Tag: renovation
-
Timber
One of the biggest disagreements myself and Chris have had about the house renovation has been how many trees to take out in the garden. Having been abandoned for forty years, the majority of the garden was covered in tall trees or scrub. Personally, I would prefer not to take out any trees – as…
-
Strip and Paint
It’s been a busy start to the year, with Chris off skiing, and me having two house guests, in the form of Chris’s brother’s dog Ned and my friend Becky. With an extra doggy guest arriving, we wanted to protect the stairs from damage by staining them. I did two coats, with a sand before…
-
Stairs
The very dull world of installing skirting kept me busy for a good week. Even once it was attached there was the filling, sanding, second filling, second sanding, caulking and of course first coat and second. It’s done anyway, aside for the doorway, which is complicated as it currently catches on the door. With the…
-
Coverings
I’ve been plodding away on the boxing in the spare room. I filled and sanded the screw holes, used expandy foam, filler and caulke around the edges, and painted the whole thing with primer. The final step was a couple of coats of white wood paint. I located a pot and painted the wood. Then,…
-
Shedding
I can’t say that I’m particularly excited about building the garden shed. This is largely because there are undone jobs I look at every day inside the house I’d rather be getting on with. But Chris has been dreaming of a shed ever since we moved in, and says I can’t replace the stairs till…
-
Filling some gaps
We only had one day free this weekend for DIY, so I made an effort to get through a few small jobs in the evenings. I gave the lounge beams a final coat of paint, before washing the brushes, putting everything away, and then remembering the one solitary beam in the utility that still needed…
-
Fiddly and annoying
It’s been a long time since I last posted – that’s largely because it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do a decent bit of DIY. Between our holiday to Norway, friends weddings and a few other commitments, we’ve barely had time to pick up a hammer. Although it’s nice to do…
-
DIY to the Max
Unfortunately for my cousin Max, his name makes a good pun – bad luck. However, it has felt like a good week for DIY, with his arrival not only giving us always welcome extra pairs of hands, but giving us a boost too. Max arrived on the Friday night and stayed till the following Friday.…
-
Van Post 2
Stage two of the van transformation was to insulate it. As someone that feels the cold this is a particularly important step for me. We’ve gone for slightly unusual insulation, as it’s actually the same stuff we insulated our house with. Chris found someone selling all the materials the contractors had left behind at a…
-
Van Day 1
It’s certainly not a sensible thing to do, starting a van conversion when you still haven’t finished your house restoration, but this is exactly what we’re doing. In part we’re switching jobs because the IVF treatment starts in July so it’s possible next year we’ll be too busy with a baby to convert a van.…
Ruined 