Tag: floor

Kitchen floor announcement

4 Comments

Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen. I have an announcement to make. The kitchen floor is in. No more concrete crap on everything!

I’ve included photos from before (we had bits of living room carpet down to stop us walking the dust about) as well as after, and we obviously have several bits still to do (like beading), but the bulk of it is done! I came home from work and think I caught Barry seriously considering another way out, but he got there in the end.

In the meantime, I’ve continued the thankless task of painting white gloss over white gloss. No photos there then.

After this, I’m going back to trying to find superhero-themed songs for our superhero-themed night out next week.  We all know we’ll end up at karaoke.

 

Hit the floor

6 Comments

The living room floor is in!  We still have some work to do (painting skirts/painting radiators/painting doors/putting beading on/never mind the photo wall), but we can walk on it, and it looks great!  I think Barry has RSI from putting it in, and he couldn’t face starting the kitchen.

A couple of things we were selling on eBay finished yesterday – the radiator with the leak went, and the kitchen trolley thing went for £102!  That will cover either the photo wall, or a trip to Ikea to get some white drawers etc.  I really didn’t want to leave the red ones in because they hurt my eyes now because they don’t match, but Barry won’t let me take them out, because we use them, or some such reason.  Progress photos below.

Here we go!

1 Comment

The flooring is here!  We had a manic day yesterday.  Barry had the opticians in the morning, and of course, that was the time when the pallet of floorboards came.  The man couldn’t get the pallet trolley thing up the path, so left it in the road.  I was literally running in and out of the house, just in case a car reversed into the pallet.  Then Barry came back, and wondered why I was running round shouting “Cones!  Get some cones!”.  We don’t have cones, but he thought it was funny.  I did not.

He then started laying the flooring in the living room.  I tried to help, but I’m relegated to underlay (because it doesn’t matter as nobody sees it).  I’m also permitted to put little protective feet on furniture and unwrap the next pack of flooring.  Oh yes, I know his game.

We also squeezed in a cinema trip (Wrath of the Titans, 1.5/5, don’t bother) and a trip to Nando’s to see some old uni friends.

We’ve got two sets of visitors coming over the Easter weekend, so the pressure’s on to get the flooring in (although we still need to paint the skirts and radiators in the living room before putting the beading in, but that can wait).  The paint’s cracking at the bottom where we’re hammering flooring against it, so that needs sanding off and redoing.  Also, Barry’s working in London all week, so he’s not going to be productive from there!

Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest.  It isn’t in our house!  Onwards!

Photos of the flooring so far…

Shotgun approach

2 Comments

In response to Wednesday’s post, someone commented to ask if we’re working on our entire house at once.  Of course not! was my first reaction.  Then, as I started writing out the reply, it really did begin to look like we are, in fact, trying to take on the entire house at the same time.

This was my reply:

We started with the living room in January, which quickly spread to the kitchen, so we’re working on all of the ground floor at the same time. We’ve got a big splodge of tester paint in our bedroom, and we know what we want to do with that. We need to finish painting black up the stairs, and then do it on the top floor too, but we also want to put decking in the garden soon…

Damn.  Barry’s forever telling me that we can’t do everything at once, much as I’d like to.  Financially, we definitely can’t do everything at once (unless the lottery plan comes together), and it will probably go very quiet for the rest of this month once we have the flooring in.  I am, however, gearing up for some excellent before and after shots.

It’s easy to get carried away.  I know I’ve talked (or typed) before about DIY and decorating influencing your friends, but it also has a snowball effect on yourselves.  The more we do, the more we want to do, and now that a certain part of the house is almost done and looks great (well, we think so!), it makes you want to keep going.  Just need to rein it in a little bit!  We haven’t even got to photo wall month yet, and we’re already thinking about decking.  In the meantime, our bedroom still looks like a crime scene.  What will we tackle next?

Kitchen excitement

Leave a comment

Well, the new flooring arrives tomorrow, and I’m very excited!  We are also going to Nando’s tomorrow, so Barry’s very excited!  This is our kitchen floor as is – a bit industrial for my taste.

We’ve got the table and chairs I wanted from Argos; they’re winging their little way to us now (well, in the next 35 days).  There’s a bit of a story behind this.

My mum came round for tea the other night and I had a fantastic menu planned: to start, grilled flat mushrooms filled with dolcelatte, with a balsamic glaze and small side salad.  For the main event, a lamb tagine with La Kama spices, honey and fresh ginger, with a variety of fresh vegetables and a side of spiced couscous.  For dessert, buns fresh from the oven, baked by my own fair hand.

