The ground beneath our feet

Since I've not actually posted in this blog (at least not under my name), and I have a bunch of photos on my phone, I decided it was time to contribute.

The garden is more or less done and just needs to bed in now - it's quite a difference from before.


Don't worry, we'll do a before and after post once we move into the house.  But in the meantime, here's a view of the garden with the leftover turf laid on the side.  We're pretty pleased with the results, not least because it will be a nice play area for the girls with their own readymade den/air raid shelter.  You know, just in case.


From outside we move inside to the sanding of the floors.  I'm grateful for a lot of things in life  (as I should be of course), but not having to sand these floors ourselves after the last time certainly ranks up there amongst the things I'm most grateful for.

We got a professional in to do these ones and they're coming up a treat.  Below is the living room floor with the shellac around the edges which is giving the sander some grief but is coming off thankfully.

Starting off 1:


Starting off 2:


Et voila!  Not bad for 90 year old pine I suppose.  It's beginning to look like a home!


And so we move upstairs to the hallway, with a view from the stairs into our bedroom (and capturing three of the four colours of paint upstairs).  You can see where the edging needs done still around the doorways and skirting.  I spent a fair amount of time plucking nails and carpet staples out yesterday to make sure the sander can work quickly.


Our room:


The girls' bedroom (back room)


Margaret calls this her room as it is very similar in colour and placement to her room in Cardiff but bigger, nicely enough:


We were planning on putting Elizabeth in the room but we may not.  I suppose we'll decide on Thursday when we move in.

The upstairs hallway:


And then downstairs to the hallway there:


And finally an alternate view of the hallway downstairs.


The floors are beginning to look nice and not having to do the hard, dirty and dusty work is pretty nice. The professional sander has a 'dustless' sander which is mostly pretty good but of course there is a little dust leftover.  I helped him move it downstairs as it weighs 89kgs.  And it's not evenly dispersed weight either so it's a pain to move.  But at least I don't have to move it again! Thanks Mr Sander guy.

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Week Eight

Okay.  Despite the inability to save money on getting turfing materials, the grass is in!  And we like thenew look quite a bit.  (Especially when I look at the before pictures, like the one above.)

What a difference having a lawn makes for the back yard!  Every time I look out and see green it makes me smile.  I hope the little girls enjoy having an outdoor space of our own.

So...this week.  It has thrown a few curveballs, but we got there in the end.  (Or at least we will eventually, right?)  Today, officially, we got heating and gas!  The radiators were on and the range cooker works.  We're in business!

The sander was suppose to start doing the floors today, so I went up last night and spent about three hours cleaning out all of the rooms except the kitchen.  There was (and is) so much dust, but the house is coming together.

We got the electrics signed off.  Plus two missionaries from church came over today and helped for a couple of hours.  We got all of the rubbish picked up from the yard and I took a few more dump runs.  (Current count?  29 visits.)

We got the pendant lights installed in the kitchen.  (We're going to put in an island underneath the pendant lights.  Probably converting a sideboard we have in storage.)

The joiner rescheduled yesterday (again) and I got worried.  So I started calling around on gumtree until I found someone who could do a few hours of work for us last minute.  One of the things he was able to do was finish laying the bamboo flooring around the oxters in the loft.

We also found carpet.  It's getting laid next week.  We got several quotes and holy cow!  Carpet is expensive.  We ended up going to J&W Carpets and talking to them about remnants and discontinued lines. Niall and I looked at rolls and rolls of carpets and talked to several employees.  One guy felt sorry for us and starting digging through carpet in their back room.  He had to use a crazy carpet forklift to move the rolls around, but we finally found one that was nice (enough) and inexpensive enough for us. It's a darker brown color.

Then I called around on gumtree to get quotes for laying the carpet and supplies.  (And drove with the girls to the other side of town to pick up two rolls of underlay.  10mm thick underlay for £2/meter at Nett Carpets was the best price I could find.)  Doing it that way saved us about 40% off the prices we got quotes for.  Is this going to be a good or painful cost saving measure?  I'll let you know.

Sanding back the stairs is still a painful process.  But then I look at the stairs from Borgen and it reminds me what the sanded back treads with painted risers can look like.  (Oh, Borgen.  I think I want to watch the first two seasons again just to see the room designs and Birgitte and Katrine's outfits.  See the screenshot of the stairs from Birgitte's house?)

I've also been working on this funny built-in box in the small bedroom.  (The head height from the stairs cuts into the room, so the box is the 'aesthetic' solution.)  We don't know what to do with the box.  We've seen some houses that have build a wardrobe on top.  We don't love that solution, but aren't sure what to do. Maybe it can be storage of some type?  It's too narrow for a bed, but maybe a cushion with some shelves?

