beams. I don’t like painted beams, as wood is so much nicer left exposed, but stripping is a painful job. But now the colours on the walls, I think the beams don’t look too bad, so we’ll be leaving them as they are and saving ourselves a job.

Next we needed to empty the room, ready for leveling the floor. This included taking apart the understairs cupboard. It feels like this is the one last reminent of what the house was, cleared away to make space for the new.

Finally the floor was washed and levelled, a job Chris got on with while I was out at my volunteer day.

His other job while I was out, was installing lights in the bathroom, which feels like luxury after weeks of washing in the gloom.

Next came the filling, with Chris plastering the holes in the ceiling, while I tackled the holes in the walls.

For the first time in what feels like a long-time we’ve acquired a helper.

Chris’s cousin Jude was looking for some work over his summer holidays and offered to come do a few days for us while he was free. He did his first day’s labouring and finished off plastering the tall stairway wall, which has been a job that’s kept slipping down the to-do list. We’ve decided to leave it with a relatively rough finish, both for a textured look and to avoid driving ourselves mad smoothing it out.

While Jude tackled the mammoth wall, and I busied myself giving some previous plastering a first coat, Chris stepped into the magic cupboard and continued the annoying fiddly tiling. That’s the problem with a big fancy shower, it takes an age to finish tiling.

After sending off for a wide range of tile samples, we eventually agreed on a dark blue set for the shower. In order not to make the room feel too intense we chose a grey tile for the windowsill. We managed to get these second hand, buying enough that they will also do the shower in the shower room, once that’s underway.

I set to work tiling the windowsill. It was surprisingly difficult as the base put in by the contractors was nowhere near flat, and larger tiles are aways more tricky. Finally having finished, Chris in his usual complimentary style stated that it wouldn’t be particularly obvious once there were things on top of it.

Next I started on the shower, which was much easier given the plasterboard was fairly flat. Having reached the shower pipework I handed over to Chris, as I wasn’t sure how to drill through the tiles to get the pipes through. I like the blue tiles with their starry pattern, however I can’t help be reminded of a magician’s trick box, like we might walk in and then reappear in another part of the room.

Downstairs, Chris started on plastering over the wiring in the lounge, tagging me in once he went up to sort the shower.

Having completed the lounge I headed round to the utility room to plaster over the exposed stone and brick.

Next I sanded down, filled and painted the new plaster in the lounge with watered down paint.

With our first guest arriving in a few days we then spent an evening ‘tidying’ and ‘cleaning’ the house. The reality is that any real kind of clean or tidy is impossible at the moment. The best we can do is minimise the chaos, not eliminate it.

As there’s no space in the other bedrooms at the moment we condensed our pull-out bed into a single, and pushed it against the window, setting up our old double in the middle of the room. As a final effort to make the room a little more accommodating Chris attached the radiator back onto the wall, after its long holiday on the floor. It’s the little touches that give us our 5 star rating.

For me the most exciting thing this week has been getting the first bit of colour on the wall. Even though the rooms aren’t finished a little bit of paint seems to bring them to life. For Chris, the most exciting thing has been getting our shed up. The shed is a short-term storage solution, as we went from having a garage for storing all our tools and bikes, to not having one and storing them in the garden. Long-term we want to repurpose the old toilet block into a shed, but that’s a whole other project, so this will have to do for now.

I’m really pleased with the green we chose for the bedroom. It wasn’t the original green we’d decided on, but one of the cheap end of line colours we were able to get half price.

Similarly the yellow for the bathroom wasn’t the original yellow I wanted. This one is called buttercup yellow and needed two white coats before I could start on the yellow paint. It’s brighter than I originally planned, but I think it will mellow once the room has more in it to break up the intensity of the colour.

On Saturday, while I was out with my volunteers, Chris had a frustrating time installing a toilet and sink. The toilet is now in and functioning, while the sink still needs a little more work.

On Sunday I set to work putting up insulation and plasterboard on the dining room ceiling. It’s always exhausting working above your head, and ideally I needed about six pairs of hands, but still most of the room got finished. The last few bits need the stack of boxes gone to be reached, and then we’ll start on the kitchen side.

