Finally...

Finally, the builder completed the painting and small jobs!! We still haven't got curtains but we can start cleaning up.

Staircase looks very nice after complete. We decided to go with eggshell finish rather than gloss. Doors are the same finish too.

Wall light looks good now :) And it's working!! 

Then kitchen... finally completed the painting and everything! It was a long long journey...

As the last job for the builder, we have asked him to put outside tap. It was too high position... it works, so it is okay for now

Still need to clean up a lot! After cleaning up, we will upload more pictures.

Living room

We have decided to paint blue in the living room. Ordered the paint online as the shop doesn't seem to have it. We used endurance matt colour range of Dulux. Stonewashed blue.  It looks nicer than the sample paint! We look forward to finish the second coat.

Kitchen 5 - Tiles

Our builder went for a holiday for 3 weeks... and finally came back! First thing we asked him was kitchen tiles. After worktop installation, only thing left in the kitchen.

We have already purchased them from Homebase. The builder got grouting from topps tiles. We chose white tiles and grey grouting. 

Match with the colour of cabinet and worktop (hopefully?) Now our kitchen looks nice!

Also we put the bulb in the pendant lights. At the beginning, one of them did not work but the electrician came back and fixed it quickly. Now kitchen is ready to use! (kind of...) It took so long since destroying the old kitchen!

Grass

After flatten the ground, we saw seeds. We have waited for a week, finally saw some green on the ground! ( there are so many stones ...)

After few days...

Even greener now!! We need to saw more seeds. So far so good :)

Paint doors

Wondering how many times I would have chances to paint doors. The same as the skirting board, first coat is white water based paint. 
Then, wood filler, sanding, base coat, and at last, egg shell. 

Just completed the first coat. Still long way to complete!

Kitchen 4 - Worktop

We chose granite worktop(tornado grey). Installation did not go well unfortunately... After the fitter correct all mistakes (cabinet opening was opposite, cabinet was broken, the dish washer was not connected etc), finally we could proceed to install worktop. 

On the sink side, it fit smoothly. However, the hob and oven side, the stone cracked when installation. The wall seemed to be too tight. The worktop guys brought back the stone and they said they would come back in one week. Due to the hole in the middle for hob, the thin part are very fragile. 

Second time... the stone cracked again :( They tried to repair but we could see some cracks. They suggested to cut the stone to 4 pieces (thin part) then install next time. We wanted one piece smooth worktop but agreed it.
They said the stone will be ready by next Friday... we called them the day before (Thursday) they forgot to book the delivery (unbelievable!) So we needed to wait another week.

Then finally, at the third installation, the worktop was installed successfully.
The following week, gas hob was installed. Looks great.

I have never had granite worktop, I am looking forward to cooking here :)

Garden

After removing the tree in the garden, we are trying to make the ground flat to seed the grass. It is hard work! The weather is getting better, the soil gets dry which helped us to make it flat :) 

The shed is old and rotten, we will need to replace it sometime..

On the side of the garden, Bluebells are blooming. Lovely :)

Staircase

Sanded and painted the staircase in white. It used to be wooden colour. White staircase looks beautiful. Yes, I did it :) It took longer than the painters but I am quite happy about my first coat.

We will need to choose colour for living room. Got sample and try them but not sure... we may need to get another samples!

Floor sanding

After the building work, floor is full of dust!! mainly plaster and paint.
I really liked the original floor board. Old and dark colour... but we decided to sand the floor and fill the gap to increase efficiency.

There is no picture showing only floor before sanding but this picture show how much dust on the floor! (The builder should have covered the floor before the building work!)

This is the picture after sanding. Colour is lighter and wood looks beautiful.

Spot lights

My partner accepted my request to have spot lights in the dining room...
We have spot lights in the dining room, bathroom and laundry area.

This one is in the dining room dimmable :) Nice and bright!

I have sanded and painted the staircase. I only did the first coat. Wall need another coat too. 

The builders/electricians' progress is quite slow... sometimes we got frustrated. 

We stayed in the shared house (temporary accommodation) for about 2 weeks but decided to move in to the house. (finally!!) It's dusty and still unfinished but I feel happy to live here :) Hope to complete everything soon.

Architrave and skirting board

Before the renovation, I did not know the words about the parts in the room... such as architrave, skirting board, coving etc ... There are so many things to choose! We chose reversible one for skirting board, used Lambs tongue side. Ogee style for architrave. (We asked the builder to get from Selco).

I have painted white today. It looks a bit better? There are many nods and holes, as this is the cheap one. Hope the paint will cover them. I'm sure it will be okay :)

Need more coats. Just finished one coat.

