Category: The archive (Bradford house)

Quote

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We’ve made a tiny bit of progress in that we finally have a quote from a decorator!  Barry had a guy round just before we went on holiday, we then had a lovely time in Majorca (see left, didn’t do much!), and when we got back, a quote was waiting for us on the doormat.

He was quite young, but Barry said he looked like he knew what he was doing and he seems to have a lot of work on, which is a good sign.

Barry asked him to quote separately for three different areas; so the quote is (excluding materials):

  • Finish sanding in kitchen, finish painting, take the black wall up the stairs and gloss the handrail and skirting board up the stairs – £120
  • Paint the middle hallway and ceiling (dealing with nail pops as he goes), the nursery walls and ceiling and gloss everything that needs it – £240
  • Paint up to our bedroom, walls, ceiling and black gloss – £240

So £600 altogether.  When you break it down into the number of days it would take (we think five), it doesn’t seem too bad, considering the same amount of work would take Barry weeks with him having two jobs now and all, but it is a bit shocking seeing it written down like that!  We’re giving him the go-ahead for the first bit so that the black wall is sorted out for Christmas as we’re having relatives over.  Think that will be done at the end of November.  For the other two bits, I think we may wait until January and get them done when I’m on maternity leave so we don’t have to take annual leave.

Still no decorator

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Trying to find a decorator is proving to be more difficult than we first thought.  We gave up on the one that never got back to us, and have moved onto another one.  Unfortunately, as we’re in London this weekend, and then on holiday the week after, the next one we rang is only available on weekends.  Normally perfect, but it means it’s going to be another month before we can get him in to even quote!

In baby news, we’ve ordered the pram now we’ve found out we’re having a girl and bought these beautiful shoes out of crazed excitement.  Got a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in H&M for babies!

Baby news

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Well, we left a message with the decorator, but we’ve had no response yet, so we’re going to have to find another one!  I think three weeks is long enough to wait.  Just need to get Barry geared up for ringing another decorator now…

On the baby front, we’ve discovered we’re having a girl!  Not sure what we’ll do with her room yet, but we’re ordering the pram this weekend which is making me a bit giddy!  We’ve chosen the iCandy Peach 2 in Berry Bon Bon and my mum’s kindly offered to buy the stroller and we’re getting the other bits.  There’s more to it than you think!  Not the cheapest, but we’ve tried so many different prams that we were going cross eyed – I’ll be relieved to have it ticked off the list!

 

She’s like the wind

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In our endeavour to sort stuff (read: everything) before the baby comes in February, we’ve started by completing the appliances in the kitchen with this beauty…

It’s a condenser dryer, bought just as the sun seems to be coming out again.  As Barry had the foresight to drill a hole for a plug through the cupboard, but not the end panel, we haven’t tried it out yet but we should have it on at some point this weekend.  I’d better buy some Bounce!

Many thanks to Barry’s Mum for the dryer!

Barry did mention that the dryer delivery men had the audacity to ask how long the wall had been like that (i.e. not painted up the stairs).  Think we need to give that decorator a call soon…

Photo wall… tick!

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Hallelujah, the photo wall is done!  I think it was one of those jobs where the thought of actually doing it was more taxing than the actual action of doing it.  As I mentioned, I have some family coming over today for the bank holiday weekend, so we’ve bitten the bullet and just done it.    I keep walking into the living room and they take me by surprise, as I’m so used to that wall being empty now!

In my humble opinion, I think it looks great!  I sat down on Friday and updated the mock up I’d done in Illustrator, and we used that as a rough guide.  There’s still a few spaces for more photos, so we can add to it if we want to.

So… here it is!  All 24 photos (for now).

Procrastination with good reason

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Oh dear, oh dear.  I haven’t posted in almost a month, and literally nothing’s changed, house-wise.  A lot’s been changing with me, but house-wise it’s exactly the same.

The prints are all safely nestled in their frames, and are waiting patiently on the dining room table to be put up on the wall.  According to Barry, I’m in charge of logistics of how we’re going to arrange them.  That should go well.  The pressure’s on to get them up this weekend, because my Aunty and cousins are coming on Monday for the first time and we want it to look great.

In kitchen news, the great black wall still lies unfinished, and we’re going to cave.  Next door have given us the number of a painter/decorator so we’re going to get a quote.  In the last month, Barry’s moved jobs as well as started his own company, and it’s just not going to happen, so we’d rather get it sorted.  The stairs are going to be a major issue anyway, best leave it to the professionals.

As well as the black wall, I think we’ll get a quote for our room to be painted so it no longer looks like a shooting’s taken place, and (wait for it), we’ll need our third bedroom painting as it looks like that will be the nursery.

Yes, I’m pregnant, up the duff, bun in the oven, knocked up.  14 weeks and 2 days to be precise.  I’ll try not to harp on about it, I know it’s not a baby blog, but my mind has been on other things lately and I’m poring over prams instead of paint like porn in my lunch hour.