Meanwhile Chris busied himself plastering the lounge wall. Originally we’d planned to finish the upstairs first, but Chris pointed out that a large amount of the stuff taking up room is destined for the lounge, so with that room complete we can make more space to work elsewhere.

It’ll certainly be nice to clear this room out and set it up properly, as throughout the renovation it’s always been a bit of a dumping ground. Not long and I’ll be able to head back to the paint shop.

A week after we moved in we went on holiday. While this was a nice escape it also meant we returned to utter chaos. Aside from halfway through the roof rebuild, I think this is the most overwhelmed by the job either of have been. At least when we didn’t live here we had somewhere to escape the mammoth list of tasks, here they’re staring us in the face every minute of the day.

Prior to packing our bags we tried to move forward with getting our bedroom done. Sleeping surrounded by dust and dirt is no fun, and we felt we needed one room as a sanctuary. I pushed on with filling all the gaps in the ceiling with cork, and repainting.

While Chris got to plastering.

He also finally fixed the downstairs toilet door, for a little more privacy.

And put the final coat of plaster on the adjoining wall.

On our return I set to work repointing the chimney brest in the bedroom. Chris hadn’t been keen at first with the idea of leaving it exposed, but I wanted to reveal a little of the history of the house. Repointed, he now sees more of it’s good side.

With a good clean the room was then ready for the floor to be varnished. I did two coats, and Chris thinks it needs a third, but we agreed that could wait till later, given that we wanted to get the room more comfortable for now.

With the floor done I did the first coat of watered down paint on the bare plaster, having filled and sanded the remaining holes.

Chris is desperate to get the shower finished, so he concentrated and moving that along. Getting the shower tray in was a faff, because of the thick stone wall beneath it. He then got the pipework in place and attached the plasterboard.

Our last job of the weekend was lugging the wardrobe and chest of draws, that had been clogging up the lounge, up the stairs and into our room. The draws were fine, but the large wardrobe was an absolute pain, given it’s width, height and slippery surface. Still it feels incredibly luxurious to be able to open a door and pick out clothes, rather than rummage in a dusty bag.

Finally we were able to look at wall colours. We went with eco paints for most of our old house, and really liked them. The brand we went for was quite expensive, but Chris found someone selling end-of-line tins at half-price online, so we selected a green for our bedroom and a yellow for the bathroom. It was important the green went with the old reclaimed doors we’re using for the cupboard, which I think it does. The yellow needs two coats of white under it first, so we’re yet to see how that one turns out. With the yellow awaiting it’s first coat we’re ordered some tile samples to match against it. It seems a little bizarre to be getting onto finishing touches when the rest of the house is still dust and disasters, but it’s easing our stress to have a little sanctuary in the corner of the house, away from all the mess.

We have moved. This was our first proper house move, having previously moved into our first house with very little of our own stuff. Cleaning out the house, it’s been slightly horrifying how much stuff we own. Even trying to donate and recycle we still seem have accumulated enough boxes that we could simply build them into a house to live in.

With my mum and dad to lend a hand we loaded the van in a day with the vast majority of our stuff. Even though we’d agreed to leave behind many of the larger pieces of furniture we still filled the van to the brim.

Uploading was even particularly straightforward. Even though we’re moving into a significantly larger house the problem is that none of the rooms are ready. So to avoid too much moving around we’ve piled everything in to two rooms. To say the place feels cramped and chaotic would be an understatement.

At least the surrounding countryside remains peaceful – even if everything within the house is confusion.

As we had the van for the weekend we tried to make the best use of it by going to collect the second-hand piano I’d been offered.

Chris’s brother came to lend a hand and thankfully it wasn’t as heavy as we’d feared. I didn’t do much on this one I must admit.

We also wanted to pick up some of the larger pieces of furniture we knew we wanted. We’d kept a look out on marketplace but struggled to find what we wanted not too far away. However, I realised there was a warehouse nearby for house clearance goods. We dropped by and managed to find a suitable sofa, wardrobe, table and Welsh dresser. All stuffed into the house it now looks like we’ve become a storage warehouse.

