DIY…… Never Again!

Finally we had managed to save enough to purchase the bits to be able to redo our very nasty and mould ridden bathroom. 

We had been buying bits slowly and paying each bit off before purchasing the next, in order that we didn’t end up with a huge credit card bill.

The day then finally arrived for us to begin the work.  Boy we wish it hadn’t once we had started!

As the tiles came off the walls, so did the plasterboard, as it was soaking wet.  Behind the plasterboard is hardboard (this is a timber framed house).  The hardboard was a complete wall of black mould!  No wonder we had always had a mould issue in here, it was making it’s way through the vey badly grouted tiles and out into the air, to grow further!

We painted the walls with a mould killer.  This is supposed to work in one coat.  Three coats later, and an oil filled radiator overnight in the bathroom to try and dry it out, and it looked no better!

We had now lost two and a half days just trying to remove the mould!

Our last ditch attempt involved goggles, face masks and an electric  sander!  We realise this isn’t the right way  to deal with it, but we had had enough at this point! Die Mould, Die!

Once this was done we replaced all of the plasterboard with some more waterproof stuff, to prevent any moisture getting through to the hard wood behind.

The new bath (which was the reason this all began in the first place, due to our old bath being damaged!) finally went in.

And finally the tiling could begin…..

Needless to say, we are not finished and have had one thing after another occur since the mould incident….. I will maybe post the finished article picture once it’s done, because the whole getting there part is just doing our heads in LOL

Jo Anne

Spray it Again, Jo!

Our front garden wall had been bugging me for a while now, and all I wanted was to be able to clean it!  I know, mad aren’t I, but Hey-Ho!

Anyway, today the urge got the better of me and I got the pressure washer out and began….What an amazing result! Yes I may be a bit mad but it was worth it!

What a difference!

In the meantime, Paul decided that the porch was long overdue a re-paint and got that done too.

A very productive day indeed!

Jo Anne

New Year, New DIY

We have many jobs that need doing around the house, but all of them cost too much for us to afford at the moment. 

The easy fix is to do a job that is 5 years overdue, and that will only cost us a couple of rolls of wallpaper, as we already have undercoat and gloss.  It is also a job that, once done, will make the largest impact on the downstairs. 

Our hallway, stairs and landing.

Since moving in, nearly 5 years ago, we have not touched the hallway, and the gloss work, and plasterboard show it!  It’s certainly not the most welcoming of entrances.

We chose a super fresco wallpaper, that is quite thick, so that it will cover some very bad plaster work and hide some areas that once held coat hooks.  (We relocated them to the down stair loo!)

Last weekend we did all of the undercoating and glossing on the wood work, leading all up the stairs and across the landing and back down again.  (The disadvantage of open plan hall and stairway is the fact you can’t just stop at the bottom of the stairs as the paintwork shows the colour difference !)

This weekend we have spent painting the ceiling, and papering the walls.

Some of the twists and turns were a challenge, but I think that it was worth it.

The alcove that once held a scruffy bookcase and the coats now holds a little occasional table and some lovely pictures.

Before is the above picture and below is the new improved version.

I’m really please with the warm cosy feel to it now.  Well worth feeling knackered when we had to get up for work today!

Jo Anne

Home to Flowers and Cards

It’s lovely to be home, despite the Chinese laundry going on in the kitchen and spare room, and even more so, when we have cards to open!
Our anniversary cards may be left up a little longer than they normally would have been, but we have to get the benefit of them from the sideboard!

I also went into work to a bouquet of flowers! Unfortunately the circumstances for them are very sad.  They were from a lovely chap who had just lot his Dad, and he bought all of us office girls a bunch of them each to thank us for our support.
RIP Harry.
PS If you can make the photo out in the frame, it was taken at the wedding, and we didn’t know it was being taken!

Jo Anne

A Welcome Delivery

It has taken us some time to get to the stage where we could order our Oak Sideboard for the living room. Between Paul's work commitments and pre-booked holidays, it has taken a long time to complete the parts of this room that got us to this stage.

The floor went down in a weekend, as you saw a long while back in an earlier post.

The walls got painted once power points and tv cables were repositioned, and the curtains/blinds that I have made, have taken longer than expected, mainly because I've had the flu and did not want to make any mistakes whilst my head was full of nasty cold residue.

It came as a great surprise, when I received the call from the furniture company, to say that they could deliver our sideboard to us before Christmas.

Although they had said that they would do this when I originally orered it, I thought it highly unlikely, due to the snow up country, and how it was affecting the roads and transport in general.

and so, here it is! We had it delivered in an unfinished state. That is without wax or varnish, just beautiful sanded Oak, so that we can briwax it ourselves to match the colour on my Great Grans writing bureau that I love so much

The pictures were awaiting to go back up on the walls, so that we could position them correctly once the unit was positioned below them.

