The highs and lows of refurbishing a house…
A diary of everything involved along the way!
Moving forwards
Nov 7th
Things finally seem to be building up a solid head of steam & are starting to move forwards….!
Bedroom 1’s new plaster’s nearly dry and we’ve made inroads today into getting the room finished.
The carpet’s been pulled up to reveal a floor that has tons of potential if sanded & varnished; skirting has been stripped & sanded; and loads of extremely sharp carpet gripper bars have been persuaded to part company with the floor.
Needless to say this wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded – along with the grippers the carpet was stuck down with what feels like miles of stubborn & surprisingly strong carpet tape… Took a while to figure out what would work well to remove this and fortunately a combination of a heat gun & sharp scrapers seems to work.
Worked around 3/4 of the room today and tomorrow’s job is the rest – along with painting the ceiling & hopefully a base coat of paint of the walls!
One of the bedrooms is also starting to look finished with fresh paint & just needs the ceiling & skirting painting to finish.
The lounge has also finally been prepped for plastering – all in, a busy day!!
Quick Update…
Nov 6th
Haven’t posted anything to here for a while, but work is needless to say very much ongoing!
Since the last post bedroom 1 has been replastered (and is still currently slowly drying out before we can paint it!); walls & ceiling in bedroom 2 have been repainted; walls in the “en-suite” have been repainted and we’ve finished wallpaper stripping in the lounge and ripped out & removed a “window seat” in the bay window along with cleaning up the resulting mess it left behind.
The first piece of plumbing work has also been completed seeing some pipes (which presumably used to feed some sort of corner wash basin in one of the bedrooms) that had been left rising from the floor, capped off underneath the floor along with the excess removed.
I did briefly debate using those new-fangled push-fit fittings to cap the pipes but ended up going with a more traditional compression 
fitting… Was working on the basis that if the pipework is going to be tucked away under the floorboards I’d rather know that the caps were secure and not going to weaken over time or suddenly decide to part company with the end of the pipe. The idea of suddenly acquiring an unexpected water feature in both a bedroom and the corner of the lounge ceiling really doesn’t appeal!!
Finally, we’ve also had a couple of builders out to come and quote for knocking down the dividing wall between what is currently a kitchen utility area and a dining room – intention being to create a larger open-plan kitchen-dining area rather than keeping a smallish utility and a formal dining room.
Next steps to include installing coving in the bedrooms; painting bedroom 1’s new plaster, and having the lounge, hallway & stairs replastered to finally removing one of 1970’s finest creations – floor to ceiling patterned Artex….!!!
Always strange what you find..
Nov 1st
Definitely the EEN…
Lounge stripped
Nov 1st
Just a quick update:
Lounge has now been completely wallpaper stripped & prepared for replastering.
All looking a touch bare at the moment but that should hopefully start to change rapidly now.
Next stop is to tidy up what appears to be a patched-over serving hatch (!)
and to remove a window seat/ cupboard currently adorning the bay window…
While that’s going on we’ve started prepping & painting one of the bedrooms & need to sand back / scrape off some of the lovely artex that’s going to be plastered over!
Onwards!
Our next challenge: The Lounge
Oct 27th
While waiting for quotes from our plasterer, we’ve made a start on wallpaper stripping in the lounge. The walls in here appear fine at first glance, but looking again reveals niceties like a badly-patched serving hatch & poor quality plaster repairs – all of which are only going to disappear if the walls are reskimmed.
Here are the before photos….
Wallpaper stripping is currently in progress.. more photos to come!
Battle won & 2nd challenge of the day!
Oct 24th
It was long & drawn out… but the built in wardrobes are no more. 
(Start to finish in about 4 hours !)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an over-engineered construction in a bedroom! Today’s flat-pack offerings are positively fragile in comparison, but on the plus side if you decide you’ve had enough of them they can be removed with little more than a strong push.
These by comparison required removal by force with the use of jigsaws, hammers, pry bar, drills & power screwdrivers. Every piece seemed to be either nailed or screwed to anything it touched – along with plenty of bolts anchoring it all to the surrounding walls. I’m sure our neighbours probably thought I was demolishing half the house, but no… just a wardrobe!
Wardrobes out of the way, attention turned to the second challenge of the day – removal of the multiple layers of wallpaper, top one of which was carrying a couple of coats of paint for good measure.
Looks nice from a distance… 
However, its amazing what paint-on-wallpaper can conceal…
So far so good – white base coat = nice and handy to paint over… 
Move onto the next wall and… PURPLE walls!? 
Looks like more white, but with a lilac “feature” ? 
Tomorrow’s plan is to get the remaining wallpaper off and clean up / inspect the walls to find out whether we’re going to be able to “make good” ourselves or if we need the services of a tame plasterer!
And so it begins…
Oct 24th
First “real” task on the agenda (after yesterday’s clean etc) is to strip out a er, lovely built in wardrobe.
Looks like it was knocked up by an over zealous chippy when the house was built – complete with a fine example of 1970’s wallpaper for good measure.
Definitely has to go…. Only question is who’s going to give up first? Me or the wardrobe??
The builder definitely didn’t want these to come down without a fight!
Completed & Keys
Oct 22nd
We’ve completed!
Everything’s done, the house is ours & we now have the keys!
It feels like its taken months to get to this point, and given how slowly nearly everything else in this purchase has been moving we’re still amazed that we’ve actually now completed after exchanging contracts only 3 days ago 
Unfortunately, now that we have the keys, the next stop involves creating a massive to-do list and lots and lots of hard work.
Contracts Exchanged..
Oct 19th
Finally, after what seems like several months, contracts were formally exchanged this morning!
Next stop, completion… hopefully on Thursday….