With furniture lugging finished for the day we returned to our old house to finish clearing the garage, clean the house, and to dig out any plants we wanted from the garden.

While taking out some of the pond plants Chris spotted a southern hawker dragonfly exuvia. The exuvia is the skin the larvae leave behind as they emerge from the water and become adults. Ever since digging the pond we’d been desperate for dragonflies to come live in it, so perhaps this was a final gift from our first home.

With the old house finally empty and as clean as we could get it, there’s no turning back. It does feel a bit like getting out of the frying pan and into the fire… but the view and the peace and quiet will keep us going a bit longer, until hopefully soon the dusty and chaotic house metamorphosises into a home.

With this being our last weekend before we move, we were keen to try and get as much done as possible. However, though we’ve got plenty done, most of it was small and fiddly. It therefore doesn’t look like we’ve moved forward very much, yet the house is significantly messier. All the cleaning carried out to impress the valuer has been buried under a thick layer of dust and grit.

We took the opportunity to move several crates of our houseplants. There’s a risk that if they get stacked in the moving van they’ll end up crushed. For now, they’ll get the enjoy a bit of time in the wild, left in the garden till the house is less dusty.

My main focus for the weekend was finishing the ceilings. I started on the bedroom ceiling, which myself and my mum had already given one coat. With the second coat on it now just needs cork adding to fill in the remaing gaps, a final coat, and the edging adding.

Next I moved on to the study, where I managed to sand down the wood filler and add two coats.

The bathroom needed filling, then sanding, and finally I managed to get one coat on. This leaves just the second bedroom, where I’ve painted the screws with the oil-based paint, but still need to fill, sand and paint.

Chris got on with plastering in the bathroom, calling me in to follow him round smoothing out the plaster surface with a trowel, and rewetting it so it didn’t dry out before the second coat.

He then started sorting the adjoining wall with our neighbour. On the bathroom wall a simple piece of insulated board stuck on with some expandy foam has done the job. In the second bedroom there’s the added complication that the chimney seems to have pulled away from the wall, so Chris added a leftover steel strap to add a bit of stability.

He then used a bit of insulated board for the part of the wall close to the exterior wall. This will prevent heat loss, while the rest can simply be lime plastered.

There are very few missing plasterboards now, but those left haven’t been done because they are fiddly and annoying. I tackled a section in the shower room, while Chris worked on the bedroom cupboard.

In order to get to the shower room plasterboard I had to reattach the plastic torn down by the builders, which Chris had to help me with, as it takes at least two sets of hands.

We don’t yet have enough wood to do all the doorways, but Chris did another couple and hung the bathroom door.

Chris’s last job was then to prep more walls ready for plastering, painting PVA across the surface of the boards, and adding scrim tape to all the joints.

Having planned to stay the night again, we upgraded our accommodation by moving our spare bed over to the new house. An Ikea bed that reduces to a single when not out as a double, it’s been great for our spare room, where there isn’t a lot of space. We normally keep it as a single unless we have guests, and then open it out for them. While you can’t walk around it in our current spare room once it’s open, as it spans from wall to wall, it’s nearly lost in our new spare room.

Our fancy wooden bed is now trundling across Europe heading to its new home. Amazingly a lady in Poland contacted me over Marketplace and had it collected by a courier. Hope she’s happy with it when it arrives, it certainly was a fancy-looking bed.

Now, we have a week to finish packing before it’s moving day. Chris is planning to get back to finish some plastering, but I think I’ll be home filling boxes most evenings. It’ll be nice to moved, less nice to be constantly surrounded by dust. But at least there’s plenty of beautiful places nearby to escape the build site/our new home.

The contractors have returned, and finished nearly all of the window reveals. Though they take up a relatively small area within a room, it’s amazing how much more it makes the rooms look finished. One of our requests to them was that they put our curved corners back, and we were delighted to see they are starting to smooth out the corners of the plasterboard to make a curve.

Chris spent an evening building the remaining piece of wall for the showerroom, meaning all our studwalls are in place now.