Mum was supposed to arrive after 7pm, when she’d had her hair done and driven over to Bradford.  In the meantime, I was going to get my skates on after work – jump on the bus, nip to Morrisons, dash round the shop and get home.  Unpack the shopping, stick the tagine in, get changed, clean the bathroom, and start preparing the starter and dessert.

Instead, this is what happened: Mum text me at 4.30pm with the following:

Hi love i am in asda bradford do u need owt ? Hair cancelled x x

My heart rate immediately tripled and my work colleagues had to tell me to calm down.  I replied:

Oh bugger, I’ve got to go to morrisons to get some shopping because I thought I had time!xx

I will get it here darl if u would like me to x x

My colleague Michelle T told me to just tell her what I wanted from the shop (thereby skipping the trip to Morrisons myself).  I text the list back:

Would you please get: big flat mushrooms, dolcelatte, bag of baby spinach, lamb, courgettes, 1% (or semi skimmed) milk and a cauliflower?  Oh, and a bottle of asti.xx

This is when it started falling apart, because the shop didn’t have everything I needed for my careful plans.  She thought dolcelatte was a type of mushroom, and picked up cauliflower and broccoli pieces because they didn’t have a whole one.  Trying to direct your mother to a very specific blue-veined cheese in a shop you don’t frequent, while trying to get home in time to beat her (be quicker than her, not hit her) is quite difficult to do.

In the end, she suggested that we just get a curry.  We both agreed that a curry was, indeed, the best course of action, would be cheaper, and that she definitely still needed to bring two bottles of Asti back with her.  I beat her back to mine, did a rush cleaning job, got changed and spoke to my brother before she got back to my house with the vino.  Phew!

Anyway, she had been trying to buy us a kitchen table for three-and-a-half years as a housewarming gift, but we’d never had the space before.  She’s taken pity on us, and is finally buying us the table and chairs.  I realise now that this has nothing to do with the meal story, but I’ve kept it in anyway as an idea of what my life is actually like.  I live on a knife edge.  Hurray for future breakfasts in the kitchen!

Change of plans

4 Comments

I’m kind of sulking, because I’m not going to be able to chop up our units to make a dressing table.  The neverending saga of me not having a dressing table continues.  I suppose if I ever actually got one, it wouldn’t be neverending.

Instead, we’ve decided to leave the units as they are, and replace the red stuff with white stuff.  Otherwise, it’d be white on white on white, and that’s clearly too much white.

As I said before, we will still be having white drawers/cupboards/wicker baskets in the units, but it won’t be quite as clinical as we first thought.

Barry’s asked me to clarify why he’s wearing sunglasses inside on yesterday’s post.  It’s not that he’s too cool for school, is a pimp, or has some strange eye disease.  No!  It was just incredibly sunny this Sunday – so sunny, he had to wear sunglasses inside.

I also wanted to show off that we got tickets to the Sunday of Radio 1’s Hackney weekend, and am super excited about it!  If my friend Rach picks up her phone, we might even have somewhere to stay for the night…

I’ve just remembered that I promised our living room carpet to Jaime many moons ago.  I’m afraid it’s not going to be much use to anybody (it’s covered in splashes of paint), and Charlie and Jaime did get their carpets redone about a year ago, so I’m hoping he’ll forgive us when we throw it away!

Almost there

2 Comments

Barry’s been a busy boy (say that five times quickly after a few drinks). He’s made the box to cover the fuse box. Twice. I didn’t like the purple on white action, so he had to make another door in white.

He’s also been sawing away at the cornices and pelmets, so they’re done, and we’ve made the interesting discovery that Tipp-Ex ® is nigh on exactly the same white as our wall units. Good to know.

This means that the units are done!  The peninsula can’t be made until we’ve got the flooring in, so that’s it for now.

We’ve been comparing the flooring samples to the units; it’s definitely got to be white. For the quantity we’re wanting for the kitchen and living room, it’s of no benefit to us to get two rooms’ worth together, so we may split it into separate lots so we can at least have one room sorted. It will definitely be the kitchen first due to the concrete flooring!

We’ve also put the dining room table back up because it doesn’t look like flooring in there will be changed very soon and we’re both tired of eating off our knees in front of the TV.

You know the drill, photos below!

