Tag: wall

Prints

1 Comment

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

6 Comments

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…

Depressing visual representation of all the jobs left to do: the living room

4 Comments

In the second of this two-part mini-series, I take a closer look at the living room, and all the things we still need to do.  Click here for yesterday’s gripping instalment.

1. Sand and repaint wall and paint skirting boards

2. Paint these skirting boards and cut and fit the beading

3. Paint this door (both sides) and the doorframe on the other side

4. Paint this radiator

5. And this one

6. Fit the strip thing between the kitchen and living room

7. Create the photo wall – finalise photos and buy frames and prints

8. Buy white drawers and baskets for the units

Depressing visual representation of all the jobs left to do: the kitchen

6 Comments

This is part one of a two-part mini-series whereby I put all the work we’ve already done into perspective and think about just how much more time and money we still need to dedicate to these two rooms of the house that are taking over all of our free time and finances. This is part one: the kitchen. Tune in tomorrow for an exciting look at the long list of tasks still to do in the living room.

1. Sand and repaint the ceiling

2. Cut skirting boards to size and repaint

3. Fit skirting boards

4. Finish painting the kitchen walls

5. Finish sanding and fit the peninsula

6. Tile the kitchen walls

7. Paint the stairs wall, handrail and ceiling

8. Replace all of the switches with brushed silver ones

9. Get a condenser tumble dryer

Photo wall

9 Comments

While all the kitchen malarky’s been going on, I’ve also been thinking about our photo wall for the living room.  I’ve mocked up the photos on Illustrator, and it’s been really helpful to visualise how it will look.

This has made me realise that we need to whittle down the photos more, and scale down some of the ones we were going to have printed A4, so it has been a useful exercise.  Definitely need to look at it again before buying anything!

It’s hard to know where to start with this, because I’ve never done this before, but this has been a cheaper way of discovering I’ve gone a bit overboard than buying all the photos and frames, and then realising it!

Feelin’ hot, hot, hot

1 Comment

The kitchen is now freezing, because the radiators have had to be removed. I seriously considered switching the oven on the other night while cooking at the hob, just for a bit of warmth.

Before we entered the Dark Ages, we were thinking about putting a small radiator under our bay window, but as the pipes come from above, this will be a really difficult job (lots of patching up), so we dismissed that. Barry’s mum once again had a great idea (this kitchen malarky was her idea in the first place) of having a vertical radiator.

These are the style we’re looking at on eBay. We started with B&Q and Wickes, but quickly switched to old faithful as they’re a third of the price, delivered. Can’t argue with that! This is now pressing as the temperature’s dropping, so I think we’ll order one this weekend.

I’ve also spotted (no pun intended) these white lights on the B&Q website. They are £40 each though, and I think we’ll need two, so we’d better raid the piggy bank!

Barry’s now put wood and plaster board on the end of the wall that was open and we’re coving the rest of them this weekend with plasterboard – hopefully it will help to keep a bit of warmth in.  Pictures below!

Breaking the fourth wall

2 Comments

The kitchen wall is no more!  All hail the supersize kitchen!

I annoyed Barry by taking lots of photos as he worked.  In my defence, I did order the Chinese food – I couldn’t exactly get to the kitchen.  It’s difficult to get a photo of the entire kitchen, so I’ve had to take the last two from either side.  It’s that big.

We sat and thought about the list last night; I think we didn’t want to do it because it’s really long and we knew it would be.  To start with, we were going to put the delivery of the kitchen units back because they’re supposed to be coming in less than two weeks’ time.  We’ve changed our minds now, because we’ll only want them, so here goes…

  1. Finish painting in the living room.  We’re going to leave the dining table down for now, and this will allow us to store things in that space.  Namely, kitchen cupboards.
  2. Get the kitchen pipework done.
  3. Electrics – get them where we want them.  Barry will be linking two lights together and getting rid of a switch.
  4. Start patching up the kitchen.  This will involve fitting plasterboard into the holes in the walls and ceilings, and generally making it ready for skimming.
  5. Take the current kitchen out.  Scary step, there’s no coming back from this!
  6. Skim the plaster.  A friend is being called in for this one!
  7. Paint ceiling.
  8. Paint walls.
  9. Put cupboards together (maybe while the other is drying?).
  10. Put in kitchen.
  11. Put in kitchen flooring.
  12. Put in living room flooring.

There are a million and one other things to add, like putting additional radiators in, sorting the photos for the living room wall, getting some more units sorted for the living room, getting the worktops cut, shall we have an island in the kitchen, etc., and I’m sure more will come to me as I’m just about to drop off to sleep.  But it’s a start.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

3 Comments

My ex-uncle (he used to be married to my dad’s sister) lives about five minutes from our house and loves DIY.  He has any possible conceivable tool, power or standard.  He can advise on plastering, putting up kitchen cupboards, decking, etc., etc.  This gentleman kindly lent his ex-nephew-in-law (can you be an ex-nephew-in-law if we were married after they divorced?) and I his (used) Bosch power sander and a set of stepladders for the various jobs we need to do.

Complicated family politics aside, the sander broke after we’d had it a few hours and so we faced the dilemma: to buy or not to buy the replacement?  Of course, we did, but I really begrudged shelling out £33 on a sander we won’t get to keep and barely got use from.  I’m hoping the stepladders don’t jump out of the car when we’re returning them!

You live and you learn; we will probably just buy a tool next time we need it – at least we’ll get to keep it!  On the plus side, my ex-uncle will be happy and if we do need to borrow something again, he will hopefully be obliging because we’ve been honest.  I say hopefully, because I’m actually telling you before I’m telling him…

On an unrelated note, I thought I’d put up a couple of photos of the kitchen before we do anything to it for posterity’s sake.  Excuse the mess, we’re decorating!

This is the wall (both sides) that will soon be no more.  It holds two radiators, a thermostat, and three light switches that need moving.

There’s a little bay window which would be nice for a table once we’ve got some more space.  The blinds are down because we don’t want people to think we’re complete layabouts without knowing why the kitchen’s in a state!  Not sure where we’re going to put the oven when the wall’s come down, think we can just shuffle it about.

We’re keeping the fridge…

Yes, we had pizza for tea that night…

We’re also keeping the dishwasher and washing machine…

The kitchen is perfectly serviceable and we would probably have kept it for years if we hadn’t have been extending it, but it’s not what we would have chosen ourselves.