Paint, Paint and more Paint!

Next on the to do list once the stairs have been moved around is to start kitting the area out as a desk area. Before the renovation the area had a steep staircase and a tall cupboard under the stairs, although we are removing a lot of storage space by loosing this cupboard and making the room open plan we are creating a dedicated office space something that we both really want. 

Giving the walls under the stairs a lick of paint really brightens up the area showing us what we have to play with.

I'm dying to see how the desk under the stairs will look but James won't tell me his exact plans, telling me that it will be a surprise! I'm not sure how happy I am with this idea, i've told him what I would require and what ideally I would like in a dream desk area so lets so what i get. 

First bit to go in is a small cupboard under the stairs, believe it or not this cupboard is designed to take the Henry hoover, and a few other cleaning bits like a dust pan and brush and some polish....... oh for the day to clean our house and maintain it rather than build it!

Detailing the stairs

We are planning to have a stair runner on the stairs so to save on paint i'm only going to paint the edges. Masking the edges of the stairs with masking tape ready for painting.

With a first coat of undercoat I realize i'm going to spend a lot of time going up and down the stairs with a paintbrush!

Painting the ceiling

Now for the job I've really not been looking forward to, painting the ceilings! and surprise surprise that's a job for me. Well I suppose there's only so many jobs I can actually do in the house unlike my partner who does all the big building jobs. So for me it's sanding and painting and any other little jobs to help out.

In true style I managed to get paint EVERYWHERE! on the floor, in my hair, on my face, my glasses even with a hood up I managed to get coated. 

The house is really starting to take shape with a nice coat of paint, next is to sand down the beams and get those painted to, although I have no idea what colour they are going to go as i want them dark and James wants them light so will have to see what happens.

Waterproofing the new porch

With the new porch built into the existing alley way we need to paint it to keep the water out and the heat in. Before concreting the floor and making it the same level as the rest of the house we paint the floor with a damp proof paint. Hopefully this will stop any damp rising into the porch and protect our home.

I might have had an ulterior motive for photographing James whilst he was painting, but you've got to enjoy that bum!

Now off to bed to let the paint dry and will hope that we don't get sticky feet leaving the house tomorrow morning,

Painting the staircase

Things are moving forwards in the house, the plaster is slowly drying out and the new staircase is settling into it's new home so it's time to start giving it a few coats of paint. Not to sure what colour it will eventually go but for now it needs several coats of primer and undercoat so we've got plenty of time to decide.

It's amazing the amount of difference a lick of paint makes.

Another day another wall plastered

Back to the living room now and a visit from our plasterer, Who has actually been here all week working through the living and dining room. Here the radiator is removed for the plastering of the back wall. I just wish the temperature wasn't in single figures outside as it's freezing!

Main fireplace in the front room with wooden beam fixed into place, really starting to take shape.

Beautiful smooth walls really do give me the vision of what our room will eventually look like. 

With so much going on in the house I find 5 minutes to catch up on some Eastenders... 

Both rooms now fully plastered, it's hard to believe the work that has gone into getting the house to this stage, both fireplaces have been completely changed, the whole house has been made open plan including new steels, new ceilings and new walls. After months of hard work the house is beginning to take shape.

Removing a tiled floor

Now you get to see some pictures of me doing the work rather than James! As we want to lay a wooden floor throughout the house it's my job to remove the old tiles in the kitchen.

With blisters on my hands and aching arms from the heavy hammer i'm proudly working my way across the kitchen removing the ceramic tiles getting the floor ready for something prettier. Not sure what yet, whether we go for wood effect laminate or real wood I think depends on budget as with all the surprise jobs that need attention we are rapidly running out of funds.

Hours later the tiles are out, and more surprises found. Under the kitchen units there was some lengths of timber in between the tiled floor and the cupboards and this was pretty much powder. With that constant ingress of water the wood didn't have a chance down there. Although with this hole exposed we need to fill this with concrete and have the floor leveled ready for a shiny new floor. Although there's plenty of other jobs to complete first before we even think about finishing touches like flooring and carpets!

Insulating a kitchen

With the lights and electrics now in place in the kitchen we can get the ceiling insulated and plaster boarded and hopefully make things not only a little warmer but also look a lot more complete and a lot less building site.

Here's the first strip of insulation going up under the ceiling beams.

With the ceiling fully insulated we can now plaster board and hide all that ugly yellow fluff, once again our house starts looking more and more like a real home.

I know we need a pretty light fitting but with the ceiling now plaster boarded i can see the end of the project ahead.... ok so the breeze blocks in the background need some attention and we have no kitchen but we are getting there slowly. It's so good to be putting final bits in towards completing the house rather than more destruction and uncovering horrors that inevitably create us more work.

Combating the damp in our house

Since moving in we have noticed that the kitchen area is always quite damp, the old kitchen cupboards stink with damp mold and the concrete floor that we put down when replacing the manhole was taking forever to dry.

We also know that the patio area outside likes to fill up like a swimming pool every time that it rains, Looking into this further we noticed that the outside patio area was actually sitting higher than the level of the floor in the kitchen. Meaning that every time it rains the water naturally falls to a lower level and thus into our house and down!

To combat this we decided to dig up the patio slabs to make the outside lower than the inside. We really didn't want to start destroying yet another area of the house but the more you start exposing the more jobs you create. Maybe now i'm thinking for our first house we should have bought something that we could just live in and taking on such a project was a bit adventurous for our first one. But James loves a challenge and we both love a bit of hard work so we continue with the project and don't think too much about it.

Having removed the patio slabs we were quite surprised to find several inches of concrete.

Help from James's mum removing the concrete.

Even more surprising was finding the sheet of plastic under the concrete!!!!! No wonder the rain water was draining into the house rather than draining away outside. I appreciate putting plastic membranes down to stop weeds coming up through a new patio but laying this amount of thick plastic meant that the water had no where to go but in our house :@(

With help from James parents we soon had the patio lower than the house.

Unbelievably under the plastic was yet another layer of concrete. Clearly the previous owner had just built up the layers over the years rather than removing the old and replacing with new had just built up layer upon layer upon layer. By the end of the day we had removed about 7 inches deep of material. 

All we need now is some heavy rain and to see where it goes, hopefully not in the house.

Freshly plaster boarded ceiling

A massive thank you goes out to our plasterer for finishing the plastering of the ceiling in the living room, I know it's just a ceiling and doesn't look very exciting but after months of ripping the house apart, demolishing  and creating mess it's a very exciting day seeing the house finally starting to come together.