Drumroll please

Leave a comment

The auctions have ended; the bids have been counted and verified (drumroll please)… we have a dazzling £343 from our old kitchen to spend on the new!  Note to self: never bin anything again ever.

It’s so much more than we were expecting that we don’t know what to do with it (don’t worry, it will be spent!).  The joiner is the first item on the list, and then I suppose the rest may go to flooring (or lights/tumble dryer/coffee machine/mixer/photo frames for the living room/yesterday’s hair cut/anniversary meal).

The lady wanted us to deliver, but we don’t have the facilities to transport 3m long worktops, etc., so she’s going to have to book a man with a van.  Hopefully she’ll sort it this week so we can carry on painting.

As I already mentioned, yesterday was our fifth wedding anniversary, and so we had to get wooden gifts.

Panicking in Boots, I originally bought Barry a wooden Botanics nailbrush, but then had a proper think about it and bought him some of his favourite aftershave ever – Marc Jacobs Men.  He hasn’t had any in ages and it has (wait for it) top notes of cypress and base notes of cedarwood.  I am the master.

Although Royal Mail are currently holding Barry’s gift to me hostage, he’s shown me a photo of what I can expect – it’s this lovely wooden jewellery box.  I’m looking forward to receiving it!

Hall of shame

4 Comments

In response to the post in which I mentioned heinous carpeting, my friend Jules confessed to me the other day that she was in possession of such a floor covering on her hall landing.  I’d like to make it clear, she came to me.  And here it is.

While discussing this with another friend, she came up with words like:

  • “vintage”
  • “retro”
  • “classic”

These words are very flattering for the carpet pictured, and yet I’m sure this style will be very popular again at some point (not just yet).  I’d like to point out that Jules didn’t actually choose her hall carpeting herself, it was there when she moved in, and she would like to change it.

Is this better or worse than boring beige?  Is it a talking point?

Kudos to Jules for accessorising the carpet with her beautiful pooch Mojo, who definitely distracts from the pattern. Altogether now, “ahhhh”…

Which is best, tiles or wooden flooring? Only one way to find out…

3 Comments

We’d decided on slate tiles in the kitchen before we’d even thought about getting a new one, never mind knocking down walls and making it bigger.  However, I’m not sure about whether they would go with the units we’ve now chosen, so I’m still wavering.  We’d settled on these ones from Wickes, which were on sale when we first saw them, but now the square footage is getting bigger and they’ve come off sale, they’re looking more and more expensive.  I think we’d have to shop around before making a decision anyway.

Another option is to take the white wooden laminate (discussed previously) from the living room right through to cover the whole ground floor.  However, I’ve been strongly advised by colleagues not to have wood in the kitchen – one leak and it’s all over.  Anyone wishing to share their experiences is welcome to do so!

This is the flooring we have at the moment – bog standard laminate.

One factor affecting the choice of a black/grey tile is the colour we’re going to paint the kitchen.  At the moment, we’re thinking brilliant white on all walls, as colours may clash with the units and they’re enough of a statement on their own.  However, in the show house we visited before we bought our house, they had matt black painted up the stairs on both floors.  It sounds a bit gothic and depressing, but it really worked (honest!), so I think we may do the same.

Now that we’ve opened up the stairs to the kitchen, we could carry that black wall down so that one kitchen wall is black (the wall in the image above).  I’m wavering, because I think very dark grey would work as well, like this Slate (left) from Wickes, but Barry’s set on black.  I bought a tester pot of Dulux Midnight Kiss (below), and painted a splodge on the wall (and a bit on the carpet for good measure).

Either colour would also match the potential slate flooring.  I think some hard decision-making is in order, but we’re committed to painting it in some way to cover up the black!

To counteract the darkness of the floor and the wall, Barry thinks that brilliant white on the ceiling and all other walls is the way to go, but I don’t know if it will be too much with the white high gloss cabinets…any thoughts?

On a completely separate issue, I have to have a mini-rant about the plastering in our house.  Where we’ve removed walls, there are obviously big vertical holes, about three inches apart.  However, in two places, the plaster on either side of the hole won’t meet with a flat, straight line of plaster because one side comes out further than the other.  On one of them, the walls are about perfect at the top, but it comes out about an inch further at the bottom.  These things are hard to explain, but it’s infuriating, and it’s going to be a problem in particular for one of them, because we’re putting the kitchen cabinets in front of it.  At the moment, we’re wondering whether the worktop and upstand can be cut in a curve to accommodate it, but we’ll have to see when they arrive.  Rant over.