Hey All
I mentioned at the beginning of the year that C and I had bought our first home, property by us has been rising in price and we were getting to the point we were about to be priced out, as we started to look more at properties we decided a fully done up house wasn't for us. We knew we wanted traditional features still in the house, we wanted a bay and we wanted something we could make our own.
We've been in the house for over 6 months and I can't believe how much time flies so I thought I'd shared some of our progress, we've essentially lived in a building site for the last 3 months with our bedroom being our only sanctuary and because of all the work the rabbits were also in our room so it's been stressful!
The standard we've bought a house photo!
The first thing we tackled was the stairs ( I may have pulled the carpet up from them within 30 minutes of opening the front door. We pulled all of the boxing off the banister to reveal the old balustrades and posts and are in the slow process of restoring the stairs, this involves a heat gun to remove years of paint and glue residue and then sanding them back. We plan to sand it all back and maybe get a carpet runner for them.
The next thing to start to tackle was the kitchen, I couldn't stand the brown on brown. We spent ages trying to decide on a colour. I loved the idea of yellow but a lot of people didn't agree with me, in the end I decided to just go for it and I'm so glad we did. We used Annie Sloan Chalk paints and I love the finish of it. I may do a whole post on it once it's finished. We want to put a vinyl floor down until we can afford to do it and the tiles properly but can't afford it at the moment.
This is the outside before any of the work started.
Next it was time for the builders to come in and begin our big project work. The house had a big damp problem which meant we had to have all the render hacked off the outside of the house before we could tackle the issue and this bought problems of it's own, includes bricks crumbling away, a chimney which needed rebuilding due to not being properly built into the structure of the house, bricks around windows needing rebuilding and a few other issues. One funny thing was finding newspaper stuffed in some of the house under the old render that dated back to 1987 (older than both C and I!)
A big debate come with the colour once the render was one, C wanted white which I was agaisnt as it gets dirty so quickly, in the end he let me have soft heather and I'm so pleased as it looks so pretty!
Painting it is such hard work but worth it, we've done all the bits we needed the scaffolding for so just need to finish off the rest when we get a chance.
One benefit to the scaffolding was the amazing views, a few drinks were had at the top during nice weather!
The last room we've been working on is the lounge and dinning room, these needed an interior damp course and all old plaster off and render put back in. We also decided to change a window to back door, open the two rooms and open a fire place up.
As with all the things with this house it wasn't without a surprise or two along the way. As we pulled up the laminate flooring the damp had actually left the floorboards rotten so these had to be ripped up and a new floor poured.
We don't have great before shots of this room but this is the dinning room after we pulled up the laminate and stripped the wallpaper.
The first job for the builders was putting in the support to be able to knock the wall down.
Seeing it knocked through was so exciting for the first time, it opened up the space so much. You can see the floorboards here which unfortunately had to go, we have floorboards all upstairs so we weren't too disappointed though we did hope to have them downstairs too!
New floor down!!
You can also see the back door we had put in here, it lets so much light into the room.
One feature we loved in the lounge was the coving around the ceilings which we thought we'd lose, luckily it was mostly saved with the exception of one repair job.
It's finally starting to come together, the plaster is drying out now too, we decided whilst the walls were back to brick to install a floating mantle piece so bought a sleeper and polished it up. I'm loving the way this looks and can't wait to be able to afford to get a fire installed in here.
The last jobs now are to install a velux in the roof and a new loft ladder and some external pipe work then onto decorating and finding the perfect shade for in here. We've also been learning electrics and moving sockets etc which has been good.
This house is teaching us a lot so far but it's all worth it.
If you made it to the end congratulations ha! That was a long post.
Love M
xxx