If you ignore the cream throws on the sofa, that are a mud catcher for Fred's paws, this gives you an idea as to how the sideboard fits with our room.

The briwax is sat in the kitchen waiting to be tenderly stroked onto the beautiful oak surfaces of my sideboard, and it will soon, be a deep medium brown, glossy finish.

All we need now is to add the wax to the unit and get a rug for the floor and the room will be finished.

A great start for the new year I think.

Roman Blind Making

Right then - This is the blind that we have in place over the one window of our living room currently. It was originally made, along with the full drop curtains, for our old house.

These window decorations have worked hard for us over the last 11 years, and we have certainly had our moneys worth out of them, however it is time for a change, and something that will match the decor (once it's complete) in our current lounge room.

It all began with some floral wall paper, and an idea at the back of my mind, that I could DIY the blinds!

I managed to find some curtains in Trago, (as I have already told you in a previous post), and the colour was an exact match to the green flowers in the paper.

My first task was to undo the tape header that was on the first curtain. I was taking it easy on myself, and using the current blind as a template, although I do have some pretty good instructions to follow (message me if you would like a copy of them).

I then unpicked the hem and cut the surplus fabric from the bottom, and then refolded and ironed the new cut line into place just below the line of the current lining.

All of this had to be done by hand, using a hidden stitch that would not show through onto the good side of the blind.

I laid the blind out onto a sheet on the floor and placed some tubes of fabric that I had run through the sewing machine. These tubes are then measured at intervals and will hold the doweling that allow the blind to fall in folds when pulled open.

Again these had to be stitched by hand, so that the stitching would not show through to the good side.

I pinned a few tubes at a time, as this took a while to do.

Once all of the tubes were stitched in place, the original baton was used for the top of the blind, and was attached with Velcro, which I was able to sew on using my machine thankfully. The side of the Velcro that went onto the baton was self adhesive, but we ensure that it was stapled in place too, just to make sure.

Finally the baton was fitted above the window once more, and the doweling rods inserted into the tubes. I stitched the ends over to hold them in place.

I sewed some small rings along the tubes at intervals for the cord to run through, and then ran the cord up to some screw rings in the baton and hung them down one side as the pull cord. The blind put in place on the baton using the Velcro.

Not bad for a first attempt, just one more to go!

Decorating

It's been ages since the flooring went down in the living room, and the wall paper has been in a ciupboard for the last 18 months, so it's about time to do something about that!

I went to try and find some curtains that I can cut up to fit the smaller than average windows and when I got back, Paul had already started the papering.

Lucky I got back when I did, as the paper was a pain to put up, as it was so thick. I kept creasing - that's what you get for buying decent quality I guess, but as we only needed a roll and a half the £14.99 per roll was justifiable I thought at the time LOL.

Doors and Windows!

Forgive me, for forgetting to get a before picture, but I was side tracked, ordering Emily's flowers!

Sooooo: the old door came out after some pretty heavy duty banging and pulling on behalf of the window / door fitter. These had only been organise two weeks ago, and suddenly it was all happening, and we would soon have a watertight door.

Before long the framework had gone into place, and everything was screwed in

and it was just finishing strips to completed the door and make it all beautiful one more!

Then it was off upstairs to the bathroom - normally a very cold and draughty place as the seals on the previous window did not work!

out came the old one - leaving a pretty awful gap

and in went the new one. - Beautiful! Once the new sill was in place it made the bathroom a haven of warmth.

Great job, messy, but worth it. I want some of the others doing now that's the only problem! Think we need to save up and do them one at a time!

Glam Lam!

I am so sick of not having enough money to do anything on the house, and always seem to be robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. Since I had my stints in hospital in January and February, our accounts have just taken ages to recover from 5 weeks of little or no salary coming into my account. Even with the sale of the static caravan, and the money that gave us, things seem to have taken their own sweet time to fall back into place.

And so, with the misery descending on me, I decided to see how much it would cost to re lay some new laminate in the living room.

The old stuff, that you can see in the picture above, was a really pale maple like effect, that the previous owners had laid (very badly) and it was chipped and scratched to within an inch of it's life. I could not take looking at it any more!

Having got a quote from a flooring company, that reached nearly £800, my general mood of dissatisfaction got worse.

It was at this point we remembered we had nearly 2 packs lefts of a deep chocolate brown laminate that we had used in the hallway when we first moved here.

