Moving the bathroom door

When we first moved into the house we very quickly did not like the upstairs layout of the house, the extremely steep and dangerous stairs that went straight up and into the bathroom. The bathroom that was a step lower than landing floor. The upstairs didn't feel very well planned and the bathroom extension was simply that, it was a bolted on bathroom extension with no thought to fit it in with the rest of the house. 

We had already decided to remove the stairs and fit a new stair case going up the opposite way as well as having a quarter turn at the bottom meaning that the stairs were not as steep as before and therefore a lot safer. Which is particularly good for people as clumsy as myself who was always tripping up the old staircase. But with the stairs now coming up the other way this left the bathroom door to the wrong side of the bathroom. You would have to squeeze around a very narrow landing around the corner and through the door. So we decided that we would move the door from the right hand side to the left hand side. Although that sounds relatively simple it was a massive job that involved moving bedroom walls to make the landing big enough to except the new bathroom door. Removing the concrete wall where the new door will go and cutting into the ceiling to increase the height so that a full height door will fit in.

Here the concrete wall on the left has been removed and an acrow prop is held in place where the old door once was. This is just a temporary measure to keep the house safe whilst the new structural timber wall is built in it's place. 

The frame starts to go in and the shape of where the new door will go sits in place, we decided to build the frame out slightly further from where the original door sat and utilise the small bit of space that made the top of the old landing. Utilising this section of dead space means that firstly the space is not wasted, but secondly the bathroom is slightly bigger and we now have the space to include an inbuilt bathroom cupboard for towels.

The plasterboard is fitted to the new frame work.

With the new frame in place it is now time to remove the old lintel and bring the bathroom ceiling height up further to fit in with the rest of the bathroom. We won't go up as high as we would like as this would involve structural work to the roofing beams so although we will be gaining height in the bathroom it won't be flush with the rest of the bathroom ceiling. But it will be safe and not to mention cheaper doing it this way and we know that it will look so much better than it does now so we are more than happy. 

Where the existing concrete wall has been removed the floor was slightly uneven so a little cement has helped us to level this out.

The old section above the door is removed and the new section slightly higher starts to take shape.

The section starts getting boxed in and looks so much better than it did previously, the door now opens up onto the new wide landing and really was worth all the extra work to make the new doors position perfect.

The bedroom continues to get built

With the old lath and plaster walls removed and the old plaster removed from the external walls it's time to start putting the bedroom back together. Building a stud work frame wall on the existing wall means that we can line the bedroom with thermally insulated plaster board making the room warmer. We will also make a plaster board frame to surround the window and at some point in the future we will replace the window with a new double glazed one to match the downstairs. 

Finally the skip is removed from the drive

Since we moved into our new house in October 2012 one of the first things we did was started ripping the house apart and this meant that we needed a skip. Well it wasn't just one skip that we needed and this week we were up to skip number seven but when this skip was removed we weren't getting another one. 

It's a really exciting feeling knowing that the majority of the renovation work is now coming to an end and that the house is nearly complete but most exciting is that we now actually get to make use of the driveway that comes with the house

There have now been skips on the driveway for the last 14 months so it's left quite a mark on the driveway but i can't wait to have my car on the driveway instead of the skip!

Creating our new bedroom by adding plaster board to the walls

Removing the bedroom walls was a very big decision as we were only moving the walls by around a foot however the work involved was incredibly messy and time consuming. By moving the walls we were going to gain a larger landing enabling us to move the bathroom door in line with the new landing as well as making the master bedroom bigger. Although the second bedroom would now be made smaller it is still big enough for a double bed and also puts the wall and new bedroom door in line with the existing bedroom wall and door making the upstairs look a lot more organised and the space now works a lot better. 

With the stud work wooden frame in place the plaster board is now added to the frame to create the structure for the new rooms. We now need to get our electrician around to wire the light switches and electric sockets into their rough new homes before the final layers of plaster board are added to the inside of the bedroom.

Building a bedroom for Christmas!

Whilst most people are putting up their Christmas decorations we are putting up our bedroom walls! With the lath and plaster walls now nearly completely removed it is time to start really pushing forwards with putting the bedrooms back together. 

The new stud work wall starts going into place, the wall has now moved over by a foot making the second bedroom smaller but most importantly making the master bedroom bigger.

The last piece of plaster is removed from the old wall and the shell of the new room is now going into place. 

The new bedroom wall stud work is now in place and ready to receive plaster board and we can start recreating two bedrooms exactly how we want them.

Restructuring the upstairs and creating new bedrooms

With yesterdays destruction removing the lath and plaster wall at the front of the bedroom today it is now time to remove the second wall.Once these two walls are removed we can rebuild the walls and start putting the upstairs back together.

Whilst James's dad removes the second bedroom wall James starts constructing the new bedroom wall and the upstairs in flying back together in no time.

This is the wall that adjoins our bedroom so currently there is just a thin dust sheet between the carnage and our bed, although the dust sheet is gaffer taped to the ceiling and the floor there is a lot of cleaning to do for the ladies whilst the boys continue with the destruction and construction.

