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...)