I worked out we need to be able to cover about 25 square foot, and we had about 3 square foot already, if we used the same stuff. I went online to check if our local DIY store still did that make and colour...... Bingo, and they had a third off, for this weekend only. The really cheap packs now got even cheaper! We did not even need the foamy underlay, as we had some left from last time.

A quick trip down to HB (you know where it is if you think about it!) DIY store, and we got the 8 packs that we needed to be able to complete the job. And the cost you ask? (bearing in mind we had not got anything to pay for it) £100! it went onto the plastic, and was worth every penny of worrying about the bill. Look at the results....

It went down in about 11 hours, over the Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon, and all we need to do now is to refit the skirting board, which we managed to get off unscathed so that it can be re-used.

A relatively cheap do over of a room that had not had a thing done to it since we moved in three years ago.

A lick of paint, which we already have, and it will be a whole new room. Thank Gooodness!

My lovely hubby even agree's it was what we needed to cheer ourselves up and feel like we are still managing to achieve something towards finishing the house.

Kitchen Warzone 4

So now that we know how everything is to be placed, it means that Paul needed to do some plumbing work to make everything fit.

Whilst he was doing this, I was painting the walls that I was able to get to, in the new soft olive colour that we had chosen. Now anyone that knows me even slightly, will be aware that I do not do green in houses! I was all greened out during my childhood and it put me off for life, or so I thought.


The funny thing is, that the whole time that this vision was forming in my head, the walls were always going to be green, all be it very pale and soft, but never-the-less green..... Go Figure!!!

Kitchen Warzone 3

Not so much a warzone now I'm glad to say.

The white goods arrived at lunchtime, just after the electrician had finished putting in our extra sockets.

Paul finished fixing the back wall of units to the wall, and then we had a break whilst Sally-Ann and Mike came over for a cuppa and a check up on how it's going.

I think Paul is a lot calmer now that Mike has talked his words of wisdom, and suddenly it starts to come together.

We unpacked the fridge and freezer from their boxes and placed everything where it will ultimately end up, just top get an idea of how it will all go.

The relief is tangible as we can see that my original master plan that worked so well in my head all those months ago (and years if I'm honest, since we moved in) will actually work how I imagined.

Phew - not much more now, and as we have a fixed wall in place I can used an old bit of work surface to produce our delightful microwave meals on, although, as you can see I have now progressed to being able to use my oven again - Woo Hoo!

Radon Survey

Back in January, we were contacted by the local council to see if we would be interested in taking part in a survey for them, to check on radon in the area.

When we moved here we were aware that Cornwall is very much affected by Radon, and had decided that we would have the test done - we just had not got around to it. So when we were asked if we could like it done for free we jumped at the chance.

The test units have now been up for 3 months and today I have posted them back for the scientific bit to see if our home is 'safe' or not. I have to say, I am now quite nervous as to what the outcome will be - not that it would make me ever want to move!

The results will be sent to us in about 4 weeks - fingers crossed we are all clear eh!

Holiday?

Our holiday started on Friday..... Somehow we have not managed to organise ourselves well enough to actually go away to our van in Somerset (Blue Anchor or BAH).

The kitchen, which we ordered 2 days before Paul was put onto short time, was delivered, and we are now in a situation where we can start to fit it.

And so, instead of heading off up the motorway on Friday afternoon, we started to pull out the old kitchen units.

For those of you that read regularly, you will already be aware that the wall cupboards and tiles came off last week (along with a trip to the hospital for Paul). Paul's stitches are now out, the electrician is booked for next Thursday the 21st and the integrated freezer and integrated fridge are due to delivered by Argos on the 21st also...... It's all systems go, so we may as well stay here and see it through.

Paul is laying the last bit of flooring today, he got a good start on it late yesterday, and then we shall sand and paint the walls before placing the units in a test before the fixing can begin.

Onwards and upwards....


I don't think Colin and Justin are very impressed by my decorating of the lounge at the moment!

Ground Force 4....

Finishing touches were applied to my lovely planter, in the form of the shaping on the top, and it had its first coat of white paint before being refilled with soil.

and then it was a trip to the garden centers and Trago for a few nice shrubs - My friend Alison also supplied me with loads of lovely little bedding plants that she had grown from seed ...

in they all went...

My lilac - so that I can get some fairies back at the bottom of the garden - What do you mean you don't believe in fairies - sacralidge LOL. We had one of these in the front garden of the house I lived in as a small child, I always loved their scent.

pretty purple petunias, busy lizzies, gazinias....

and Escallonia Red Tide

and Cape Daisy's - I love these as my Dad gave us some when we moved into the house before the last one, not long before he passed away - I love their pretty violet colour and their eagerness to spread and reach the sun light.