The new wooden frame is now being built for the slightly smaller second bedroom and you can see the scars on the walls where the old wall used to sit. Although the wall hasn't moved far it will make all the difference to the new larger landing.

Work now starts on the upstairs!

With just a few weeks until Christmas we really start working a lot harder on the house. In less than three weeks my family are joining us from Essex for their first Cornish Christmas in our new home and there is lots of work to do!

So far we have only done the bare minimum upstairs in the house and only completed work when we have had to like changing the position of the stairs and removing the old bathroom but with my parents and my sister and her partner staying for Christmas we need use of both bedrooms! So far we have move from one bedroom to the other every time some work needs completing and as for the box room... well this is for boxes and is currently storing a lot of our stuff until we have built cupboards for them downstairs.

It was only a few days previous that we had the brainwave to even complete this work. We love the house and the transformation of the downstairs has been incredible and I didn't ever expect the house to look as good as it does. Being our first home and first project I didn't know what to expect, with the downstairs taking shape and looking beautiful we had only one problem with the house and that was that the bedrooms were all quite small. Now you might be thinking that there is only two of us and three bedrooms is a bit greedy but each of the bedrooms are small and so we decided to remove the internal walls upstairs and make the master bedroom bigger by around a foot. To me this seamed like a lot of work to make the room only fractionally bigger but the extra room means that we can fit our wardrobes in and make much better use of the space and although this makes the second bedroom considerably smaller it is only a guest bedroom and makes perfect sense.

The plan now is to remove the two walls of this bedroom and move them both in, creating a smaller room but creating a bigger master bedroom and a bigger landing leading directly into the bathroom via a new door rather than going around the corner through the old bathroom door.

Once the door is removed it is now time to remove the old plaster board and expose the lath and plaster behind.

Now being a complete novice i had no idea what lath and plaster was and I certainly had no idea how messy it would be to remove, suddenly the thought of my parents staying here in a few weeks horrifies me and feel that maybe we should have left this job until after Christmas, but now we have started we must finish.

The plaster is removed from the wooden slats covering the whole house in dust. Whilst the boys smash and crash upstairs I try to keep on top of the dirt downstairs and constantly sweep and hoover the floor as with our new wooden floor down the last thing we want is the floor getting damaged. 

With the majority of the lath and plaster removed and several trips up and down stairs off loading sacks of rubble the wall is nearly down.

The first wall is completely removed and now time for a tidy up before removing the next wall tomorrow.

Competition time

Whilst everyone else is Christmas shopping I'm spending my evenings trawling the internet for things for the house. Sadly I'm not even talking pretty things like soft furnishings cushions, curtains and pretty things but instead I'm hunting for bathroom tiles and walnut panels.

Now that the upstairs of the house is taking shape we have turned our attention to lighting and a feature light for the landing. Because we have such high ceilings upstairs we want to create a big feature out of the light fitting and want to go for something eye opening and spectacular.... We have a few ideas to create something unique and home made, so you'll need to watch this space for what we choose.

However whilst I was trawling the internet shops for lighting ideas I couldn't help but notice this competition to win a heap of Christmas chocolate! Pop over to http://www.thelightingsuperstore.co.uk/blog/page/Competition.aspx to enter the competition for your chance to win.

Christmas is coming and the DIY continues

We have invited my parents over for Christmas and they currently live in Essex, they have seen our new house twice the first time in January 2013 when the house really was nothing more than a building site and again in the summer of 2013 when the house had progressed further out of the realm of building site and slightly more into the realm of home but we were still living with a concrete floor and a lot of temporary fixtures including a very temporary landing with no banister and no bathroom door.

With just two weekends to go until the family arrive from Essex panic is calmly setting in as we muddle through constant lists of things to do and buy to get the house as complete as possible for the big day.

Although not major jobs there are lots of things that still need doing, here we fill all the holes where the panels have been screwed into kitchen units to make them nice and smooth ready for final painting. Although not essential to get done for Christmas it's nice to get the kitchen closer to being finished. 

The island we built ourselves using second hand kitchen units and match board panelling now gets prepared for painting.

Once the filler has dried and been sanded the kitchen units can get painted. 

More painting in the kitchen, painting big walls in the final coat really does make a massive difference and means we are yet again closer to getting things finished in time. Whilst most people are having a stressful Christmas with thinking about the Christmas dinner and what presents to buy people we have all of this added to the fact that this is the first ever Christmas we are hosting and the constant strain of so much work to do to get the house as finished as possible. I'm saying as finished as possible as we know it will be impossible to get it completely finished by Christmas but hopefully we can get very close. 

Our new fireplace looks amazing

What a difference a year makes, last October we bought our first home and had big plans to renovate the whole house. With my parents coming for Christmas in our new home the mad rush to get it as finished as possible begins. In March we renovated the old fireplace but now that it is just three weeks to Christmas the addition of a garland really makes the fireplace beautiful, we just need to get the chimney swept now and we can have an open fire at Christmas and we can't wait..