We were dithering about which room to make the nursery.  To begin with, the baby can reside in our little nook off our main bedroom, but I think it would be nice to do up a bedroom for when it’s ready to move on and be a bit more independent.  At about 6 months.  Charlie’s giving us lots of good advice, and she thinks that would be good for the daytime anyway, and then the baby can get used to the room.

We initially thought the spare room with the yellow bed, as it’s the nearest to our bedroom. However, Barry’s made the excellent point that it’s nearer the road, and therefore noisier.  They’re both the same size, so I think we’re going to go with the one that’s further back.  We’ll have to get rid of the double bed that’s in there, but I think we’ll get a nice fold-out sofa bed in there for when Barry’s family comes over.

We won’t know what colour we’re going for until around October time (forget team yellow, we want to know!), which is also putting the brakes on which colour and design of pram we want.  For anyone who’s interested, we’re getting an iCandy.  Now I’m going to daydream…

Prints

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Prints for the living room wall have now been ordered, all 24 of them!  Got an excellent deal through Quidco for Photobox as well – 30% off + 5% cashback.  Ker-ching!

My brother’s moving house this weekend, so we’re moseying on over to see the new pad.  Don’t know about you, but if we have one thing to do on a weekend at the moment, it means that the rest of the weekend becomes null and void and we don’t want to plan anything else!  Think that means we’re getting old.

It’s also my Nanna and Grandad’s 50th wedding anniversary this weekend, and I’m very excited that I found them some gold dinnerware for a present (don’t worry, they’re not silver surfers!).  I also got a lovely card printed with their wedding photo from Moonpig.  We’re all going out for a meal a week on Saturday with the rest of the family to celebrate.

PS – the new Batman was very good, 4/5, I recommend it!

It’s a frame up

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Sorry, sorry, I know, I’m a terrible person.  You would think I would be eager to write my 100th post, but we’ve been doing so little house-wise (read: nothing) that I’ve not been able to admit it.

We seem to have negated this inaction by spending £120 on white frames in Ikea.  Now I know this sounds like a lot of money, but we had almost three quarters of this already from the bits and bobs we put on eBay in the last few months, and the living room is looking so bland without these finishing touches that we thought we’d just bite the bullet.  Plus, it’s near TGI Fridays and we deserve Jack Daniels chicken.  I digress.

We also picked up some white boxes for the units, but decided that £120 was enough for one day and put them back.

For this princely sum, we purchased 24 frames – 4 x A4, 11 x A5 (ish), and 5 x smaller ones (5 x 7″) and 4 x even smaller ones (4 x 6″).  We ended up going for two different styles, Sondrum and Ribba.  24 is less than we were going to have originally, but when we looked at my mock up from March it seemed a bit crowded.

With it being payday next week, we’re going to wait to buy the prints, but they should be around £30 from photobox.co.uk.  As I mentioned way back in January, I’ve turned them all black and white and they should look amazing!  Not sure how we’re going to arrange them yet – looks like it may be a difficult thing to measure.  Watch this space…

Dreaming of decking

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Despite the terrible weather, we have been talking about decking recently.  We’ve decided it’s not something we can afford to do this year – we’d rather get the house into some semblance of painted perfection first, especially the rooms we use the most, but it doesn’t stop us planning!

Barry has so very much time on his hands, that he’s put the measurements into a fancy schmancy computer programme and come up with an actual plan.

This is what it looks like at the moment (not much!)…

Not a lot going on, and the slabs that we do have are grey and drab and boring.  Now this is the plan for the decking (although it may go to three stages instead of two)…

For those of you interested in such things as elevation, this is below.  This is why we can’t just have one level of decking, because we’d be towering over the neighbours!  Although it might be good to see what they’re having for tea…

And finally!  This is how Barry envisages the finished garden.  I was assured there would be a fire pit in there somewhere as well.  And the slabs can go and be replaced by beautiful ones.  And the sun can come out.

Negative effect

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We’ve finally sorted out replacing the red drawers in the Ikea unit our TV sits on.  They were the only red item left in the room, and it was really getting on my nerves!

We nipped to Ikea (after the aborted attempt last bank holiday), and I got to try Krispy Kreme for the first time.  It’s amazing, but I digress.

We picked up a few picture frames, and then started doing mental arithmetic, and put them all back again.  We’re going to go in a month or two when we don’t have quite so much going on!  We did also try the shop near to it, HomeSense, which was recommended by a neighbour, but they didn’t have a wide range of white frames, and we’re being quite particular.

They did, however, have an amazing range of mirrors, and we nearly bought a coat peg with different knobs in bright colours (before realising we had nowhere to put it), and a half corkboard/half chalkboard thing for the kitchen (but it was cream, not white).  I’d definitely go back there!

Anyway, we’ve swapped the drawers out, and it looks a bit like a washed out version of the red, like a photo negative!  It works with the room though, doesn’t clash like the red, and will look even better if we ever get these [insert expletive] frames in!