Painting

After plastering, the builder started painting. The first coat and second coat are white. Then we chose the colour for the rooms upstairs.
The builders said they only paint Dulux paint. (even we saw the cheaper paints are the same and even better! on TV... it was BBC the other day)
The upstairs rooms have been painted in pale blue with purple ish colour.

The pictures shows just after the paint (first coat of the colour). After drying, the colour slightly changed. A bit paler.

We will need to choose the other rooms colours too.

Before finishing the second coat, we needed to move our staff in the room... so none of the rooms are finished :(

Also, we could not arrange electrician to complete the switches and sockets before moving in... so we rent a room for a while to wait to complete their job :(

The builders get slower... delayed. Many of my friends experienced delays, so it sounds very common here. Hope their job completes soon and move in to live there. 

Kitchen painting

Kitchen wall and ceiling are painted...looks nicer :)
We asked the builder to paint...
Worktop fitter came to measure, it will be installed in one week.

Dining room is still mess... :(

Some progress

Some progress but we feel the builders are quite slow :( We need to move in next weekend. 

Upstairs rooms have been completed the second paint. Still need to put skirting board and the door...

Below picture is before filling the gaps around the window of landings.

After filled the gap and plastered...Also, door frame is attached!

Plastering

The kitchen fitter is working in the kitchen...
In the meanwhile, the builder completed one room plastering. (small room)

This is the wall which was re-built due to the weak frame!! It looks strong and smooth :) We only planned to re-do the wall only this side, but the other side was quite soft and dirty... so re-do this side as well.

After plastering, the wall looks straight and nice. Unfortunately, the original doors don't fit anymore. The doors were not straight anyway, so we need to get the new door :( 

We need to get paint too! We visited B&Q or Homebase a couple of times for other reasons. We've seen massive selection of paint there... hope we pick the colour soon to start paint!

Kitchen 3 - Kitchen delivery and installation

The kitchen cabinets and appliance are delivered and the fitter started the installation. Before installation, the builder had to complete plastering and tiling in the kitchen. They did not have time to paint... so the behind the cabinet, there will be no paint :( damn. But he did brilliant job for plastering on the wall and ceiling.

Then the cabinet and extractor were installed...

Looks very nice but all wrong unfortunately :(  The cabinet closer to the extractor should be the bigger cabinet, also open from closer to the extractor. All opposite.

We love the extractor! That looks very good :) We are happy about our choice.

Hope we can resolve the issue soon.

In the meanwhile, the builder is working upstairs room, plastering... we really hope to complete by the end of the month.

Tiles

It was hard to choose tiles for kitchen... floor tiles and wall tiles. We've got a basic idea but it was harder than we thought! Not only colour, texture, thickness, size etc.

My friend recommended fired earth, their flat has got beautiful tiles from the shop. We visited several times, tiles are beautiful but a bit out of our budget...
Next, we visited porcelanosa, their tiles are again so beautiful but a bit too luxuary... (out of budget too).
Then we went to Topps tiles, Homebase and B&Q. Topps tiles are more expensive than we thought but not as much as the first shops we saw. Luckily, we found a nice wall tile at homebase (half price!) The tile is Laura ashley one, looks very similar to the one in fired earth. 

As for the floor tiles, it was even tougher... we ordered some samples online too. Crown tiles was so quick! The samples were free up to 4 samples, and arrive in next 2 days. We liked some of them such as magma, but it was out of stock when we needed. (disappointing )  The other online tile shop, tons of tiles, their samples were NOT free and it took 4 days (as there was a system error etc) but the sample tiles were nearly actual size and very good to compare! In the end, the samples were not arrived before we ordered but we were happy to see the samples as one of them was the one we ordered :) We've already seen the same tiles at Topps tiles, so we decided to order, we had to order on that day! Tons of tiles has a good selection of tiles, and the price was competitive. Also the next day delivery is available... with these reasons, we ordered from tons of tiles. We chose Pietre di Keope Cogne Grey (right one!)

I'll upload the pictures in the next blog. 

Underfloor heating

Our kitchen is quite small... we noticed that we won't have space for radiator. We looked at thin long vertical radiator such as this... Looks great but only the space we can think of is the next to the cabinet. So the cabinet won't open properly if we put the radiator there.... so only the solution is underfloor heating!

I did not keen on underfloor heating at all as I have heard that the running cost is quite high... let's see if it is successful or not. We can't know until we move in and use it.

My partner found an underfloor heating company. He called the company and found quite helpful so we decided to order from them (Ambient Electrical Underfloor heating).

We didn't plan to renovate the bathroom... however, we thought it would be nice if there is underfloor heating in bathroom too. So We decided to re-do the bathroom floor too.

The underfloor heating kit arrived the next day we order online (it was quick!) We ordered the insulation mat as well.

Next, I will write about tiles!  (It was hard to choose for us...)