With the house valuer now booked in to return, we wanted to make the house look as finished as possible. I therefore continued with plastering, starting on the doorway between the kitchen and the lounge.

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Chris spent some time putting back in a plug socket in the bedroom closet. He’d asked the electrician to remove this, as he thought we didn’t need it, but then remembered this was where the broadband was going to be wired in.

Feeling like they were having too much fun in their spare time, my mum and dad came up for the Saturday to lend a hand.

I got mum helping me with the old wooden ceilings. First we had to paint all the screws with an oil-based paint in order to prevent them from rusting. Next we started filling all the holes with wood filler.

Finally the ceiling had a quick sand and then a paint. It needs another couple of coats, but I already feel justified in my previous insistence that the old, recycled ceilings would look nice when painted.

In the meantime dad helped Chris to move all the tools and other items out of the three rooms that needed the floors sanding.

Nails then had to be banged back into the floor, and everything swept and hoovered. We’d hired an edge sander, and a larger floor sander. Dad got to work on the edges, while Chris began sanding the main floor.

Both of the two bedrooms came up really nicely. We aren’t too bothered about sanding everything off, as the darker areas create a nice texture… plus it would take forever.

Chris had a go at sanding the bathroom, but the paint was so thick it gunked up the sandpaper within seconds. Instead, we brought some paint stripper and tried to scrap the worst off. Once washed and dried I gave it another go. It took an absolute ages, and I constantly had to change the paper, but in the end the worst came off.

Spending another night at the house, we decided to build the old wooden bed we’d found in the house when originally selling off things that had been left behind. Chris had been keen to keep the bed, but when we put it together we realised it was actually a superking, far too big for us to use. So onto Marketplace it goes, for someone else to enjoy.

Having to take the day off to meet the valuer and broadband installer, Chris spent a bit of time filling in the gaps around the glass bricks, and plastering.

Thankfully the valuer agreed that our house was worth the value of our mortgage, so this has now been transfered. With that done we’ve set the moving day as the 27th June, so two weeks time. Currently, our evenings are spent packing up our old house, but with only half a room plastered, we’ll be spending the coming weekend trying to get some more rooms ready to move in to. We’ve decided to try and unpack as little as possible once we move in, living out of one room, till the others are more habitatable. It’s not very appealing leaving our comfortable and dust-free home for a building site, but it’ll be nice to have the sale done, and be able to work on the house without a long commute to eat up our time. Lots of positives… but also lots and lots of dust.

This weekend was all about eating cake! Well, and DIY. Mostly DIY actually, but there was some cake. We’d been invited to Chris’s cousin’s 21st; an afternoon tea at a fancy hotel. In order to get a good day’s work in before we clocked off for the party, we decided to sleep over at the house for the first time, giving us a Friday evening of work and an early start on the Saturday. In order to give us more focused work-time we dropped Idris off at Chris’s aunt’s for the night, meaning we didn’t have to stop to walk him.

It wasn’t 5* accommodation for the night, but the house was surprisingly warm at least. It would have been nice to sleepover more often during the renovations, but the dust, and lack of electrics, would have made it tricky early on.

A few nights before we spent an evening getting more of the plasterboard on around the kitchen window, including a very tricky corner.

Chris focused on the plumbing for the kitchen sink. Another fiddly but essential job.

Back at the house on the Friday night, I spent my time building more of the frame for the shower wall.

Chris added a recycled piece of wood to the wall in the old doorway, to build up the glass bricks above.

Finishing the last few bits of essential plasterboard around the kitchen windows, we were able to put the kitchen units in place, and Chris spent some time leveling them and connecting them together.

This meant we could add an old worktop, as a temporary surface for the sink to be mounted on. This is to fulfill one of the requirements to get out mortgage moved over; having a kitchen sink plumbed in.

The whole set up looks surprisingly nice, even despite the fact we won’t be keeping this worktop.

