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...

Where to start... remove the wall paper!

Well, as the first step of house renovation, I started to remove the wall papers. Luckily, my colleague gave me 'steam' wall paper stripper!

I've managed to strip the part of dining room and the staircase.
There is a wooden bar at the middle of the wall, could not remove the wall paper very well... will need to remove the bar to clean the wall

And the staircase, the wallpaper's texture. And the colour of the wall changed... with the steamer, the wall paper was removed very easily.



Will continue removing all the wall paper and clean the wall to make it ready for painting.

By now, it took approx 4 hours to remove the wallpaper. Isn't it a good progress?