Anyway, the box used to have a piece of decorative paper and lots of layers of paint.  I used the heat gun to take off all the layers, and the belt sander to clean the wood.  We thought we'd just paint the top, but now that the wood is clean we're changing our mind.

Maybe we can sand it back enough to keep the wood.  You know, with all the spare time.

And since we're moving in six days, we've started buying some soft furnishings.  (Because having a 150 square foot storage room of stuff isn't enough.)  Mostly we need curtains and blackout blinds for the girls' rooms.  But the lengths are causing a bit of an issue.  Instead, I am buying less-than-high-quality items.  To add more color.  (That's what I'm telling myself.)  Niall the Interior Designer has provided plenty of input.  Here are a few items (I'm grabbing these photos straight from the interweb):

Duvet set from Harry Corry.  I bought this from someone on gumtree, so no returns.

We have really struggled with rugs (for the sanded floorboards) because what we like is out of our budget.  It may be that we go with bare floors for a while.  (Like in Cardiff, where we never bought any rugs.)  But, we're giving some less expensive options a go.  Urban Outfitters has free shipping and a decent return policy, plus 10% off purchases right now.  So a bunch of rugs are making their way to our house for a trial run.

Antique Blue Rug (Maybe in our room?  Because in my mind it might just work w/the duvet cover.)

Eyelet Rug  (Perhaps for one of the girls' rooms?)

Red Herringbone Rug  (Maybe for the front room, if we sell the maroon couch and get something else.  You know, always good to buy rugs on hypotheticals.)

And for kicks, this little elephant rug.  Where we'd use it?  I don't know.  But Niall was pretty taken with it.

Oh, and I just emailed a guy about this Chesterfield sofa.  I like the idea of it in the front room with the blue walls.  Niall has been looking at Chesterfields for years.

Stepping Over Pounds To Get Pennies

Ugh. I mean, we are trying to be careful with cash.  But my attempts to save some money sometimes backfires.

Like on the lawn.  We decided to go forward with getting sod (turf) laid by the gardeners.  I asked for the cost of supplies and called around to get a better price.  I found another grass supplier that would deliver for £50 less than what our gardener could find.

So, we went with the supplier I found.  Bad choice.  Last Friday I was told they could deliver on Tuesday.  On Monday (a bank holiday) I was told they couldn't deliver on Tuesday.  The gardeners rescheduled, and when the delivery arrived today it wasn't complete.  We had to buy more turf layer (it's like compost to help with the soil nutrients and make the ground more level) and get it delivered tomorrow.  Anyway, to save £50 it is going to cost us £170.   And maybe even more because of extra labor costs.  So, uh, not great.

Also, to get the stairs sanded, we got a quote for £300.  I thought we could do it ourselves for less.  So far we've spent £200 (£160 on two days labor, £40 for a paint gun).  And the stairs still need a lot of work.  Seriously, stepping over dollars to get dimes.  Or pounds to get pennies.

Anyway...even with my failed attempts at saving money on the lawn, I do think the backyard (garden) is going to look very nice.  The gardeners did get to lay some grass today.

And overall the house is really coming along.  The granite cutter was able to find an extra piece of granite for the 600 mm cupboard (the one right behind the range cooker in the picture) and upstands (the smaller pieces of granite against the walls) and fit the rest of the granite.

A joiner has started boxing in the extractor hood vent.  I'm guessing this will be a work in progress for a while.

And guess what?  The plumbers came!  And the radiators are mostly installed.

We even got new toilet seats installed.  (Another cost saving measure?  We bought trade toilets and then upgraded the seats.  To ones that have built-in training seats for the kids.)

Week Seven

On Monday the decorators finished painting.  Well, sort of.  There's still some things that need to be touched up and other places that need to be cleaned, but let's just say the painters finished.  Also, we got the front wall repaired and repointed.  It still doesn't look great, but at least there are no longer large chunks falling of!

On Tuesday...nothing.  It was just me at the house, working for a couple of hours.  It was strange.  For the past seven weeks there has been work going on (except for Sundays).  

On Wednesday we got the cavity wall insulation.  I hope it works.  It was a good test to see where the walls had leaks.  (Answer:  Around several windows.  And the flue for the boiler.  And the pipes going out of the bathroom.)  The walls are filled with little Styrofoam (ish) balls with adhesive.  And where there were leaks the pellets got inside the house.  They look like rodent droppings and gross me out every time I see them.  And then I remind myself they're insulation.  Glorious insulation!