Upstairs I was continuing with the shower. When buying our secondhand glass bricks, we’d only been able to find them in a much larger quantity than we wanted. Though we’ll sell on the spares, we decided it would be nice to build some in to the shower wall, to let in some light. I therefore built another shelf across at the top of the shower, at the right height to allow two rows of bricks to be built above. Chris also decided we should build a little recess into the wall, for us to stick shampoo and soap into.

Having previously rebuilt part of the wall in the utility room I spent an annoyingly long time plastering it.

With the back wall cupboards in place we then added the cupboards for the island, and placed the remainder in the utility in order to make things looks a little neater.

Our final job was to tidy the house and take another car-full of rubbish to the recycling center. With our mortgage meeting set for Wednesday, and, with some luck, the valuation shortly after, hopefully we’ve done enough to pass the mark this time. At least it’ll be tidy if nothing else.

We have light! It’s been a busy week for Chris, trying to finish off the last few sockets and light fittings before our electrician came to connect it all together. He was fairly worried incase it didn’t work, but luckily there were no major faults, and for the first time in nearly a year we have lights again.

After working evenings on the lights, Chris went off for a well-deserved rest, heading to a festival with friends. Luckily for me, my friend Becky decided to come stay, meaning I had some company. Unluckily for her, she got dragged into house renovations.

I spent most of the weekend busy on awkward bit of plasterboarding, a fairly slow job, but satisfying to see some more walls completed.

Becky got put to work building the rest of the wall in the old doorway, which she did meticulously.

The next day, on Chris’s return, we loaded up the bathtub that had been sitting in our garden for months, and manhandled it up the narrow stairs and into position in the bathroom.

It’s definitely one of the things I’m most looking forward to, as we’ll have a bathtub that looks out across the fields, certainly a luxory item.

With the bath in place Chris got on with sorting out pipes. To his annoyance he thinks he needs to put in all the plumbing at once, rather than just installing what we most urgently need now. With a rush on to get things ready for the mortgage inspector this isn’t ideal.

In the kitchen, myself and Becky continued the work of the insulation contractors, around the very fiddly windows. Though the contractors are returning to finish the job, we’ve been told that won’t be for several weeks. In order to move our mortgage, one thing we need to install is a kitchen sink. Therefore we have no choice but to get on with the awkward job ourselves.

At home, I’ve started the packing, working my way through the most chaotic room in the house; the coat cupboard. Next stop will be the equally out of control garage. Hopefully with the more demanding rooms packed up in plenty of time, last minute packing of the other, more ordered places, won’t seem as bad.

With work completed for the weekend we headed up a nearby hill, to enjoy a little of the spring sun.

I feel this is going to be a short blog post. Although we’ve been working particularly hard, our energies have been put into a very small number of repetitive jobs.

For me, it’s been never ending plastering. After initially being disappointed with my plastering efforts, Chris has lowered his expections and allowed me to continue (given that it’s only the undercoat).

Plastering is amazingly exhausting. From lugging round the heavy mixture to constantly bending and refilling the hawk (not the bird, the big metal yray you load with plaster in order to scrap it onto the wall with the float), to reaching up and above with the weight on your arms. Plasters must be very fit.

With a day off this weekend to take some of our siblings and nephews kayaking, we managed to get a good amount done in a long evening together. I worked my way up the stairs, plastering up to what I could reach, and then continued round the corner to the bedroom on the weekend. With a sudden heatwave reaching us, we’re having to be particularly careful to cover the wet plaster with hessian so it doesn’t dry out too quickly.

Chris on the other hand has been focusing on electrics. Having finished off the downstairs toilet and sink, he moved on to attaching sockets, switches and lights. With the electrician booked in for next Friday to connect everything up we have a hard deadline to get all the electrical works finished.

Along with our main jobs we fixed a few of the contractor’s mistakes. Chris removed the plasterboard that had been attached over the top of the plaster, knocked off the old plaster and reattached the board.

With my last hour on the weekend I managed to rebuild some of the wall the contractors dismantled during the plumbing installation.

Outside one of my favourite flowers has returned, a purple columbine with green-tipped petals. I’m glad to see our piles of building waste haven’t smothered it. Though there’s still the risk it gets swallowed by the sinkhole, which still seems to be getting steadily larger…