Walls and ceiling

One after another!! We found so many issues and places to fix.

We found that the upstairs wall is weak and not solid enough... when we push the wall, the wall made squeaky noise and whole wall moves. The other side of the wall looked okay but some builder pointed that the wall is weak as well. 

Same to the ceiling in the dining room... once we move in, we cannot do it as the work make so much dust. So we decided to re-do all ceiling in the dining room too.

This is the picture the builder removed the wall upstairs. The wood is very thin and weak, so they will make it stronger.

We did not expect such a big re-construction of the house...

Plumber and Electrician

The pulmber and electrician are working on our house at the moment. 

We thought (and the estate agency said!!) the boiler is combi boiler. But!!! actually, the boiler is conventional boiler. We haven't had any knowledge about boiler and we did not know it. We noticed that there was a water tank next to the bath room but still we did not know the boiler is not combi boiler! 

So we called some plumbers and asked quotes about removing the water tank ... then find out that our boiler is not combi boiler. We decided to change it to combi boiler. Also, all radiators are very old. They are not energy efficient at all. We wanted to change them as well...
Oddly, the previous boiler was in the bath room. We wanted to move it to outside of the bathroom too.


In addition, we need to re-wire all electric cables. We know it from the validation survey... We asked electricians for some quotations and chose the good electric company to do all the jobs. We haven't expected such big jobs!

This is the dining room... removed all ceiling. I will write about the wall and ceiling in the next post. (we haven't expected this big job neither...)

Removing wall paper...carry on!

Carried on removing the wall paper in the dining room and the bed room...
It was a hard work, managed to remove all wall paper in the living room, finally!

Below the wallpaper, we can see the stain of old picture rail! We need to clean up the wall but pretty much removed all wall paper. Will be ready for the builder to plaster the wall.

Same as the bedroom...After removing the wardrobe, then removed the wallpaper... need to clean up but the room gets bigger!

We'll ask the other works to the builder. Hope to proceed very soon!

Kitchen - 2: Remove old kitchen

Last weekend, builders came to our house to start removing our old kitchen...
They came with drilling tools to break tiles. Bye bye, old kitchen!

This is the kitchen before started.

Then....

Then.... removed the lower ceiling as well...

To be continued...

Kitchen - 1: How did we design?

One of our biggest project for the renovation is kitchen!
Kitchen was very old and needed to replace completely. Our kitchen is quite small, galley style (like corridor, worktop on both side)

[How did we decide the kitchen design?]
It was a good timing to purchase kitchen as many kitchen shops (such as Magnet, B&Q, IKEA etc) are on sale after Christmas! We visited a couple of shops and got quotations. They draw design for us for free! (Some home visit design are not free...such as John Lewis and IKEA) We've been to John Lewis, Magnet, Betta living, IKEA, Wickes and Wren Kitchen...

We made appointment and visited the store, chat with the designer. We got rough design at the first visit. They are very helpful to decide our kitchen design. We already had some ideas before hands but it is hard to decide the details!! Such as colour of the cabinet, worktops, handles. So many choices.

As for cabinets, we decided to go Shaker style. Our house is an old house, shaker country style goes well with dining room's wooden floor :) Some store's cabinet are flat pack, some are assembled at the factory. We liked them to be assembled so that there will be less missing parts and easy to fit for the fitter.

I wanted wooden worktop at first, but my partner wanted granite worktop. Granite is beautiful and hygienic, easy to maintain. Wooden worktop is harder to maintain... so we decided to go with granite. It is expensive but it would worth it!

We agreed on the basic design, then paid the deposit. The designer came to the house to make sure the measurement. We haven't decided the height of the cabinet and some small details, we will finalise them on the next visit at the store. We'll book the next visit shortly.

Besides, we started to remove the current kitchen... I'll write about it in the next post!



This is the current kitchen... nice wooden door and handle but all wanky and half broken...

Built-in wardrobe

Last weekend, we had some progress! Removing more wallpaper (continue from the previous post) and start breaking built-in wardrobe in the bedroom.

At first, when we came for viewing, we did not have any idea removing the built-in wardrobe, actually, we liked the doors and the storage. But after the several visit, we found that the shelves in the wardrobe are a bit broken and not too nice to use it as it is. So we decided to remove them and make the room bigger.

In the picture, still they looks nice... when they are closed

Some of the screws are quite stiff, but we managed to remove all shelves! We could not reach the top shelf/door as we are both short. We'll get a step ladder to remove them completely. 

Next, we decided to remove all wallpapers, not only the bottom half... the bottom half has been removed today, including the hallway. Started to remove the top half. The wallpaper has different texture. We were not sure what is under the wallpaper... the wall looks like bare concrete. We will consult with the builder what shall we do after removal...