A diary of everything involved along the way!
Posts tagged decorating
Busy week ahead…!
Nov 20th
Just a quick update to say that a busy week is coming up…
Progress today includes lots of ground work to prepare the way – getting a couple of rooms nearly ready to finish off when a floor sander arrives on monday!
Window sills have been painted & coving “installed” in both main bedrooms. Tomorrows job will probably need to be painting said coving, along with a freshly prepared radiator & removing all upstairs carpets!!
Finally, we’ve just about lined someone up to do battle with the garden. It’s a job that’s at the end of a long list of things that need doing but needs to be done…
Decorating progress
Nov 19th
Now the plaster’s done, it’s time to crack on with the rest of the house.
The first couple of coats of paint have been applied to the main bedroom to seal & cover the newly dry plaster, and this weekend’s job is to start getting the proper top-coats of paint done along with all the woodwork, window sills, skirting, door frames etc.
We’ve also been getting on with fitting coving to the nearly completed bedroom 2, and are in the progress of lining up various quotes for flooring downstairs & removal of an unwanted wall!
Plasterwork finally done!
Nov 17th
Reached a bit of a milestone over the last weekend – all of the replastering we needed to do for the moment has now finally been completed.
The Lounge has now been finished, along with the hall, staircase walls and upstairs landing walls!
The biggest benefit of this work being finished is that it means we can start to actually decorate the rooms now – and hopefully the lounge can start to look slightly less like a building site, and more like a room.
As a quick reminder of why we need to do this, this photo was what the stair walls (and the hall / upstairs walls) used to look like….
They now look more like this… which even with bare plaster are a vast improvement over heavily ridged Artex!
More mountains moved!
Nov 8th
Great progress today – starting to feel like the house is slowly coming together now.
Lounge plastering is well underway; bedroom 1 has had all of the remaining mess/carpet tape removed along with the first coat of paint on the replastered walls & ceiling and the remaining paintwork in bedroom 2 completed.
We’ve also made a bit of a 
positive discovery – all of upstairs bar the ensuite extension has good quality floorboards throughout rather than chipboard.
Does mean that we need to hire a floor sander for longer than thought but also means we don’t need to recarpet everywhere!
A quick test of the varnish we’re looking to use seems to have resulted in a nice finish on sanded boards – which is good even if it does seem to need 3 coats!!
Next steps are to finish off the bedrooms and to get the lounge painted once the plasterer’s finished.
Lots more to do throughout however!!!!
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!