Just a bit about the house….

03/07/2016 by UKMA 11 Comments

I have been referring to “the house” often and now some progress has been made I thought I would share a bit about it.  The house used to be a pair of side-by-side Victorian semis which were united in 2000 into one house.  When we took it on, we knew there were issues, but were a bit in love with it from the start.  Rose-coloured glasses and all that.

We have done a LOT of work on it so far but there is still a ton of work to do.  The next big thing is the front entryway.  Each house had its own version of Victorian clay tiles, which were lovely, but filthy.

The part that was cleanest was just under the stairs.  On the left you can see the state of them, and on the right what about 2 hours of scrubbing with powerful cleaner and a stiff scrub brush and then scrubber attached to a drill accomplished

Looking down from the upstairs landing, you can get an idea of exactly how much tiling there is.

Further down you will see the other angle as the tiles flow on to the back of the house. We are re-thinking me spending weeks scrubbing when after they are clean, the next step, the sealing of them, is critical.  It might be something to hand over to the professionals!

I am pretty much living in one room, DH’s office (or it will be) at the moment, as there has been painting and carpeting and damp proofing and construction gong on all around.

Sad, isn’t it?  But on the plus side, the lounge is looking lovely, ready for old furniture – and new curtains. New furniture is still a ways off, I’m afraid. It’ll all be a bit mis-matched for a bit.

A casualty was one of a pair of lampshades, dropped by one of the painters.  It took me a week to sort out a good replacement, due to a series of annoying issues with Amazon.  But I quite like the new glass shade

The lounge and the dining room are being professionally done. The dining room is still in progress

I’ve done the snug (a small second sitting room that will probably be a library of sorts

and what would have been wayward son’s bedroom

and what would have been his studio

THAT one was a real challenge!  The walls were bright deep blue above the dado rail and under, two fat stripes of lime green and turquoise!

The walls were badly lined and there is flippin’ wood chip everywhere, but at least I got a fresh coat of paint on it.  Best that could be expected, really,  as it has already take two weeks for the pros to do the lounge and dining room and the ceiling in the snug.  At some point I expect we will have to strip off all of the wood chip and have the whole house re-plastered but RIGHT NOW it is more about making it clean and fresh, fast, for us to live in.

In that previous photo you can see my hubby’s touching expression of love.  Some men buy jewels, some buy flowers, but mine knows what matters.  He slipped a pair of comfy knee-pads in the basket at Homebase, knowing kneeling on the hard laminate flooring was going to hurt.  Love that guy loads.

I have one room that is done (except for an area rug and sorting out the curtains, and that is DDs room, the Purple Palace

As she will never have a fire in the fireplace. I’ve used some re-positionable adhesive and added squares of Basic Grey cardstock over the tiles. You don’t see it in most of the photos but every bedroom has a sink and most have a fireplace too.

I also did the Master Bedroom (see my sad and lonely bed-on-the-floor?)

and the biggest success was fresh white paint and new vinyl to replace the tattered and smelly carpet in the master bath.

What else?  I am in the middle of slapping a quick few coats of magnolia on what will be my office – this is actually just an hour before I started

I am awaiting the repair of the sink to do the last wall and a half – it was falling off the wall, and apparently leaking so the joist underneath is drying out so new floorboards can be installed.

I had to re-paint a bit of hallway that was incredibly grubby, leading up to the loft.  You can see that the door is in need of re-painting too!

The acoustics in the upper landing are fabulous.  By placing a bluetooth speaker just here

and streaming Radio Paradise from my iPad, I can literally fill the house with music.

What’s missing?  Well, the kitchen is a big one.  It is proper disgusting.  I can’t even show it. There is NOTHING good about it,  Rising damp, stained, ornate cabinet doors with extra barley twist insets (all painted duck’s egg blue but chipped and showing the original orangey wood thru in some places) and too shallow to fit our dinner plates, then buckled and lifting dead cheap laminate floors,  grubby backsplash tiles and cheap and ugly work surface.  We had one end unit ripped out and a new radiator installed to make room for the dishwasher but this room is just something we will have to live with while we re-stock the bank account to pay for a new kitchen.  No point in spending money to make it marginally better when it needs ripping out ASAP.  We may spend a pittance on some vinyl to cover the laminate, but other than that, nothing for now.

Off the kitchen is a smelly, damp and mildew-ridden utility room that is in the process of being sorted out, and a smelly downstairs loo, also being sorted.  There is another utility room off the back of the other side, with a small store room off it,  that is bone dry and smells fine.  Go figure.

Upstairs there is another bedroom that we are doing NOTHING to (the ONLY ROOM that seems fine) and a box room that was an office. That needs quite a bit of work too as the walls are full of nail holes and Blu-tak and there is a huge hole around the electrical socket that worries me a bit. There is also a slap-dash bookshelf that need removing before it can be painted.  There are two more family bathrooms, both needing a lot of work, not just cosmetic refreshing, but which are useable, more or less.  We might have to replace the shower mechanism in one, the other has just a tub, toilet and sink. If you are counting, that is 8 sinks upstairs.

So, if you were wondering what was keeping me from anything more than occasional blogging, now you know.  Between cleaning, and painting and wrangling workmen and making 1000 hot beverages, it was hard to find time to do much else!

I do believe this is going to be a work in progress for the foreseeable future…