On Thursday...BAM!  We were back in business.  The electricians came and finished the second fix.  There are maybe two very minor things left before we get the certificate.

Our electricians has been really thorough.  And threw in a bonus for us.  They ran a power (light and sockets) out to the bomb shelter!  I'd mentioned we'd like to leave a line to do it down the road and they surprised us!

Another surprise (less pleasant) is that our earthing was not good.  I'd like to pretend that I know what this means or involves, but I don't.  I just know that it was a problem that we weren't sure how to solve (possibly adding new rods or running off our neighbors!) but it got sorted.  We called Scottish Power and they sent out a technician right away.  (Maybe it's a serious issue?  Or maybe we were just lucky.)  He took a crack at it, and then another team came later in the day and took care of it.  Our reading is now 0.22.  I don't know what that means either, except that it's very good news.

Our plumbers were supposed to come on Monday (nope), then Thursday (nope) and then Friday for sure.  (Still nope.)  I'm really hoping they actually show up next week because we have to have heating before the sanding guys come on the 10th.  Also, to manage a few bits and pieces a joiner was supposed to come yesterday (nope) and then today (nope.)  Fingers crossed for Monday.

No plumbers or joiners, but we did arrange for two guys from church to come and help me.  There are so many things that we haven't managed to take care of yet.  Some we thought we'd do ourselves because the work quotes seemed too pricey (like sanding the stairs).  Some we didn't realize needed to be done (like painting shelves and doors, I thought the painting quote included the items.)  And some seemed so easy we should do it.  (Like cleaning.)  These 'many things' are a list of about 130 items.  And if each one on average takes an hour, well...we won't be ready to move in 12 days from now.

  

Some items have to be done before we move in.  Some things can wait, but it would be nice to have them done.  (Like painting the storm doors and stripping the paint from the pull.  Because of the way the lock is situated, the bolt to remove the pull is buried in the door!)

Anyway, we decided to ask two guys from church who are between jobs if they would come and work with me for a few days.  The work was dirty and mundane, but it has been so nice having them help.

Look!  The storm doors are primed.  (We're still trying to decide if we leave them white or to paint them blue.)

The back door has been painted.  (It used to be red, now it's blue.  Still no glass.)

The exposed collar and oxter supports in the loft have been sanded.

And the stairs?  Well, sometimes I think we made a choice that's too labor intensive.   They used to look like this.

Then this.

We could have just carpeted them.  But that would be too easy.  I painted the stairs in our house in Cardiff, and Niall and I both like the look.  (And how much easier they are to clean than carpet.)  But these ones had at least 1/3 of each tread unpainted.  So we want to try to paint the risers and take the treads back to the wood.

I bought a heat gun and we went to work stripping the paint.  It was a slow, tedious, sticky and not-very-rewarding-mess.  Each step took about 40 minutes.  

They looked awful.  One of the guys spent a good portion of yesterday and three hours today sanding.  The stairs look better, but we're not there yet.  I'm not quite sure what to do. 

I'll probably sand over the stairs a few more times next week.


And then we'll decide whether to paint them or if the wood cleans up nice enough to varnish (and possibly stain.)





In other heat gun news, it worked a treat (funny what I consider a treat these days) on the funny box thing (where the stairs cut into part of the room) in the smallest bedroom.  Same story...not sure if we'll paint this or try to restore the wood.

We bought a second hand dual-fuel range cooker.  It has been in the garage for the past six weeks, but the electricians connected it on Wednesday.  (Now if the plumbers will just show up so we can truly be cooking with gas!)  The ovens were filthy.  I started cleaning it and then one of the guys spent six hours scrubbing it yesterday.  It's almost clean.  Oh, please let it work!

And how fantastic is this?  Four missionaries from church came over yesterday and helped us for two hours.   (They do service every week, and have come to help us a few times.)  Four guys + two hours=the equivalent of a full day's work of what I'd do by myself.  They did all sorts of odd jobs, mostly scrubbing off residual paint splatter.  With all the sanding the house is a dusty mess.  I laughed today when I saw that two of the Elders had left their mark on the banister dust.

So, all in all, things are moving along.  Up next week is the garden/yard (we're getting turf/sod laid), heating (please show up plumbers!) and sanding (if the plumbers arrive.)

Current count on dump runs:  25.

As a closing note, sometimes when I watch TV I find myself looking at the decor on the set instead of watching the story.  The other day I was watching "Borgen" (is that bad to admit?  Sometimes I think it might be a tad too racy, but I keep watching anyway) and was so pleased at the yellow, blue, grey and white contrast in the Room of Mirrors that I took a screenshot.